Asus ROG Zephyrus G15GA503Q Gaming Laptop Review

Asus ROG Zephyrus G15GA503Q is pretty wild. In a very small package, it includes a powerful Ryzen 9 5900HS CPU in combination with Nvidia’s mobile RTX 3080, which is surprisingly lightweight. This is the kind of laptop that forgets the restrictions on the use of portable computers and instead looks to the possibilities. It’s a fun little beast that I use almost all the time.

This laptop has two aesthetic variations, dark gray and white, and received the latter. The outer case is dotted with straight holes that look through the rainbow-colored reflective surface below, and when opened, the white finish around the keyboard gives a slight sparkle. In addition to that, there is harsh and angled ventilation. The atmosphere of a sports car is common in gaming technology, but it’s subtle enough to pull your office desk apart unless your boss looks too close.

Zephyrus G15 is also very versatile. Given the internal growls, it’s not too surprising that the G15 is pretty clever to handle most basic tasks. The included software package is a standard Windows 10 home. This is expected by most people until Windows 11 is released (this laptop should support it without any issues). Still, it’s easy to handle all the simple things like web browsing, video watching, and word documentation.

It also came with an Asus-specific installation, and I was confident that I opted out during setup, but I still had to wait nearly an hour to get to McAfee Anti-Virus and uninstall it. This wasn’t a great start to this experience, but for many laptops that bundle it, it’s a pretty good course.

However, this is a gaming laptop and this site is not called a PC Office Worker. So I had to try some games, especially with these flashy guts, and I wasn’t disappointed.

All the games I tried were really nice. I loaded Valheim and raised the specs, but I was quite late because I was dissatisfied with the performance of my old PC. When the snowstorm hit the foot of the mountain, I took the courage to expect the usual slowdown and jagged performance, but it was smooth even after hours of building the wrong building in the snow. I encountered a voyage. Fans sound like they’re putting in a piece, but it’s a clean, airy sound, and the laptop itself feels totally unnoticed in all other respects.

After a bit more ray tracing, I loaded the Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition. The way light passes through the early broken subway, the theme that establishes the moment of the game, has brought an even more eerie touch. The guns and the fire reflected in the snow were also welcome to lift the mood. This was the best Metro look I’ve ever seen, and again the Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 GA503Q didn’t seem to be upset at all by it. The RTX 3080 under the hood is amazing with 80W TDP, but can increase to 100W with Dynamic Boost.

In the benchmark, the numbers do a pretty good job of speaking for themselves. It sits fairly tightly in the area of ​​high-end gaming laptops, some lower, most higher, and does a pretty good job of handling itself. None of it actually blows anything out of the water, but when it comes to performance it’s a great high tier all-rounder. Again, while running any of these tests, the laptop didn’t really seem to bother me much.

But I think that’s why it feels as good as this little beast uses. Often, when using a laptop or desktop PC, there are moments when you’re worried that you’re pushing it a little further. I had this G15 work on something pretty heavy, and I never feel it is, even when it’s working hard. There was no stuttering and I can’t remember noticing a drop in performance. It manages like an absolute trooper.

And it helps to make the rest of the package feel like it’s backing it up. The screen looks very nice. It’s very rich, and the 165hz display combined with Adaptive Sync can also look and play butter smoothly. It’s a shame that it looks bright enough indoors, but it doesn’t work outdoors. I tried to hide and play some games on the patio on a sunny day, but even when plugged in, it didn’t look good enough to make it work. This was my biggest complaint with a laptop that was so lightweight and capable of playing games on the go. But, as I say, it wasn’t something I noticed indoors at all.

The keyboard also surprised me how great it is to use. I wanted to connect something else, but it wasn’t really a problem with the game. Maintains the familiar desktop-style layout with convenient feature buttons for volume and brightness. In addition, the keys aren’t too big and are nicely responsive, balancing work and play machines. I’m still using a mouse, but even a touchpad is pretty good enough. Thankfully, it supports two USB 3.2 Type-A ports and two USB 3.2 Type-C ports. You may need one of them because it does not include a webcam and follows the current trend of increasing screen space.

When I tried streaming, I missed the webcam. The laptop ran Xsplit and Hades to handle the livestreaming, which was perfectly fine, but I was at a loss for the webcam capture. I used an onboard microphone and speakers (https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1025593908, It picked me up very well without picking up the sound of its own game (if curious). The mic is a bit smaller at the high end, but it’s definitely transparent. The 6-speaker setup is backed by Dolby Atmos, and I’ve always been amazed at how good it sounds for a laptop.

Perhaps the only other hardware that’s disappointing here is that the fingerprint reader is often cheeky and you don’t want to set it up.

And of course, there is also a price. Gaming laptops aren’t cheap, and the Asus ROG Zephyrus G15GA503Q is no exception. It will return you $ 3,899 AUD or £ 2,500 GBP, or you can get a similar model in the US between about $ 2,000- $ 2,500 USD. But given how difficult it is to make a mistake, it may be worth it.