G51J and G51Vx awarded Anandtech's Bronze Editors Choice

Also briefly reviewed here:

http://anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=3689&p=3

And yes, the G51J's 1080p LCD is pretty bad. 200:1 Contrast Ratio and poor levels of everything else.

 

200:1 contrast ratios are on the low end of the spectrum and doesn't quite compliment the backlit keyboard. If Asus had the plan to cater gamers who like to play in a dark environment, you'd expect they would also put in a screen that features richer blacks and crisper whites. 200:1 is what you'd normally see in budget consumer laptops like the Sony CW series. It's not the most desired, but it's bearable for the most part.

 

Which unfortunately shows to some extent the shift in Asus' marketing and sales strategy shifts over the past 18-24 months, esp the G series..... upper end gpu for frame rate performance, skimp on everything else to beat a price point.

Oh, for the W2/3 and V6 again

 

The G51j fits me needs almost perfectly...except with the stability issues people have had, I can't consider it

I asked, and apparently the review unit didn't have any stability issues, so I don't understand what that means. If that older G51Vx was available (I assume it's the same thing only with a Core 2 quad), I'd just get that instead since it's apparently stable.

 

I read that review..and I began to think doesn't the nvidea control panel have a contrast setting? Does that improve monitor contrast?

 

Yes, its almost mandatory to tweak the display with the nvidia controls. It dramatically improved the subjective quality of the screen on my G51j (I don't have any equipment to actually test after tweak, hence the 'subjective' description).

Colors are richer and deeper, items pop and contrast is much higher post tweaks. The only thing that didn't improve greatly is viewing angle: if anything, its slightly worse. Otherwise I'm relatively happy for games, the web, etc. Wouldn't want to do any really serious photo work with the screen but with an HDMI port I simply switch to my much better quality (and size) desktop screen.

 

You can probably kind of fake it to an extent, but ultimately the monitor's quality matters.

I know my n80's monitor isn't super great. It's good enough though for me, as the majority of the time I have it hooked to a far superior external monitor. It would bother me more though if I used it exclusively.

 

Oh, I couldn't agree more. There's no way to fix the underlying hardware: it is what it is. But with tweaks it certainly looks 200% better than default config, at least in my case.

 

How do you make it so the laptop uses the custom nvidia control panel settings automatically when booting up the computer? I adjusted everything to my own likings and thought it had saved...but when I boot up the next time it's not using the nvidia control panel settings but rather the first option on that screen. (I can't describe exactly the wording because I'm at work and my laptop is at home right now) What am I doing wrong when I save the settings?

 

Thats strange... I simply changed the settings from 'Other applications control color settings' to 'Use Nvidia settings' then tweaked each of the three bars to my preference. I rebooted and its restored my choices every time for the past few weeks. I have noticed a slight delay sometimes on reboot, I assume its the control panel driver loading at slightly different times during the boot process.

Actually, I think I did use the standard Win7 calibration tool before I tweaked those settings further with the Nvidia controls. You might want to try that: just type 'calibrate' in to the start menu search box. I'm not sure which one has precedence or if they work in conjunction, so you might want to experiment a bit.

 

As Anandtech points out ASUS (and others) use screens from 2 or 3 different suppliers, and so can have variable quality. I'm pretty darn impressed with the screen in this G51; it's far brighter and better contrast than any non-LED I've seen on a lappy, and while not of Apple MacBook Pro quality not all that far off either. So by luck alone I must have gotten a good one from one of the better suppliers; for new buyers I guess it's a roll of the dice. Don't forget ASUS's Splendid utility; I'm running on the "gamma" setting and it helps a lot.

 

It's a roll of the dice for different poor quality screens. There is no dice roll that will get you a good one in most of the Asus models. They are budget systems for a reason.

 

As I said I don't consider this a poor quality screen. It's not as stunning as the one on my Apple 17 inch MacBook Pro, granted, but the computer costs $1000 less, also. It's as good or better than equivalent Dell, HP, Toshiba etc. products, however, in my opinion.

 

It doesn't come close to the screens Dell uses. Dell uses LG displays in their Alienware line and the same LG's get used in their Studio line as well. The Studio XPS 16 uses LG for their 1080p 15.6" display (same one used in the AW M15x) and an RGB LED for their 16" version. All the aforementioned screens are orders of magnitude higher in quality than anything Asus puts out.

 

What you DON'T say is that a similarly configured Dell XPS Studio 16 is $1688, with a backpack. This model has more memory (6GB) than the G51J, but less hard disk space (500GB), so that seems to me to be a wash. Add $49 for a Copperhead mouse, and that's $1737, $287 -almost 20% - more than the ASUS. So, yes, it BETTER have a better screen.

As for Alienware... seriously? I used to have a real Alienware desktop back when they were made in Miami and besides being pug ugly it was WAY overpriced then, and the brand is butt ugly and WAY overpriced now... for what's basically a designer Dell. Again, however, for the money you should expect a better screen.

But my only point really is that nobody should be scared off buying this model ASUS by talk of a sub-par screen... go to a store and check it out for yourself. I don't feel mine is sub-par at all, and if you want something significantly better be prepared to pay for it is all.

 

The screen quality is subjective.
when you ask different people to rate the same lcd screen, you will get different response. For example: One person might considered the screen to be good, another might considered it to be bad.

 

Exactly so.

 

From a technical standpoint I think the article does well to just put up the raw data on the pluses and minuses of the shown monitors. Subjective or not, the charts speak for themselves on the G51j/vx screen quality.

Personally I don't mind the screen too much for the price but if I had the finances I'd rather pay a little more for a better screen. It is one of the most important parts of the machine imo. Still, overall I think the g51J/vx is the best deal out there right now bar none and deserved an award

 

I can get a Studio XPS 16 with an RGB LED for about $1350. What are you smoking? My girlfriend got her SXPS 16 with a 1080P LG LED that annihilates the junk screen on the G51 for get ready..$900.

You think Alienware is ugly yet you like the Asus design? Besides, in your original post you said the G51 screen was better than the stuff Dell/HP and the others put out which is far far faaaarrrr from reality. I had a budget Acer laptop from Costco ($500) that had a superior screen.

I don't need to go to a store to see it. I'm practically an expert when it comes to Asus, I've had the G51-X2A and G60VX. I don't need a noob like you telling me what it looks like.

 

Aside from the veiwing angles from time to time, I find the screen on the G51J to be more than adequate. At first the back light bleed did sort of bother me, but now I really don't even notice it anymore. WoW looks amazing on it in my opinion.

 

I'm just scared off because it's not stable. I *MUST* have something 100% stable whether I'm playing a game for hours on end, Folding on the CPU/GPU, watching a Blu Ray, whatever.

I think I said this, but for me the screen's less of a concern because I hook it to an external monitor mostly-though if I didn't, I'd want an 18.4" screen of as high quality as possible

 

So they put in a great grafic card to make your games look like eye candy and then ruine the whole effect by giving you a bad screen. Sigh...when will I finaly find a laptop without any flaws. And whats up with al those shiny screens anyway, its killing my eyes.

 

If not for the GPU throttling the M15x would be close to perfect...and really this would be too for myself and a lot of people if not for the instability.

 

The M15x would be absolutely perfect if:

No throttle
Fixed touchpad
2 HD capacity (it's size should certainly fit 2) in RAID
RGBLED 16" screen (the M15x should also be able accomodate one due its larger than 15" size)
GTX 280M or next gen GPU

 

Yeah, I'd like all those things too (aside from I don't care about the screen really, I just want LED backlit)...

But there's not a huge difference between the 260 and 280. I mean 14 extra cores is cool, but I've only got a 32 core part right now, so either way...

So for me the throttling is the only thing stopping me (plus I am concerned about the PM55 USB problems :-/ )

 

The 280 is substantially faster enough that you get tangible FPS improvements across the board... anywhere from 10% +.

 

Yeah, makes sense 'cause it's got 12% more cores. Still though, that's not the deal killer for me, it's these two flaws

 

To be honest I'm not sure I'd choose an RGB LED if given the choice. I had an SXPS 16 with the RGB LED and while the color gamut is great, the contrast ratio and blacks are barely passable. They're certainly not Asus terrible but those that tested it with a meter found it could barley reach 500:1 (that was Anandtech's finding, others rated it lower). For a quality display, the minimum contrast ratio is 500:1. The RGB LED also suffers from a red color shift and it's difficult to correct that, even while using Win 7 profiles + calibration tools.

Given all the above, I'd still take the LG LED they give right now over the RGB LED display. However, I do agree that a 16" size would be perfect but it seems the trend right now is 15.6" or 17.3" for 16:9 displays.