Unlike many gamer-oriented notebooks which shine like a Christmas tree, Asus G60J has a much more balanced and discrete design. Other than the blue lid, the notebook is made of a combination of matt and glossy black plastic, the glossy elements being the sections around the display and keyboard. The Asus G60, weighing a 3.5 kg, certainly belongs to the heavyweight category, which was already hinted by a mild look on its formidable dimensions. The good side is that we have no negative remarks as far as the construction is concerned, while the lid fared particularly well, since we haven’t managed to distort the image on the display however strong the pressure on the back side of the lid was. Although the G60 has a 16” display, the keyboard is the same in size as the ones seen on some of the smaller notebooks. This implies that a particular construction solution had to be used, one that we see quite often on Asus’ notebooks lately, unfortunately, meaning that the right cursor key was placed where one would expect “0” to be on the numerical part of the keyboard. The keyboard itself belongs to the new, “Chiclet” wave, with the keys spaced further apart than usual, giving them a “separated” look. Typing is pleasant in general, while deflection is only somewhat present in the central part of the keyboard. Other than quality, the keyboard on this model can also pride itself on its backlight. Even though it’s not the keys themselves that glow, but rather the side lighting, the effect is great. Besides the aesthetic effect, we have to point out the functional advantage of backlight, because it makes you completely independent from ambient lighting, thus enabling you to work in a completely dark room. The backlight level can be adjusted in three steps. If you’re worried about the power consumption, when the PC is powered by the battery, keyboard backlight uses just over 1 watt, which is negligible in regard to the total consumption.

The touchpad has a large surface, framed by a relatively high edge, which makes it nearly impossible to “land” by mistake. The button edges are unnecessarily cut off precisely in the part which is the most used one (in case of the left button anyway). Aesthetically, that looks nice, but functionality was needlessly compromised. Other than that, the buttons are characterised by precision and a rather quiet behaviour. Above the keyboard, a pair of very good Altec Lansing speakers found their place, with a few sensor keys between them. The display measures 16”, as previously said, and we expect some to find the “HD Ready” resolution (1366x768) rather small for this large a diagonal. There are advantages to it, since you’re able to play the most demanding of games at maximum resolution, but we feel that the GTX 260M could’ve coped with higher ones just as well. Visibility angles are quite solid, and colour saturation on a high level. Reflection is quite evident, but as most gamers prefer to play in the dark anyway, this shouldn’t present a problem. The webcam is of average quality, and the bundled software provides quite a few fun effects.