Hands on: Asus ROG G752 review

The ROG GX700 isn't the only beastly gaming laptop Asus brought to its big Republic of Gamers event: it also packed along its other top dog, the ROG G752. The 17.3-inch gaming notebook comes as the successor to the flagship ROG G751 and features a radical new design, its own novel cooling system, and sixth-generation Intel Skylake processors to boot.

Design

The first thing you'll notice about the new Asus ROG G752 is it has a flashier aluminum exterior that's also much cleaner than its predecessor. Whereas the G751's lid was made of a slate of black polymer with a giant metal plate in its center, the G752 top section consists of one solid plate of brushed aluminum with a few spots that light up when the machine is turned on.

Asus has even departed from its signature red and black Republic of Gamers color scheme and given the G752 a titanium silver with copper highlights paint job. It's still a striking machine that easily stands out as a hardcore gaming rig. Given its massive 9.6-pound weight and 16.85 x 13.15 x 2.09 inch (W x D x H) dimensions, it would be hard not to spot the G752 in the first place.

You'll find the most eye-catching part of this machine on its rear end, where there's a giant flared vent that looks almost like a grinning baleen whale. It's an incredibly cool touch that's further accented with orange trim and some red LEDs for an added light show.

Specs

The biggest and most notable upgrade on the Asus ROG G752 is that it comes with Intel Skylake processors. There are only two options, but the chips are both high-performance Intel processors: the 2.6GHz Intel Core i7-6700HQ and 2.7GHz Intel Core i7 6820HK. Of course, both chips are overclock-able and users will be able to get up to 3.5GHz and 3.6GHz speeds, respectively.

On the graphics end, this 17-inch gaming laptop can be configured with a Nvidia GTX 965M, 970M or 980M graphics cards. You'll can bump up the specs of this machine with up to 64GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD storage space or a 1TB hard drive.

Aside from the new silicon, the Asus ROG G752 features a vapor chamber cooling system. Rather than going with traditional heat pipes, this system introduces a larger chamber that acts as a reservoir for cooling liquid in the heat pipes. In short, the technology is more efficient at dispersing heat than the heat pipes traditionally found inside most gaming laptops.

Thus far, only Nvidia Titan cards and other high-end GPUs have had vapor chambers because the chambers are expensive to produce. As Intel's new Skylake processors are always overclocked to some extent, this should help the G752 run more efficiently and at higher performance levels for longer.

That said, if you're using this machine on the go, expect battery life to last a short 4 hours, and that's going by Asus' best estimate.

Price and availability

The Asus ROG G752 will release later this holiday season for a starting price of $1,499 (about £977, AU$2,046). At it's most basic configuration this 17.3-inch gaming rig comes outfitted with an Intel Core i7-6700HQ processor, Nvidia GTX 965M, 1080p G-Sync display, 16GB of DDR4 RAM and a 1TB hard drive.

At its maxed-out configuration consisting of an Intel Core i7-6820HK, Nvidia GTX 980M, 64GB of DDR4 RAM and 512GB SSD, the G752 rings up for the still slightly sane price of $3,499 (about £2,282, AU$4,777).

Early verdict

Asus has long made a name for itself in the gaming world delivering some of the highest performance hardware available. The ROG G752 continues this lineage. The new model's design is refreshing and also much more attractive compared to the outgoing flagship G751.

The new 17.3-inch laptop comes outfitted with all the latest silicon, including Intel Skylake processors, Maxwell graphics, andDDR4 memory, all at a fairly decent but still expensive price. While I had tons of fun playing with the machine at Asus' Republic of Gamers event, I'll have to put this machine through some thorough testing before I can stamp it with my complete approval.