Asus ROG Strix G15 AMD Advantage Edition
AMD’s swing at the high-end gaming laptop is here.
The best gaming laptops, for years, have been dominated by Intel and Nvidia hardware, something that only really started to change in 2020 when AMD launched its Ryzen 4000 laptop processors. The Asus ROG Strix G15 is the next step in that direction, launching with not only Ryzen 5000 series processors, but paired with the latest high-end Radeon graphics announced at Computex 2021.
So, admittedly, there’s a lot riding on this gaming laptop, as it is going so against the grain of the hardware we typically see in devices like this, especially in its price range. We’re not sure yet exactly how much the Asus ROG Strix G15 is going to cost when it hits the streets, but we have been told that it will cost around $2,130. That’s a pretty high price, and puts it in between the Razer Blade and Asus’ own Zephyrus G14, both of which are some of the best gaming laptops in the world right now.
Design
If you were to close your eyes and imagine a gaming laptop, you probably wouldn’t come up with something too far off from the Asus ROG Strix G15. This is as traditional a gaming laptop as you’ll find today, even though it is on the nicer end of the gamer aesthetic.
This gaming laptop has an all-black colorway with red accents, both at the back of the laptop, and one that serves as a rubber foot for the laptop – which means you’ll only see it when the laptop is upside down. That rubber foot also has some text engraved on it that says “Back on
Top” next to the Asus ROG logo. So, yeah, this is very much a gaming laptop. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but if you don’t want everyone thinking you’re grinding away in World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Classic every time you break out your laptop, this might not be for you.
But while it does have a bit of a dated design aesthetic, don’t go thinking that it’s cheaply put together. The top of the laptop and the keyboard
deck are aluminum, and while the keyboard deck does have a little bit of give, you really have to push down on it to make it flex.
However, while the top of the laptop is aluminum, the bottom of the laptop still seems to be plastic, but it’s at least of high quality. And then because it’s a gaming laptop in 2021, there’s a strip of RGB lighting that runs along the front of the laptop.
There’s also RGB lighting in the keyboard, and all of this lighting can be controlled through the the Asus Armoury Crate app, just like any other Asus gaming laptop.
The keyboard itself is a delight. Nice, deep travel makes it great for playing games, including long grinding sessions in World of Warcraft Classic, getting ready for the new (old) expansion that comes out on June 1. It’s not quite as good for long-form typing as many Ultrabooks, but it’s perfect for gaming, and really, that’s all you can ask for.
Performance
Packed with an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX, 16GB of RAM and an AMD Radeon RX 6800M, it’s no surprise that the Asus ROG Strix G15 is an absolute powerhouse of a gaming laptop.
In its keynote debuting the Radeon RX 6800M, AMD specifically targeted the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070, and, well, the 6800M crushes it. In pretty much every benchmark we throw at this laptop, it passes up Nvidia’s GPU. In Metro Exodus, the Strix G15 passes the 73 fps that the 3070-equipped Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 manages, with 78 fps. That’s just a 7 percent difference, but that’s still a win for AMD.
This happens in synthetic benchmarks, too. In 3DMark Time Spy, the Strix G15 beats the Zephyrus with 10,098 points to 9,333. It goes even further in Fire Strike, where it manages to beat the RTX 3080-equipped MSI GE76 Raider by 5 percent.
It sounds like a dream machine, and in a lot of ways it is. However, either AMD or Asus has some kinks to work out here. Halfway through our testing, we started getting drastically reduced performance, we’re talking 18 fps in Metro
– much lower than the 78 fps it usually manages. We were thankfully able to get it back to normal with a simple reboot, but expect some growing pains.
Battery life
Earlier we talked about the absolutely massive power supply, but unless you’re going to be out literally all day, because this is one of the longest lasting gaming laptops we’ve ever tested.
The Asus ROG Strix G15 manages 11 hours and 23 minutes of battery life in the PCMark 10 benchmark, which simulates various real-world workloads you might encounter while doing office work. It falls a little under that in our video streaming test, where it manages just 9 hours and 22 minutes, but that’s still a full eight-hour day and change.
In years past gaming laptops like the Asus ROG Strix G15 would last just a couple hours, and it was just something you accepted due to the power of the hardware on offer. But with more and more gaming laptops breaking the eight-hour threshold, it’s not unreasonable to expect all-day battery life out of a gaming laptop.
Despite some bugs and a dated design, the Asus ROG Strix G15 might be one of the best value gaming laptops in its class. If you’re after some seriously powerful gaming performance, you should keep an eye on this one – but only if you’re comfy being an early adopter.
Bill Thomas
Packed with an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX, 16GB of RAM and an AMD Radeon RX 6800M, it’s no surprise that the Asus ROG Strix G15 is an absolute powerhouse of a gaming laptop.