ASUS G1S 15.4″ Gaming Notebook

I was speaking with a good friend a few weeks ago, one who’s not that fluent on PC hardware. During our discussion, we got on the topic of this notebook, as I was working on benchmarking it at the time. One thing he mentioned struck me. He noted that when it comes to ASUS products, he’d be willing to pay more over a competitors product, because hes had such great experiences with their offerings in the past.

After pondering for a bit, I realized that I was in the same boat. We’ve reviewed numerous ASUS products in the past, fifteen to be exact, and we’ve never given one a “bad” review. The closest was the PW201 monitor which had ultra-poor touch-controls, which still annoy me to this day. It’s not too often that we see such an abundance of quality products released from the same company, without receiving a less-than-ideal product every now and then.

The reason I bring all of that up, is because ASUS is not currently known in North America as being a notebook manufacturer. Of course around here, their motherboards are quite popular, but their notebook lineup is slow to catch on. Why? Too much competition, no doubt. With that in mind, how is a company to compete? By attempting to create better products than the competition, of course, something that ASUS has done well for a number of years.

The G1S is a perfect example of this methodology. All too often, when a company releases their first product into a new market, the results will be sub-par, but improve over time. This is due to their R&D department being not that well-versed in that market segment, or because the company simply wants to rush a product out the door to see who bites.

I’m unsure how long ASUS have been producing notebooks in Asia, but I do know that their North American releases have been nothing but impressive up to this point. From what I can see, ASUS doesn’t release a product unless they know it’s going to be well-received, and that it’s well-built. After using the G1S notebook for the past two months, I can vouch for its quality.

You might be thinking that I am going to continue this ASUS-love-fest for hours, but that’s not the case. As much as I love most of their products, there are many things that they could improve on, the primary one being product support. I’ll touch up on this towards the end of our article. For now, let’s take a look at what the G1S offers and what you will receive with it when you decide to purchase one.

First and foremost, a box is not normally a selling point of a product, but ASUS has always done a good job with their designs, so it’s with that reason that I include a picture of it here. Let’s game, indeed.

Before we jump on the notebook itself, we will take a look at what is included. In the picture below, you will find the various driver CDs, the manual, battery and it’s power brick, LCD cleaning cloth, various accessories and an ASUS-branded Logitech MX518 mouse.

Once out of the box, you will notice that the G1S has been packaged well… it shouldn’t have a single scratch once received. All sensitive areas of the notebook are protected with plastic, including the screen and faux carbon fiber.

Being a gaming notebook, the G1S couldn’t leave the factory without some “bling” pasted on. In the case of this particular notebook, that bling included a carbon fiber chassis, which looks great. I’ve yet to find someone who didn’t think that it looked good. Sure, it’s fake, and it doesn’t help to cut down on weight, but it looks great and from a gamers perspective, that matters.

With that, let’s move onto a look at the physical features of the notebook itself.