The 17.3-inch, 1920-by-1080-pixel screen looks great in most situations. You can view multiple spreadsheets or get absorbed into games and movies. Text looks clean, and it shows off a bright range of color. Contrast is good, but it sometimes suffers under the slightly glossy surface; the laptop can handle a fairly bright room, but reflections can overpower the image near windows or outside. The screen also doesn't tilt back quite far enough. You'll probably never have a problem with its angle on a desk, but you might want it to lean a little further if it's perched on your lap.

With a 1080p display, strong video processor, and target audience of gamers, the G73Jh begs for Blu-ray support. Unfortunately, that kind of drive didn't make the cut. Instead, you get a DVD- and CD-burner. Hard disks fare batter, with this model including two 500GB drives in a RAID array.

At least the audio performance meets expectations. It'll never blow you away, since it favors mid-tones instead of fully balancing the highs and lows. But it gets loud enough to fill a room without becoming distorted. Stereo separation might be the biggest disappointment here--unless you lean your head over the top, most of the audio seems to come from the same place. It's not a big deal for most music, but gamers won't be able to easily hear the direction of an approaching enemy. However, the fan stays fairly quiet in most situations, so you can concentrate on those footsteps.

The usual ports and extras complete this laptop. It packs four USB 2.0 ports, VGA, HDMI, audio in and out, and an 8-format card reader. Its Webcam takes good-enough pictures and video. You also get 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, gigabit ethernet, and Bluetooth. But throwing in an eSATA port would have been nice.

Battery life is also just a touch disappointing. The laptop lasted 1 hour, 48 minutes in our testing. Sure, the high specs require a lot of power, but even big laptops should last at least 2 hours.