The ASUS Republic of Gamers G751 Review: G-SYNC Comes To The Notebook Computer
by Brett Howse on July 29, 2015 8:30 AM ESTBattery Life and Charging
Most of us would not think of a 8.5 lb notebook as something that is overly portable, but there still might be an occasion where the G751 would need to be off the mains for a bit. NVIDIA has done some work on battery powered gaming, but their biggest issue to overcome is that most of these gaming notebooks do not get great battery life even under light workloads, so gaming generally means an hour or less of battery life, and that is with reduced performance as well.
The G751 comes equipped with a 90 Wh battery, which is certainly on the large side but not unexpected with a large chassis notebook.
Our light battery life test consists of web browsing, with the display set at 200 nits. Time is logged until the device powers down. The heavy test ramps up the number of pages loaded, adds in a 1 MB/s file download over Wi-Fi, and also includes a movie playback.
If the G751 has an Achilles heel it is battery life. Although we can't isolate power consumption of the laptop's GTX 980M discrete GPU, based on the performance of other large gaming laptops I believe the bulk of the battery life hit comes from the lack of Optimus support. Without any Optimus support, or a hardware switch to disable the GPU like the MSI GT80 has, the ASUS G751 is dragged down by having to power far more graphics power than is necessary to browse the web. These devices are not really designed to be used on the go like a smaller Ultrabook would be, but here we can see pretty clearly that there is a lot of work to be done for the Maxwell GPUs to get close to integrated GPUs low power usage.
It is pretty much the same story on the heavy test. Only the Clevo manages worse battery life, and it has a desktop processor inside of it. A ten pound notebook is already not very portable, so the battery life scores are certainly not as relevant as they would be on many machines.
With a 47 watt quad-core Haswell processor, a powerful GPU which can’t be completely disabled, and no real requirement to be efficient, the G751 is closer to a desktop replacement than other similar devices. Like a desktop, this laptop should be plugged in for pretty much any usage. If you wanted to watch a movie on it, you could get by as long as it isn’t Lord of the Rings (the extended version of course). But if you are going to have a knock on a device like this, battery life is likely the one area that is not as critical to the experience.
Charging
ASUS ships the G751 with a 230 watt A/C adapter, which should be plenty to cover the peak power usage of the laptop. With a 47 watt processor and a GPU that will draw somewhere around 100 watts, there is still a nice margin even if the device is fully loaded up. This also leaves quite a bit of power available to charge the large 90 Wh battery.
Despite the huge battery, ASUS manages to charge up very quickly, with the G751 being right at the top of any device we’ve tested. In fact the only device that charges quicker is the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon, and it has just a 50 Wh battery inside, so ASUS slightly makes up for the less than stellar battery life by at least getting back up to full charge quickly.
All in all, the battery life is poor, but with G-SYNC requiring that the GPU be directly connected to the display, rather than through the integrated GPU, there is no possibility for Optimus to be used. Some devices have a hardware multiplexer to enable the integrated GPU to be used, but it adds cost and complexity to the laptop, and you would lose access to G-SYNC on the desktop too in that case. With these handicaps, ASUS has tried to compensate with a large battery, but in the end the device is just not that power efficient, but its use targeted audience is likely not too worried about that.
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boeush - Wednesday, July 29, 2015 - link
(The sad and rarely advertised/appreciated aspect of any kind of engineering or architecting, us that 50% or more of the time is spent on writing or reviewing of documentation.)douglord - Wednesday, July 29, 2015 - link
Has anyone seen a windows laptop with a 4 core cpu and Iris Pro with NO igpu?ingwe - Wednesday, July 29, 2015 - link
Isn't Iris Pro an iGPU?BMNify - Wednesday, July 29, 2015 - link
pointless question is pointless, Iris Pro IS igpu.Notmyusualid - Saturday, August 1, 2015 - link
+1Meaker10 - Wednesday, July 29, 2015 - link
Yes this model with the 4870HQ, also the GT72/GT80 with the 4950HQ and 5950HQ. However they can manually switch to it too.deeps6x - Wednesday, July 29, 2015 - link
I believe the author must have been referring to the Zenbook 303, as the Zenbook 305 is a cpu crippled piece of dung. But an otherwise nice piece of dung. 1080P (not some unusable in windows 3k or 4k BS), matte screen (which is the only way to go on a non-touch laptop), NON-TOUCH (which is also the only way to go imho), nice keyboard, nice case, nice weight, so-so connectivity. But the 303 doesn't gimp the CPU and that makes it a NICE ZENBOOK.As for this overweight (big steaming pile) mini-desktop (as nobody wants almost 9 lbs dropped on their laps, and certainly not 9 lbs of HOT laptop while gaming).... I will say this: I love that GSync is being included in laptops now.
Note to Asus, quit trying to 'check boxes' and start offering real value in some other form in your laptops. Does anyone need 24 or 32 GB of ram in a lower mid level desktop equivalent laptop used for gaming? Um... NOPE. 16 GB is overkill, but 8GB is underkill, so stick to 16. But don't cheap out on the SSD. These days, when you can get a 480-512 GB SSD for like $200, just put that in it and be done with it. Don't try to up sell your customers for $500 for something that should already be included for your bloated list price. BTW, stop overcharging for GPUs in laptops. If you take this 980M out of the laptop, what do you have? A laptop spec wise similar to something you charge $799 for? That is CRAZY! Does adding a GPU that is functionally equivalent to a $250-$300 desktop card mean you should charge $1200 (or whatever) more? Sure seems like you are milking your loyal customers instead of trying to expand your user base by offering a better bang for the buck than your competitors. Which sucks, because I personally think you are second only to Apple in design quality. I'm typing on a Zenbook now. Love ya. Try harder. Do better.
/end rant
WackyWRZ - Wednesday, July 29, 2015 - link
While I agree with most of your statements, I fail to see how they are "cheaping out on the SSD". Its an XP941 which is a PCIe SSD - not SATA and is known to hit 1.0Gbyte/sec+... They also cost about 2x the price of a SATA drive too.deeps6x - Thursday, July 30, 2015 - link
My mistake. I missed that the first time I glanced at the article. Came back to read it. I do love the PCIe SSDs. I have a small one in my MSI Ghost Pro and it is actually noticeably faster than the regular SSD in my Zenbook. Hopefully everything will start coming with the twice as fast PCIe version, from the lowest Zenbook to this massive gaming box.One other thing I'd add to my rant. Asus, you clearly have enough room on the keyboard, so could you PLEASE return the double wide zero key on the keypad? For people who actually use the keypad for number entry, the double wide zero key makes it so much easier. Especially since we are used to it on every desktop keyboard and calculator out there. Why do you insist on gimping your laptops this way?
PS, I looked at the picture of the back of the laptop, read the Pontiac Aztec comment, and laughed. Yup, both look quirky. Some people will love it, some will hate it.
boeush - Thursday, July 30, 2015 - link
At least the keyboard spans the width. What really gets my goat, is when laptop vendors stick a 13" keyboard into a 17" form factor...The fact that I feel a need to actually commend Asus on this matter, is a very sorry commentary on the state of the laptop market these days.