When play is work: The ASUS ROG G703

The need for horsepower under the hood has been hampering the growth of the Indian gaming industry. Yet, ironically, the numbers of gamers has increased exponentially in the last five years across mobiles, gaming consoles, laptops and desktops. Asus has been shrewd in tapping into this burgeoning market.

Its latest addition to the Republic of Gamers (ROG) collection, the Asus ROG G703, could well be the portable gaming beast that could take on gaming desktops, thanks to what's under-the-hood: an Intel 8th generation Core i9 processor which can be overclocked up to 4.8GHz and the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 8GB graphics over clockable to 1974MHz. We are a bit surprised to find that the Operating System in a high-end machine like this, is the rather basic Windows 10 home edition rather than the professional version, which is cheekily recommended by Asus (at extra cost no doubt).

The Full HD Virtual Reality-ready panel of G703 features 17.3-inch screen that also provides an ultrafast 3 millisecond response time that reduces motion blur and ghosting.

The machine offers 64GB RAM along with a 3 x 512GB Samsung SSDs and 2TB hard disks for storage. So, you don’t have to worry about memory or storage running out. Asus has also included one USB Type-C Thunderbolt 3 port, three USB 3.1 ports, one mini display port, one HDMI port and a SD card reader to ensure you have no shortage of input options.

In the audio department, the G703 has two 2W tweeters located at the base of the display channel to deliver high-frequency audio directly to you while the two large 4.5W woofers in the chassis reflect sounds to deliver a balanced audio experience. The G703 uses the Sonic Studio III audio suite to simulate a 7.1-channel surround-sound signal to provide an immersive 3D audio experience even on standard stereo headphones.

The keyboard uses Aura RGB lighting technology which allows you to customize light effects right down to individual keys. It also allows you to create unique colour patterns for each of your games, that can help you find and master the controls. An Anti-Dust Cooling (ADC) system cleans the machine of dust and particles.

Although a gaming platform, this device is still basically a heavy duty laptop and requires twin 280W power adapters to keep it going. The average battery life provided by this device is 3 hours. Priced at Rs 4,99,999 the G 703 could end up being a heavyweight (literally too — at 4.7kg!) gamers' platform as long as one has the deep pockets for it.