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

The pairing of a top-end AMD CPU with a high-performing NVidia GPU has finally come. ASUS has been selling midrange and high-end gaming laptops under their “Republic of Gamers,” or ROG, line for the last 15 years, and the Zephyrus G15 is a model that has been around for some time with evolutionary updates each hardware generation. The latest version of this popular laptop brings a few design changes that result in a sleeker, smaller machine that doesn’t skimp on performance and makes few sacrifices to get there. This year’s ROG Zephyrus G15 is easily the best gaming laptop I’ve ever used, and it may be one of the best laptops available today. - Unboxing & Setup Being one of ASUS’ top laptop offerings, the packaging impresses with a mechanism that raises the laptop as you open the box. A handful information cards are all that accompany the laptop and power adapter, leaving most of the setup and instructions on the G15 itself. ASUS loaded Windows 10 Home for this machine instead of Pro, which is a little disappointing for a high-end offering but the choice won’t impact most users. Completing initial setup without a Microsoft account is tricky - remember to skip connecting to the Internet during the process if you don’t want to use one. The power button integrates a fingerprint reader for Windows Hello login; a nice substitute for face detection as the laptop lacks a webcam. Once up and running, ASUS’ “Armoury Crate” software offers control over the system’s performance and helps switch between battery and AC power modes for the graphics processors. It stays mostly out of the way and doesn’t seem too bloated, with the usual Windows promos and an ASUS support helper being the only other notable preinstalled applications. - Build Quality & Connectivity The ROG Zephyrus G15 is one of the nicest laptops I’ve held. It’s extremely svelte for a 15.6” laptop and feels solid, but not overly weighty. Despite its plastic chassis, the machine feels great with no keyboard flex nor wobble in its display hinge. The metal lid is gorgeous and provides welcome rigidity to the screen, with the perforated motif giving a premium touch. The keyboard and Windows Precision-enabled trackpad are solid, but there is some room for improvement in the quality of the keycaps as the plastic does feel a little rough. Connectivity options are fairly good. Two USB-A ports accompany two USB-C ones that both support DisplayPort off the NVidia GPU alongside a full-size HDMI 2.0 port, which means you can in fact run triple screens off the laptop. Both USB-C ports also support Power Delivery, meaning you can charge with a high-power USB-C charger instead of through the included DC barrel plug. A Gigabit ethernet port and combination headphone-microphone jack round out the available ports. A microSD card reader is integrated into the laptop, which is convenient if a little odd as full-size SD is more versatile. WiFi and Bluetooth are both strong, offering up range and signal strength matching my desktop’s powered dual-antenna solution. - Performance Once the laptop’s on AC power and full the full performance mode is enabled, the 80-watt (100 during boost) RTX 3070 Max-Q delivers incredible graphics power for this size. The GPU lets nearly all modern games run with High or Ultra settings at the screen’s native 1440p with high framerates. After a few days of testing I found no game performed any worse at the same settings as my main desktop with an RTX 2080, and the benchmarks I ran showed both GPUs within a couple percentage points across the board. Ray traced titles, DX11 games, Vulkan games, even VR games on a high-res HMD were all equally performant between the two systems, and I would be hard-pressed to tell which machine was powering my experience on an external display. The dedicated GPU makes for a great gaming laptop on its own, but the trick up the ROG Zephyrus G15’s sleeve is the integrated Vega 8 GPU on the Ryzen 5900HS. On battery, ASUS’ Armoury Crate disables the 3070 entirely and lets the machine run on just the integrated GPU. The Vega 8 boosts up to nearly 2GHz frequency, which delivers graphics performance not far removed from desktop APUs such as the 3400G. Smooth framerates are achievable with lower graphics settings, letting you untether from an AC outlet for less-demanding games or eSports titles. Battery life takes only a modest hit when pushing the integrated GPU to its limits. The AMD Ryzen 5900HS is an 8-core, 16-thread powerhouse that sips energy - the 35-watt chip puts out desktop-level performance not far removed from the Ryzen 3800X. In synthetic benchmarks it consistently outperformed my desktop’s 5600X (6-core, 12-thread) by a few percent in multi-threaded performance, leaving my desktop winning only in single-threaded applications. Regardless, the single-thread power on tap is plenty for modern gaming, and the extra cores available make the Zephyrus G15 a viable mobile streaming solution. On test streams my viewers reported not a single stutter nor noticeable frame drop while playing both CPU and GPU-demanding titles like Hitman 2 and Cyberpunk 2077. Make no mistake, this laptop can be a desktop replacement. I didn’t feel the CPU nor GPU were obviously bottlenecking the other, leaving it to a game’s settings and optimization to make either run out of steam. The system’s 16GB of dual-channel RAM and speedy NVMe disk (though only PCIe 3.0 x2) keep the system snappy and load times short. - Thermals & Noise New for this generation of Zephyrus laptops is ASUS’ choice to move away from traditional thermal compounds and move to liquid metal. This ensures the most efficient heat transfer from the two processors to the heat pipes, resulting in much smoother temperature changes as they heat up. Thermal paste tends to break down over time, sometimes as quickly as a few months, while liquid metal will retain its thermal conductivity for years without issue. As a result of this change, the G15 maintains some of the best thermal performance I’ve ever seen in a gaming laptop. At no point in testing did the CPU breach 85C, and the GPU never exceeded 70C, even while stressing both to their limits simultaneously. ASUS’ cooling solution uses six copper heat pipes to whisk heat away from the processors, exhausted by two fans that blow out the sides and at the base of the screen. At full bore these fans are not overbearing, but in “Silent” mode the heat pipes alone absorb enough heat away from the CPU that the fans almost never run. Further helping keep things cool is the “Max-Q” design that raises the back edge of the laptop when the hinge is open, creating a gap of air underneath the machine to get more cool air across the processors. - Screen & Sound Backing up the high performing RTX 3070 is the best screen I’ve seen on a laptop this side of Cupertino. The DCI-P3 certified, 165Hz IPS display is a stunner. Not only are colors incredibly accurate and vibrant, but the screen exhibits hardly any ghosting and gets more than bright enough for indoor use. While not HDR-capable, the brightness and color gamut make up the difference. This is a great screen for media editing, and with a 1440p resolution it borders on “retina” level sharpness at normal viewing distances. The speakers bring one of the only letdowns I’ve come across with the G15 thus far. A four speaker array with integrated subwoofers does a bit to overcome the “tinny” audio that laptops are known for, but anything resembling a deep bass hit gets reproduced with a “whump” sound that’s completely out of place. Of course, headphones are an expected occurrence with a gaming laptop, but I found that sound from the audio jack was on the quiet side and I had trouble getting my headphones loud enough to be usable in a noisy environment. I recommend using USB or bluetooth headphones. - Battery Life & Upgradeability Off-charger with the RTX 3070 disabled, I saw about 7 hours battery life in my testing which is quite good for a gaming laptop. If you’re looking to carry light you can use a USB Type-C charger to recharge using Power Delivery instead of using the 200W power adapter. It took a little under 2 hours to recharge from empty using the AC adapter, and about 6 to recharge through a 65W USB-C PD one. Removing the G15’s lower panel reveals the only user-upgradeable internals on the laptop. Two M.2 slots allow for larger, faster SSD storage to be installed, and a single SODIMM slot allows swapping the included 8GB model out for a larger one to give the system either 24GB or 40GB of RAM. The other 8GB is soldered to the mainboard, which means any upgrade will cause the system to lose its dual-channel memory mode and significantly reduce both CPU and integrated GPU performance. While 16GB should be plenty of RAM for gaming now, some games are already using close to this and it may not be long before 16GB is the new minimum with 32GB recommended. - Bottom Line A stunner through and through, I find little to criticize on the ROG Zephyrus G15. It really does feel like it’s the best of both worlds - a competent mobile solution with good battery life and an excellent gaming performer - without compromising what’s important in either. It’s destined to be my daily driver from here forward until a better machine comes along, but barring more powerful processors or a RAM upgrade there’s nothing I can think of that comes up short in real-world use. Perhaps it could be priced a little lower, and a webcam would have been nice, but that’s about it. If you want to take desktop power with you in a reasonably-sized chassis, then the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15 comes highly recommended!

I've owned a few gaming laptops over the years and the new Zephyrus G15 comes closest to hitting that perfect balance of performance, design, and portability. The model as reviewed here foregoes some high-end upgrades and has a few small quirks, but the design is eye-catching and the overall package is essentially unmatched by any other laptop. Nvidia's new 30-series GPUs offer incredible performance and value, but there are certainly some trade-offs to be aware of with the 3070 in such a small machine. Likewise, you'll want to temper your expectations if you're upgrading from a laptop with a 20-series GPU. === DESIGN === - This particular configuration is only available in the Eclipse Grey color, which I actually prefer over white. The color maintains a sleek, professional look allowing you to use the laptop in any setting without attracting too much attention. The holographic microdots on the laptop's lid add just enough flare so as to not be over-the-top. - When closed, the laptop measures 14" wide by 9.6" deep, and less than 1" thick. At just over 4 pounds, it is very portable and should fit in most backpacks and travel bags. - There are a decent amount of ports available, though I would have preferred more. On the left, there's the power port, an HDMI port, an Ethernet port, one USB Type-A port, two USB Type-C ports, and a headphone jack. On the right, there's one USB Type-A port, a microSD card slot, and a Kensington lock slot. - The power port on the left side is oddly placed right in the center of the laptop rather than towards the back. As a result, the power cord runs along the length of the laptop, which looks awkward and sometimes covers the left exhaust vent. - The power brick is surprisingly compact for a gaming laptop. You will need it for the laptop to run at full power, but the machine can also be charged via USB-C with any 100w adapter. Just be aware that the CPU and GPU will not run at full speed when the laptop is being powered via USB-C. - Build quality is excellent, with minimal flex and no squeaking. Most of the machine is a soft-touch plastic, which is great for keeping weight to a minimum. The hinge is very smooth and can be lifted with one hand. As you raise the display, the base of the laptop begins to raise at a slight angle to improve airflow. I haven't noticed any significant wobble with the display raised. - Overall: The Eclipse Grey color is great and I appreciate the understated yet modern design of the laptop. The power port positioning is an awkward choice, and I wish there were a couple of additional USB-C ports especially on the right side. Build quality seems top-notch and I'm confident it will last a long time. === DISPLAY, KEYBOARD, TRACKPAD, & AUDIO === - A key selling point for me was the 165Hz 1440p (QHD) display, which ASUS claims covers 100% of the DCI-P3 -- meaning it can show a ton of colors and display them very accurately. I absolutely love the resolution and pixel density of this display, and colors are indeed rich and vibrant. I find that contrast is a bit lacking and there is some visible wash-out as you tilt the display very far back. There is also a bit of light bleed along the top edge of my display, but it's hardly noticeable except on black loading screens. The 165Hz refresh rate means that games look incredibly smooth with no tearing or choppiness. - The keyboard is very spacious and comfortable. It has a nice amount of travel and it takes a satisfying amount of force to depress the keys. It has just the right amount of "clickiness" that you would expect in a gaming keyboard. Given the 15.6" form factor, I'm glad ASUS omitted the 10-key pad. The keyboard is RGB-lit, though the entire keyboard can only display one color at a time (there are not multiple RGB zones to control). The RGB brightness is sufficient, though I've certainly seen brighter RGB keyboards. - The trackpad is a joy to use. It is very large, soft, and easy to click. It works perfectly with gestures and is extremely responsive. - The speakers on the G15 really surprised me. MacBook speakers aside, these could be the best sounding speakers I've heard on a Windows laptop. I usually expect to hear a lot of distortion at medium and high volumes on laptop speakers, but not with the G15. Mids and highs are well balanced with a nice amount of "oomph" in the lows. The included Dolby Access app provides some pretty good preset audio profiles as well as an equalizer for custom settings. - Overall: Minor gripes aside, ASUS has nailed the basic aspects of a 15-inch gaming laptop with arguably the best display available in the segment. The keyboard, trackpad, and speakers also live up to the hype. === PERFORMANCE, COOLING, & UPGRADES === - Long story short: you won't have any problems playing modern AAA games on this laptop. The graphics performance in this machine rivals that of a high-end desktop with a 2080 from just a couple of years ago. Just don't buy this laptop -- or ANY gaming laptop -- expecting to get the same performance from the 3070 Laptop GPU that you would get from the full-powered desktop 3070. Due to thermal restrictions and the laws of physics, the 30-series GPUs in laptops use a LOT less power than their desktop counterparts, so performance will never be equal. Regardless, the most impressive aspect of the 3070 in the G15 is its value. Just a couple of years ago, a laptop with this type of performance would have cost much more money. - Time Spy benchmark: 9408. Cinebench R23 multicore: 11548. Cyberpunk 2077 (Ray Tracing Medium, DLSS Balanced, 1440p): 50 fps average. Gears 5 (Ultra preset, 1440p): 80 fps average. Red Dead Redemption 2 (High preset, 1440p): 45 fps average. Shadow of the Tomb Raider (High preset, DLSS enabled, 1440p): 65 fps average. You get the idea. This laptop can handle these demanding games quite easily, and the performance only gets better if you're willing to fine-tune each game's settings. - Reducing the resolution in games to 1080p results in noticeable performance gains, but you obviously sacrifice a bit of clarity. That is one drawback to the 1440p display: it looks brilliant, but it requires a lot of GPU power to process such a high resolution. - So much of your performance will be dependent on the settings you choose in the ASUS Armoury Crate program. There are presets for Silent, Performance, and Turbo. "Turbo" gives you the best performance and cooling, but the fans get obnoxiously loud if you're not wearing headphones. "Performance" is a good middle-ground with less fan noise, but you will sacrifice a bit of CPU and GPU power (the clock speeds of the GPU will not boost as high as quickly). You will have to spend some time in this program to tweak the performance settings to your liking. - The laptop stays surprisingly cool, but that definitely comes at a cost of loud fans during intense gameplay. Luckily, the fans are hardly noticeable when using the laptop for routine work and web browsing. On Turbo mode, most games push the GPU temp to about 67 to 70°C, and the CPU to over 80°C. - Battery life is pretty great lasting over 8 hours with standard web browsing and day-to-day tasks (screen at half brightness). Obviously, gaming is going to result in much shorter battery life. - There is an extra M.2 NVMe slot to add an additional SSD for more storage. 8GB of RAM are soldered onto the board, with another 8GB SODIMM in the memory slot. You can swap out that 8GB DIMM for 16GB (for a total of 24GB of RAM), but that's the most RAM you can get. - Overall: Performance out of the box is outstanding and should satisfy most gamers looking for a portable gaming laptop. Just do your research and know what you're buying. Cooling is great, but it comes at the cost of loud fans that will have to be closely monitored through the ASUS software. === SOFTWARE AND OTHER THOUGHTS === - A fingerprint reader is built into the power button for logon via Windows Hello, but the reader is very unreliable. I'd say it fails to scan my fingerprint at least half the time, prompting me to enter my PIN or password. - There is no webcam on this laptop, which seems like poor timing on the part of ASUS given how the world has changed over the past year. - The ASUS Armoury Crate software is essential for tweaking the performance and cooling of this laptop, but it is very clunky and confusing to use. Luckily there is a button above the keyboard that you can use to switch between your cooling/performance presets. === OVERALL === From a cost/performance/value perspective, the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15 checks all of the boxes -- especially this particular configuration. ASUS offers the laptop with a beefier GPU (the 3080) and some additional RAM for hundreds of dollars more, but in my opinion, this model with the 3070 is the sweet spot. Gamers just need to manage their expectations and understand that they are not getting a full-fledged, desktop-class 3070 in this laptop. Those upgrading from a laptop with a 10-series GPU will be blown away. Those coming from a 20-series laptop might not see as big of a jump, but you are getting a lot more performance for your money this generation. A few minor gripes aside, this is likely THE gaming to get right now. With the beautiful display and raw performance offered, nothing else seems to come close to matching its value.

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.

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.

Honestly if you are looking for the best of the best on a laptop at the time of this review, this laptop has it all. Currently this laptop runs everything faster and smoother than my tower PC. This Laptop has 1TB storage which by today's standard is average since applications and games are getting bigger, but don't get me wrong the SSD makes everything load fast unlike a regular hard drive. When it comes to the CPU, oh boy, that one is a beefy one. Inside this monster of a machine is a Ryzen 9 5900HS which is arguably one of the top multi use CPU for gaming, streaming, editing and rendering on the go. On the GPU side you have a 3070 with 8GB of GDDR6 which is plenty to run games on 2K smoothly or to get higher frame rates. One side note for you streamers looking for a laptop, this is a good laptop to stream with using the NVEC encoder, but with games that require a lot of GPU, the frame rate will take a hit. Once you are on the laptop you can use the ASUS ROG app that will let you see your temps, fan speeds, battery mode color of the keyboard etc... In the app you can change several things to your liking, it is easy to use for beginners and for more experienced people. Honestly with all the Nvidia card shortages going on I would highly recommend this laptop. I have been playing Valheim and Valorant and experience is smooth as butter. The only complaint i would have is the matte finish. As a gamer once you have a long and intense sessions of gaming, your hands tend to get sweaty and oily and leaves marks on the surface of the laptop. It would of been nice if they had a polished metal finish but that is mostly nitpicking.

This is such a beautiful laptop, with Bad QC. loved the screen so bright, and it’s a joy to edit video and photos on it. But it has such terrible light bleeding, I had to take it back and get a replacement hopefully the new one is much better. The specs are really good if you edit videos and photos it’s a joy to use, editing 6k raw and Sony A7S III footage handles it well chugs sometimes but for the most part is really good. Gaming it’s so nice the you get good frame rate, I like to play when I can and it gets it done. The fans get loud tho, louder than I’m used to for a laptop, I don’t mind it since I always wear headphones for editing but if noise is an issue this might not be the laptop for you. But the temperatures stay very cool for a laptop this size so I’ll take that with the louder fans. Overall as a content creator I’m happy with this laptop, just wish asus had better Quality Control. The screen is a huge plus and I’m glad at least for me I went with this one over the amd version with smaller screen.

Pros: This laptop is a beast coming from my MacBook Pro 2015 Retina 13”. It can run GTA V at 80+ and Apex at 120+ Both on Ultra Settings. It runs Osu at 440 FPS but I think that the display caps at 165 so it’s kind of overkill. I have ZERO complaints about it gaming. I don’t hear the fans because I’m wearing some good headphones and using the inline mic/3.5mm port. Ehhhs: I was concerned how the vents blow the hottest air right onto the display but if ASUS thought it wasn’t of concern I guess it’s ok. I also wouldn’t recommend anyone to touch the middle part just in front of the screen where the system monitoring lights are (between the two vents) but that’s easily avoidable. Cons: My only concern is a multitasking issue. I have updated all my drivers and updated the BIOS using the MyASUS app. When I am on a Zoom call, which is when I need it work the most reliably, if I have another application such as Chrome running with Zoom on the same desktop or a separate one, Zoom will hang and freeze, and I will lose connection to the Zoom call. This is a huge issue, something I hadn’t experienced before on even my 5 year old MacBook. I hope ASUS fixes this in a future update because until that time I have to stare blankly at people’s faces with no way to browse Reddit in the background at the risk of losing connection. Just a super small issue: the RGB keyboard is great, the first one I’ve owned in my life, but why does the down arrow key/Page Down key have the light a different hue? Like the whole keyboard will be white backlit, but the down arrow is tinged different. Please see my pictures.

So far after having for a few weeks i have no major complaints other than when playing games the laptop gets really hot, up to high 80s' and almost 90. I managed to fixed the issues and its now at high 60s' mid 70s' which is quite the improvement. It runs games smoothly so far and maybe ive had a few issues with the ROG armoury crate and Nvidia experience application but i suppose its not a deal breaker. Overall, this laptop fulfills what i wanted and i am satisfied, there are probably many better laptops than this but for my budget and the specs i got id say it was a good purchase.