ASUS Unveils First 17.3-Inch Laptops With Fast 240Hz 3ms Displays for Buttery Smooth Gameplay
When shopping a laptop for playing games, it's imperative that you get one with the fastest GPU you can afford, since it can't be upgraded in the vast majority of notebooks. The CPU, RAM, and storage also deserve consideration, but don't overlook the display. ASUS certainly isn't—through its Republic of Gamers (ROG) division, ASUS announced what it claims are world's first 17.3-inch laptops with a 240Hz/3ms display.
The new ROG Strix Scar III G731 and ROG Hero III 731 pair the blazing fast panel with up to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 GPU to keep the action smooth, which is further bolstered by a factory overclock. Even with a GeForce RTX 2070 underneath the hood, however, pushing 240Hz is a tall ask for many games.
It's not totally wasted, though. There is plenty of headroom to stretch beyond 60 frames per second, which a GeForce RTX 2070 is capable of doing in many games. It's also worth noting that esports titles tend to be less graphically demanding, and that is where having a 240Hz display might be most beneficial.
Incidentally, ASUS has been pursuing faster laptop displays for several years now. In 2016, it's G752VS debuted a 120Hz panel that was twice as fast as most of the competition at the time.
"That led to a
project with chemical giant Merck to develop a new liquid crystal structure capable of supporting even
higher frequencies, resulting in the release of the world’s first 144Hz gaming laptop in the ROG G703
desktop replacement. Beyond speeding up the refresh rate, the 144Hz panel also cut the gray-to-gray
pixel response time to just 7ms, a reduction of nearly 4X over the alternative at the time," ASUS explains.
By 2018, the
response time dropped to just 3ms and spread across a full lineup of ROG laptops. Then earlier this year at the Consumer Electronics Show, ASUS showed off a version of its Strix Scar II with a 15.6-inch 240Hz display, which it recently began rolling out to multiple models of its ROG Spring 2019 Collection.
ASUS Zephyrus S GX502
In addition to now offering that same refresh rate in the 17.3-inch form factor, ASUS notes that AUO has developed a 4K Ultra HD panel with a 120Hz refresh rate (4K120). That is double the speed of traditional 4K displays. ASUS is demoing the panel in 15.6-inch form in a modified version of its Zephyrus S GX502, an ultraslim gaming laptop with G-Sync support.
ASUS is showing off these new laptops at Computex, along with a spattering of other models, including special editions of its newly released ROG Zephyrus S GX531 and GX701 with HDR support. Pricing and availability varies by model.
