Asus G2S-X1 Gaming Notebook Evaluation

Introduction:
There are some companies that just keep popping up. They are the kind of companies that are not happy with stagnation and feel the need to surprise their customers again and again. One of these companies is Asus. Asus is not content to sit back and ride out the success of their motherboard and video card line; they feel the need to branch out. Asus has been a long time manufacturer of the white-box notebook. This is the same thing as a barebones system but in the notebook realm. A few years ago Asus took this from white-box to completed product and started marketing them to the world. Now you can even buy these notebooks in your local Best Buy.
But as with every step in a company’s evolution there is a chance to start skipping steps, quality can drop and in the interest of growing the business customer satisfaction can fall by the wayside.
We have one of Asus’ latest offerings to the notebook consumer, the G2S-X1 this is marketed as a gaming notebook and seems to have the specs to back it up. How well will it handle real world gaming and applications? Read on to find out.

Product: Asus G2S-X1 Gamer’s Notebook      
Author: Sean Kalinich
Reviewed on: March 10^th 2008
Product cost: $1,850 (Best Buy)
Manufacturer: Asus
Spelling and Grammatical editor: Jason Hambly, Paul Mercer
Discussion Link
 

{mospagebreak title=Packaging and Accessories}

Packaging and Accessories:
“I’ll put him in a box, then put that box in a bigger box”
The box the G2S comes in is a fairly attractive item, it is black with a large graphic of the “angry eye” (as my kids call it) and a full picture of the open notebook on both sides. The words “ASUS Gaming Series” and Let’s Game” are also displayed prominently on both sides. On the front of the box is a large Vista Ready logo and a Microsoft Office ready logo is on the back. The sides of the box show the G2 series number and the Asus “Green” logo.
Inside the box everything is well protected with multiple layers of cardboard. The G2S itself is inside a foam jacket.
Goodies that arrived with the G2S were pretty impressive as well; the optional Logitech MX518 mouse and roomy backpack were very welcome and fitting for a 17” gamer’s notebook.

{mospagebreak title=Construction and Appearance}
Construction:
The G2S has a beefy feel to it, although it is made primarily of plastic the aluminum plating on the top and just in front of the keyboard give it an industrial feel. The numerous rubber feet on the underside make it feel rock steady while on just about any table. In all the impression you get is that Asus built the G2S to last.

Appearance:
As I mentioned above the G2S has a nice industrial look and feel to it. When you first view it with the lid closed it looks very sleek with tapered edges along the sides and front.  The top of the lid has brushed aluminum plating with a black plastic bevel along the sides and back.  If you rotate the G2S to the right you will find the DVD-ROM (complete with LightScribe) as well as the power port. I am not certain I like the power port along this side as with it in place it seems to stick out. I am sure this was just a personal dislike as it did not seem to cause and issues with usage. You will also notice a red “reflector” at the back along the top. This is not a reflector (as I first thought) but is a light that flashes whenever the system thinks it is running a Direct X game (see Direct Console below). In the end I had to turn it off as it would flash with just about any open application just under this is the end of the hinge bar for the lid/screen this has been tooled to look like it is a thumb screw that can be removed and adds to the heavy duty industrial feel of the G2S.
Continuing our clockwise rotation of the G2S we come around to the back of the notebook, here Asus has placed an S-Video, 15-Pin VGA and an HDMI port as well as three USB and one –SATA ports. The e-SATA port is a nice addition and is controlled by a J-Micron JMB36X controller. Turning one more quarter turn clockwise brings us to the left side of the G2S, here are the LAN and Modem ports, a single USB 2.0 port, what appears to be an infrared receiver, jacks for Headphones, Microphone, and Line-In, a small 4-pin Firewire port, the switch for disabling the Wireless devices, a multi-card reader, the PC-34/54 card slot, and one more IR port. You will also find the matching red light on the lid that was visible on the right side. Giving the G2S one final turn clockwise we are back to looking at the front. Here (while the G2S is closed we only see the latch to open the lid and what would seem to be a third IR port. I am not sure why there are three on the G2S, there is an option for a remote controller but I would think there would still only need to be one IR port, perhaps two at the most.

Opening the G2S and peering at the working end; the first thing that will catch your eye is the continuation of the angular look to the G2S, the same bevel is evident on the inside as you saw on the outside. On the front bevel you will see a set of controls right along the front edge as well as lights for Power, Battery (this indicates charging but not that you are on battery power), an e-mail notification light (if you are using ChkMail), and a light to indicate the status of the Wireless card. All light up blue with the exception of the battery light that glows red (almost pink) if you are charging.
There are also buttons for power, and controls for DVD/CD playback. These controls are set in another bushed aluminum plate that covers the first couple of inches of the lower deck (where the keyboard is).  Next in line is the touchpad, this actually extends into the aluminum plating as the buttons and bezel are of the same material, at the bottom in the center (and providing a visual separate of the left and right mouse buttons) is a small round indentation with a resin covered medallion that displays the “angry eye” again. When running any 32 bit version of Vista this eye lights up red while the G2S is powered on. The touch pad itself is unfortunately a little boring; it is made of a flat black material and has a diagonal pattern to it. The surface is a little rough (your finger seems to drag over it) but it is fairly accurate for a touchpad. Now something that is visually interesting is that neither the touchpad nor the controls are centered, instead they are shifted slightly to the left giving greater room for the right hand over the left. Now this is something normal in most notebooks; but since this is a gaming notebook and the left hand is used more often that the right for keyboard control I found it awkward to have touchpad here.

On the right end of the aluminum plate are the required stickers proclaiming CPU, and GPU type, what type of Windows the G2S was built for and there is even a sticker proclaiming Bluetooth 2.0 compatibility. Moving further up the deck we move from aluminum into shiny black plastic with a crosshatched pattern beneath the surface.  Moving up we arrive at the keyboard, this is set down in a depression that makes the surface of the keys level with the surface of the deck. The keyboard itself is a fairly decent one although it does respond better to a heavy hand than to a light one. This is probably meant to help with longevity as the stiffer a keyboard is the more it can take abuse.Asus has also shaded the W, A, S, and D keys red for easy identification.  I did have a few issues with the keyboard other than the need to type “aggressively”, the first is that it is too far back on the deck, this means that your forearms are resting on the corners of the notebook; after a few hours of typing or gaming this position becomes uncomfortable. The next is the size of the CTRL keys; on most standard keyboards these are larger than a standard key. Since the CTRL key is used in most games I was surprised to see these so small. When you add this to the awkward position of the keyboard it makes them even more unwieldy.

On either side of the keyboard are 8 rectangular indentations, these have red mesh grills at the bottom and cover up the speakers.  This little detail adds some needed flare to the otherwise dark deck.
Behind the keyboard is a mirror like area with an OLED display as well as some more familiar Icons that light up in Blue LED. There are also some additional feature buttons (From left to right) Powe4Gear+, Power4Phone, Splendid, Touchpad disable, and the Power Button. The touchpad disable button never worked for me regardless of the OS version I was using the software buttons I will talk about later in this review.

The OLED display is a great idea, it is capable of displaying a variety of items, the default is a clock but you can also customize it with emoticons, and a scrolling marquee you do this using Direct Console which I will cover later. But that is not the extent of its usefulness; it also integrates with outlook to flash when new mail arrives and to scroll the subject of the new mails. This is further complimented by the OLED display’s ability to flash when someone on MSN responds in a chat. It will flash and show you the name of the person that responded. Both Mail and MSN responses have Icons that will stay after the flashing stops.
Now that we are finished with this area we move up to the display. In simple terms the 17” display used in the G2S is stunning; it is crisp, sharp, clear and vivid all at once. I honestly have not seen a better display. And I am talking about desktop displays as well. It puts my 24” monitor to shame.
Surrounding this amazing display is a thick black bezel that actually helps to make the colors and clarity of the screen more prominent. Below the screen on the ridged lower bezel is the Asus logo in silver letters. Above the screen is a 1.3 Megapixel web camera and built in microphone.
Unfortunately the appearance is marred by the visibility of the locking latches; they are the old fashioned slider hooks and stand out on what is otherwise a very impressive looking notebook.

Flipping the G2S over on its back we see more of Asus’ attention to detail for this gaming notebook. There are eight rubber feet on the bottom to these feet range in size from 3/8” squares in the front to one inch long ovals along the back. The arrangement of these feet gives the G2S a very stable footing and allows for very good airflow underneath. Visible compartments for RAM, HDD and accessories (wireless card, TurboRAM etc) are also arranged on the bottom of the G2S.

A word on RAM, the basic G2S configuration comes with 2GB of RAM (2x1GB modules) but the bottom compartment only grants you access to one of these. The Manual does not shed any light on where the second module is. A quick call to Asus tech support and we find out that it is located under the keyboard.  To access this you will need a jeweler’s flat head screwdriver.  Look closely at the top of the keyboard, here you will see three “clips” VERY carefully slip the screw driver in-between the key and that clip, push the clip back and it should release. After you have released all three clips again very carefully lift the keyboard it is still attached by a fragile ribbon cable to the notebook. Removing that is fairly easy but not required. Once the keyboard is out of the way there is a small rectangular metal plate that needs to be removed and you have access to the other half of your RAM.

 

{mospagebreak title=Software}
Software:
The G2S comes preinstalled with Windows Vista Home Premium, plus a large amount of what some might call shovelware. In some cases I would say this is true, you can uninstall the applications you do not want or install your own OS and then install just what you want from the drivers CD.

Asus update:
This is a handy little application that will keep you up-to-date on BIOS versions, software patches and most items that are covered by Asus’ website. Having this installed had no affect on performance. I would recommend keeping it.

Direct Console:
Direct Console is the application that controls the flashing red lights on the side (called direct flash) This portion causes these lights to blink on and off while you are playing any game using directX, interestingly enough in Vista X64 the lights would flash for anything graphical including watching a movie or running a VM. The other portion of this application controls the OLED display, with this you can set it to the default (shows the time) or add scrolling emoticons or a scrolling customized text message. The only issue I had with this was in Vista x64 on occasion I would have to reboot because the shell app for Direct Console would fail. This would not prevent me from running but the OLED only showed the word ASUS.

This application also did not affect performance and is fun to play with.

Instant Fun:
This application is supposed to give you quick access to multi-media application (DVD Player, Photo display, etc.) but was, in the end, pretty worthless and can be considered expendable for most gamers.

Lifeframe:
This application allows you more functionality with the built in webcam. Offering the ability to make small video clips, still images and to even make minor edits to the videos and images, this application should probably be left on the system.

MultiFrame:
Another interesting but (in the end) useless application is MultiFrame. This allows you to rapidly move a window to different areas of the screen by clicking on an extra floating Icon on each window. I found this would cause periodic screen freezes and was no faster than dragging a window to the place you wanted it in the first place. This app can also be safely removed.

NBProbe:
This is a tool for checking the status of the system. With NBProbe you can check temperatures, HDD capacity and health as well as environment information (OS etc). It only runs when you start it and is handy for finding out information on the system.

Power4Phone:
This is a video conferencing software that works with Skype though your Modem or other internet connection as Skype now supports video conferencing it does not really serve a purpose. Power4Phone is another application with limited use and one that can also be safely uninstalled. The feature button, at the top of the G2S, that controls this function lights up when this is in use.

Power4Gear+:
Now, here is an application that Asus put some thought into. They have developed a power management application that allows you to choose from different types of workload.  For both battery and AC power there are; High Performance, Entertainment, quiet office, and Battery Saving.
Each of these is pretty self explanatory. These can be easily toggled back and forth using the Power4Gear+ button at the top left of the deck. Each mode can also be tweaked to provide you with exactly what you want.

Splendid:
This is Asus’ color correction technology and allows you to tweak the display to suit your tastes or the type of playback you are running (i.e. movie, games, etc). The application allows you to make a custom profile while the Splendid feature button allows you to toggle through the available presets; Normal, Gama, Vivid, Theatre, Soft, and My Profile.

Norton Internet Security:
What batch of shovelware would be complete without Symantec? This application is a 60 day trail and is something that I would remove as soon as possible and replace with a better AV application.

Asus Data Security Manager:
This handy little application allows you to make encrypted folders that you can also hide from outside or internal users, the normal folders are your media and documents folders but can be any folder you chose. The Asus Data Security Manager application also adds in a contextual menu feature allowing you to right click on a folder and encrypt it without the need to open the application and browse for it first.

Virtual Camera:
I never did find out exactly what this application was for, you can enable it, disable it or see the info screen. I would remove it.

Nero OEM Suite 7.5.13.0:
For disk burning and light scribe Asus provides the Nero OEM Suite 7.5 for use.
This is the standard collection of burning (Nero Burning ROM) and nothing special to write about.

SetPoint:
This software is only useful if you have the optional Logitech  MX518 mouse and allows you to use advanced features of the mouse as well as customize the extra buttons to your taste.

I will caution you that the G2S does not like to have XP or Server 2008 forced on it. I did find that it has no issue with Vista x64 of any type and the driver CD has all the needed drivers to get you up and running with the exception of the driver that makes the “angry eye” under the touch pad light up, although this is not a huge loss.

{mospagebreak title=Performance}
Performance:
I am sure you are wondering how well the G2S performed, is it up to par as a gaming system? Or is this just another expensive boat anchor with no real power? I wanted to test as many possible scenarios as I was able.  I didn’t just want to cover gaming performance, as I had a feeling that this notebook would be perfect for someone that wanted to game but might also be looking for a desktop replacement system.
I was curious to see if the G2S would be able to deal with gaming as well as other tasks such as video encoding, image manipulation and general office work.

The G2S-X1 as tested was configured as follows:
Intel Core 2 Duo (Centurion Duo) T7500 (2.2GHz)
2GB (2x1GB) Hynix DDR2 667 RAM
160GB Toshiba 5400RPM SATA 150 HDD
nVidia 8600M GT 256MB discrete GPU (DX10 capable)
17” Splendid video display
Logitech MX518 Optical Mouse
Windows Vista Home Premium (Pre-Installation)
Windows Vista Ultimate x64

FutureMark:
FutureMark is something of a staple here at Planetx64, although we do not claim that it is the end all of tests. Instead we use both PCMark and 3DMark to give you an over view of how well the system should perform under “perfect” conditions.

3DMark 06 and Vantage:
When I began my testing on the G2S 3DMark Vantage was still not out, however I went back and ran this test on the G2S just to see if the extra features of DX10 would hinder this system.

3DMark 06 shows off basic graphical performance but does not touch on any of the features available in DX10. This means that physics testing for the CPU is minimal as are the AI calculations.

Vista Home Premium x86	Vista Ultimate x64

 
For 3DMark06 I saw a less than average score and with it the beginnings of my doubts about the G2S as a gaming platform. However, knowing that this was only a synthetic test I did not let this concern me too much.

3DMark Vantage:
The latest and greatest from FutureMark 3DMark Vantage adds in DX10 to the mix while increasing the physics and AI calculations the CPU is tested for. In the end the majority of the score still comes from the GPU’s ability to render the graphics in each of the two graphics tests, both of these are heavy with Shader Model 4 features and other DX10 goodies.

Vista Home Premium x86	Vista Ultimate x64

3DMark Vantage also seemed to cast serious doubt on the G2S’ ability to play games and especially to render DX10 textures and surfaces. Again, I wanted to wait and not base my findings on these two tests.

PCMark Vantage:
Another test that is good for getting a feel of a system is PCMark Vantage, although it is not a replacement for real world usage it is good for finding weak spots in a system.

Vista Home Premium x86	Vista Ultimate x64 (32-Bit)	Vista Ultimate x64 (64-Bit)

PCMark Vantage scores were about what you would expect from the G2S.

HyperPi 0.99b:
I like using SuperPi and especially multiple instances of SuperPi to test memory to CPU to HDD speed and stability. This requirement made HyperPi perfect; it automatically opens up the proper number of instances based on the number of cores on your CPU. HyperPi uses the Xtreme Systems Mod version of SuperPi.

1M HyperPi 0.99b
Vista Home Premium x86	Vista Ultimate x64

32M HyperPi 0.99b
Vista Home Premium x86	Vista Ultimate x64

The HyperPi times seem to show the 5400 RPM HDD as a weak link here, for with a normal 2.2GHz CPU using a 7200 RPM HDD times would be much faster.

Cinebench 10:
Cinebench is a free testing application that was developed by Maxon  (the makers of Cinema 4d) it is designed to test your GPU and CPUs ability to handle 3D Animation. It includes an OpenGL test and a CPU test which gives results for single and multiple cores (if they are present).

Vista Home Premium x86	Vista Ultimate x64

Cinebench R10 scores were surprising, I expected them to be much lower considering performance with other application tests.

Video Encoding with AutoGK:
As I have mentioned in other evaluations, video encoding is becoming a fact of life. There are dozens of products on the market to move your movies from DVD to XviD or DivX whichever is your favorite format.  Video encoding is very CPU, RAM and HDD dependent. If you have a slow HDD you encoding will take longer as the CPU and memory have t wait for the HDD to write to the drive. Video encoding is also a good test of the system bus as there is a considerable amount of data moving back and forth during the encode.

Vista Home Premium x86	Vista Ultimate x64
1:24:39	1:25:54

Time is in hours minutes and seconds lower is better

Here again we see the slower 5400 RPM HDD coming into play if Asus would use a 7200 RPM drive I think the overall performance would improve.

Photoshop CS3:
As with video encoding digital images (pictures) and the way things are now. Just about every phone has a camera and can send its pictures to your PC. Adobe’s Photoshop has been the industry standard in image manipulation for some time.

Time in seconds lower is better.

Photoshop was a surprise, as with Cinebench I expected Photoshop to be a poor performance but I was pleasantly surprised. This made the G2S even more attractive to me personally as I am a Photographer as well as a computer geek and use Photoshop for my image manipulation. The G2S’ performance under Photoshop combined with the amazing quality of the screen makes this an even more attractive pacakage.

{mospagebreak title=Gaming Performance}
Gaming Performance:
The G2S is marketed as a gaming notebook, with an 8600m GT and a 17” LCD that is superb it would seem the perfect fit for the G2S. But is the G2S really able to keep pace with today’s games? Or will the extra workload from eye candy and heavy AI bring it to its knees. And with a DX10 compatible card will it really be able to run DX10 games? Or will it (like many other DX10 compatible items) stumble under the extra load from DX10 surfaces and textures.  I picked a variety of games from different genres. All frame rates were captured using FRAPS. Each level was run through three times and the average for minimum, maximum and average FPS were recorded for each game.

Bioshock:
This is my only DX10 title and also a game that I enjoy playing. If you are not familiar with Looking Glass Studio’s other releases you will want to look those up. They like Monolith (F.E.A.R. and The Blood series) have a way of taking you inside the game, with each title they give you someone that you think is an ally for the better part of the game, only to have them betray you. Once this betrayal is discovered you have to kill of the final bad guy.  The graphics in Bioshock are excellent although the colors are a little cartoonish.  AI in this game is a little brutish and straight forward cooperative tactics are not used by enemies making the AI load light. But even without a heavy AI load Bioshock can put a hurtin on your system. Game setting are shown below.
I played the “Welcome to Rapture” level from just after you get the Electro Bolt Plasmid until you first meeting with the Little Sister and her Big Daddy. This gives a few interesting spaces for the GPU to render and still gives you some fights to get into.
Settings are shown below:

Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare:
The Call of Duty series is a great historical themed games series. Now they have moved from history into the present. Modern Warfare is based on realistic low-level conflict scenarios that are happening around the world today. Graphics are superb and with excellent lighting and surface textures to push your GPU.
AI is based on “Mob” tactics with very little cooperation amongst your enemies. I like to call this “Bar Fight” AI.  The sheer number of enemies on the field still creates a heavy AI load for your system to chew on.
For my testing I ran the “Crew Expendable” level from after you go into the cargo hold until you find the package. This eliminated the cut scenes and gave plenty of action. Settings are shown below.

COD4 was also very smooth; this game exhibited no lags, stutters and was very enjoyable to play. Frame rates were just under 30 FPS which is just under full motion video (32 FPS) There was  a 1 FPS difference between Vista Ultimate x64 and Vista Home Premium x86.

HalfLife2 Episode 2:
Rise and shine Mr. Freeman, back again is Gordon Freeman the Hero(?) of Black Mesa and City 17 but now he has escaped from City 17 with Alyx, but still needs to get some vital information to his buddies at a remote location so they can save the world again. This is an all too familiar scenario to those who follow Valve’s HalfLife series. And while this is repetitive they still manage to drag you into the story as Dr. Gordon Freeman. The graphics are well done with a HDR engine that simply out performs everyone else’s. The AI in HalfLife is really something, the developers at Valve have created a wickedly intelligent AI; your enemies will actually work together to kill you. There are cooperative tactics, flushing (ever had a grenade thrown at you to flush you out from cover?) and feints all bound up into a neat package.  For testing I ran the “To the White Forest” level from after the Vortigaunt rescues you from under the building until you extract the AntLion larva.
My settings are shown below.

With Frame rates between 29 and 33 FPS HalfLife 2 EP 2 was another game that was very playable. There were absolutely no lags or stutters at the above settings. Vista x64 was a tad slower with average FPS at 32

TimeShift:
Timeshift is a fairly good game that puts you on the track of a rouge scientist who has stolen a time manipulating suit. This leads to an interesting chase through an alternate time stream where you try to track down the other suit and restore time to its proper state. The suit allows you to stop, fast forward, slow down, and reverses time, this provides for interesting game play while you figure out which power to use in each new puzzle. Graphics are cartoonish although some of the water and rain effects are impressive. For my testing I used the entry level from after your escape from the resistance safe house to the point where you enter the court yard and face the tank.
Settings are shown below.

Timeshift showed less than performance with frame rates between 21 and 23 FPS. There were a few stutters and at one point movement felt like it dragged as you try to move quickly through an exposed area. It was still playable but not as well as on more powerful systems.

Company of Heroes:
Company of Heroes is a historically based game that puts you in charge of soldiers as the move through World War II. Beginning with the assault on Normandy, you follow through the campaigns as Infantry, Rangers, or Airborne soldiers. You are placed in control of squad and platoon sized units for each new objective. The graphics are quite well done for a real-time strategy game as is the enemy AI. Company of Heroes is an addictive game that can provide hours of game play.
For my testing I ran the Normandy assault from the initial beach landing to the destruction of the “88s”.
Settings are shown below.

Company of Heroes showed no performance issues at all, as with most of the other games I found myself playing farther into the game and would often play when not testing simply due to the sharpness of the screen and the ability to setup anywhere in the house and play.

Gaming conclusion:
Gaming on the G2S-X1 was great, the power was more than enough to run all of the games I like to play, the screen was sharp the colors clear and the portability of the G2S meant  that I was not tied down to my office. I could game anywhere that I wanted. The G2S-X1 is an impressive gaming machine.

{mospagebreak title=Battery Life}

Battery Life:
The battery on the G2S was probably the least impressive item. With a standard life of about an hour and 45 minutes, the G2S is not something you are going to take on the road without your power cord.
Gaming battery life differed with the game but was a little under one hour for the most part.  I would make sure that power is handy if you take the G2S on the road.

{mospagebreak title=Price/Warranty}
Pricing and Warranty:
The G2S-X1 does not come cheap, with a price tag of $1,850 from your local Best Buy it will set you back some cash, but when you compare this to other gaming notebooks on the market it is a pretty good deal. The optional Backpack and Mouse will add some extra dollars to the price but are both very nice additions and if you have ever searched for a good back pack for a 17″ notebook you will want to grab this one if they have it.
Asus offers a two-year warranty on notebooks purchased in the US. Asus has, on its website, a nice link so that you are able to locate the closest service center if you are in need of repairs.
Asus Global Notebook Service

{mospagebreak title=Conclusion}
Conclusion:
After working with the G2S for roughly 60 days I feel I can give you an honest opinion of this notebook. We at Planetx64 made a decision long ago not to follow the usual path and crank out “8-hour” reviews. To that end I reviewed the G2S-X1 as if I had bought it for my personal use. I carried it back and forth to work with me, I gamed with it, I edited and printed my photographs with it. I did this for 30 days using the pre-installed OS (Vista Home Premium x86) and for 30 more with Vista Ultimate x64 installed. I can tell you that Asus has a formidable system with the G2S-X1, with its combination of power, clean graphics, and functionality it makes for a great portable gaming system and graphics workstation. I was very impressed with its ability to handle Photoshop as well as 3D Animation applications. Gaming was extremely smooth with even DirectX 10 titles being playable. The weight was not too extreme for a 17” notebook and the Backpack accessory is perfect for toting the G2S around with you. Wireless networking was a joy with the n specification wireless NIC, this kept me connected inside my home network with none of the lags associated with g spec wireless cards. The 5400 RPM HDD that hindered some application performance and that I thought would hinder the gaming performance was not an issue and did seem to provide a little better battery life as well. In all I feel the G2S is an impressive balance of gaming and workstation notebook and one that will find a home in any gamer’s or graphic designers home. I know that the day I have to box the G2S-X1 back up and send it home to Asus will be a sad one for me. I have said this before; the other players out there that have gotten complacent with the lack of real competition had better keep an eye on Asus as they may one day realize they have taken over their cozy market.

For its sharp display, performance, and features we are happy to award the G2S our Best on the Planet award:

{mosimage}

Discuss this evaluation here

Acknowledgements:
I would like to thank Charlton Ho for his help in arranging the G2S-X1 used for this evaluation.