Asus heats up 3D laptop wars

With a pair of 3D notebooks, Asus is courting gamers and movie buffs while taking on rival Acer.

The Taiwanese computer maker will release the 15.6-inch G51J3D and the 17.3-inch G72GX next month. Both computers use active shutter glasses to convey 3D imagery. In that regard, the technology differs from Acer’s Aspire 5738DG, which uses polarizing glasses instead.

Polarized glasses use lens filters to separate light into different images for each eye, creating a 3D illusion, while active shutter lenses darken each eye alternately using LCD screens.

Asus tells Reg Hardware that active shutter is better-suited for the laptops’ 1080p displays, and the technology is also friendlier to multiple viewers at different angles, but polarized lenses don’t cause as much of a headache and don’t need to be powered. Still, Reg says Asus’ notebooks win on overall 3D quality, aided by a 120 Hz refresh rate.

Asus is being cagey about the 17.3-inch G72GX, but we know that the smaller model has an Nvidia GeForce GTX160M graphics chip with 1GB of dedicated DDR 3 video memory, plus an Intel Core i7 processor, 4 GB of memory and two 320 GB hard drives.

Pricing hasn’t been announced, but if Asus wants to compete on equal footing with Acer, its notebooks will have to be cheap. Acer’s Aspire 5738DG sells for a mere $780 — a great price for any gaming laptop, let alone one that supports 3D, and I’ve heard some good things about it. I suspect Asus’ offerings will be more expensive due to the Core i7 processor, compared to the Core 2 Duo chip found in Acer’s 3D notebook.

Whichever laptop proves superior, it’s pretty impressive that two notebook manufacturers are getting into the 3D game now. So often, you hear about 3D being the future of home televisions, but when it comes to computer gaming, we don’t have to wait any longer.