ASUS G73Jh DX11 Gaming Notebook Review – ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870

ASUS G73Jh Tour

The ASUS G73Jh is a slick looking full sized gaming laptop with a very comfortable feel. This is yet another example of a solid ASUS notebook that is built to last. The design of the G73Jh was inspired by the F-117 Nighthawk Stealth Fighter and it seems to show. As you will notice, the body of the notebook is actually longer than the 17.3″ Full HD LCD.

At the top of the G73Jh’s display, we can see the standard 2.0 Mega Pixel web camera.

The 348mm full size keyboard of the ASUS G73Jh gaming notebook includes the Instant Launch keys at the top left that includes an on-the-fly overclocking button and a numeric keypad on the right side. While we really like the fact that we have a full sized keyboard on the 17.3″ G73Jh, it did take some getting used to hitting the correct arrow key when browsing since it blends in with the numeric keypad. It seems with the extra room on both sides of the keyboard, ASUS could have afforded to make the keyboard a little wider in order to space the numeric keypad out a little more.

At the bottom of the G73Jh’s keyboard is the full sized track pad with a single button that accomodates both left and right clicks. It is here that we can really show the new ASUS black matte finish on the G73Jh. It really gives it that stealth look and doesn’t show off your fingerprints like the high-gloss finishes do that we are so used to seeing.

Here on the left side of the ASUS G73Jh, starting from the left, you can see the LAN port, USB port, Blu-Ray DVD Combo drive, another USB port, mic port and headphone jack. You can really get a feel for how long the G73Jh is with this angle. The part of the notebook that sticks out past the LCD hinges is mostly the duct that fits around two heatsinks. Also note the angle of the notebook. There is a keyboard tilt effect since the front of the laptop is thinner than the back of the keyboard. This makes makes this laptop more comfortable to game on for countless hours than other notebooks we’ve seen.

On the right side of the ASUS G73Jh we have the 8-in-1 SD/MMC/MS/XD/Smart Media/miniSD/MS-Duo card reader, followed by two more USB ports, an HDMI port, VGA D-Sub port, and power port.

The back of the ASUS G73Jh shows off two mean looking air vents that blow the hot air out of the back of the notebook. We love this design as it makes this notebook appeal to both left and right handed people since no one has to deal with hot air blowing on their hand while fragging! There is also a spot for a TV Tuner on the right side of the left vent. On the left side of the right vent is a security lock port. In the center of the back is part of the battery pack.

Here we have the bottom of the ASUS G73Jh where you can access the guts of the system. The 8-cell 5200 mAh battery pack is at the top and a speaker on the lower right that is part of the built in 2.1 stereo speaker system.

Once we remove the access panel, you see there is quite a bit available to customize. In the upper left moving to the right, we have the 802.11 b/g/n wireless card, followed by the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 GPU with 1GB of on board GDDR5 memory, then the DDR3 RAM running at 1333 MHz. Then on the bottom, we have two SATA drive bays. Our model only came with a single 500GB Seagate Momentus 7200.4 HDD, so it would be easy and convenient to add an SSD boot drive down the road!

Here is a close up shot showing six of the 8GB of Kingston ASU1333D3S9DR8/2G PC3-10700 RAM found on the ASUS G73Jh.

Here is a shot of the 8-cell battery that gives the ASUS G73Jh its juice when not plugged in.

Let’s move on to our testing to find out how ASUS G73Jh performs!