Asus ROG Zephyrus G15
Smart, powerful, compact and light – the Zephyrus G15 is the perfect gaming laptop for grown-ups
PRICE £2,326 (£2,792 inc VAT) from laptopsdirect.co.uk
A sus is pitching the new ROG Zephyrus G15-series laptops at two types of people: the serious gamer and the content creator. It certainly has the spec to match. I tested the top-end machine, part code GA503QSHQ003T, which comes with an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HS CPU, Nvidia RTX 3080 graphics, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD and a 165Hz 2,560 x 1,440 display.
The Ryzen 9 5900HS belongs to the upper echelons of the Ryzen family. Its eight cores have a base frequency of 3GHz but this increases to 4.6GHz under load in Turbo mode. Little wonder, then, that this thing is quick. It scored 323 in the PC Pro benchmarks, which is up with the very be best, although the £99 £999 Acer Nitro 5 (see
p58) ) wasn’t far o off. It’s in games where the G15 truly excels.
Hitman 2 averaged
65fps at Full
HD and 42fps at the screen’s native Q QHD (2,560 x 1,440) resol resolution.
Wolfenstein: Youngblood, Youngblood running with ray tracing on but DLSS off, returned 108fps at Full HD and 76fps at QHD. Shadow of the Tomb
Raider turned in 52fps at QHD with everything set to Ultra including ray tracing, and switching ray tracing off saw that figure jump to 81fps.
In short, the Zephyrus goes like the clappers at Full HD but also has the power to handle the latest AAA titles at QHD with ray tracing on.
Considering the spec, the G15 runs cool: 82°C was the highest core temperature I saw after two solid hours of Wolfenstein: Youngblood, and that was with Turbo mode on.
The double fans are loud at full speed, but you can manually adjust them via the Armory Crate control panel. There’s even the option to set them to “Silent” mode when you’re not pushing the hardware to the limit. Thanks to a 90Wh battery, the Zephyrus lasted 9hrs 41mins in our video-rundown test, but gaming kills the battery much faster: I saw less than two hours when playing l gD oom. The good d news is that if you u don’t fancy carrying arrying the 200W power ower brick around round with you the G15 also supports 100W USB-C charging.
At 355 x 243 x 19.9mm mm and 1.9kg the G15 is impressively mpressively compact and light for a 15.6in gaming notebook. This is the basis of the Zephyrus ethos: deliver gaming specs in Ultrabook dimensions. And with Ultrabook style. My review machine arrived in the “Moonlight White” livery and looks very smart. The lid and deck are constructed from magnesium-aluminium alloy and, while the lid flexes a little under stress, the body is solid and squeakfree. The hinge pushes the bottom of the lid out below the base as you open it out, which adds a few degrees to the angle of the keyboard deck.
On the edges you’ll find two
USB-A 3.2, two USB-C 3.2 ports, a microSD card reader, an HDMI 2b port, a 3.5mm audio jack and a Gigabit Ethernet connector. That’s a nice haul. My only criticism is that the DC-in jack is in the middle on the right-hand side rather than tucked away around the back.
Popping off the base reveals a spare M.2 2280 SSD mount – the supplied the SK Hynix SSD returned solid read and write speeds of 2,913MB/ sec and 1,693MB/sec – and an accessible SODIMM slot. The latter was occupied with a 16GB RAM module in my machine, with the other 16GB of RAM soldered in place.
The chiclet keyboard is solid and responsive with 1.7mm of travel, but I expected all the stops to be pulled out when it came to backlighting. Instead, it’s white-only and special effects are limited to two pulse styles of breathing and strobing. There isn’t even any special demarcation around the WASD keys. Where the Zephyrus follows the gaming norm is to omit a webcam and a fingerprint scanner. For this money, I’d expect both.
The audio system is much more impressive, thanks to a six-speaker setup comprising 4 x 2W woofers and 2 x 2W tweeters. The end product is ample volume, a surprising amount of bass and plenty of detail.
Finally, we come to the display. With a refresh rate of 165Hz and 3ms response time, the matte-finish IPS panel will delight gamers. Brightness maxes out at 323cd/m2 and it covers 88% of the DCI-P3 gamut so colours look vibrant and rich. An average Delta E of 1.3 is respectable (versus DCI-P3) while the contrast ratio is a solid if unexceptional 987:1.
It’s hard to pick holes in the G15. I would like to see an infrared webcam and fingerprint scanner, but neither omission is a deal-breaker. The price, however, may well be. If you’re willing to drop down to 16GB of RAM and a Full HD 144Hz screen, Scan is selling the GA503QS-HN103T for £1,999. Whichever model you choose, though, the G15 more than satisfies its target audiences.
“With a refresh rate of 165Hz and 3ms response time, the Zephyrus G15’s matte-finish IPS panel will delight gamers”