ASUS has been blazing high-tech trails with its dreamy laptop designs. Those who know the ASUS moniker are accustomed to its sleek form factors and use of the latest technology trends. Take, for example, the ASUS U1F and S6F, ultraportable designs geared toward road warriors, as well as for flaunting. At the other end of the spectrum is the ASUS G1S ($1,550 street), a high-performance laptop that ASUS is touting as a gaming machine. I'm more inclined to call it a multimedia laptop, with an above-average gaming card. Still, it addresses ASUS's lack of retail presence, one of my long-standing complaints. The G1S can now be found at your local Best Buy for a very reasonable price.

ASUS puts a lot of emphasis on design, and it shows. The G1S's lid bears some resemblance to that of the Acer Ferrari 5000, which uses carbon fiber on its chassis. In fact, the ASUS's lid is glossy plastic, with an in-mold decoration (IMD) design like the one found on the HP Pavilion dv9500t. The IMD process extends into a portion of the palm-rest area and into the touchpad. Your palms actually rest on another part of the palm rest, which is made of brushed aluminum. You can easily make out the wasabi-green highlights—which give G1S more of the look of a gaming machine—on the edges of the screen, surrounding the 1.3-megapixel webcam, and around the keyboard. The LED-lit emblem wedged between the mouse buttons looks like a functioning button or application key but is merely decorative, though it does accentuate the gaming theme. If you really want to see LEDs on steroids, take a look at the Dell XPS M1730.

At 6.9 pounds, the G1S isn't a back-breaker like the 11-pound XPS M1730, but its display isn't as big, either. It uses a 15.4-inch widescreen (as opposed to the M1730's 17-inch). This should be the absolute minimum size if you're intent on serious gaming. Its 1,680-by-1,050 resolution is a notch lower than that of the XPS M1730 and two grades higher than that of the Acer Aspire 5920G. You should be able to make out, in great detail, the exploding particles and assorted weaponry in a game like Ghost Recon Advanced Warfight (GRAW) 2. Your thumbs will have to apply a lot of pressure on the mouse buttons, as they are a little too resistant. I have no complaints about the rest of the typing experience, however.

The G1S is well equipped with the latest features to get you through the next couple of years. Though the system does come with four USB ports, all of them are in the back. Every time I plugged in my flash drive, I had to reach all the way around to do so. It has an HDMI port for the latest HDTVs, but this model doesn't have an HD DVD or a Blu-ray optical drive. Although you won't find an HD-drive-equipped G1S in any of the Best Buys, the ASUS Web site does say that it offers one. The G1S also has an eSata port to connect the latest in external drives. eSata technology is still in its infancy, but you'll be seeing a lot more devices with this port later on. In the meantime, the internal 160GB hard drive should be more than enough to hold all your games. The Dell XPS M1730, on the other hand, can support up to one terabyte, using two hard drives. The built-in speakers are average for a gaming system. The webcam is a useful addition for video chatting.

ASUS touts the G1S as a total gaming package, but when you look at the components, you see it's really more like a high-end media center. The 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 processor can also be found in the Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (LED) and other consumer media systems like the Dell Inspiron 1720 and HP Pavilion dv9500t. The T7500 processor pales in comparison with the mobile Extreme Core 2 Duo processor found in the XPS M1730. The G1S loads 2GB of RAM, which should be the minimum for a system running Windows Vista Home Premium. The only component that sets the G1S apart from other nongaming laptops is the graphics card. It loads the nVidia GeForce 8600M GT, an above-average discrete graphics solution but certainly not a top-tier card such as those found on the Dell XPS M1730 and the Alienware Area-51 m9750. It's like calling the Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (LED) a dedicated gaming rig, when in fact it's a more general system. The G1S's 3DMark06 (4,324), Prey (57.7), and Company of Heroes (49.5) gaming benchmark scores at low resolution are more in line with those of the Dell Inspiron 1720 and the Sony VAIO VGN-AR590E than with the true gaming rigs. Battery life, however, was consistent with a gaming laptop, as G1S scored only 1 hour 47 minutes on MobileMark 2007.

To call the ASUS G1S the total gaming package is a little misleading. It's really a great system for multimedia tasks that's also capable of supporting 3D-intensive game-play. You can determine a lot about a system's nature from the pricing, too. If ASUS marketed the G1S for more than $2,000, I would have had a serious problem with it. But it's being sold at Best Buy for $1,550, which is very reasonable for a laptop with these specifications. True gaming rigs can run you well over $4,000. In this light, the G1S is a great system for those who have an extensive media collection plus an urge to dip their feet into the gaming waters.

Check out the Asus G1S's test scores.

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