Under its Republic of Gamers (ROG) series, Taiwanese-based gaming tech giant, Asus, wanted to participate in 2017’s fresh new breed of sub $1,000 gaming laptops by launching its own prize piece at CES earlier this year. Asus was proud to say it’s ROG STRIX GL553 gaming laptop not only featured both Core i5 and Core i7 processors, but has quite the equipped load of storage and RAM. Battery life, however? That’s another story.

Dell did this. Remember when it’s Precision 15 7510 laptop came out with the theme of power on a budget? This thing, for less than $900, included a sharp display, yet not quite enough color for the latest game titles. However, the following about Asus’s ROG STRIX GL553 seems to be a general consensus- it’s got some good going for it, like performance (very important), a quality screen, and attractive design. Now, that’s not to say you are going to get that svelte, premium build out of this machine. In fact, despite the red backlit keyboard, and some lit-up markings here and there, design is just fine, but not fine-tuned as many gaming rigs are.

Specs for the GL553 include a 15.6-inch full HD 60Hz IPS display at 1920 x 1080 pixels. Measuring 15 x 10 x 0.82 inches, and at a 5.5 pound build, the inside of the svelte laptop features the choice of either a seventh gen Intel Core i5 or i7 CPU processor, and 8GB or 16GB of 2400MHz DDR4 RAM. As for graphics, users have the choice of an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 with 2GB to 4GB of GDDR5 video memory, or a GeForce GTX 1050Ti with 4GB of GDDR4 video memory. As far as connectors, Asus equipped this guy with pretty much anything a PC gamer could want or need. This includes gigabit Ethernet, HDMI, 2 USB 3.0 Type-A’s, a USB Type-C, and a 3.5mm headset jack all on the left side. Then there’s an SD card slot on the front, and on the right a USB 2.0 port, plus a DVD drive, which, as you know is a bit unusual. The computer rig of course includes Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to boot.

At least some of the lit-up, neon orange highlights put a bit of focus on the gamer-oriented features we see on rigs. Perhaps it’s a bit old school in its hardware design, but there’s just enough of that modern twist to put it in its category. When talking pros and cons, there are definitely lovely attributes, like its vivid display specs, storage and I/O options. There are, however issues which we have not discussed, including a lackluster set of laptop speakers, a fussy touchpad, and a shorter-than-average battery life of only four hours on average. In the end, this is a $1,000 laptop, hence, there’s always compromise when you aren’t paying top dollar. Hence, my thoughts are that a four-hour battery life, and crappy speakers are two things that could be particularly disappointing for a gamer.