The Fastest Gaming Laptop We've Ever Tested! - Asus Zephyrus GX701G Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
2,024 words · ~10 min read
0:00
this right here believe it or not is the fastest single GPU gaming laptop that we
0:05
have ever had in our office the zephyrus
0:08
gx701 is an absolute beast rocking a six
0:12
core core i7 processor and a GeForce rtx
0:15
2080 max q that's clocked closer to a desktop spec than the laptop one
0:21
but how the heck have they managed to cram all of that power in here and
0:26
has the extra performance been worth the uh
0:30
interesting design choices that uh
0:33
you know like the keyboard placement wait
0:36
wait where's the webcam it's not here
0:40
it's not here is it under here oh no that's just our sponsor
0:46
build.gg build.dg is the same folks behind
0:50
cablemod and they made a website where you can show off your new rig check it
0:54
out at the link below and enter their
0:57
k challenge contest go go go
1:09
the zephyrus gx701 does an excellent job of looking both classy and gamery at the
1:15
same time blending eye-catching details like the colorful rog logos and RGB
1:20
keyboard with a very sturdy black magnesium alloy chassis that gives the
1:24
device a distinctly premium feel
1:28
now the zephyrus does look a bit like an
1:31
oddball but at this point we've pretty much come to expect it's small offset
1:37
vertical trackpad it's shifted keyboard and the ventilation flap party trick
1:42
that opens up the back of the chassis for improved airflow speaking of party
1:47
tricks in the box you get a little metal sculpture of the rog logo which is cool
1:52
i guess but honestly ASUS i would have much rather there was a
1:57
gigabit Ethernet dongle in here it's the only port that's really notably missing
2:02
from what's otherwise a very solid assortment of i o with usbc with
2:07
charging and full-sized HDMI all making appearances now let's get into
2:11
performance as we discussed in our review of the MSI gs75 NVIDIA's mobile
2:17
rtx cards can have extremely varied
2:20
thermal and power targets with about half of their performance depending on
2:25
laptop manufacturer's ability to completely optimize both cooling and
2:31
power delivery so with that in mind before we proceed
2:35
with our testing we need to disable the illuminated logo right here above the
2:40
keyboard because according to ASUS it's possible to see a 3 degree increase in
2:46
temperatures while it's on and when push comes to shove it turns
2:51
out that we are not actually willing to give up real
2:55
performance for RGB lighting
2:59
and we don't have to in the 3dmark port
3:02
royal test our gx701's graphics core managed 1600 megahertz for the duration
3:08
of the test time which is shockingly close to desktop performance and
3:14
side note absolutely smashes the MSI gs75
3:18
this translates into real-world performance that just runs circles
3:22
around last-gen laptops enabling high refresh rate gaming and aaa titles that
3:27
previously would have run closer to 60 FPS than they would to 144. now we
3:32
haven't got any other max-q laptops in yet so we don't know if others on the
3:38
market will be equally fast but we do know that they won't be faster for that
3:43
you would need something truly massive like the rog mothership or the alienware
3:48
area 51m and there's more good news the FPS isn't
3:52
the only thing that's been turned up here so has the screen size with a 17
3:57
inch thin bezel display sitting where a 15.6 inch one used to be
4:03
but this did come with a sacrifice not only
4:07
is there no webcam up here there isn't one anywhere else on the
4:12
machine blasphemy now ASUS's solution
4:17
was to pack a 1080p 60fps webcam in the
4:21
box with the logic being that well we
4:24
have to choose between one of two options including a barely usable webcam
4:29
like what MSI did with the gs75 stealth
4:32
or include one that doesn't fit in the laptop's chassis but is frankly good
4:37
enough for twitch streaming well okay fair point but here's my take why are
4:42
you guys acting like there are only two ways of doing something why is it my job
4:47
to come up with something else here's an idea free of charge you make an indent
4:52
here and you put a camera bump there the smartphone industry has been doing it
4:56
for years and then we could have even better front-facing cameras or i mean
5:00
while we're thinking outside of the box instead of this going on like this how
5:04
about magnets there is no reason that they couldn't have run a usb 2 interface
5:08
up here had little contact points that power it and handle data and you just
5:13
put it on there and it snaps into place now in fairness as it is the quality is
5:18
great the best that we've seen on
5:21
a gaming laptop but the implementation is
5:25
truly clunky back to the display though
5:28
this thing is very impressive it's a 144
5:32
hertz ips 1080p panel with g-sync 3
5:36
millisecond response times and factory calibration from pantone frankly it's
5:42
awesome to game on and it's got other benefits too ASUS astutely noticed that
5:47
a lot of people purchase gaming computers like this for professional
5:51
tasks like cad music creation and video
5:54
editing so they actually tuned the display to be more suitable for these
5:58
tasks and it's great because video editing on laptops used to be a giant
6:03
bag of suck nowadays honestly for basic cutting you can't
6:08
tell the difference and even for some late after effects work they are pretty
6:13
darn capable of course for more professional or
6:17
creative work CPU power is key which is why desktops still have a lot of life in
6:22
them by the way i mean any system with a core i7 8700k will destroy the zephyrus
6:27
for a lot less money but ASUS has done
6:30
quite a bit to make the core i7 8750h in
6:33
here more potent its 1200 score in cinebench is higher than most core i9
6:38
laptops that we've tested and under an all core synthetic load the CPU gets
6:44
toasty while it's turboing then settles down to a more reasonable level at
6:48
around three gigahertz sustained that's not bad the only way to get more
6:53
performance out of a laptop would be to buy something much thicker which is kind
6:58
of becoming a recurring theme here and along with its strong CPU
7:01
performance the gx701 can be equipped with up to 24 gigs of RAM eight gigs
7:06
soldered while the remaining 16 is on a sodium slot and a one terabyte NVMe SSD
7:11
from samsung that really impressed us like this machine regularly loaded games
7:16
and completed tasks faster than the two raid zeroed ssds in the gs75
7:22
but performance only gets you so far let's return to the questionable
7:26
keyboard and trackpad placement i'm actually going to let alex
7:31
who did up the review on this field this bit over the last two years here i've
7:35
used a ton of laptops and i have to say this design choice of putting the
7:39
keyboard right here is not nearly as bad as you'd think like using it on your lap
7:44
is a really bad time and so is going from one side of the
7:49
screen to the other with this trackpad but beyond that i'm always surprised by
7:52
how quickly using the trackpad on the right of the laptop becomes natural to
7:56
me after a day of using the zephyrus i suspect you'll be reaching for the
7:59
numpad on other laptops instead of the usual trackpad placement the only real
8:03
improvement i would have made is to bring back the front firing speakers
8:06
from the last zephyrus and use this space to make the trackpad even wider
8:11
but Linus and i ended up just debating of whether we'd end up giving up the
8:14
surprisingly good sound quality ASUS has been able to squeeze in here
8:20
one thing we agree on for sure though is the quality of the keyboard it's got a
8:24
bit of an unusual feel but the strokes while short have a nice tactile feel and
8:29
the keycap stabilization is well above average making it pretty forgiving for
8:33
inaccurate typists it's solid and ASUS
8:37
was actually particularly proud of their volume knob which
8:41
really does have quite a nice feel and
8:45
satisfying click for mute you guys hear that
8:49
all right so that's all fine and good but the biggest problem with the
8:53
zephyrus has always been its portability
8:56
it's small yes light
8:59
ish but the last model had a wimpy 53
9:03
watt hour battery that struggled to get three hours of light to moderate use in
9:08
our testing to address this shortcoming ASUS has finally upped the battery
9:13
capacity to 76 watt hours
9:16
now to get the most out of it you're going to have to make some tweaks you're
9:21
going to want to switch out of dedicated GPU mode which means disabling g-sync
9:26
and allowing the Intel igpu to take over for lighter tasks and of course you're
9:31
going to have to dial back your RGB and knock the screen refresh rate down to 60
9:36
hertz but if you do all these things it adds
9:39
up to letting this guy run for about 5 hours on battery with light to moderate
9:44
use not too shabby and the type-c usb
9:48
charging also helps in this regard because it allows you to pack a much
9:52
smaller 65 watt charger if you don't plan on gaming saving you a pound or two
9:57
in your backpack so as long as you have a desk wherever you're planning on
10:01
working the zephyrus is now a much more compelling option than ever before
10:06
as for upgradability well no one's perfect opening it up and
10:10
replacing the RAM or storage is possible but there's only one RAM and one m.2
10:16
slot making upgrades more wasteful and therefore expensive which in turn makes
10:21
it harder for us to recommend the spec down versions of this guy if there's any
10:27
chance that you might need to upgrade them later which i guess brings us to
10:30
the conclusion for our model here coming in at an eye watering 3 300 us
10:37
dollars it's expensive so if you want something
10:40
cheaper the MSI gs75 is a solid option
10:43
and the zephyrus gx531 still gets you the same CPU for about 1300 less
10:50
but the gx701 still walks out of here with a solid recommendation thanks to
10:55
ASUS's zero compromise approach to cooling battery life and build quality
11:01
with extra marks for the pantone calibrated display
11:05
did you ever wonder what's actually wrong with your car when the check
11:09
engine light is on can mean almost anything well the fixed translates your
11:14
vehicle's issues into simple to understand terms for your Android or iOS
11:19
device to show you via their app so this allows you to know more about the inner
11:23
workings of your vehicle helping you feel more empowered and less intimidated
11:27
when you're confronted with an automotive issue it also explains your
11:31
trouble codes keeps track of where items reminds you when your vehicle is doing
11:35
for maintenance and it does all of this regardless of your level of vehicle
11:40
knowledge so check it out at their amazon page today at the link in the
11:43
video description so thanks for watching guys if you disliked this video you know what to do
11:47
but if you liked it hit like get subscribed or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured
11:52
at the link in the video description also down there is our merch store which
11:55
has cool shirts like this one and our community forum which is definitely
11:59
worth a join