we've got a handful of laptops all set up here for a big old-fashioned
cinebench run which is pretty much the CPU equivalent of a drag race we've got
the top performers from Intel over on this side a couple of core i7s their
latest and greatest mobile core i9 and then this weird one from alienware with
a desktop eight core processor that's our current king of the hill and then
over here we've got AMD's desktop eight
core muscle car equivalent this was only dethroned very recently along with
something really really special the ASUS
rog zephyrus ga502 is the first laptop to hit our
studio that features an AMD mobile ryzen
processor the ryzen 7 3750h to be exact
meaning that it was actually made to be used in a laptop
unlike this one so without further ado gentlemen let's hit it and see if team
red is able to regain its place at the top of the cinebench leaderboard three
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okay so our two eight core intels are done our
eight core AMD is done our first core i7 is done over there
second core i7 is done everyone's done but then
oh boy um is this supposed to happen yeah
okay hey it's not about finishing first it's about finishing together so the ga-502
isn't super fast but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't
consider it for your next gaming notebook because it has two really big
things going for it power consumption and price
let's dig into the specs a little the ryzen 7 3750h only features four cores
and eight threads with a maximum speed of four gigahertz that's kind of
surprising given the way that Intel has been pushing up mobile core counts
recently i thought that was kind of AMD's gem the thing is though for a
gaming machine there's actually very little benefit to going beyond four
cores so AMD's approach ends up giving
us way more bang for the buck so this laptop that we've got right here
equipped with a gtx 1660 ti max q and 16
gigs of RAM comes in at only 1200
dang and in our testing the CPU performed
admirably i mean by admirably i mean i i wouldn't have
paired it with a more powerful graphics card or anything but we still managed to
get aaa games above 60 FPS at high
details and we comfortably reached 120
FPS which matches our 120 hertz refresh rate in lighter and esports titles as
for use outside of gaming we generally saw similar performance to the Intel
core i5 8300h so nothing amazing but our zephyrus ga502
stayed cool and quiet even when it was under full synthetic load that doesn't
mean ASUS didn't make some compromises though moving from the inside to the
outside compared to the other zephyrus's zephyr psy
doesn't matter the g0502 doesn't quite
have the same build quality not that it needs it it lacks visual accents like an
RGB keyboard and the chassis has a slightly plastickier feel
but all of that is pretty easy to forgive since most zephyruses
cost two to three times as much also when compared to similarly priced
competition like the dell g5 the ga502
easily takes the cake for overall look and feel like there's basically no
chassis flex furthermore it's impressively thin for a
gaming laptop and the metal on the back of the screen and the really thin bezels
give it a very modern look now the screen itself is merely
pretty good but once again for the price
it's more like pretty darn good it's of the 1080p ips variety so no
fancy retina branding here but it gets
bright enough for comfortable use in a well-lit office and it sports a 120
hertz refresh rate making it generally very enjoyable to game on and even
acceptable for watching movies and shows with the above average speakers adding
to the experience as well
as far as connectivity goes the zephyrus has four usb ports one of which is type
c along with full-sized HDMI headphones
and Ethernet which is better than most modern devices there's
no Thunderbolt 3 mind you but you're not going to see that on any AMD devices for
a little while while Thunderbolt 3 makes the transition to becoming usb4
one shortfall here though is the wi-fi with just a one by one wi-fi five card
this thing chugs during large downloads
like it's it's kind of thing you wouldn't think would be noticeable but
it definitely is and you're going to want to plug into the wall whenever
you're installing a game or copying files over the network
now so far the ga502 has been faring
pretty well but where most gaming laptops face plant is the trackpad and
this one actually seemed like it was going to at
first like for whatever reason my finger kept
kind of getting stuck on it and skipping around
but then after using it for a day my hand grease actually made it
pretty nice and smooth to use so so that's pretty gross um but i guess it
also goes to show that a little lubrication is never a bad thing and the
usability score keeps getting better the keyboard is downright excellent no
finger lube required it's got a snappy short throw that easily beats out the
dell g5 and acer's helios 300 while
still being both comfortable and quiet
now as i mentioned before it doesn't have an RGB backlight but it is still
backlit which is a lot of help if you're working on assignments at night and
you're not a comfortable touch typist and there's more good news for the slow
typists out there the 76 watt hour battery gave us close to five hours on a
single charge in our standard test now that's not an amazing result compared to
a low power ultrabook but it's way better than similar gaming laptops and
well beyond the threshold of usable so i can't really complain
what i will complain about though ASUS is where the holy hell is the webcam
i really hope that you guys figure out how to get a webcam in a small bezel
laptop sooner rather than later i mean dell did it i'm gonna get real sick at
telling you guys that no webcam at all
is in fact worse than having a bad or
even a poorly positioned webcam the thing that makes this really difficult
though is that you guys are never going
to learn if i don't stop recommending your bloody devices like honestly even
even this would be better i think actually
no i'm not sure that that would be better back to the recommendation
there's no getting around it for me if you guys are looking for a somewhat
budget-oriented gaming laptop you should go grab a zephyrus ga502
so that's all there is to it end of video right
no not quite yet because here's a big question
why is it that AMD was able to so
effectively crush the Intel competition
in this market segment well as it turns out this is less of a
win for AMD and more of a colossal
screw-up from Intel so when oems are speccing out their
systems Intel will offer kickbacks if one of their higher-end processors like
a core i7 gets used even if that processor doesn't make a
ton of sense for the rest of the configuration so if you were ever wondering what is up
with those weird laptops where the CPU power vastly outstrips the GPU that's
what's been going on here because in many cases a quad-core core i5 is going
to keep up with a 1660 ti or even up to
a 20-70 max q and it'll do it at a lower price
but Intel's branding strategy is leaving this giant hole in the market that AMD
has filled quite tightly here simply by allowing laptops with their processors
in them to be specced in a way that makes sense for gamers
this just in at computex 2019 laptops
are revealed from dell and lenovo featuring i5 processors and 1660 ti's
seemingly in response to AMD's pressure at this price point
now this news does not change your recommendation of the ga 502 but it's
still very exciting and gives consumers extra options now back to you Linus
so once again AMD's return to competitiveness is a win for consumers
so i say why not celebrate by picking up a
sensible gaming laptop at the link in the video description
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