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00:00Hey, how's it going? Dave2D here, and this is the Asus GL503. So this is a laptop that's
00:10equipped with the GTX 1050. It's on like the lower tier in terms of gaming laptops, but
00:15it's relatively inexpensive. It's built quite well, and this is something that Asus has
00:19brought into the market to just be a little bit different from every other gaming laptop.
00:23So the first thing I noticed when I picked this thing up is that the design language
00:27on this laptop is a little bit different from what they've gone for in the past. Normally
00:31the ROG line is very much black and red. I think that Asus is like one of the original
00:36companies that did the whole black and red gamer thing. I feel like this is like the
00:40transition phase. I feel like we're on the edge. Next year, I really think that we will
00:45not be seeing as many black and red laptops as we've been seeing this year in the gaming
00:49industry. So this thing has no external red accents. There's some red in the exhaust vent,
00:54and the ROG logo lights up red, but that's it. Everything else is black. Even the keyboard
00:58lights are configurable to whatever color that you want. It has a metal top surface,
01:03and the design of this is actually very similar to the Asus GX501, which is like their flagship
01:08laptop, and it's kind of weird to see the same kind of design language on a laptop that's
01:12significantly cheaper. So this thing starts at around $1,000, and the build quality is
01:16quite good. The hinge is good, the paneling feels solid all around, and overall it's a
01:20well-built laptop. Now the bottom panel does not remove readily, so there's like an access
01:25panel that you can remove to access the RAM, the hard drive, and the SSD if you want to
01:30put one in, but the rest of the bottom panel is very difficult to remove. I tried for a
01:33little bit, and I couldn't get it to come off. So if you need to kind of clean out the
01:37fans or access anything else, like maybe the Wi-Fi card in there, I'm sure it's doable,
01:41but I didn't want to break the review unit. It's a little bit tougher than your average
01:45gaming laptop. If you'll notice, there's only one RAM slot. The good thing is that it already
01:49comes with 16 gigs, so if you want to upgrade it up to 32, you just need to buy a single
01:53stick of 16 and pop it in. The port selection on this thing is pretty good. You get one
01:57USB-C, it's not Thunderbolt 3 though. You get four USB 3s, a couple of display outputs,
02:02an Ethernet, and an SD card slot. The audio jack that's on here is one of those combined
02:06ones, so it has headphone and earphone at the same time, so you might like that, you
02:10might not. I personally prefer this type. When you crack it open, you get a great keyboard.
02:15The layout is nice, it's got a number pad and everything, so you got that leftward shift,
02:18but the keyboard feels very nice to type on. The keystrokes are a little bit softer
02:22than some gaming laptops, but I think most people will like this thing pretty quickly.
02:26One feature I do like are the audio keys up top, so you get volume up, down, and mute,
02:30and it just makes it a little bit easier to control your sound in-game. The fourth button
02:34is the ROG button, and it launches the Asus ROG app for performance stats, fan control,
02:39and other things like that. The other app that Asus has is the ROG Aurora Core, and
02:44this is the app that lets you switch the colors on the keyboard. So there's four different
02:47zones and you can switch into whatever color you want. The trackpad down here is nice,
02:51it's smooth, it's plastic, and it uses Windows Precision Drivers, which in 2017, that's what
02:56you want. You want a Windows Precision Driver based trackpad because everything else is
03:01not as good. The button mechanism is okay. It's good, it's just not perfect. There's
03:05a little bit of play before it actually depresses as a click. It does feel good though overall.
03:10The speakers are about average for a $1000 gaming laptop. They're not bad or anything,
03:14they're just not amazing. They get reasonably loud, but they're not particularly clear.
03:18The screen is where I feel like this laptop shines. So a lot of times when you spend $1000
03:22for a gaming laptop, you're gonna get some better performance, but you're gonna get some
03:26not great displays. This display panel is quite good. Color accurate, bright, and it
03:31just feels like a high quality display. Now there are variants with 120Hz and other types
03:36of panels, but even the standard panel looks really good. So if you want to do some color
03:39accurate work or video edits, this is a great screen to do it with. For the people interested,
03:44this is what the webcam looks like and I guess this is what the mic sounds like. The image
03:48looks a little dark, I mean it's a little bit underexposed. The resolution is there,
03:52but underexposed. Performance on this machine is gonna vary depending on how you configure
03:57it. This one's running a GTX 1050, you can get a GTX 1060 for it, but for the 1050 model,
04:02it performs as you would expect. I ran some light and moderately demanding games, and
04:07because it's a 1050, you're not gonna get blistering performance, but it's not bad,
04:11and the thermal output on this thing is easily handled with the cooling system, but if you
04:14configure yours with a GTX 1060, performance will be better, but it will run hotter.
04:19The fan noise on this laptop was louder than I thought it'd be. It's a GTX 1050, right,
04:37so I was hoping for it to be a little bit quieter, but this is just how thinner gaming
04:41laptops are. The good thing though is that it is able to maintain comfortable temperatures
04:45when you're playing games. So with the Asus GL503, you're getting a laptop that starts at
04:49around $1,000, you're getting great build quality and very little red accents. The screen is great,
04:55it's only 1080p, but you're getting great color accuracy and good brightness, the keyboard is
04:59comfortable to use and you get four color zones to customize, the trackpad is accurate and uses
05:04Windows Precision Drivers. On the inside, the GTX 1050 and the Kaby Lake CPU are good performers
05:10and are properly cooled, the RAM and the two drive slots are upgradable. And down over here,
05:15the 64 watt hour battery gets around five hours of battery life, depending on what you do. I ran
05:19my tests with the screen at 250 nits. So who is this laptop for? Because this thing starts at
05:24around $1,000, you can get gaming laptops with this kind of performance for around $800. Granted,
05:30the extra money in this thing goes towards better build quality and a significantly better screen,
05:35so if that's what you're looking for, check this thing out, I really like this one. Okay,
05:38hope you guys enjoyed this video, thumbs if you liked it, subs if you loved it, see you guys next
05:42time. And, if this thing's not black and red, I mean, that's worth $1,000 by itself.