Asus has been juggling a couple of gaming brands, those being its Republic of Gamers (ROG) division and its Strix line of products. Now it appears Asus is making a concerted effort to bring them together. It started earlier this week with the introduction of its first ever ROG Strix motherboard dubbed ROG Strix X99 Gaming, and now it's announcing its first ROG Strix laptop (GL502) and wireless headset.
Starting with the laptop, the ROG Strix GL502 sports a 15.6-inch IPS display available in Full HD 1080p or 4K Ultra HD, both with G-Sync support. It's powered by either an Intel Core i7-6700HQ or Core i7-6820HK processor (both Skylake parts) and up to a GeForce GTX 980M GPU with 8GB of GDDR5 memory. Note the GPU is the mobile version, not to be confused with the desktop-class GeForce GTX 980 for laptops that Nvidia introduced last September.
Memory and storage options consist of up to 32GB of DDR4-2133 RAM and up to a 512GB M.2 NVMe PCI-Express x4 SSD for the OS paired with up to a 2TB hard drive for bulk storage duties. There's no memory card slot, not unless Asus forgot to list it on the spec sheet.
External connectivity comes in the form of three USB 3.0 ports, a single USB 3.1 Type-C Gen 1 port (meaning it operates at USB 3.0 speed), HDMI 1.4 and DisplayPort 1.2 output. GbE LAN, and a headphone-out/audio-in combo jack.
As for the ROG Strix Wireless gaming headset, it boasts up to a 15-meter range via 2.4GHz wireless technology and more than 10 hours of battery life by way of a built-in and recharable 900 mAh battery.
The aggressive looking headset uses Sonic Studio audio software to process virtual 7.1 surround sound. It's pumped through comparatively large 60mm Neodymium magnet speakers with a 20Hz-20kHz frequency response. There's also a detachable, uni-directional boom microphone with a 50Hz-16kHz frequency response and a rated sensitiviy of -40 (+/- 3dB).
All that's left are price and release dates, neither of which Asus is providing at this time.
