ASUS - ROG Zephyrus 14" Gaming Laptop - AMD Ryzen 9 - 16GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 - 1TB SSD - Moonlight White

I want to go into a bit more detail than I see from others on this laptop and get into the pros and cons more deeply. A quick summary would be that this laptop offers great performance especially for the size of the machine. Early battery tests of some light mixed usage yields results of 10-12 hours, inclusive of YouTube video playback of 1080p content. This is with the screen brightness at 50% and the screen refresh rate automatically lowered to 60hz, instead of the native 144hz. The 5900HS beats, in my testing, an Intel Core i7-10870H, and matches in testing an i9-10980HK., while the 3060 matches or beats a desktop 2060 while stock. Delving into gaming, I tested Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 1080p with the Highest Preset, and AA set to TAA. The game returned an average frame rate of 91 FPS. In Doom Eternal, with all settings cranked, the system gets over 130FPS on average, generally matching the 144hz refresh rate of the display. At full stock settings, the laptop returned an overall score of 7532, with a score of 7324 for the GPU and 8985 for the CPU. Overclocking the memory by 150Mhz and the Core by 200Mhz using Armory Crate, and with the fans manually set to 100% yielded an overall score of 7959, with the GPU scoring 7798, and the CPU scoring 9016. Temperatures are a bit interesting. With stock settings and running the system in Asus’ “Turbo” mode, the GPU stayed under 75°, and the CPU under 73°. Overclocked, the GPU pushed to 85° before setting the fans to 100%. Stressing both the GPU and CPU simultaneously in Turbo mode got the GPU to 77°, and the CPU to a toasty 96°. Setting the fans to 100% reduced the CPU temps to 86°, and the GPU to 71°. This was also using the same CPU and GPU stress testing. With an overclock, the 3060 performs relatively close to an RTX 2070 Super Max-Q, with Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmarks showing a better result of 95FPS. The response times of the display are a bit slower in practice vs other 144hz displays, but in games, I did not find it too noticeable. The fingerprint scanner is markedly improved over the last version of this laptop. Could just be drivers, but it definitely works faster and more accurately. The keyboard backlighting is better than the previous version of this laptop, with the lighting being much more uniform, but during the day it is still hard to see due to the lighting being white on silver keys. Otherwise, the keyboard feels great to type on, with deeper travel than one might expect from a laptop so thin. Removing the bottom panel allows the user to upgrade SSD, WIFI card, and 1 RAM module. 8GB is soldered to the motherboard. The speakers are great with surprising clarity and bass. Using the default performance presets, they can easily overpower the sound of the fans when gaming. I think this laptop is a great buy, with my only issues being the color of the backlight on the keyboard, lack of HDMI 2.1 (It has HDMI 2.0, but I think HDMI 2.1 would be more forward looking), and lack of ethernet, though the system has WIFI 6, and in my testing with a Netgear Nighthawk CAX80 Router, the system was able to achieve download speeds over 1400Mbps. The laptop does support USB-C charging, which works great, and the touchpad is fluid, and uses Microsoft’s precision drivers. All around, I think this laptop would be a great companion for editing, code compiling, and gaming. Some of the things I’ll be using it for. I’d definitely recommend this laptop.

Performance: This is truly a powerful machine. For my usage(Schoolwork, light gaming, youtube), it is more than enough. When I play valorant, it runs at a constant 144fps(I limited it) and rarely drops at all. The same is true for when I play Splitgate. Genshin Impact is also very smooth at high graphics 60fps. However, this performance comes with fan noise and keyboard heat. The WASD keys stay cool compared to the rest of the keyboard when gaming, but it does still get warm. But, this is a small laptop, so there is limited cooling space. Keyboard: I love typing on this thing. Period. Travel distance is great, and the ergolift makes my hands feel comfortable while typing my essays. Touchpad: The glass trackpad on this thing feels great. Others may feel that the trackpad is too small, but I personally have no problems with the size and it works for my usage. Battery: I'm sure that you guys already know this, but the battery life is impressive. After an hour of usage doing college work, I used 10%. After 4 hours, I've used 40%. I guess that means that this laptop actually lasts 10 hours like others have said. Speakers: Comparable to a Macbook's speakers. That says a lot. Now, lets move on to the cons. Connectivity: My model comes with the Mediatek Mt7921. Idk if this is normal for the 2021 g14, or maybe it's just a BestBuy thing. The wifi speeds on this computer are SLOW. On my OnePlus 8T, when I'm downloading at 40mbps, the g14 is downloading at around 10mbps. When my phone is downloading at around 10-20mbps, the laptop is downloading at 1-3 mbps. This means that when downloading large games, it took hours before I was able to finally open it up and play. Quality Control: This is probably one of the G14's biggest issues. The QC is horrendous. I haven't seen many people talk about the power button, so I'm not sure if it's just my unit, but there are gaps and it isn't even. Not a huge problem, but may be irritating to some. Additionally, when I first pulled the computer out of the box and set it on my table, the computer base wasn't even and would wobble if I pressed on the corners. If the screen was closed, the computer would wobble when I pressed on the top left corner of the laptop. When the screen was open, the computer would wobble if I pressed on the right palm rest. I could fit my watch's wrist strap between the rubber feet and the table. To fix this, I took off the bottom panel/base and reclipped it firmly and rescrewed all the screws back in. Boom. Problem fixed. No more wobble. I suspect that one of the pressure clips wasn't fit in, resulting in an uneven base. MORE Quality Control: My left fan rattles. The fan under the WASD keys. I'm not sure whether that's the CPU or GPU fan, so I just said WASD keys. You guys have no idea how I felt when I sprinted upstairs after receiving my delivery from the FEDEX driver, then opened the box, booted it up, just to hear rattling sounds. For some reason, the fans only rattle at low speeds, and don't seem to rattle when it gets to 2900 RPM and above. The uneven base only made it worse. The rattle was a bit quieter after I fixed the uneven base. But it was still there. Overall, this would've been a great computer if not ruined by quality control.

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus 14” is a no-nonsense laptop for the hardcore gamer on the go. First impressions of this laptop are how sleek and civilized it looks. The gamer aesthetic is subtle, looks and feels premium. ¼” thin bezels and minimalistic branding are also a big plus. Big fan of its notebook form-factor as well, making it very portable. Key stabilization is great on all keys and keyboard feels like any membrane keyboard. All keys have dimmable white backlighting which has customizable effects in the included Armory Crate software. Magnesium chassis has no deck flex with Dolby Atmos compatible, upward firing speakers. Another thing worth mentioning is the texture of the chassis feels comfortable when I rest my palms on it and will not attract smears and smudges. ASUS’s “AI noise cancellation” is advertised to block out unwanted sounds from the microphone array. Was not able to get this feature to work even after an audio driver update and reinstallation of the Armory Crate software. Next-gen RTX 3060 and Ryzen 9 5900HS shred through even the most intensive games at high settings. Paired with a 144hz, 1080p, variable refresh rate display, this trio creates a no-compromise buttery-smooth gaming experience. Don’t forget about workstation use, the Ryzen 9’s raw computing power is great for video editing, 3d rendering, and many more creative use cases. The SK Hynix NVME drive offers blazing fast read and write performance. Loads games in a heartbeat. During heavy workloads, the fans are significantly quieter than other gaming laptops I have used. All this computing power comes with a cost, heat. The laptop gets uncomfortably hot on the bottom and very warm near the keyboard during intense gaming. However, cooling system keeps the temps in check, peaking at 76° on the CPU and 71° on the GPU under load. This laptop has a myriad of thoughtful battery-saving features so you can enjoy longer cordless gaming sessions. For starters, Nvidia Geforce Experience has “batteryboost” optimized settings for games, which lowers the graphical fidelity of the games when on battery to save power while not sacrificing FPS. ASUS Armory Crate software also has preset “on-battery” and “performance” modes which automatically switch. Finally, the refresh rate of the display is locked to 60hz while on battery to greatly increase the battery life. Gaming on battery is still extremely smooth, even with all these features at work. One drawback of this laptop is the absence of an integrated webcam. In this day and age where video conferencing is the norm, this redaction blemishes what is otherwise a near-perfect laptop. Wi-Fi 802.11AX a big plus for future proofing or anyone who has latest AX (Wi-Fi 6) router. Incredible throughput with my Asus GT-AX11000 router. Synthetic Benchmarks: • 3DMark Timespy - Overall Score: 6404 (Great) - Graphics Score: 6161 - CPU Score: 8256 • Unigine Superposition (1080p High) - Score: 8494 - Min FPS: 52 - Max FPS: 78 - Avg FPS: 64 • Blender BMW Render (CPU) - Time: 03:38:86 • Blender BMW Render (GPU) - Time: 05:35:26 • Crystal Disk Mark - Sequential 1mb read: 3598 MB/s - Sequential 1mb write: 2844 Mb/s - Random 4kb read: 927 Mb/s - Random 4kb write: 359 Mb/s Real-world Gaming Benchmarks (All benchmarks were recorded with Nvidia’s optimized settings): • Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2019 - Min FPS: 79 - Max FPS: 139 - Avg FPS: 102 • Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War - Min FPS: 80 - Max FPS: 137 - Avg FPS: 104 • Escape from Tarkov (Customs Map) - Min FPS: 32 - Max FPS: 85 - Avg FPS: 47 • Rocket League - Min FPS: 202 - Max FPS: 251 - Avg FPS: 234 • Titanfall 2 - Min FPS: 55 - Max FPS: 146 - Avg FPS: 141 Hugely impressed with how much computing power and features can be packed into a small package. If you want to game all-out on the go, this laptop is for you.

The laptop market is dominated by systems that are powered by Intel CPUs. This is no surprise because of how well their CPUs run and its battery life and performance. But along the way, things have started to shift and Intel is, in my opinion, losing grounds on this market segment. With AMD eating away at Intel’s CPU market dominance, I’m happy to be able to test this laptop that features one of AMD’s latest in the mobile market. The model number and name is the ROG Zephyrus 14 GA401QM-211.ZG14. This model is an outlier where you don’t find an official product from ASUS themselves. Instead, this model is a blend of specs that is built specifically for a store. In this case, it’s for Best Buy. There are ups and downs to this. For one thing, a mix blend means that there are some aspects that make sense to have for performance. But at the same time, it means that you cannot easily view the full hardware specs at ASUS’s website because it doesn’t exist in their catalogue. So here are the nitty gritty specs that will either clarify things or confuse you more. AMD Ryzen 9 5900HS Zen3 8 core, 16 thread APU nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 6GB GDDR6 dedicated on 192bit bus, GA106 core 16GB RAM consisting of 8GB PC4-3200 DDR4 SODIMM and 8GB soldered onboard memory SK Hynix HFM001TD3JX013N 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD Windows 10 Home comes installed with the laptop with the 20H2 update. At the time, this is the latest major release but 21H1 (and beyond) isn’t too far off from release. Also, despite other and similar laptop models from ASUS promoting its recommendation to use Windows 10 Pro instead, I won’t be deducting a point for this. The reason is that this is a laptop model specific to a store and is outside the scope of ASUS’s Windows recommendation. Setting up the laptop is a breeze. Depending on whether or not you have a Microsoft account, and how you set up your account security, the amount of time setting up your account for Windows will vary. I was able to set up my Microsoft account very quickly using a Yubikey 5 security key. It did not prompt me for a username or password. Simply a PIN associated with the key and physically authenticating. After all the small updates were finished, I toured around the desktop to see what’s there. Thankfully, there’s little 3rd party bloat. There’s no McAfee or Norton and it saves me the headache of having to remove either of these from the system. But should you need a security software over Microsoft’s built-in Windows Defender, the option is there for you to install one of your choice. Office 365 is available to try but I’ve opted to remove that. For the hardware side of things, there is no webcam. This is a hit or miss to me. While it’d be nice to have one, it isn’t necessary. Yet at the same time, if there isn’t a webcam, why does the laptop have a microphone? Voice communication is fine for a laptop but if you’re out in public, you’re bound to have ambient noise leaking in. If voice communication is needed, you’re better off using a proper headset that provides better noise reduction and lessen the pickup of ambient noise. The keyboard is quite interesting, as it has quite a bit of travel and isn’t like the other laptop keyboards I’ve tried before. There is backlighting for the keyboard which has 3 levels of brightness and off. The trackpad is also smooth and the buttons have a decent tactile click to it -- not bad. The trackpad can be disabled on the fly should you opt for a mouse instead. Sound is surprisingly decent. Speakers are placed just below the keyboard and to the side, so all the sounds are front firing and sound better than ones that are bottom firing or use low quality speakers. Networking is handled entirely by an Intel AX200 WiFi 6 adapter. While it’s capable of WiFi 6 (11ax) connectivity, I do not have an appropriate router or access point to test it. However, I did test transferring files using the 11ac specification. Using the 5GHz band, I was able to transfer a 50GB file in around 10 minutes with an average speed of around 640Mbps. Gaming performance is satisfactory. While the GPU itself isn’t a top tier part, it should handle anything being thrown at it (limited by a 1080p display). Games tested are Guild Wars 2, Genshin Impact, Ni no Kuni - Wrath of the White Witch Remastered, Hard Reset (benchmark only), and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (single player campaign only). In Guild Wars 2, a game that is limited in CPU speed than in GPU power, panning the camera around a crowded area nets me a range of 45-60+fps. In the open world where a boss fight is happening, framerate would be above 50fps with random spikes of 70fps. GW2 is an odd case where the more crowded and more effects on screen, along with more player models rendered, the higher the CPU demand. Many people can get away by finding a balance between visual fidelity and “good enough” framerate. In Genshin Impact, the game wasn’t demanding. With all the settings turned on except for Bloom and Motion Blur, anti-aliasing set to SMAA, and Render Resolution set to 1.2, framerate for the game seemingly never dipped below 60. Granted, the game is limited to either 60 or 30fps. Render Resolution setting can only go up to 1.5. But I found no visual difference between the two (at least at first glance) so I opted for 1.2 for a balance. I have attempted a few times to provide load for the RTX 3060 in random battles. But nothing seem to push it far enough for it to break a sweat. Hard Reset is a nice first person shooter which once pushed GPUs very well. While it does not consistently push it, it still has some parts in its benchmark system that can throw the GPUs off. Attempting to see how far the RTX 30 series can go, I set everything to its highest: 144Hz refresh rate and “Ultra” detail settings. The end result was amazing. With MSI Afterburner running to provide me with framerate data and other hardware info, I never saw the flyby scene go below 60. However, the benchmark itself said its lowest was 56.3fps, with a peak of 259.8, and an average of 122.8. It’s no Crysis or Microsoft Flight Simulator. But it can provide a GPU a good workout. Granted, the time where the framerate drop towards 60 were moments where the GPU was being taxed the most by the benchmark. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is another first person shooter. With today’s generation (and perhaps even previous generation) of GPUs, it should be more than enough to handle the game at its highest visual settings. With those settings in mind, framerate is well above 100 in almost every case. Granted, the game itself is old enough to not pose any problem. But setting a variety of visual extras, such as high anti-aliasing and HBAO, tend to push GPUs to work harder. While I would like to have given its multiplayer a quick run, account setup as well as fixing all keybinds to personal preference would have been too time consuming. The last game on the list could be considered a light load game: Ni no Kuni - Wrath of the White Witch. Even with all settings set to its maximum value, the 3060 barely broke a sweat. With that in mind, I set the game to render on the integrated GPU (Radeon). With the same setting, it was able to consistently run above 90fps. Knowing this can be useful in figuring out what games are capable of running with just the integrated GPU instead of the 3060. Lastly some of the little bits and pieces that I couldn’t dedicate a section for. For one thing, the power button doubles as a fingerprint reader. This is great for easy authentication and getting into Windows without having to type out the password or PIN every time. While WiFi performance is adequate on either band for the majority of tasks out there, heavy network traffic is hindered by the fact that there is no RJ45 (ethernet) port. It’s a bit of a shame that this is omitted and I felt that something could have been done to keep it around. And while there are a decent amount of USB ports to use (2 Type-C and 2 Type-A), the USB Type-C port next to the HDMI can also serve as a charging port to charge up the laptop battery. This is great for times when you happen to forget the laptop charger itself. The power input seems to be rated for 20V 5A for up to 100W power. The charger itself is rated for up to 180W (20V at 9A) so using the Type-C port won’t be as quick. Still, the option is at least there. Overall, this laptop is a good performer. It uses AMD’s Zen3 architecture, something that I would prefer using over Intel’s current crop of CPUs. There’s nvidia’s RTX 3060 GPU which should strike a nice balance on being powerful enough and not overly powerful that it eats up battery power fast. The speakers are a surprise. And the keyboard is actually comfortable to type on. The display is fast and the 144Hz refresh rate is a new and refreshing experience. Not having a RJ45 ethernet port is a downer. And it can be worked around by using 11ac and 5GHz band. It’s not ideal if you’re constantly transferring large files. But if you’re transferring large files once a while then this should suffice. Is the price for the laptop worth it? It’s hard to say to be honest. At the time of review, it is difficult to get the latest AMD CPUs for desktop. It is also very difficult to find a GPU from either side -- AMD and nvidia. If you’re seeking something akin to a desktop replacement, then this is not likely suitable for that. But if you desire something that is decently powerful yet portable, then this is a good candidate to purchase. It’s probably best to shop around for similarly spec’d laptops to see if this is worth the asking price. Verdict: (unbiased) Undecided; (biased) buy it because AMD is winning and Intel lags behind PS: If you wondered why I did not test anything for RTX/raytracing performance, it's because I do not have any games that utilizes it. Sorry.

It is amazing how the power of a high end desktop gaming PC from two years ago can fit into a 14inch laptop under 4lbs. The Ryzen 9 5900HS cpu in this thing has enough power to be relevant for at least 3 years. The RTX 3060 is a good balance of speed and power efficiency, although the 6GB may require realistic graphic detail adjustments in near future games. I do not think any gpu more powerful or higher wattage would be possible in this chassis. The RTX runs through Radeon iGPU which does reduce performance in cpu bound games, but allows freesync adaptive sync to eliminate stutter and tearing. The usb-c port on left side of unit supports displayport/hdmi directly from RTX 3060 with optional adapters. I verified Gsync works through usb-c port with displayport adapter to my external monitors. I have seen a lot of complaints that the HDMI port is not connected directly to RTX but I actually feel this is a good thing because it allows longer battery life when hooking up to projectors during business presentations where the power of RTX is not always needed. For simple slides and video, the Radeon is sufficient and the RTX can be used via Optimus if presentation requires more graphical grunt. The cooling system is about as good as physically possible in a chassis this small without using a more expensive vapor chamber design. The liquid metal thermal interface on cpu helps minimize cpu thermal throttling issues. If running simultaneous cpu + gpu stress for prolonged periods, expect some mild throttling on either gpu or cpu as they share heatpipes. The VRMs seem to have dedicated cooling plate and pipe. Asus engineers seem to have found best balance between power and thermals. The touchpad is small but very smooth and responsive. The keyboard has good layout. The backlight is improved in uniformity compared to last year, but still difficult to see in medium light conditions (especially at low keyboard light brightness). I put a 2021 G14 black keyboard cover on system and I think it makes system look better in medium/bright light rooms. The speakers are loud and actually have some low frequency response. Probably the best speakers outside of a Macbook Pro. The screen on my unit had minimal light bleed and good black levels. For text and videos, I had no complaints. Unfortunately, I do notice ghosting from the relatively lower response time. It is definitely better than last year’s model, but resembles a fast VA panel more than a fast IPS. Anybody sensitive to ghosting/response time should consider something else or use external monitor when not traveling. The single m.2 slot and single SODIMM slot is disappointing but understandable. There is literally no space to fit additional slots due to small system. I wished all 16GB was soldered with open slot for user to add more. But I suspect more than 90% of users will find the 8GB soldered + 8GB SODIMM sufficient. At least there is option to increase RAM to 8 soldered + 32 sodimm in future even if only first 16GB will be dual channel. Overall is probably the most processing/graphical power in the smallest/lightest laptop available on the market (Apple ecosystem users should also seriously consider Macbook Air or Pro M1). It is easy to carry around and allows use of up to 100watt PD USB-C charger to reduce need to take 180watt brick on trips. Just remember to get external webcam or learn how to use phone camera as webcam because there is no builtin webcam on this laptop.

I'm primarily a Mac user, have an iPhone, iPad, and iMac. There's one thing that I miss being able to do and that's play some good PC games. I've had some other gaming rigs in the past, both towers and laptops and there's been some significant trade offs that have made sticking with them unviable. So I was skeptical about the buzz I'd heard about the new Asus ROG Zephyrus laptop as a killer gaming laptop. Asus has been a brand that I've had good experiences with since my days of building my own PCs back in college, so I felt a little reassured that the machine would be of good quality. From a performance aspect, this thing so far has blown me away with the amount of power Asus has been able to cram in a 14 inch laptop, but there have been some noticeable trade-off's in my experience that keep it from being a perfect product. The over design of the machine is very nice. The hinge on the back folds easily with one hand, yet feels sturdy enough that it's not shaky. On the left-hand side of the device, you have the power jack, HDMI output, USB-C port that also supports charging with an appropriate USB-C power supply, and an AUX headphone jack. On the right side, you have 2 USB-A ports as well as another USB-C port. I haven't tested the USB-C charging ability since the laptop comes with a traditional power brick and power cord setup, nor have I tested any Thunderbolt certified devices, so your mileage may vary there. The keyboard is my first major gripe - the layout and spacing is fine, but the backlight is so minimal that the white letters are barely legible from the silver keys. If there's a way to increase the backlight of the keys, I haven't found it yet. It would be nice to be able to clearly see the keys since this device is designed to be enjoyed using it's beautiful screen. The screen itself boasts a 1080p display at 144Hx. But because the device has got so much in the way of muscle under the hood, you can actually use the Radeon software to push the display higher. I've left mine at the 2560x1440 setting because that's what I'm used to seeing on my desktop display. Playing games like Doom 2016 have been buttery smooth in respect to screen responsiveness. You can easily forget that you're only viewing a 14 inch screen! The other trade offs I noticed were in battery life and the trackpad. It's no surprise to anyone that trackpads can't hold a candle to the responsiveness of a good mouse when it comes to gaming, but I was amazed at how quickly I died trying to do simple things like navigate a hallway playing Doom. Once I hooked up a good, wired mouse, we were cooking! The jury is still out for me on battery life - I have a lot of older PS2 games in my Steam library that I like to play from time to time, one of them being Soul Reaver 2. I had made it through the opening cinematic and past some of the opening dialog and the battery was already below 60% coming off a full charge. I could also hear the fan quite well over the speakers. Not sure if there's some tweaking that I need to do or not - but I wouldn't recommend trying to do too much gaming on the battery, I'd stick to gaming while it's plugged in. Speaking of the speakers, pun intended, this thing boasts some nice sound from a small package. The speakers are Dolby ATMOS enabled, so watching movies and playing games sounds much better and cleaner that my older laptop could produce. I wouldn't go so far as to say this thing can power your home theater setup, but for gaming on the go, it's awesome. Another nice feature of the ROG Zephyrus is the versatility - you can use this as a gaming laptop, or by using the NVidia software, you can pull down different drivers that are more focused on content creators. The price point is high - this laptop clocks in at $1500 regular price, so if you're looking for a daily driver machine to check emails and surf the web, this is certainly overkill. But, if you're a gamer and / or someone who dabbles in creating your own content, then the device hits a nice sweet spot where it's strong enough to easily handle fast-paced games, but also well equipped for video editing and creation. There's also an app called Armoury Crate where you can customize the Zephyrus's performance and either use settings optimized for Windows, Performance, or Silence. For gaming, I use Performance and for most other situations, I use Silence. Bottom line - I expect this thing to hang around for a while and power the bulk of my PC gaming rather than my older tower rig or older PC laptop. I'm not quite ready to make the switch full bore back to Windows from Mac, but the Asus ROG Zephyrus is certainly a very nice, and very powerful machine.

Let me start off by saying that, I am not what you call a pro PC gamer. Matter of fact, I have not played PC gaming in many years. However, I am a big Call of Duty Warzone fan and it is pretty much the only game I have been playing on console. I do want to begin venturing into more PC gaming now that I have this, but Warzone was a primary reason for my purchase as I have heard that PC gamers have a competitive advantage over console. That could not be any more truthful too. The fluidness of gaming on this is unlike anything I have experienced. For reference, I have an Xbox One X. This laptop exceeds my expectations and Asus has really hit it out of the park IMO. This is everything I was hoping for out of a laptop of this size and it has not disappointed. I really thought it would take me more time to adjust from console/controller to keyboard/mouse, but the transition was pretty easy once I knew what keys did what. Using a mouse to shoot/aim in a shooter game like this is lightyears better than my console experience. The graphics are SO CLEAN! Everything is so crisp and smooth I really cannot believe how much power is packed in this thing. The frames show no stutter whatsoever and I have everything maxed out for graphics settings on Warzone. It is absolutely amazing the difference between FPS and latency when I compare my experience to gaming on the Xbox. I really feel like I have done myself wrong by not jumping to a gaming pc like this sooner. For someone who is not so fluid with the gaming vocabulary and language, I can appreciate what Asus includes here. The Armoury Crate software I personally find especially useful as it makes it easy for someone like me to understand and in a way “ do the work “ for me . So far, I have been satisfied with the systems default options in the software. I think for someone who is a beginner into PC gaming and is scared they might not understand what to do or the best settings to tinker with, this laptop is a great start to ease those nerves and fee comfortable. This is my first AMD powered device as well. I’ve only ever owned Intel based products but from my research I gathered, AMD has come a long way to the point where they are preferred for gaming, which also had a part to play in why I chose this specific laptop. The 144HZ FHD screen is a beauty. There is absolutely no reflection on this screen either and it’s so sharp it puts my 4k TV’s in my home to shame. I was worried with the size for gaming but it honestly is the perfect size and is ideal because I feel you are able to focus completely on the ratio this screen offers VS looking around and moving your head so much on something bigger ( I’m used to gaming on a 60inch .) I think I spent more time looking at each corner of my TV than I did finding enemies because of how big it was. This has changed that for me and has made the gaming experience even better. I feel more involved than ever before as it’s just all right there in front of me without any strain. The laptop does get hot initially when playing, but it seems to find its sweet spot and settle in. You can hear the fans, but it is not that intrusive. I was using Turbo mode while playing, but changing it to silent mode and instantly everything goes quiet within seconds. It's actually pretty neat how quick the armoury crate works it's magic. I also like that you have the ability to use your phone to adjust settings as well. The fingerprint reader works fantastic as well. In general, the keys are great, probably the best feeling keyboard I've ever typed on. Extremely tactical and well raised. The trackpad is top notch as well. The hardware inside and out is extremely impressive, this is one beautiful laptop. From screen quality, gaming quality, sound quality and build, I really find it hard to compare this to any other laptop in it's class and price. One negative thing I'd say is that I wish it came with an ethernet adapter. Now, initially I had concerns when I saw this wasn't included as the WIFI in my home isn't the best, even when I'm right in front of my router. My Xbox is hardline in because of it. I was really worried about lag when playing online but, I'm not sure if it just speaks volumes to how powerful this laptop is or if it picks up my WIFI better than other devices, I experience zero lag, even when I was on the 2nd level away from my router, I had no issues which I'm really happy with because now I don't have to confine myself to the basement to game. When I asked some of my gaming buddies about the NVIDIA RTX3060 and if it would be sufficient enough for me, they all said I'd have no issues, and were even surprised a laptop of this size had it. They were right though, as this graphics card has provided me with an experience in Call Of Duty that I have never had.. The details it offers blows my mind and I really can't wait to test out its other capability down the road. Everything loads insanely fast. I'd watch streamers playing Warzone and always wondered how everything loaded so much faster vs console and now I know first hand what that feels like. Within a full day of use, this laptop has made me feel like a true gamer. I'm very excited to use this and transition more and more away from console gaming to this. I have no doubt in my mind that it will handle everything I throw at it. For those in the market for a superb laptop that has everything you need and more, look no further. I don't see how anyone could be let down by this beast. For anyone who is like me and was scared to take the leap and not sure if it'd meet or exceed expectations after spending most of your life on console gaming, do not hesitate to buy. This has opened up a new world of gaming for me that I'm excited to expand on.

Needed something for school and gaming because traveling around with a mid-tower is exhausting. :P I play a lot of Path of Exile which has a bazillion particle effects when you play with friends often crashing computers left and right. This laptop can really handle itself. I love the color of it too, makes it feel a little bit special.(who doesn't like feeling special sometimes) The screen actually lifts the base up off of the table leaving plenty of room for air flow, and if you're not the hulk with gamer rage, I think it doesn't have much chance of breaking. One thing that kind of sucks is you'll need a USB hub if you want to plug in all your own accessories. there's only 2 USB's on the right side of the laptop, so I use a hub for my keyboard, mouse and headset. HDMI port on the left along with the 3.5mm for headphones/headset. USB-C and charging port also on the left side. Haven't thought about upgrading it, I really don't have a reason to at this point. Nailing out my music homework using Ableton live and kicking some game req. butts. so I see no reason for upgrading at this time.