ASUS ROG Zephyrus S GX701 Review - Quick Verdict
The ASUS ROG Zephyrus S GX701 is the latest high-end gaming laptop from the ROG series that manages to live up to the hype. The excellent hardware in the laptop makes it a pleasure for gaming. The 144Hz, 1080p display takes the gaming experience to the next level while the RTX 2080 keeps breathing life into games. Overall, a pretty impressive gaming machine for the hardcore gamer.
- Gorgeous display with 144Hz refresh rate
- RTX 2080 allows you to play pretty much any game
- Super expensive
Author's Rating
https://consumertechcentral.com/category/gaming-laptops/The ROG series from ASUS has been producing some excellent products over the last few years. The ASUS ROG Zephyrus S GX701 is the latest release from the series and it promises to be one hell of a gaming laptop. This is a high-end gaming laptop that compromises at nothing and comes with excellent specs.
The laptop is aimed at hardcore gamers who want a no-bullshit, mobile gaming machine. If you’re a serious gamer, then this gaming laptop is something you should be interested in. However, the notebook does come with an expensive price tag. How well does the laptop justify it? Let’s find out.
Design
The ASUS ROG Zephyrus S GX701 comes with a premium build that looks well worth the price. You can see this thing a mile away and tell that it’s a premium device. The industrial build quality of the laptop has a great feel to it. The edgy corners might be a problem if you’re not being careful enough, though.
Usually, gaming laptops are bulky and thick. But the ASUS ROG Zephyrus S GX701 gaming laptop takes a different direction. It comes with a slim profile and is a lot thinner than other gaming laptops out there. Though the laptop weighs around 6 pounds, it can easily fit into your backpack.
The cooling system is the laptop is made of 2 12V anti-dust fans. ASUS should have used a bit of liquid cooling here especially for the price they are charging. Having said that, the cooling in this laptop is satisfactory. The cooling system succeeds in keeping the laptop at optimum levels of performance without any issues.
Keyboard, Touchpad, and More
The keyboard is pretty sweet and has nice keys that are a pleasure to use. The travel is decent and the typing user experience is more than satisfactory. There are colored zones for backlighting that can be customized by the user. The touchpad is found on the right hand of the keyboard and it also doubles up as a number pad as well.
One gripe with the design is the placement of the keyboard. ASUS has completely removed the palm rest and has placed the keyboard at the bottom. This might get some getting used to. The top half above the keyboard is perforated for venting purposes.
You can find the speaker grills on either side of the keyboard and the touchpad. The speakers are pretty good and don’t get distorted even at high volumes.
There is a fingerprint reader just above the keyboard which works as advertised. Another interesting feature is the presence of an external, detachable webcam. This helps the laptop is attaining that sick screen to bezel ratio.
ASUS ROG Zephyrus S GX701 Specs
At first look, you can help but look at this gorgeous screen. The ASUS ROG Zephyrus S GX701 gaming laptop comes with 17.3-inch display with full HD resolution. This is an IPS panel which makes it even better. But the more interesting feature here is the refresh rate of 144Hz. This makes this display instantly much better than other ones out there.
Designwise, the display comes with thinner bezels around it. ASUS has achieved a screen-to-body ratio of 81%, thanks to the 6.9mm bezels. Though the laptop comes with a 17.3-inch screen, the body is 23% smaller than your average laptop with the same screen size. This is due to the use of smaller bezels around the screen.
Coming to the performance of the display, we have to say that this is one excellent 1080p panel. Being an IPS display, the viewing angles are fantastic. The factory-calibrated Phantone validated colors are excellent and make this laptop suitable for content creation and gaming visuals.
Performance
The ASUS ROG Zephyrus S GX701 gaming laptop comes with an Intel Core i7 processor from its eighth generation. The i7 8750H processor is a hexa-core chip and comes with a base frequency of 2.20GHz. The processor can clock a maximum of 4.1GHz with the help of turbo boost.
When it comes to sheer power the processor is a pretty good one. It does well with benchmarks and the real-life performance of the chip is also impressive. Whether you are a light user of a heavy user, this processor can handle your everyday work without any issues.
The memory department here comes with 16 gigs of DDR4 RAM. This might be one of the shortcomings of this laptop, especially considering the expensive price. ASUS has cheaped out on this one. They should have gone with 32GB RAM instead. Since you can’t upgrade the memory easily, you’ll have to deal with this memory for a long time.
Gaming on the ASUS ROG Zephyrus S GX701
The gaming performance on the ASUS ROG Zephyrus S GX701 is excellent, thanks to the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 GPU. This is the second-fastest GPU out there and comes with the Turing architecture. The graphics card comes with features such as Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) and Real-Time Ray Tracing (RTRT) which allows this GPU to give more realistic lighting effects during gaming.
Playing even the most graphically intensive games is a smooth experience, thanks to the sheer power of this GPU. For example, playing Rage 2 with high settings will give you a frame rate of 130 FPS. Playing Dirt Rally 2.0 with high settings runs at 153 FPS and Far Cry New Dawn rocks around 102 FPS with high settings.
Thanks to the 144Hz screen, the gaming experience on this laptop is something else.
Storage and Battery Life
Storage is another excellent selling of this laptop. We have a 1TB SSD which is super fast. The solid-state drive makes a big improvement in terms of performance and keeps the machine on its feet. The operating system loads in a few seconds, and there is hardly any waiting.
All applications and games also load pretty fast as well. If you’re coming from a mechanical hard drive, then the difference in speed will be day and night.
The battery life is pretty average on the ASUS ROG Zephyrus S GX701. You can get around 6 hours on this laptop with light usage. When gaming heavily, the laptop will not last for more than a couple of hours at best.
Connectivity
The connectivity options in the ASUS ROG Zephyrus S GX701 include a couple of USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A ports on the right side and one on the left side, a USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C port on either side, an audio jack, and an HDMI port. The type C port on the left side also includes functionalities of a display port and can deliver power as well. It, truly, is a diverse port.
The laptop comes with 802.11ac WiFi connectivity which enables high-speed internet connectivity. The lack of an Ethernet port might be disappointing to some but that’s what it is.
Bottomline
The ASUS ROG Zephyrus S GX701 is an excellent gaming laptop. Though it sports an expensive price tag, the laptop comes with a fantastic array of hardware that makes this laptop worth it. The display alone can amplify your gaming experience. If you’re a hardcore gamer who loves to game and doesn’t mind spending extra for superior gaming, then this one should be in your shortlist.