ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15 – AMD and Nvidia in sweet harmony

Conclusion

When I bought the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15 my goal was to have a nice gaming laptop while I was in our vacation house over the summer. I did not feel like bringing my whole big gaming rig and needed something that would allow me to play games with good frame rates. I would say that the laptop has fulfilled that goal.

There is a lot that I like about the laptop and a few things Asus should improve.

Quality

While it would have been nice to get a real metallic chassi I guess the plastic that Asus uses works pretty well as a substitute. It has a nice feel to it and does not feel too plastic. What I do not like is that it really seems to attract oily stains from your fingers. I’ve had to clean it up much more than I am used to with other laptops. Other than that I have no complaints. It does not feel like a cheap laptop. There is no squeaking when using it and the screen sits nice and tight in its hinges and does not move when you are typing on the keyboard.

Features

On the feature side I think Asus has managed to include most of the things I would like. You get a great screen which, even if it is “only” 1080p is bright and has great colour reproduction even when looking at it from an angle. Add 240 Hz and adaptive sync-support and basically the only thing I miss is some HDR-support.  On the port side you do get an USB-C-port with DisplayPort-support and which can charge the laptop. It would have been nice with more than one though.

While the laptop does support up to 32 GB of ram the fact that it has 8 GB soldered to the mainboard seems to mean I will only be able to upgrade to 24 GB which is a bummer. Two NVME-slots is nice although you will have to settle with a bit less speed on one of them. I do not see that as a big issue though.

What I am missing is a card-reader and some sort of biometric support. The fact that the laptop is missing a webcam means no chance for Windows Hello. My sons old Omen By HP 17 has it as has my Surface Laptop 3 and I absolutely love it.  Asus could at least have included a fingerprint sensor.

Performance

I am actually very happy with the performance. It performs very well in the games I play and I never felt that I had to settle with lowering the settings a lot just to get playable frame rates. I think it is nice that AMD has managed to release such a nice mobile CPU. Sure, I haven’t compared it to the various Core i7-10XXXX mobile chips out there but to be honest for me it is just important that it is “good” as I’ve been a bit disappointed in earlier AMD mobile CPU’s.  The RTX2060 Max-Q 2060 is not the fastest GPU out there but I think for this price point it is a good fit. If you do not need the RTX-features there is also a version with the GTX1660Ti.

Heat/Noise

With a ultra-thin gaming laptop you will have to expect both noise and heat. That is how it is. And this is where Asus might have been able to improve some things. While I did not experience any issues running the laptop for long gaming periods it does get very hot. This affect performance and thus noise (as the fans need to spin faster to move the warm air out). I won’t argue with Asus regarding blocking two intake vents as they might be right that it is needed to cool other components but you still might want to look into other solutions to bring down the temperatures. I did find that using a laptop cooler did work well with the temperatures as did using the software Ryzen Controller to fiddle with the settings of the CPU.  I personally will probably use these two solutions separately or together depending on which game I play. In the end I do not see this as a huge issue as 1/ the laptop seemed to handle the heat well over long periods and 2/ I found several solutions to bring down the temperatures if I wanted.

I was planning on testing this laptop for a little while and then decide whether to return it and switch to something else but I’m happy enough so this laptop will now stay. Even with the minor complaints I have I have no problems of recommending the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15.

Pros

• Great performance
• Sleak nice looking chassi
• Very good screen with high refresh-rate, good color reproduction and fast
• Fans might be loud but not annoying
• Quite easy to get the temperatures down with either a laptop cooler or Ryzen Controller
• Not overloaded with bloatware
• I like the Armoury Crate-software as it also works via the phone
• Great AMD CPU

Cons

• Gets hot when gaming and thus quite loud
• No card-reader
• No webcam
• No biometric login-support

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