We take a quick look at the GL503!

ASUS officially took the wraps off of their ROG Strix GL503 notebook back in May during COMPUTEX, with the Taiwanese company announcing availability of the new machines during the recently concluded ROG Masters in Manila. The Strix GL503 differs from ASUS’ other offerings by providing eSports afficionados with a gaming notebook that has enough oomph for competitive play while still being portable enough to chuck inside a backpack.

ASUS ROG Strix GL503 specs

• 2.8GHz Intel Core-i7 7700HQ processor
• 8GB DDR4 2400MHz RAM
• NVIDIA GTX 1050 discrete graphics, 4GB VRAM
• 15.6-inch FHD IPS display, 1920 x 1080 resolution
• 1TB SATA hard disk drive, 128GB SATA3 solid state drive
• Wi-Fi 802.11 AC, Bluetooth 4.1
• 3 x USB 3.0, 1x USB 3.1 Gen.1 Type-C,1 x USB 2.0, HDMI, mini DisplayPort, Ethernet port, 3.5mm jack, SD card reader
• Windows 10 Home

Initial Impressions: Oozing with legit gaming cred

Since the Strix GL503 is a notebook from the storied ROG brand, it’s been designed for gamers first and foremost. The lid of the notebook looks familiar, which isn’t surprising since it’s essentially a tweaked copy of the one in their top-end thin and light Zephyrus. The design gives the GL503 a little bit of extra street cred, since you’ll probably mistake it for the more expensive notebook from afar.

Once you get up close though there’s no denying the rather thick chassis of the GL503. With an overall thickness of 22.9mm and 2.54Kg weight, it’s rather meaty, especially when you factor in the power brick to supply power to the thing.

There’s plenty of customizable ROG lighting to be found on the notebook. While we’ve yet to customize the rear ROG logo that glows red when the notebook is on, the keyboard’s backlight can be customized depending on your mood. There’s four distinct sections of the keyboard’s backlight that can be customized, thanks to ASUS’ Aura lighting system.

The display itself is a 15.6-inch IPS display running at 60Hz, which is good enough for most people, though demanding eSports athletes may want a responsive display to game on.

There’s a full set of connectivity options available for the notebook, which includes HDMI, mini DisplayPort, USB ports along with a USB Type-C connector and Ethernet port if you want faster, wired connections.

Inside the Strix GL503 is Intel’s Core i7 7700HQ processor, paired with 8GB of DDR4 2400MHz RAM as well as an NVIDIA GTX 1050 GPU with 4GB of VRAM. That’s more than enough to run most games on medium and even select titles on high with 1080P gaming, but we’ll have to find out with our full review.

ASUS hopes that the ROG Strix GL503 will hit the right spot for mainstream gaming, with a SRP of Php 69,995.