ASUS ROG LAPTOP

Despite a slick aluminum lid that Asus claims was inspired by an F-22 fighter plane, the ROG GL552 doesn't look as sleek as some of its competitors. At 15.1 x 10.1 x 1.3 inches, the system is a little chunkier than similar 15-inch gaming notebooks However, weighing 5.6 pounds, the GL 552 sits between the lighter 5.1-pound Acer and the heavier 5.9-pound Dell. Inside, Asus added some silver patterning, which helps bring a little flair to the GL552's black metal deck, along with the sinister red backlighting. The detailing on the left vent helps reinforce the GL552's red-and-black color scheme, and is also a good reminder to keep your hands and legs away from that area, which can get pretty hot. Unfortunately, like grungy black sneakers on a gymnasium floor, the Asus GL552's rubber feet leave streaks on any surface. So try to prevent dragging it across tables and desks. The ROG GL55s's keyboard oozes sinister red light and features an extra band of red highlights along the bottom of the W, A, S and D keys. Typing on the black plastic keys felt snappy, thanks to a pretty standard actuation weight of 60 grams and typical 1.87mm of key travel. Asus also managed to squeeze a 10-key numpad on the right side of the keyboard, but since space is at a premium, the keys on the numpad have been shrunk to about half size. On [login to view URL]'s typing test, I hit a speedy 83 words per minute after just a few minutes spent getting familiar with the keyboard. That's pretty impressive, since my usual typing pace ranges from 75 to 80 words per minute. While it doesn't get the same backlighting treatment as the keyboard, the 4.1 x 2.75-inch touchpad features a similar level of responsiveness. The pad accurately and immediately registered my swipes, clicks and multitouch gestures, such as two-finger scrolling. Display The GL552's 15.6-inch, 1920 x 1080 screen delights with great accuracy, spot-on colors and top-tier brightness. It makes both gaming and watching movies a pleasure, and since the non-touch screen also features a matte coating, you're never forced to stare back at your own reflection. When I watched the trailer for The Nice Guys, the GL552's display nailed Russell Crowe's turquoise blue suit in a way that screamed 1970s even louder than the teaser's retro font. At 272 nits of brightness, the GL552's screen fell barely short of the display on the Acer's V15 Nitro (289 nits), and performed significantly better than 222 nits we saw on Dell's Inspiron 15 7000. With a color range that spanned 116.2 percent of the sRGB spectrum, the GL552 topped the V15 Nitro's mark of 115 percent and easily surpassed the Inspiron 15 7000's range of 70 percent. And with a Delta-E error rate of 0.7 (0 is perfect), the GL552 was more color accurate than the V15 Nitro (1.0), but a tiny bit behind the Inspiron 15 7000 (0.4). The GL552's stereo speakers feature SonicMaster tech that's supposed to provide rich, high-fidelity audio, but in my experience, both music and games sounded a little shallow. Switching to the battlefield preset in the AudioWizard app offered a slight improvement to the bass, but still didn't do enough to help the overall audio experience. On less demanding tasks like streaming HD video from Hulu, the ROG GL 552 strayed just 5 degrees over our typical 95-degree comfort threshold on its bottom. The space between the G and H keys and touchpad were cooler at 92.5 and 90 degrees. The problem is that while gaming, temps near the vent on the left side of the system shot up to over 125 degrees. On its bottom, temperatures  rose only a couple of degrees, which means you can still get in some laptop gaming; you just have to be careful to stay away from its super-hot left side.