ASUS - ROG Zephyrus 15.6" QHD Gaming Laptop - AMD Ryzen 9 - 16GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 - 1TB SSD - Eclipse Gray

This is an amazing laptop. AMD processor wors perfect, super fast, can render in 3dmax, work on cad, photoshop, anything. I thought about taking a star out for the quality of the case (all plastic) but after using for a while I realized I like it much more then my hp spectre high end metal construcion, looks and feels good but waaay to heavy, the light plastic is much better on this Asus. The other bad point is the lack of a webcam, but I personally like it like that , more private, no need to worry, if I want a camera I can connect it on the usb. It is one of the best laptops I've ever had, had it for over 2 years now and still works great, amazing performance, great value, you pay for the actual components, not for brand, unlike other apple trash I got in the past . AMD is def the way to go. Also upgraded the memory and storage, very easy and unexpensive upgrade.

This laptop is a great example of a balance between a portable laptop on the go and a great powerful beast for gaming/ heavy workloads. The thing it isn't perfect with possible major flaws. Like your first love in school with your girlfriend/boyfriend, you may find great things but uncover the bad after being deeply together after a while. Ill list the Pros and Cons since there is a lot to cover. Pros: 1. The design is good with a great metal feel on the lid and a trackpad that is similar to the Microsoft Surface. The device is very portable and the charger is really compact with not a lot of weight. I usually carry my laptop to worksites once a week and it is barely noticeable. 2. Great battery life. Able to get around 6 hours on ASUS silent mode with mix office work and Teams conferencing. 3. Great gaming performance all around. Time Spy hits average 9723 while Firestrike hits 22359 benchmark score. These scores in comparison is about 12% slower than an RTX 2080 desktop with an i9. For gaming with an external monitor I was able to get 90 FPS average on Ultra 1080P with GTA 5, COD Warzone at max setting 1080P no raytracing was averaging about 80 FPS, FF15 with hairworks off on ultra 1080P was getting about 88 FPS average. That is great results for a 4 lbs. laptop as most laptops can't even come close to these results. 4. The built in 2k screen is fast and colors are almost as accurate as my external 4k monitor. Still needs to be calibrated for actual color work related tasks but for most gamers this should be a fine great panel. 5. Low power draw is something that people really don't mention since I guess people just don't pay for electricity? This laptop has an average power draw of about 130 Watts when gaming which makes it very attractive for people who don't want to spend a lot on utilities for people who want to be more environmentally conscious. Could also be a good option for hash mining if you live in an area that has low electric costs but I can't confirm since I don't mine. Cons: 1. When using it as a workstation connected to 2 monitors with the lid closed, the device will go to Sleep when pushing the CPU/GPU which indicates an overheat. The temps seem to be fine when I monitor (hits around 87 C on CPU and 82 on GPU) but it seems that there is something that is baking inside that forces it to sleep. I was able to remedy this issue by using a cooling pad and adjusting the laptop fan curve to be a lot higher that what it supposed to be. This is a disappointing one since with the Dell and HP I used to own, I would just have to use a cooling pad in the workstation area and it would work with no issues. 2. Speakers are alright. It has good sound but sometimes on bass, it will have a very light pop noise. Kind of annoying for an expensive laptop of this caliber. 3. I know this doesn't have a webcam but it is annoying to lug a webcam around to when using it for Teams conferencing. Yes I know most laptop webcams suck but it's better than no webcam and ASUS could have change the game by adding a good webcam similar to my work loaned Microsoft Surface. The kicker is that ASUS feature their "amazing noise canceling" mic which is decent but not a replacement for a dedicated mic. What's the point of adding a mic to the laptop if there's no webcam..... 4. Minor issue of one 8 RAM module being soldered to the mainboard which means max upgrade is 24 GB of RAM (16 GB dual channel + 8 GB single channel). For an enthusiast gaming laptop, this is slightly disappointing and will dissuade some customers who need 32 GB of dual channel RAM for heavy workloads. Overall this is a good portable laptop with great performance in which to be honest will fit with the majority of people use case. There is a much darker picture I have to paint though. Questionable QC is my concern since I actually exchanged the laptop with the same model. The previous laptop had random blue screen issues when on battery power and had a really bad blown out right speaker that would pop and scratch during certain noises. Since this laptop is a new design for ASUS, I would recommend to test every feature of this laptop since there is a chance of possible defects. Since I tested what I could on this second laptop and seems to be fine, I will be keeping this for many years to come.

Purchased the laptop in March 2021, works very well playing games. Had to adjust the base level sound because the sound was too low. Otherwise and nice powerful laptop with a lot of features. Good sound, 2K screen, nice physical interface, ability to upgrade storage space in the future, very strong battery life. All around a good purchase.

I have owned the laptop for just around 4 days now and these are my early impressions…spoiler: they’re pretty great. Overall build quality is excellent and it comes in a space grey color. It is constructed from a mix of aluminum and plastic. The top lid itself is a nice aluminum, while the rest of the body is plastic. While the materials aren’t premium, it does allow the machine to be more economically friendly as well as lighter, which is a plus in my book. It is prone to smudges and light wear, so keep that in mind. I think it will be fairly durable, but it won’t look new for long (you can actually see the smudges in my photos-I didn't clean the laptop to help show this - it does clean easily though). The hinge is the best in the business. It is Asus’s ergolift hinge. There is rubber feat on the bottom of the display which lifts the bottom of the laptop at an angle. This has two benefits: first it allows for proper heat flow into the intake vents on the bottom of the laptop. And lastly it allows the keyboard to be positioned at a more comfortable typing angle. The hinge allows the lid to be a one hand open and rotates 180 degrees, allowing the screen to lay flat on the desk. It’s also very firm, so when opening or closing, there is perfect resistance. It is really, really nice. The Display is a 15.6” LED matte display with a resolution of 2560 x 1440 and it has a refresh rate of 165Hz! This display is excellent and it easily has one of the best panels I’ve tested. Colors are very accurate (see calibration results below) and contrast is nice as well. Viewing off-axis is good, but not great. There is some minor color washout as you move past 120 degrees off-axis, but it is minor and still looks nice. sRGB – 100% NTSC – 86% AdobeRGB -89% P3 -95% The keyboard is as close to perfect as I can think of…not only is it angled thanks to the ergolift hinge, but it’s properly spaced out, the layout is perfect, it is backlit and has excellent travel. My only personal nitpick is the feel of the keycaps themselves. It has a rubberized feel to it. I prefer a nice plastic keycap myself. Again, personal preferences. One thing to note: there is a LOT of heat that comes through the keyboard itself and it can be a slight discomfort over time. It was something I most definitely noticed, even during normal use. Below I have included thermal readings to illuminate this. The touchpad is a slight negative as well…It is VERY large, which is a good thing, sort of. The palm rejection in Windows isn’t anywhere near as good as the Mac side of things and my cursor constantly drifts. I always disable touch to tap feature in windows, so nothing gets activated, but it could be a problem for some, if that feature is left on. The trackpad is constructed from glass and is a windows precision trackpad and it feels wonderful. Palm rejection aside, it is an excellent trackpad. It’s as close to a macbook trackpad I have seen, even down to the click mechanism (by this, I mean the auditory sound produced, not the actual force touch side of things). The speakers are nice. They’re not MacBook Pro 16 levels of greatness (nothing is) but they’re better than about 90% of the laptops out there. The mids are great, the highs are good, but tend to falter and the lows are boomy and leave a lot to be desired. They don’t get overly loud either at around 81db’s. The placement is perfect as they are adjacent the keyboard and we have stereo separation too, which every device should strive for. Okay, let’s discuss the internals. This particular model came with: o AMD Ryzen 9 5900HS 3.3ghz 8-core Processor o Nvidia RTX 3070 Max-Q 8gb Graphics Card o 16gb’s DDR4 RAM (8gb’s soldered on motherboard & 8gb Stick -upgradeable to 32gb stick) o 1tb m.2 Solid-State Drive CPU performance is excellent - geekbench results below. Normal tasks won’t move the meter in terms of stressing this machine. Editing 4k video stressed it slightly but it still handled it without any issues. This is easily capable of editing video up to 4k as well as photo editing. Geekbench 5 numbers: 1461 single core & 7363 multi-core performance GPU performance is exceptionally good. I have only used the built-in screen for testing so far. And I have tested a few games at 1440p resolution at high settings. I plan on testing more games as well as running 4k tests as well, but I’ll save that for the video review. Below are my numbers so far: o Wolfenstein: New Colossus = 99fps o Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order = 53fps o Ori & the Will of Whisps = 79fps There is several fan presets you can cycle through with a simple touch of a button (fan icon on keyboard). I usually utilize the “silent” mode when doing basic computing and switch to “performance” mode when gaming or editing. The fans in silent mode are exactly that: silent (38.0db’s). During gaming or editing, they were on full blast and were 46.9db’s loud. A tremendous amount of heat is given off during gaming. Below is my temperature readings after just 30 minutes of gaming: WASD – 101 F Top middle keyboard – 118 F Top right Keyboard – 78 F Bottom Left Keyboard – 89 F Spacebar – 109 F Bottom Right Keyboard – 97 F Left Wrist Area – 86.3 F Trackpad – 81 F Right Wrist Area – 87 F Screen – 92 F Port Selection is almost perfect. While I don’t like proprietary power plugs, I understand it’s necessary here, so you have to accept that. Otherwise we have an HDMI port, Ethernet port, 2 USB type C ports, 2 USB type A ports and a micro SD card slot. Battery life is very poor. Yes, this is a gaming laptop, but still worse than I expected. For my reviews, I usually do a battery range, so I test the lowest demanding settings to get the longest life possible as well as stressing the laptop completely (editing/gaming) giving me the shortest battery life under high demand. While gaming at max brightness, fans on performance mode and a light backlight to the keyboard I got 83 minutes of battery life. While having the screen at minimum brightness, no backlit keyboard, fans on silent and web-surfing and word-processing, I was able to get 4 hours and 37 minutes. Total recharge time was impressive at 1 hour and 45 minutes. Okay the major negatives on this laptop: o No web-camera. This is bad, especially right now, in the day and age we live in. The web-camera used to be something not many people cared about (including myself), but it has become essential. Not having a web-camera in 2021 is a bad move on Asus’s part. o The lack of a full-size SD card slot is such a misstep. This is a powerful laptop, capable of editing, and to omit it is a bit shameful on Asus’s part. This is a gaming laptop, yes, but it’s an editing monster too. o The display doesn’t have touch integrated. This isn’t a big deal for me, even though I’ve been an advocate for touch displays, and is probably a cost saving on asus’s part. It is something to consider though if you just have to have a touchscreen. o The Fingerprint reader is bad. It is built into the power button and it just doesn’t work for me. I work with my hands a lot and wash my hands regularly, so it could just be me, however none of my other devices have given me this much trouble. It plain doesn’t work for me. Overall this a beast of a laptop. Whether you plan on using it for gaming or video editing, or both, you’re going to very, very happy with this. It is priced appropriately at $1799. With the impeccable quality and high-refresh rate of the screen, the incredible processing power, the amazing RTX 3070 gpu (desktop counterparts are impossible to buy right now), the wonderful keyboard and the state of the art hinge make this a recommended buy. It will be my daily driver for a while. It's great.

After 2 years the laptop is still solid the only issue is baterry life and that it can get super hot but works as a charm

I really think this laptop is the most well rounded laptop. It has long battery life. There are many built in conveniences both hardware-wise and software-wise. Most importantly it is a good value for the price. I would recommend this laptop to someone who doesn't have a console and is looking for an all in one gaming/work portable system. When it comes to the battery life, I believe it requires a bit of tweaking, but you can get up to 9 hours of streaming videos, web browsing, and productivity tasks. I set my Armory Crate (included software) to Silent and set Windows to battery saver mode. Then, I got 9 hours of battery life with rgb set to blue (255), green (255), and Red (0) to low and the brightness to like 50%~. So ya, I would say kudos to battery life. As to hardware, I know a lot of people complain about no webcam. However, there is built-in software for that. In the included MyAsus app there is a Shared Cam app, you connect your phone and then it becomes your webcam. I mean my phone has a 1080p camera opposed to most 720p cameras included in most laptops and I am pretty sure a vast majority of people's phone's cameras are at least as good as mine if not better . . . I used it on zoom and discord no problem (but you need good internet connection . . . The greatest hardware advantages are that it has a huge trackpad and it has a fingerprint reader. The trackpad can be programmed with "advanced gestures" to pause/play, play next/previous songs. I swipe four fingers to skip or go back a track, I tap four fingers to pause. I have all the multimedia control I need. The fingerprint reader is so convenient. Out in public with a mask I could unlock with windows hello via my finger upon boot. Ya, I am lazy. The internal specs allow you to play any game out there today at 1440p 60fps ggez. I am not a digital art creative type so I cannot speak to the rendering times etc. The software I touched upon. There is single zone rgb control and the color hue is unique its really vibrant. Uh, the battery can be limited to charge to 60%, 80% or 100% via the MyAsus App. The BIOS updates itself no need for a flashdrive. Auto updates are simple and convenient. Uh, there are five power modes Windows, Silent, Performance, Turbo, and Manual. There are tons of controls in the Armory Crate to customize this laptop to your hearts content. You get both AMD and Nvidia with this so its cool to have stuff like freesync and Gsync. The built in monitor will be using gsync no MUX, but the dGPU can be shut off completely on battery mode automatically to get that long battery life~. Sorry for rambling because software-wise there is a ton and I am quite scatter brain thinking about it, but you don't have to tweak anything, out of the box this thing runs fine. TL;DR I really think it's a good value laptop on sale especially for like ~$1,550. No other laptop will give you a nice software for your own camera (I only have 1080p and I know at least it does 1080p); convenient software updates; a color accurate, high refresh rate, low response time panel; 9hrs battery; RGB keyboard, big trackpad, fingerprint scanner, nice internal specs, great thermals for the sale price of ~$1600 plus tax. If it were not on sale the ~$1850 is still a pretty good deal. So, in my opinion if you are looking for a good gaming/productivity laptop this is it.

Great laptop. My first higher priced quality laptop. Well built in a metallic casing. Fast and has very good high performance Nvidia graphics card built in. Long battery life. Lightweight, slim design. Very pleased with it.

I'm sure there will be plenty of in depth breakdowns of this laptop and its variants in the coming days. I wanted to address reasons why I chose this laptop over any of the others in the 30 series laptop launch, more expensive models and the previous gen. In my personal experience it's hard to get this kind of performance for the price in any package. The AMD chipset was a hard requirement for me. AMD has been blowing up the CPU market and to go for a rtx 30 series GPU with an Intel series CPU would have just been leaving performance on the table for lost money. Passmark with no changes to the laptop (performance, turbo mode, etc) are attached. Can you squeeze more performance out of this? Absolutely, but a standard benchmark is more useful as this is the barebones you should expect when comparing to others. The CPU and GPU were amazing, and those are the ones to pay attention to. I wasn't looking for anything spectacular from the RAM or the HDD and since they are both replaceable, if you REALLY NEED TO UPGRADE, then you can. The 165hz WQHD screen is great. I am not a content creator so I have no need of a Pantone validated screen for color correction or the like but the screen is very pleasant to look at. I came from a Macbook Air-esque thin laptop with 350-nit brightness and a glass touchscreen. This screen is matte and not as bright by a long shot, but with a drastically reduced glare, that extra brightness isn't missed. I have a portable monitor that connects via usb-c and while it doesn't work on my desktop (that is also an AMD processor) I was worried without thunderbolt, it would not work. Rest assured this cheap USB-C portable monitor purchased from Amazon worked no problem. The keyboard took some getting used to as I tap the capslock key too often finding the home key. I think this is in part because I wear a wristwatch and I dont want to scratch the laptop and put my hand in different positions than I would on my previous laptop where the keyboard isnt as 'deep'. I am really pleasantly surprised at the size of the laptop. The 5900HS and 3070 are a powerhouse team and to fit that in a "slim" gaming laptop is hard to believe but they did it. I played a few minutes of Star Wars: Squadrons and the thermals did not go over 70*C on the GPU. If you are interested in mining, I was able to reach 51MH with 1300+ memory clock at 102W (80W TDP plus the 20W boost when the CPU doesn't need it). This is compared to a desktop 3070 at 120W for 56MHs. Thats pretty incredible, although it will run 73+C and if you dont provide alternative cooling (or prop the bottom up for better airflow) it *could* eventually cause premature wear and tear. Am I worried about that? No. I am a student exclusively online and the lack of a webcam would be a tick off the review if it was as impossible to get a webcam as it was desktop GPUs right now. But it's not. If you really need a webcam, one can be had for as little as $30 dollars. Again the price to performance ratio here is insane. You don't gain that much going to a 3080 version of this but that easily pushes the price over 2200 with tax. The visuals are about as muted as you could get for a gaming laptop. I can bring this to work and the grey laptop blends in with the other workstations if I set the keyboard RGB to white. Honestly the asthetic of the other 30 series laptops is a bit over the top and I appreciate how subtle this one remains. If you're on the fence, the only other comparable laptop would be the MSI Thin for the specs and price, but again no AMD cpu and it wont release for another several weeks. TLDR: Great buy, what there is to complain about is just trivial stuff at this value.