ASUS ROG G701VI OC Edition, 17.3″ 120Hz G-SYNC VR Gaming Laptop, GTX 1080, 7th-Gen Core i7, 32GB RAM, 2 x256GB SSD , Backlit KB

Beautiful display (with one ever so minor con, see below), fast as hell in every measurable aspect. Built very solidly, well-designed cooling, excellent aesthetics. Dual PCIe NVMe SSDs, 64 GB DDR4, and one of the top-tier CPUs on the market make this system scream in ways that are hard to quantify, other than to describe the performance as this: Replace every progress bar with the word “Done.” GPU performance is exactly what you’d expect from a GTX 1080 on a 1080p display.

The first system that I received (purchased through Newegg, not Amazon) had a major light bleed issue with the display. It was significant enough that it was screwing up color reproduction on non-black images. I ended up returning the system and buying another one through a different vendor (via Amazon), as Newegg’s RMA process is needlessly slow, and I was on a schedule. The one I received as a replacement has been almost flawless. There is still the tiniest light bleed here as well, but even on a flat black image, it’s difficult to make out, even on full brightness. The camera is not Windows Hello compatible, nor is there a fingerprint reader, so no biometric authentication option is available using integrated hardware. The speakers are a bit odd, in a manner opposite to what I’m used to with laptops: Rather than overly tinny, these seem to overemphasize the low-midrange, giving sounds a kind of “dull” quality. That said, this doesn’t really ruin it for me, as any time I’m listening to something where I care about sound quality, it’s through headphones or an external speaker system of some kind. There also seems to be a driver issue where the trackpad will lose gesture capability (two-finger scrolling, two-finger tap to right-click, etc.) after waking from sleep, and requires a restart to fix.

I want to point out that this laptop is large, and somewhat heavy. I don’t consider this a con, because I knew that I was getting a large, somewhat heavy laptop. Please, be aware of what you’re buying before you buy this laptop. If you want something that is “thin and light,” you’re going to hate this. If you want a laptop that can go toe-to-toe with some of the best desktops/workstations out there, and you’re fine with the size and weight, then I can happily recommend this system. This would easily be a top-tier gaming laptop, or an excellent professional mobile workstation, and I’m using it for both. In all, an incredible amount of power, marred only by the smallest little niggles, make this a fantastic buy for anyone not deterred by size, weight, and budgetary impact.