 We cover all kinds of laptops and notebooks around here everything from Asus's monster G750 series gaming beasts to our upcoming MacBook 2015 video But today's gaming laptop the G501 is not about extremes But rather balance trying to find the perfect middle ground has Asus done it well, I guess we'll find out Kingston KC 310 series business grade SSDs feature firmware based power loss protection massive capacities and Performance to spare in fact we're using them for our new production server click right here to learn more about them so if I'm going to make a statement like This is a you know Balanced laptop I guess I'd better back it up objectively right under the hood our machine is kitted out with the core i7 4720 HQ that's typical of mobile gaming rigs these days 16 gigs of RAM so plenty but not overkill a 15.6 inch display size squarely between the 14 inch blade 14 and a 17 inch monster like the GS 70 from MSI a GTX 9 60m with 4 gigs of VRAM that lives squarely between entry-level discrete graphics and the legitimately high-end 970 and 980 M's and I guess I probably sound like a broken record by now Which like a broken record by now which like a broken record by now which like a broken record by now which but I digress The g501 does have some things that really set it apart from the crowd first and foremost the config I have in front of me is equipped with a 512 gig PCIe 4x based SSD that I've nicknamed the record Next up is the IO on the front We've got these kind of neato indicator LEDs on the back is just ventilation on the right we find Nothing of note a three and a half millimeter combo jack an SD card reader and two USB 3.0 ports then on the left we find Nothing of note again. Well hold on a second Linus. Why did you say the IO was exceptional ah? There's a mislabeled port here That's a USB 3.0 port and HDMI ports a standard power in and a thunderbolt 20 gigabit per second port disguised as a mini display port port It's a feature with very little relevance to many users But one that could be a key selling point for creative pros who use thunderbolt in their daily lives and finally We've got the display I mentioned the size But I specifically didn't mention anything else at the beginning of the video now It wasn't long ago that every gaming laptop had some kind of poop-tastic 1080p TN panel in it not today and while maximum brightness is not as high as I'd personally like to see the IPS display in the g501 manages the higher contrast and great viewing angles that I've come to expect with a 3840 by 2160 ultra HD native resolution to boot So let's take the rest of the physical tour then shall we build quality is again what I would describe as High to mid-range although a couple of years ago. It would be somewhere between very good and exemplary Which goes to show how far we've come with a brushed aluminum top cover sporting a shiny asus and slightly less shiny but definitely more red ROG logo a similar brushed aluminum base that can be removed to reveal the single upgradeable dim slot to complement the four or Eight gigs of soldered RAM and a solid blasted anodized aluminum unibody style keyboard and touchpad surface That would have combined with a bezel made of anything other than plastic pushed the device into outstanding craftsmanship territory if it didn't have quite so much give To it when I press down or rest my wrists on it the trackpad is again average It's unfortunately not glass which is what makes it sort of not premium but the good news is it does feature a pretty satisfying plastic surface and On the keyboard travel distance is good although that is something that's admittedly easier on a laptop Like this rather than on a super hyper slim one like the you know point 15 MacBook But I did find the backlight brightness a little low and the tactile bump could be less mushy the really good news Though is that there were no cardinal sins committed in the layout and while I personally prefer home end page up and page down To be bound to function in the arrow keys versus their slightly inconvenient or altogether absent Location in the top right the inclusion of a number pad and proper up and down arrow keys at all is great if you're a productivity minded person who also wants to game a bit, but this is where we get into the first unbalanced aspect of the g50 ones configuration the GTX 960 m GPU is Just plain not suitable for gaming at 4k like at all It's very unusual for me to say in this case I think a downgrading the spec would have been just plain better, but a 1080p IPS panel with great contrast and a bit more brightness would have actually been preferable for me in this case Now you can simply run it at 1080p in games as I did in these comparative benchmarks versus the razor blade 14 2015 which gives us an idea of how the 960 m compares to the 970 m But if you're going to do all your gaming at 1080p in the first place then the question is why not just use an HD display Anyway, which I guess leads pretty well into the whole who is the g501 made for conversation as a gaming device It delivers a good experience better than the vast majority of last generation gaming laptops even ones with much thicker profiles But actually it's its general purpose mobile computer Utility that's more likely to sell it to folks who are shopping for a new laptop Since its battery life for productivity was great compared to most gaming machines and it can actually game a bit So the bottom line is this I compared it to the razor blade 14 2015 for a couple of reasons number one is that I happen to use that as my daily driver So the comparison is convenient and number two is that at its old price of $2,000 The g501 was actually somewhat price competitive with the blade 14 making it a pretty tough sell from a performance and construction perspective But at the new price not to mention the included mouse and headset the conclusion actually changes a lot And now for someone looking for a good-looking laptop that delivers great usability for productivity and a good if not exemplary gaming experience The g501 becomes a quiet cool running compelling value as long as you don't mind spending 20 minutes removing the unnecessary Bloatware seriously asus. I just bought your laptop. I don't need like an asus Gift box like deals app are you for real? Look at this thing Takes forever to load All right, so that's pretty much it guys like the video if you liked it Dislike it if you thought it sucked leave a comment preferably at the link to our forum in the video description if you want To discuss it also linked in the video description You can buy a cool t-shirt like this one give us a monthly contribution or change your Amazon bookmarked one with our affiliate code That kind of thing helps us out a lot as always don't forget to subscribe and follow and all that good stuff