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Written by Zeljko Djuric
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Wednesday, 28 January 2009 |
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Page 1 of 3  Republic of Gamers (ROG) badge, that can be found on cover of this notebook, is known from graphics cards and motherboards and it emphasizes gaming character of this notebook. Besides its obvious gaming pedigree ASUS G71V actually belongs to desktop replacement notebook category. Even if you never encountered ROG badge in your life, after first glimpse at this notebook it will become obvious that it is intended for gaming population. Large number of openings, colorful blinking diodes and lights combined with, usual for this kind of products, red-black color theme makes this notebook very noticeable.
Your opponents at LAN Party will be especially irritated with mentioned ROG badge that is blue lighted along with two large blue LEDs that are placed along cover sides. Those can blink in the rhythm of played music or according to frequency of fans or CPU load. If that wasn’t enough there are two LEDs on front side that can even change color according to same conditions mention in case of cover LEDs.
Most surfaces of this notebook like cover, display frame and sides are done in shine, piano, finish. Even keyboard, along side with numeric pad, looks it was sprayed with star dust. At least palm rest is made of plastics that resembles carbon fiber and doesn’t act as fingerprint magnet. Above keyboard is located green LCD screen that can display information about battery capacity, amount of free memory, new email, arrived instant messenger message or CPU load. Beside additional display, above keyboard are also located additional touch sensitive control buttons. Those can be used for power mode changing, overclock of CPU and one more function: touch pad disabling – very useful function in gaming environment. All these functions have their appropriate signalization on main screen so you always know what you have done.
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Most connectors are hidden behind covers so even sides of this notebook look sleek and sporty. Since this is one big notebook, 4x USB connectors are absolutely expected. There are also HDMI connector for connection with HDTV and D-SUB for monitor connection. We were disappointed with absence of DVI connector but since there are HDMI-DVI cables (converters) already available on the market this shouldn’t be a major problem. Seventeen inch screen looks great with 8ms response time and great resolution. We didn’t like the fact that this is glare display since there will be a lot of reflections on sunny, bright day, but since gamers are mostly night hawks this won’t be a big problem. Color reproduction of this display is precise with colors well saturated, wide viewing angles and small pitch which resulted in a display that can be used for much more then just playing games.
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