Digital Trends

Asus G50VT October 29th, 2008 | by Nick Mokey

Performance

Despite its relatively modest price, the G50Vt performed extraordinarily well in our gaming performance tests, chewing up even demanding games with authority. Asus built this thing to play, and play it does.

We first stretched our gaming legs on the G50 with BioShock, which is an older title, but fairly representative of the type of middle-of-the-road title many gamers might interested in playing on a notebook. It uses DirectX 10 to create detailed bump-mapping on surface and atmospheric effects like shimmering water. After setting every feature to high, we were still able to stride through the game with the G50 barely breaking a sweat, rendering every detail with a smooth, flawless frame rate. 

Since the G50Vt sliced through older games without so much as a hiccup, we fired up Crysis to run the machine through the ringer. Although we had issues with strange keyboard shortcuts booting it out of full-screen mode originally, and had some foreign characters crop up in corner, once we ironed out the kinks, it did an admirable job playing through an infamously demanding game.

After setting the resolution to the computer’s native full-screen, we managed to keep all settings at high and still have a playable, game, even if it did occasionally show signs of choppiness during scenes of extreme on-screen action. After turning anti-aliasing to 2x, game play began to crumble, but backing other settings down to medium returned the game’s silkiness. Overall, we were able to maintain extremely impressive graphics settings without losing playability, and highly commend the G50Vt for its hardware prowess.

In boot tests the G50Vt managed to get Vista running in about 58 seconds, which is respectable given the sluggish scores so many other notebooks rack up when saddled with the OS. Asus also includes a feature called Express Gate, which is like a built-in mini OS that snaps up quickly for applications like Skype or Web browsing. We were able to go from zero to homepage loaded in 45 seconds with it. That’s impressive compared to Windows Vista, or even many OS X machines, but given the limited capacity you end up with inside Asus’ groomed OS, the time savings didn’t really justify using it much for us.

Gorging on Batteries

Not surprisingly, the festival of lights dotting the outside of the G50, combined with its hotrod internals, make it an absolute battery hog when running full bore. In our testing, we only managed to wring about 45 minutes from the machine with games playing, lights blinking, and performance set to maximum.

Sadly, the machine doesn’t dial down very well, either. Asus does provide utilities to turn down the notebook’s excesses, but we had to laugh when we saw that even the book’s “power-saving mode” lights up the rear badge, one light bar, and the blue strip around the touchpad. An energy miser, it is not. After turning on every energy-saving setting, but leaving Wi-Fi on and surfing to simulate typical airport-type use, we managed to swing about 1 hour and 45 minutes – not an impressive figure for a notebook

Filling the tank is no quick exercise, either. In our testing, the G50 only managed to store away a single percentage point worth of charge for every two minutes it was plugged in as we worked. This makes the process of filling it up from nothing an agonizing affair best left to be completed overnight. 

Image Courtesy of Asus

Double Displays

One of the G50’s most interesting features sits nestled directly above the keyboard next to the indicator lights. A small blue LCD screen acts as secondary display, which can be set to show battery life, new e-mails CPU usage, memory, and other functions through Asus’ software. While it could easily be called a novelty, we found the battery monitor to be genuinely useful, along with the e-mail indicator. 

Sound Quality

Though the Altec Lansing tag on the G50’s audio system might lead buyers to believe the speakers are something more than ordinary, we found them to be fairly unremarkable in testing. They lacked volume even at the highest settings, rattled the keyboard at punctuations in music, and barely even hinted at any bass – all hallmarks of a standard pair of notebook speakers. They’ll work for Windows sound effects and quick YouTube clips, but extended music, movie or game sessions will definitely demand a pair of headphones. 

Conclusion

If you’re willing to accept the limitations of a gaming notebook, including poor battery life, size, bulk, and debatably gaudy styling, the Asus G50Vt delivers many times over in sheer speed and performance. It shocked us with its capabilities, and with a pricetag of only $1,250, we would even call it bargain for the segment.

Pros:
 
• Screaming performance
• Reasonable price
• Unique look
• Convenient secondary display
• Stellar connectivity

Cons:
 
• Awful battery life
• Extremely large, heavy
• Loud styling
• Mediocre sound quality