Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (GA503Q) review | Laptop Mag
Our Verdict
The Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (GA503Q) delivers well-nigh everything you want in a gaming laptop from kickass performance and battery life to punchy speakers and a clicky keyboard.
For
- Killer AMD and Nvidia performance
- Amazing bombardment life
- Clicky keyboard
- Elegant Moonlight White design
- 1440p, 165Hz console
- Powerful speakers
Against
- Brandish could be more vibrant
- No webcam
Laptop Mag Verdict
The Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (GA503Q) delivers nigh everything you desire in a gaming laptop from kickass functioning and battery life to punchy speakers and a clicky keyboard.
Pros
- +
Killer AMD and Nvidia functioning
- +
Amazing battery life
- +
Clicky keyboard
- +
Elegant Moonlight White design
- +
1440p, 165Hz console
- +
Powerful speakers
Cons
- -
Display could exist more than vibrant
- -
No webcam
When the Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (GA503Q) showed up at my door, the name eluded me for a moment; I didn't recognize information technology as the sibling to the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, the all-time laptop I've e'er reviewed. I'm a picky person and this machine already had a lot to alive up to if it was going to succeed similar its smaller sibling, and however it managed to blow me abroad (almost).
For a pricier $2,499, the Zephyrus G15 offers amazing performance from its AMD Ryzen 9 5900HS processor and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 GPU. Information technology even boasts a similarly long-lasting battery life, a clicky keyboard, a xv.6-inch, 1440p display and a set of powerful speakers wrapped upwardly in an fifty-fifty more than elegant Moonlight White blueprint.
Still, the Zephyrus G15 drops the ball on the display. Yes, its display is sharper and smoother, just it's less colorful and duller than the one on the Zephyrus G14, which is a mid-range gaming laptop. It too doesn't have a webcam, which is annoying.
That's why I tin't give the Zephyrus G15 a perfect score, fifty-fifty though it doesn't take much away from how astonishing this gaming laptop is. Information technology's easily one of the best gaming laptops and best VR-ready laptops that you can purchase correct now.
Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (GA503Q) price and configuration options
Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 specs
Cost: $2,499
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5900HS
GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 GPU
RAM: 32GB
Storage: 1TB PCIe NVMe 1000.2 SSD
Display: 15.six-inch, 2560 ten 1440, 165Hz
Bombardment: eight:06
Size: xiv.0 x 9.6 ten 0.viii inches
Weight: four.2 pounds
The Zephyrus G15 I reviewed costs $ii,499. It's the only model currently available, and it'southward not even up for auction merely yet. It comes with an AMD Ryzen ix 5900HS processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 GPU with 8GB of VRAM, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB PCIe NVMe 1000.2 SSD and a 15.half-dozen-inch, 2560 ten 1440-pixel, 165Hz brandish.
However, there are other models on the style with an RTX 3070 and RTX 3060. The CPU tin can also drib downwardly to a Ryzen 4800HS, but nosotros're not sure how much that'll save you only yet.
Unlike its fourteen-inch sibling, the Zephyrus G15 is on the expensive side. If you're looking to stay under $2K, check out our Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 review. If you lot're looking for something cheaper than that, read our all-time cheap gaming laptops page.
Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (GA503Q) design
With the 15-inch Zephyrus post-obit adapt, nosotros now accept a family of badass-looking gaming laptops. Every bit with its sibling, I'm absolutely stunned by this blueprint, and Asus fifty-fifty added some extra flair even though it didn't take to.
You're getting the same elegant Moonlight White colour over a magnesium-blend chapeau accompanied by tantalizing microdots for mini LED lights. Our model doesn't come with Asus' AniMe Matrix brandish, only instead of outfitting it with apparently night dots like terminal time, Asus filled each dot with a prismatic pic that causes the lid to glow in a gorgeous rainbow.
Combine that with the metallic Democracy of Gamers institution stamp on the bottom-left corner, and this machine is looking' slick as ever. I noticed that Asus removed the Zephyrus logo from the swivel and replaced it with indicator lights, which is much more practical. And where the hat is closest to the swivel, there's now a sleek silvery glossy accent.
You accept no idea how happy I was to find the interior swapped from the gray-silver silver design to the same Moonlight White found on the lid. It non only looks good, but it feels great, every bit the white was applied via a soft-touch paint. Surrounding the unchanged keyboard are two thin vents that I certainly hope are the speakers (Spoiler: they are). Like its sibling, there are five dedicated keys above the keyboard, including a volume down, book up, mute, ROG push button (summons Armoury Crate app) and power button.
At iv.ii pounds and fourteen.0 x 9.6 10 0.8 inches, the Zephyrus G15 did gain a little weight due to its screen size, but it's still a very slim 15-inch laptop. The Alienware m17 R4 (vi.6 pounds, 15.seven x 11.half dozen x 0.7~0.ix inches), MSI GS66 Stealth (2021) (4.half-dozen pounds, fourteen.2 x 9.vii x 0.7 inches) and Asus ROG Flow X13 (2.9 pounds, xi.8 x 8.7 x 0.6 inches) all take varying displays and so it'southward tough to compare size and weight.
Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (GA503Q) ports
Like its sibling, the Zephyrus G15 has a decent number of ports, but I still would take liked a Mini DisplayPort.
On the left, there's the power jack, an HDMI 2.0 port, an RJ45 Ethernet port, 1 USB Blazon-A port, two USB Type-C ports (DisplayPort 1.iv) and a headphone jack. Meanwhile, the right side features a Kensington lock slot, one USB Blazon-A port and a microSD carte slot.
If you're looking for more than ports, have a tour downwardly our best laptop docking stations and best USB Type-C hubs pages.
Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (GA503Q) display
The Zephyrus G15 boasts a 15.vi-inch, 2560 x 1440-pixel panel with a 165Hz refresh charge per unit, making it sharper and smoother than its xiv-inch counterpart. Yet, despite a bump in specs, it sacrifices colour and brightness.
In the trailer for Judas and the Black Messiah, there's a scene where one of the characters sits in a darkened room. On the Zephyrus, the shadows made it hard to suss out detail and the contrast too wasn't balanced, so the blacks didn't look as deep. Lakeith Stanfield'south character wore a light-green undershirt that stood out on the panel, and thanks to the actress resolution, even the stitching looked super sharp.
In Assassin'southward Creed Valhalla, the red carpet sprawled forth the interior of the longhouse glowed slightly as the light from the sun crept in through the ceiling. Itch the depths of ruins was surprisingly not bad, as the panel was bright enough to reveal the detail in each corner, but the contrast was off a bit, and the shadows were a little washed out. However, the game looked incredibly shine on the 165Hz panel later on I turned downward the graphics. I swiftly swept into a army camp and launched my ax into someone's pharynx.
Co-ordinate to our colorimeter, the Zephyrus G15 covered 76.8% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, which fell short of the 91.vii% premium gaming laptop average. Information technology also fell backside the Alienware m17 R4 (lxxx.6%), but managed to beat the MSI GS66 Stealth (69.9%) and ROG Flow X13 (69.nine%).
At 286 nits, the Zephyrus G15 is a trivial on the dim side, crashing beneath the category boilerplate (349 nits). Once over again, it couldn't friction match up against the Alienware m17 R4 (316 nits), but it did surpass the MSI GS66 Stealth (272 nits) and the ROG Catamenia X13 (282 nits).
Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (GA503Q) keyboard and touchpad
When I reviewed the Zephyrus G14, I idea the keyboard was comfortable, but needed some comeback. I'm pleasantly surprised that the Zephyrus G15 is not merely comfy just also clicky and punchy: the hallmarks of a truthful gaming keyboard.
I knocked out 76 words per minute on the 10fastfingers.com typing exam, which is almost my 78-wpm boilerplate. Like any keyboard, it takes time to get used to, but these keys require a solid corporeality of actuation forcefulness and characteristic pleasantly deep key travel.
Similar its sibling, the Zephyrus G15 forgoes an RGB-lit keyboard for a white backlit keyboard. The choice itself is fine, simply once again, the lighting does not look expert. I've complained about this before; the LEDs but partly light upwards the articulate font on the keyboard. To be off-white, the lighting does look brighter, but it's not sufficient enough unless you lot're in a really dark space and fifty-fifty then, some of the keys look slow.
The 5.1 x 3.4-inch touchpad has also seen some improvements. On top of the trackpad beingness larger and super soft, its clicker is a little less shallow. It would still be nice to accept a deeper click for the trackpad, but it's definitely improve than before. Windows 10 gestures similar two-finger scrolling and iii-finger tabbing worked fine.
Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (GA503Q) audio
It'southward very rare that laptop speakers are actually up to par with the price of the machine, but I was blown away by the Zephyrus G15'southward speaker arrangement.
I listened to Raon Lee'south cover of "Hated by life itself," and the opening piano was deep and present. When the vocals followed, they were crisp but didn't completely overshadow the rest of the instruments. Throughout the rest of the song, I could hear the presence of the piano and percussion where they would have otherwise been muddled.
I played Assassin's Creed Valhalla and, every bit I was raiding a village, I heard the battle cry of the Vikings at my side; it sounded as if they were correct next to me in existent life. When I charged my enemy, I missed my showtime ax swipe, and when the ax grazed against the cobblestone, it created a pleasant scraping sound. And after dealing with him, I unleashed a flurry of arrows on my foes, each hit with a resonating ping audio that satisfied my ears.
The laptop comes with the Dolby Access app, which gives iv presets: Game, Music, Movie and Vocalization. Within those presets, you can choose whether yous want Detailed, Balanced or Warm sounds. There'south also the Dynamic preset, which identifies the content and performs automatic adjustments to evangelize the "all-time sound." And then y'all accept three Custom presets, which lets y'all tune the sound with an equalizer.
Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (GA503Q) gaming, graphics and VR
Whereas the G14 was a midrange beast, the Zephyrus G15 comes in at the summit of the food chain with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 GPU (with an lxxx-watt TDP) with 8GB of VRAM. This monster shrugged off Assassin's Creed Valhalla at Ultra, 1440p settings as I raided a small village on the coast, trigger-happy through my enemies at 51 frames per second.
On the Assassin's Creed Odyssey benchmark (Ultra, 1080p), the Zephyrus G15 hit 67 fps, climbing over the average premium gaming laptop (61 fps). The competitors were all toting an RTX 3080 GPU, just the Alienware m17 R4 (78 fps) and ROG Menses X13 (68 fps) did amend, while the MSI GS66 Stealth (66 fps) fared slightly worse. At 1440p, the Zephyrus G15 managed 56 fps, which is i frame behind the MSI GS66 Stealth (57 fps).
The Zephyrus G15 averaged 81 fps on the Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark (Highest, 1080p), flying by the 74-fps category average. It knocked out the ROG Catamenia X13 (65 fps), but couldn't catch up to the Alienware m17 R4 (103 fps) and MSI GS66 Stealth (87 fps). At 1440p, the Zephyrus G15 achieved a solid 60 fps, which is once again one frame behind the MSI GS66 Stealth (61 fps).
On the Borderlands 3 benchmark (Badass, 1080p), the Zephyrus G15 scored 81 fps, soaring over the 67-fps premium gaming laptop average. It surpassed the ROG Flow X13 (77 fps), but again fell short to the Alienware m17 R4 (102 fps) and MSI GS66 Stealth (84 fps). At 1440p, the Zephyrus G15 hit 58 fps, which is miraculously 1 frame behind the MSI GS66 Stealth (59 fps).
The Zephyrus G15 averaged 69 fps on the Red Dead Redemption two benchmark (Medium, 1080p), sailing past that category average (56 fps). This time, information technology won over the Alienware m17 R4 (39) and ROG Catamenia X13 (65 fps), but it was just backside the MSI GS66 Stealth (71 fps). At 1440p, the Zephyrus G15 nailed fifty fps, which actually isn't i frame behind the MSI GS66 Stealth but two frames (52 fps).
Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (GA503Q) performance
The driving force inside the Zephyrus G15 is the shiny new AMD Ryzen ix 5900HS processor comboed with 32GB of RAM. The Zephyrus G15 flexed xl Google Chrome tabs and five 1080p YouTube videos while Assassin's Creed Valhalla ran in the background, and did so with ease.
On the Geekbench five.3 overall operation exam, the Zephyrus G15 scored 8,640, skidding past the boilerplate premium gaming laptop (7,549). Information technology overpowered the Alienware m17 R4's Intel Core i9-10980HK (8,082), the MSI GS66 Stealth's Core i7-10870H (six,078) and the ROG Flow X13'south Ryzen 9 5980HS (8,121).
The Zephyrus G15 transcoded a 4K video to 1080p in but half-dozen minutes and 17 seconds on our HandBrake benchmark, flying over the 8:02 category boilerplate. This new AMD CPU destroyed the Alienware m17 R4 (vi:44), MSI GS66 Stealth (9:01) and ROG Menstruation X13 (viii:13).
Asus' 1TB SSD has a transfer rate of 632 MBps, which lagged behind the premium gaming laptop boilerplate (877 MBps). Surprisingly, information technology beat the SSD in the Alienware m17 R4 (449 MBps), simply it couldn't lucifer up to the SSDs in the MSI GS66 Stealth (1,051 MBps) and ROG Menses X13 (780 MBps).
Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (GA503Q) bombardment life
It's tough to live up to its sibling'southward legacy with an eleven-plus hour battery life, but the ROG Zephyrus G15 is still a close second despite its sharp panel and beefy GPU. The Zephyrus G15 lasted eight hours and half dozen minutes on the Laptop Mag battery examination, burdensome the 4:l premium gaming laptop average. Practise you meet that? Poor battery life is no alibi for gaming laptops anymore. Information technology made brusque work of the Alienware m17 R4 (2:05), MSI GS66 Stealth (vi:27) and ROG Menses X13 (6:30).
Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (GA503Q) webcam
A webcam? What's that? No, but seriously, even if it'due south bad, Asus needs to put the webcam back in. I honey playing D&D Online and that requires me to use a webcam, but I don't want to lug effectually a detached webcam if my laptop is already supposed to have one. However, if you lot desire this motorcar, which y'all take every reason to, check out our all-time webcams page.
Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (GA503Q) oestrus
The Zephyrus G15 does go a trivial warm nether the hood. After playing a game for 15 minutes, the underside hit 131 degrees Fahrenheit, which is far from our 95-caste comfort threshold. Still, that is the hottest it got. The middle of the touchpad and keyboard measured 110 and 94 degrees, respectively.
Fifty-fifty when information technology's not gaming, it can go warm. Afterwards streaming a 15-minute video, the underside reached 109 degrees, the keyboard hit 99 degrees and the touchpad measured 87 degrees. The hottest information technology got was 118 degrees on the underside alongside the SN sticker.
Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (GA503Q) software and warranty
The most important app in the Zephyrus G15's arsenal is the Armoury Crate, which you tin use to manage the performance of the CPU, GPU and fans. In the aforementioned app, you lot can likewise customize the key lighting, amass games from other launchers, and create profiles for performance and lighting based on what yous're playing or doing.
The GameVisual app adjusts the color of your display. There's as well the MyAsus app, which tin can run system diagnostics and hardware checks on your system.
Additionally, you'll find Windows 10 bloatware like Hulu, Roblox and Hidden City.
The Zephyrus G15 comes with a i-twelvemonth limited warranty. Encounter how Asus performed on our Tech Support Showdown and All-time and Worst Brands ranking.
Bottom line
It's tough to make a striking more than one time, but Asus managed to drop a banger. The Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (GA503Q) totes effectually some of the near powerful components you tin can get right now. Most every part of this machine is surprisingly great and well worth the money you'll be paying. However, it's not perfect. It's one thing if the display isn't as vibrant as the average premium gaming laptop, merely it'south another if it can't lucifer up to its $1,000 cheaper sibling. Plus, a webcam would exist prissy.
I personally call up this is the meliorate gaming laptop amid its competitors, but each rival has its advantages. If you're looking for raw performance, the Alienware m17 R4 killed it on those benchmarks. It as well has a brighter and more than colorful display.
Regardless, the Zephyrus G15 is i of the few best gaming laptops that y'all tin buy with an RTX 3080 GPU.
Source: https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/asus-rog-zephyrus-g15-ga503q
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