Just take a look at the G70s and you will see how much of a beast it is. It has a huge array of flashing lights which not only make the laptop look like a spaceship but also can flash to music. Let’s hope were not hoping for a long battery life. On average though, even with flashing lights and the huge screen we managed to get just over 1 hour with normal use. The laptop comes with built in switches and buttons to instantly load up gaming profiles for your favourite games. The brushed aluminium looks brilliant and so much better than just a plan black finish, but does show lots of finger print marks esp. as the touch pad buttons are also brushed aluminium.
"Designed as a gaming laptop"
The G70S on paper at least sounds awesome. Our review model came featured a 17-Inch LCD screen in WUXGA / WXGA+ resolution, a whopping 4GB of RAM, 2 x 320Gb 5400 rpm Hard Disk Drive, a Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 CPU, two independent GeForce 8700M GT graphics card, Blu-Ray writer, WiFi, Bluetooth and Dolby Home Theatre System. Yes that’s right an SLI laptop, duel core and a blue ray writer. Wow. On initial look this laptop sounds yum. But there are a few problems. 5400 rpm disk drives. Come on now, 7200 drives for laptops have been out for some time, and for a gaming laptop are a must, especially running Windows Vista as this model came preinstalled with. The cost difference would have been next to nothing and the lack of disk transfer speed is all too obvious in Vista. The addition of the blue ray writer is a good on and with its HDMI output should enable watching some of those high def movies people are ranting on about. The rear and side of the laptop features enough USB sockets to keep all your peripherals attached and it even has an external SATA port.
" SLI laptop, duel core and a blue ray writer"
The 2 SLI graphics cards to the novice sound like an amazing selling point of the laptop, but to be honest the performance even when in SLI mode is not great when compared to some of the latest chips available. At this price point though the extra power will be fully utilised in some of the latest games. Don’t even think about Crysis at a high res though, expect mid 20 frames per second, but most games will play at a pretty good frame rate. Sold as a gamers laptop you might expect something a little more powerful, but as mentioned it’s not a bad priced laptop for what you get.
The touch pad can change modes lighting up a control pad for use when playing movies and music. It has volume controls, along with the usual play and fast forward buttons. This is a neat way to reuse the touch pad rather than to plug in another load of buttons considering how many this has anyway.
"The G70S on paper at least sounds awesome"
Although the laptop is heavy and sports a huge power pack it’s still portable, but you’ll certainly use a few muscles moving it. Because of the spec of this laptop as you’d expect it gets pretty hot, but Asus have put some thought into this. As well as having 2 huge fans on the bottom it also has a huge vent at the back helping dissipate heat as fast as possible. Under normal gaming conditions we were still able to place the laptop on our laps and play without burning too much.
Overall
So to conclude the G70s is an extremely capable laptop, runs most things well, but a few small compromises internally let this beast down. If you’re looking to impress your mates then the styling and flashing lights will impress most as it does look like something out of an alien space craft.