laptop oh wow that was not how that was
supposed to go but that's fine because this thing is
absolutely sweet on paper at least the
ASUS zephrus g15 g503 looks like everything a modern
laptop can be it's crazy fast relatively
lightweight and it's built with the finest materials available it even looks
really good I mean is this finally it
the zero compromises gaming laptop yeah
eh maybe it's also possible that ASUS
left too much performance on the table in the name of thinness and sex appeal I
mean that would be a compromise wouldn't it especially if somebody else did it
better the zephrus G5 g503 leaves an
excellent first impression doesn't it it's got a reinforced magnesium chassis
a massive glass top trackpad and instead
of RGB ASUS has gone full classy with
this sweet Prismatic film behind the 8,279 holes in the lid that just barely
catches the light and Peaks through pure style can I just take a moment to say
thank you like finally the industrial design of gaming laptops is getting the
same kind of attention attention as The Thermals and the power delivery IO is
overall solid but I do wish the HDMI port was the 2.1 variety and this being
an AMD laptop you're getting two USB type-c 10 GB per second ports instead of
Thunderbolt 3 that's a potentially deal-breaking downgrade if you have
invested in the Thunderbolt ecosystem moving inside though we've already shown
the ryzen 9 5900 HS shredding Intel's
Flagship core I9 and that was in a much smaller design so unsurprisingly in this
more robust enclosure the performance numbers it puts up are enough to make
any more blue machine absolutely cower in fear which means that the more
relevant comparison to ensure that ASUS hasn't compromised on performance is of
course another AMD machine ah yes the Spectre that loomed
before there we go ah much better while
both of these machines are similarly equipped on paper there are some key
differences the xmg neo5 here gets the
45 rather than the 35 watt ryzen 98 core
and it gets the 135 watt version of the
RTX 380 Mobile H probably the most
beautiful thing about the xmg neo5 though is that after you buy it xmg
doesn't seem to give too Hoots what you do with it so naturally we started by
sliding every one of the dials all the way to the right for a generous 80 Watts
on the CPU and 135 Watts on the GPU of
course ASUS has some fun sliders too but
the CPU only goes to 45 Watts Boo and
the GPU tab turns every game you play into alt f4 simulator which is a good
game I just wouldn't buy an entire machine for the express purpose of
playing it truthfully though it's not
the end of the world in our experience with both of the machines turned up to
their Dyson performance profiles so named for the wonderful
noises that they make the g15 GPU sat
above 1,400 MHz with temps in the mid
70s super reasonable that's not bad so
it's clear then that in the name of thinness ASUS is giving up somewhere in
the neighborhood of 10 to as much as 30%
of the performance this silicon could be capable of but here's another
perspective even operating in its much quieter default profile which will cost
you about 10 FPS across the board it easily beats the best of last gen even
in their loudest possible profiles and
like it looks like this doing it surprisingly it was actually the CPU
bound games where the neo5 was able to pull ahead the most with the GPU in the
zephrus punching well above the official specs of an 80 watt chip realistically
then if you're looking to choose between these two laptops it comes down to what
you plan on doing if you want to get real nerdy and do some memory
overclocking and you know you need to do professional video editing or you can't
stand the idea of losing 5 to 10 FPS get
the Neo by the way we'll have a video going over this laptop more thoroughly
on our ShortCircuit channel so make sure you subscribe to that for my money
though I would choose the zephrus for its easier daily drivability and
although we haven't been able to test it so I can't say this for sure I think
that the RTX 3070 equipped version looks like The Sweet Spot since you could save
a couple bucks likely have similar class
performance and a cooler and overall quieter experience just like how you can
be cooler by purchasing a t-shirt from LTT
store.com something that anyone looking at an RTX 3070 or 3080 equipped laptop
needs to do is check the available display options the thing is at 1080p
you're going to be wasting this GPU's power and 4K is still stupid at these
screen sizes not offering any kind of meaningful benefit so I absolutely love
that the industry has begun moving towards 1440p for this generation and
the 1440p 165hz IPS panel on the zephrus
is an absolute joy to game on it's got
adaptive sync to eliminate tearing and smooth out stutter and it strikes an
Ideal Balance of sharpness High High refresh rate and Rich color with 100%
coverage of the DCI P3 color space if I had a complaint it would be that it's
not particularly bright and that if you were a professional trying to do color
accurate work on it the average Delta of 3.8 out of the box is going to require
you to get it professionally calibrated before you can really trust it with that
said it's definitely good enough for gaming right out of the box continuing
with things that are great the trackpad for a gaming laptop it's freaking huge
and the glass top makes using it a breeze also given we were able to get
about 10 hours of Office work on battery
the g15 is one of the first gaming laptops that you could whip out at the
coffee shop or the Library without losing too much street cred with the
Apple M1 MacBook crowd when you have to drag an extension cord out of your
bag no no this is what you want yeah what
the heck is that what do you mean what this moving up the keyboard is excellent
with a Snappy but soft feel that allowed me to easily get up to full speed and
ASUS also added this little bit of venting under the WD keys they claimed
that this was to uh keep your gamer fingers nice and cool but I think they
mostly had to do this to avoid the keyboard getting too hot during long
gaming sessions for the typing feel though and overall layout this is an
easy A+ in my book but I I would like to
take a second to nitpick First although
I respect that ASUS's designers have stuck with white lighting rather than
RGB I do wish that they had done the light piping a little bit better and the
function keys frankly don't make a ton of sense we've got plane mode sleep fan
control and then Aura RGB software but
this is on a laptop without RGB and then
they didn't include pause and play I
mean I don't know about you guys but I turn my music on and off way more often
than I go onto a plane especially in the last year or so and being able to change
the song quickly would also be appreciated speaking of things that suck
to say that the webcam is unexceptional would be an
understatement because it hasn't got one
and no webcam also means no facial recognition when questioned asusa said
they don't bother including webcams because Gamers don't need them but then
this is weird they dedicate this huge chunk of the product page to the fancy
trode microphone not only does the AI
noise cancelling suck but who is using the integrated microphone on their
laptop but not using the webcam if
you're a gamer you got a headset and if you're not a gamer then you need a
webcam for your for your Skype calls at least ASUS managed to include
the second best way to unlock a laptop hidden in the power button is a
fingerprint reader that caches your fingerprint with when you press it then
hands it over to Windows at the login screen for a super seamless login
experience opening it up we get a look at the 90w hour battery and the two subs
on either side that offer decent base even if it's not quite at the same level
as a Macbook or an xps15 and we also find two m.2 slots for easy storage
upgradeability and a single sodm slot for what I would describe as somewhat
easy RAM upgradeability I use the word somewhat
because one half is soldered directly to the board while the other half is on a
stick above that is the exceptionally complicated looking cooling system with
six heat pipes snaking their way across the chassis along with these very slim
but very wide heat SNS so the zephrus
g15 g503 is really an excellent laptop
the RTX 370 model that we lean toward is going to set you back a casual
$1,800 which is a lot of money but for
what you're getting it really doesn't look too bad you just have to hope that
ASUS made enough of these that you can actually buy one but hey at least our
sponsor Squarespace lets you buy their products Squarespace gives you the tools
you need to build and grow your online presence they've got tons of templates
spanning a large variety of categories so whether you need a website for your
blog or your wedding or your business Squarespace has you covered you can get
a domain quickly through Squarespace if you need one or P it over an existing
domain that you already own and you don't have to take my word for
any of this you can get started with a free 14-day free trial and just try it
out so go to squarespace.com SLT and get 10% off your first purchase
when you're ready to buy if you're looking for another video to watch now
go check out our video on NVIDIA's 3000 Series gpus for laptops there is a
shocking amount that you need to know about these cards to make an informed
Choice as a consumer laptop oh ow hit me right in
the chin