Asus G2P-7R009C

The Asus G2P-7R009C is a big, heavy notebook short on battery life but long on gaming muscle. This powerful desktop replacement can handle e-mail and spreadsheets, but the flashing lights and red-honeycomb air pockets won't let you forget that its raison d'être is killing zombies.

If Black & Decker were to make a laptop, it might look like the G2P. The black and silver case has brushed chrome and red highlights. A menacing eye located between the mouse buttons glows red when the unit is running, and red side panels flash during moments in games when DirectX 9 is invoked.

Our test unit came with the multimedia extras you'd expect in a gaming laptop. Serious entertainment enthusiasts will appreciate the multiple options--S-Video, DVI, and VGA--for attaching an even bigger screen. However, the version of the G2P sold in the United States does not have an integrated TV-tuner option, despite what the user manual says.

The case layout could be a tad more convenient. The right side houses nothing but the DVD burner, and all but one of the five USB ports are stuck on the back. The keyboard is plenty comfortable, especially for gamers, with the crucial A, S, D, and W keys color-coded red. The palm rest is very deep, but people with long arms should have no trouble reaching the keys. In a more practical vein, a direct console LCD mounted above the keyboard on the left provides user-defined status information, such as incoming e-mail and appointments.

The G2P's hefty 9.6-pound weight is typical for a gaming notebook. So is the battery life, 3 minutes shy of 2 hours in our tests. But the speed of this 2-GHz Core 2 Duo T7200-equipped machine with 2GB of RAM was superlative, earning a WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 81, which ranks in the top 5 percent of laptops we've tested. In our game-play tests, 3D shooters ran without a stumble on the 17-inch WXGA+ screen. In our automated Far Cry test, our test unit reached a searing 99 frames per second, powered by a 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon X1700 graphics card.

For gaming fiends who can pony up $1949 (as of 6/6/07) and have a bit more in savings for a set of surround-sound speakers, the G2P would make a fine desktop replacement.

Carla Thornton