Asus G50V-A1 Arrived, Photos Inside

Intial Impressions:
Wow, pretty wide, and a pretty big laptop. Maybe not as wide as a 17 incher but it's close. Bigger than I expected. Makes a 15" macbook look diminutive!

Loading the OS the first time is SLOWWW...express gate is fast and works well.
Yes, it is a little flash, but it grows on your after awhile. Build quality is EXCELLENT!
Little OLED looks nice, pleasing to the eye. Finish again is excellent.
Trackpad is smooth but the acceleration seems weird to me. (Personal preference)
Whatever photos you guys want, ask and ye shall receive. Just uh, tell me what your looking for. (Photos or otherwise).
Oh, and the LCD is gorgeous!



















(8/10 Update) More photos can be found here @ post #36 -> http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=3750060&postcount=36

 

That's awesome, I asked Vicious this in the other thread but maybe you can answer. Both of you have stated that the laptop is bigger than you expected so this kinda worries me. I gotta carry this thing around every single day, taking it in and out of my bag multiple times per day. What do you think about carrying this thing around like that? If it's too uncomfortable, I won't be getting it.

 

I have 2 minor gripes with mine,

1.) mild backlight bleed on the bottom of the lcd. Test it with an all black screen like maybe the eizo monitor test utillity and tell me if you have bleed too.

2.) an "air bubble" I think over my oled readout for the battery power and stuff, you cant see it when using the laptop but if you get an over top view with the display off you can see it.

I agree it is wide, and it kind of made me think wow a 17"? for a moment but thinking about the 17" I got hands on with at BB the other day its still smaller by a good amount. Did you decide if your going to use Raid or not?

I went raid 0 just so I can say I tried it before I said it was bad. It "feels" like things are installing slower, but maybe loading faster. I know it will pay of if I start doing video editing.

 

Can you post some pictures of it beside that 15" macbook? That would be great.

Also, im a bit of a noob when it comes to raid, hard drives and stuff. What drives does it show in My Computer? I'm guessing its 2 separate HDD's that it shows but I just wanted to confirm this. Can you take a picture of this? Thanks

 

Stock setup is 2 drivers independant no raid.

 

Does the second HDD have anything on it (ie recovery) or is it completely blank? I'd guess there would be different partitions on the primary HDD but I could be wrong.

 

Big, yes. Too big, no. I will also be lugging this 12 miles a day on a bike. Doable if you ask me, even more so if you're close to class, or where ever else you are headed. But make no mistake, this is NOT an ultra-portable.

I'm reinstalling Vista right now on the RAID 0 drive, two partitions. I'll let you know how it goes.

Not sure on the backlight bleed, can't check it right now. And I have no air bubbles over my stuff, mine's perfect.

Yep, I'll get you the photo comparison of a macbook in a bit.
When it arrives it shows as two separate HD's in "My Computer".
Right now I am choosing to set it up as a RAID so it will show as one large 500G drive. (Actually two partitions but that's just my preference)

 

I don't see any pictures in here ><

 

Check again!

 

By the way, both of you guys have the Intel 5100 wifi card and not the 4965 as advertised by various resellers right?

 

correct I do.

 

Stunning bro you should be a paparazzi for laptops lol, those are amazing pics i just cannot wait for the g71v does ANYONE know when it's coming out sorry for the off topic but i cant find info anywhere

 

In early September. We still got one month away, I'm also waiting for it.

 

you know i don't understand why both these laptops didnt come out at the same time unless the g71v will get an updated gpu, lets hope there's an expensive version that gets a 9800m gt we can only hope

 

Correct. 5100.

 

I hope not, because the G71v will be just barely in my price range. I won't be able to afford anything more expensive.

As far as a I know, it will be around $400 more expensive and really all your getting is a 17" screen. But since I'm hardly going to carry my notebook around, I prefer this over the G50v.

 

well im gonna kindly diasgree well its more then a 17 inch screen remember the ddr3 people say it's not a big deal it isn't....for now but later on it will soon all ram will shift to ddr3 making ddr2 outdated so you can argue it is somewhat more future proof and this g71v supports overclocking or some crap like that and lastly up to a terabyte of space i mean you said you are getting the base model so all that good stuff may not matter though you'll still get the overclock/ddr3/bigger screen so its not such a bad deal

 

cant wait for this to come out in UK so i can see it in real life before buying. also i want to see the size because im tempted by the g71v.

btw in the pics, what is the "BT" thing in the wireless section

 

BT is bluetooth, I think.

 

This has been bugging me but what's the battery life on this laptop??

 

6-Cell power saver normal use 2 hours.

Gaming - Dont bother

 

man im starting to think this may not be the laptop for me

It looks aweosme and performance is great , but looks too big and battery life may not be good for class? Though I should be able to plug in hopefully.

 

nots not that big and its very light, battery life seems great to me this is a gaming notebook. If you want a pencil pusher laptop for web & MS Office for extended amounts of time with no battery then yeah this is not the perfect fit.

You can get 3 hours tho with the 9-Cell for me thats more than I could ever need at a given time with no power around.

 

Definitely a notebook in the "don't leave home without the brick" class

 

Definitely don't want any bricks lol

I hope it's not as big as the Sager NP8660. I think I'm gonna order this thing and play around with it for the first few days and see if I need to return it.

 

Do you live near a best buy? mine had the X1 model on display its the same body minus some of the colors and things. Go look at one of those.

Its not deep and its not too thick its only sort of wide. The only scale I can give you is that it hands about an inch off my Zalman NC1000 on each side, but its a small cooler even the C90S was off of the edges of it.

 

It's definitely not. Xoticpc has the dimensions of both on their website if you wanna check.

 

I've got an other question, the black material below the keyboard what is it? Is it leather plastic, carbon or ...
and can you switch between the nvidia gpu and an internal gpu for saving battery life? that was the promise with montevina.
Greetzz Michael

 

PLastic.
No reference to Hybrid-SLI anywhere.

 

No onboard integrated on this unit. I think there are still one or two things the full fledged montevina will have that are not in this unit.

The material where your hands sit is a honey comb like plastic. Works good as it stays cool and is scratch resistant.

 

How is the heat overall? Does it make your fingers sweat or does it get annoying around the palm rests?

 

can we have a pic of it sitting at the desktop please? Vista desktop that is, I'm intrigued as to how Vista looks at that res, cheers!

 

And please with your macbook pro or another laptop next to to see what is look like

Thanks for your pics

 

Yeah please a comparison photo with the macbook and this

 

can I get a picture of inside the case, and the mouse.

 

Nope, keyboard doesn't get hot. A little warm at the outlined areas but nothing enough to make your fingers sweat. Hardly feel it around the palm rest.

Best I can do for now, recovery ATM. Full res tomorrow.

Tomorrow.

Here you go.










*BONUS* Next to a Logitech G7 for comparison.

*DOUBLE BONUS*

Shot at night of the back of the laptop. Steady mode.

 

Are those stickers on the palm rests easy to remove? They're nice for advertising 'n all, but after all, I think they would get annoying. 'Course if you remove 'em, there's potential for icky residue...

 

I'm sure they're easy enough to remove, provided you remove them early on, otherwise the heat might bake them on and leave you with a sticky residue. It's nothing a little GooGone wouldn't take care of though.
For the time being I'm leaving mine on. I'm **** proud of my G50V and everybody else can know it.
I thumb my nose to them.

 

I recommend removing stickers early on. Otherwise there will be a difference in color between the surfaces that were under stickers, and the rest. And it'll look ugly.

 

Don't need to remove every single one if u want them to stay. Definitely gonna remove the hideous alone in the dark sticker from mine along with the energy star sticker, HD vision (wtf?), the sitcker next to it and the big asus sticky on the left with the specs.

 

Don't remove the small stickers with Windows and Intel. They are a pain, not worth the trouble. Very strong adhesive.

 

Haha, yep. Sounds like somebody knows from experience

 

Came right off for me, the intel & windows stickers were 2 of the ones with the strong metal back so no paper like material to tear and get left behind.

Mind you taking the stickers off was the first thing I did before anything.

 

I guess it also depends on the case material. When I took the Windows sticker off the W7, I had to rub for about 2 hours to get that sticky glue off...

 

The hand rest area is this honeycomb like plastic material. Id imagine it has a lot to do with how long the sticker has been there to cure and what conditions it has been exposed too.

Being one of the first G50 owners means that sticker was just put on there not that long ago.

 

removed that big ugly alone in the dark sticker just fine

 

Only complaint I have right now is the keyboard is not totally solid feeling, it bounces around near the edges a little bit. Especially around the number pad.
I don't have time to get it fixed for a while so I guess I need to live with it, but it is really bothering me.

 

Very good post.

Thank you.

 

You bet. Any other questions or photo requests?

 

Since the bestbuy here in Canada doesn't carry this monster, the only way i can get a sense of its size is from photos and videos.

Can you post some more images,video to give me an idea of relative size.

i.e. put a ruler to the back, side and front of the beast. Also maybe some pictures with a regular 8x11.5 sheet of paper on the laptop when it is closed.

Pictures of the powerbrick would also be good too. Is the screen 15.6" or 15.4"?