A couple of weeks back Asus has launched a new series of laptop in India, Republic Of Gamers, under this series, Asus has launched G551J which is one of the best laptops available in Indian market for gamer’s at the price tag of under Rs. 85K. A couple of weeks back we had got this laptop for review and after using this laptop extensively we are very much impressed with its build quality and the features which it comes with.

In the past we had seen that Asus is more and more focusing on the design language of its devices, like Zenfone series devices, here too Asus has done its homework very well and this laptop has a nice design language which you must love if you are a gamer.

Inbox Contents Asus G551J :-

When you first unbox Asus G551J, you will find following contents :-

  • Asus G551J
  • Battery
  • Power cord
  • And, Power breaker

Build And Design of Asus G551J :-

When you first take your newly laptop out of box, you will find it quite a heavy device, we were not surprised as it comes with some high end specs and its build for gaming so we were expecting it to be heavy. As told earlier, you will love ts design at first sight. The hood of it is covered with a sheet of brushed aluminum and the interior part is made up of single piece of metal, these metal parts invites your finger prints and show smudges which make it a big task to keep it clean, underbelly is made up of some good quality plastic. You will find a logo of ROG on the hood which glows but not very much.

Asus G551J Hood

Overall laptop has mixer of black and red colors, you will find red colors placed here and there on the machine. If we talk about placement of ports and connectivity then on left side you have a power port so that you can charge this laptop charge and keep it running, apart from this you have exhaust grill on the left side and you can see cooling system fins from it which are red and seems very nice, next to it you have mini-Display Port, HDMI Ethernet and two USB 3.0 ports.

Asus G551J Left Side Ports

Asus G551J Optical Drive

If we talk about the right side then you have optical drive, a USB 3.0 port, audio port and a Kensington Lock which helps you to keep your laptop secure in public places. Just below you trackpad you will find some of your status LEDs which are good as all indicators are in front of you but at the same time it might bother you will watching movies.

Just above keyboard you will find Republic of Gamers embedded with two speakers also placed there, speakers are good and will give nice feedback to you, there is another ROG logo just below your keyboard.

Hardware And And Specs of Asus G551J :-

Under the hood this laptop comes with some high end specs which is good enough to keep your gaming experience at high level. It is powered by  Intel Core i7-4710HQ clocked at 2.5GH (you have choice of getting up to 3.5GHz) with 8GB of RAM and comes with 1TB of storage which lets you install plenty of games on it. To handle your gaming experience it houses a 2GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX850M graphic chip. At top of screen it has a HD camera which gives good amount of feedback to you.

Asus G551J Display Screen

In terms of display it has a 15.6 inch full HD wide angle IPS display screen, as its an IPS display screen so viewing angle on this screen will be very good and you can view it from almost every corner, under sunlight screen gives nice feedback.

Software And UI :-

Asus G551J runs on Windows 8.1 Pro edition, so if you had used Windows 8 earlier then you are not going to find anything extra here. UI is nice and comes with all Windows 8 features.

Keyboard And Trackpad :-

Keyboard of Asus G551J sits at the center of the interior frame and it gives good feedback to you, keys are well designed and nicely placed so that you can easily type on them, in our test we were able to type long emails and blog post also ;), without any hassle, keys are not flexible which means if you press them from sides then also they will register themselves.

Asus G551J Keyboard

One thing which didnt liked on keyboard is the placement of its Power button, which is placed at the top right side, in many occasions we end up by pressing it and it puts laptop in sleep mode.

Asus G551J Backlit Keyboard

Asus has selected to put black keys on black background which is not the smart selection, however keys are backlit and it has red illumination on black keys gives nice look, but if you are in dark room then you might have to keep illumination always on, as it has black background. WASD keys has red border on them and it adds beauty to the keyboard.

Asus G551J Keyboard WASD Keys

Asus G551J Trackpad

Lets talk about trackpad, well trackpad is decent and it worked very good with us, it responded very well on our swipes and gestures, but clicks on it needs some more pressure, but as its a gaming laptop so you must be going to use mouse and its not an issue for you.

Speakers :-

While playing games, its sound quality which keep you motivated and affect your gaming experience, in Asus G551J speakers are placed above the keyboard facing up and they gives nice quality of sound experience to you, however it misses base, but I am sure if you are a gamer then you are going to use your headphone and it will fix this problem for you.

Noise And Heat :-

Under moderate or normal use this laptop performed very well, fans on this laptop never goes completely off but you wont hear any noise from them on normal use, fans on this laptop is placed at top-left side of it and heat comes out of it, so you better not put any obstacle there. But under heavy usage this laptop do gets loud but its not something which you cant bear.

Under very very heavy usage (while playing games for 6 hours) it reaches temprature of 95 degree Celsius and you will feel heat coming out of the exhaust area.

Connectivity :-

For connectivity it has Qualcomm Atheros AR9485 wireless module which perform very good, in our test we were able to download and upload files at good speed when we were at the distance of 40 feet from our router with some obstacles between us.

Upgrade Options :-

Asus has launched different version of this laptop across this world, however all version allows you to upgrade your hardware specs, all you need to do is remove two phillips screws which holds tray on belly. Once you remove that tray you can easily upgrade your RAM, Hard Disk.

Asus G551J Back Tray

Battery :-

Asus G551J houses a 56 Wh 5000 mAh battery which is disappointment for us, in our test it lasted for 4 hours and 45 minutes when screen was at 80%, WiFi was on, keyboard backlit was on, played full HD video of 45mins on YouTube, and watched movie of VLC.

Asus G551J Battery

And when we played Need For Speed Rivals on full screen brightness, full audio and WiFi was on, it lasted for 1 hours and 20 minutes.

Performance :-

Performance wise its a good laptop, we were able to play almost all modern games like Need For Speed Most Wanted Black Edition, GTA IV, Tomb Raider and Battlefield 3, the gaming on this laptop was very good, we never faced any kind of lag or frame drop on it.

Asus G551J HWiNFO

All went very smoothly, performance does goes down while playing game on battery but its wont affect your gaming experience at all.

Asus G551J Backlit Disk Benchmark

Lets talk about some stress test which we did on it :-

  • When we put stress on CPU with Prime95 it scored :- 3093Mhz with temperature rising to 90 degree Celsius.

Asus G551J Backlit CPU Stress Test

  • When we put stress on GPU with Furmark it scored :-1091Mhz with temperature rising to 81 degree Celsius.

Asus G551J Backlit GPU Stress Test

We also run few bench-marking test and here are our results :-

  • 3DMark 11 :- P4956
  • CineBench R15 :- OpenGL 98.15 fps

Final Verdict on Asus G551J :-

At last we would say that its a nice gaming laptop, it comes with nice display screen, nice keyboard and overall it perform very nicely. The price of this laptop is one thing which makes it stand out in the crowd. At the price of around Rs. 80K you are getting much more which you might not get on any other gaming laptop at this price tag.

Pros :-

  • Price
  • Screen
  • Keyboard
  • Build quality
  • Beautiful design

Cons :-

  • Stiff trackpad
  • Get hotter under heavy load
  • Battery could be better

Asus-ROG

Asus G551J/FE170CG
Reviewed by Rahul Sharma on December 31, 2013
Rating: 4.0

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