ASUS crams 4K gaming into a sleek and distinctive laptop
What should a company do immediately after unveiling an incredible 4K laptop that's only 19 mm thick? Why, repeat the feat while throwing in some gamer-level GFX from NVIDIA on the way. You might have heard that we were particularly impressed with ASUS' Zenbook NX500: Besides the specifications, it was quite the looker too. However, if brushed-metallic finishes aren't your thing, maybe the moody black and red undertones of the ROG GX500 will be more to your liking. Has the Razer Blade finally got competition in the slimline gaming laptop market? We prodded and poked ASUS ROG's new beast earlier today, and we reckon it's a yes.
Back to that screen. Yes, it's 4K and that's incredible in its own right, but ASUS is also ensuring it delivers on color reproduction to, with 100 percent of NTSC's color gamut, and 106 percent of Adobe's RGB. In the flesh, the display is astoundingly crisp, while the fact that it's IPS means it's probably going to be Netflix-friendly too -- especially when that 4K content starts rolling.
Streaming only video would be a gross underuse of the GX500, however, which crams in a powerful NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M GPU for gaming muscle, while still weighing just shy of five pounds. The burning question remains: How do games run? We wish we could tell you, but unfortunately ASUS's ROG launch event was mostly showcasing on-the-rails gaming footage, and the throng of pro gamers and reporters made gaming pretty much impossible. At least for now, early impressions are that it's yet another impressive laptop screen from ASUS, while the keyboard felt far more responsive than we thought it would, given the shallow frame of the GX500. We're also hoping it's just the next step in a gaming rig design revolution.
