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Asus G51J: 3D laptop Na'vi-gates its way into our hearts

The unstoppable juggernaut that is 3D has breached the walls of TV, and is now making inroads into a new frontier: laptops. Today, we take a look at the Asus G51J

Rory Reid
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The unstoppable juggernaut that is 3D has breached the walls of TV, and is now making roads into a new frontier: laptops. We recently reviewed the Acer 5738G -- today we've had a chance to get up close and personal with the Asus G51J.

Whereas the Acer 5738G uses polarising glasses and a screen filter (which compromises image quality), the G51J uses a more advanced solution: battery-powered LCD shutter glasses. These rapidly open and close each lens to expose each eye to a slightly different image coming from the laptop's 15-inch, 120Hz display. Viewing the same scene from two alternating perspectives tricks your brain into thinking that what you're seeing is a single, three-dimensional scene.

The 3D effect is considerably more impressive than that achieved by the Acer solution. Asus' bundled 3D video demos look very convincing and games such as Avatar look even better. Objects flying towards the screen really do cause you to jerk backwards (or duck), but better still, objects that simply cross each others' paths (cars, people, giant plug-in pterodactyls) are layered so convincingly, you really will believe that some objects are closer to you than others.

The G51J itself is well kitted-out. Its 15.6-inch display has a relatively limited 1,366x768-pixel resolution, but it uses a high-speed Intel Core i7-720 CPU, 4GB of RAM, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 260M graphics chip with 1GB of video memory, a 4x Blu-ray reader and twin 500GB hard drives. All in all, it's unlikely to worry anyone working for Alienware, but it's a capable gaming and multimedia machine nonetheless.

The Asus G51J is available to buy now for around £1,600. Click the 'Continue' link below for a closer look.

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The 15-inch screen has a relatively limited 1,366x768-pixel resolution, but it'll give so much depth to compatible games, you'll forget it's not running anywhere near 1080p.
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The LCD shutter glasses rapidly open and close each lens, exposing your eyes to slightly different views of the same scene.
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Here's a close-up of the 3D glasses and the 3D Vision USB infrared emitter box. The glasses aren't very comfy if you have to wear them over normal prescription specs, but they're fine otherwise.
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The G51J has a wealth of other luxuries, including a backlit keyboard, a Blu-ray drive and 1TB of storage space.

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