the asus zephyrus g15 has been
completely redesigned for 2021
and it's offering some of the best cpu
performance from a ryzen gaming laptop
i've ever seen
i'll show you what this new model has on
offer and help you decide if it's a
laptop worth considering
i've got the highest spec'd config here
including the 8 core ryzen 9 5900 hs
processor
nvidia rtx 3080 graphics and 32 gigs of
dual channel memory for the main
components
the design aesthetic reminds me of the
smaller g14
and in my opinion it looks and feels way
better than the older 2020 version of
the g15 that i covered just a few months
ago
it's available with either black or
white finishes and i've got the white
version here the lid has some shallow
holes with a rainbow film behind it so
it looks different based on the angle
and light the laptop alone weighs about
2
kilos or 4.4 pounds or 2.6 kilos or 5.7
pounds with the 200 watt brick and
cables the dimensions are fairly typical
for a modern 15-inch gaming laptop
they're on the thinnest side considering
the specs inside my g15 has a 15.6 inch
1440p 165hz
screen it's got excellent color gamut
and freesync unfortunately there's no
way of disabling optimus for a speed
boost
it gets bright enough too easily
surpassing 300 nits at 100
with a 1028 to 1 contrast ratio the asus
software has panel overdrive enabled by
default which affects screen response
time i've got a link in the description
if you need an explanation of these
numbers
but basically with overdrive enabled
we're looking at a 4.25 millisecond
average greater go response time however
there was some overshoot and undershoot
in some transitions but this is typical
with overdrive modes here's how response
time looks if we instead manually turn
overdrive mode off
it lowers just 7.23 milliseconds but
there's no overshoot or undershoot now
this is how both of these results
compare against other gaming laptops the
overdrive enabled result is one of the
best i've recorded ever but also the
best i've seen from these new 1440p
165hz panels so far backlight bleed was
minor with a patch up the top but this
will vary between laptops
although there's no camera it does still
have microphones and this is what they
sound like by default
what it sounds like with cardioid mode
and i'm sitting right in front of the
machine
this is what it sounds like if i instead
switch over to stereo mode and this is
what it sounds like with omnidirectional
again i'm in front of the machine for
all of these tests
the keyboard has white backlighting
which can be adjusted between three
levels
all keys and secondary functions are
illuminated but it seemed a bit patchy
some keys were brighter than others i
only found it useful in the dark
in a well-lit room there's not enough
contrast with the white keys and the
white lighting to see them properly this
shouldn't be an issue with the black
model it's got nk rollover and a 1.7
millimeter travel distance
i liked typing on the keyboard but
didn't like the smaller arrow keys or
the lack of dedicated print screen key
here's our typing sounds to give you an
idea of what to expect
there are some extra buttons above the
keyboard on the left including volume
adjust
microphone mute and a shortcut to open
the asus armory crate software the
control panel for the g15 the power
button is separate to the keyboard and
above it on the right it doubles as a
fingerprint scanner and when you power
it on it will actually cache the
fingerprint and automatically log you in
i found it to work quickly and
accurately the precision touchpad clicks
down anywhere and is huge
it's making the most of the available
space and i really liked using it
fingerprints don't show up on the white
finish but it will probably be a
different story on the black model i
didn't have dirt show up on mine but
presumably over time it would show
easier on the white version
on the left from the back there's an air
exhaust vent power input hdmi 2.0 b
output gigabit ethernet port facing the
preferred way usb 3.2 gen 2 type a port
2 usb
3.2 gen 2 type c ports with displayport
1.4
and a 3.5 millimeter audio combo jack
right at the front the right has a
second usb
3.2 gen 2 type a port micro sd card slot
another air exhaust and kensington lock
up the back there's no thunderbolt but
the type c ports can both be used to
charge the laptop with up to 100 watts
so not enough for full performance but
enough for most tasks
and this means you could use a portable
power pack both type c ports connect
directly to the nvidia graphics
bypassing optimus
however the hdmi port goes via the
integrated radeon graphics
most of the i o being on the left is
generally going to be better for
right-handed mouse users
but if you're a left-hander it'll
probably be annoying the back has some
air exhaust fans towards the corners
however with the lid open the vents are
blowing on the screen rather than out
the back this is because when you open
the lid the back of the laptop raises up
a little this means air can better get
underneath to improve cooling
and there's a slight angle to assist
with typing the front has a subtle
groove around the whole lid to assist
with opening the lid
it's easy to open up with one finger and
the screen goes the full 180 degrees
back for sharing there's some flex to
the screen if you go looking and some
keyboard flux
probably because the back raises up with
the lid open meaning there are less
contact points with the desk underneath
speaking of underneath there are air
vents above the intake fans on the left
and right
getting inside was easy there are 13
phillips head screws
and the ones down the front are shorter
than the rest so keep track of that when
putting them back in there are three
screws in the middle which are hidden
below these rubber covers
i pried them out with a screwdriver the
front right screw doesn't remove from
the bottom panel it instead lifts up to
help you open it
inside we've got the battery down the
front 2 m.2 storage slots just above
the wi-fi 6 card on the far left and
single memory slot towards the middle my
g15 came with 16 gigs soldered to the
motherboard so as long as we've got a
stick also installed in the single slot
it will run in dual channel there are
also options with eight gigs soldered to
the board so you'll have to pick with
this in mind as you can't change it
later the g15 has six speakers including
subwoofers underneath and two
front-facing tweeters on either side of
the keyboard
i thought the speakers sounded amazing
for a gaming laptop easily one of the
best i've ever heard they're clear and
there's some bass
though they started to get a little
tinny sounding when maxed out but the
latent simon results looked good
quite a few people on reddit are
complaining about speaker pops during
base
and i experienced this too with music
playing it sounds like some people were
able to fix this with driver updates or
eq settings but i had no luck
by default it plays this sound on boot
fortunately you can disable it through
software or the bios
speaking of the bios it's the same as
most other asus rog laptops i've tested
just the usual basic options available
the g15 has a 4-cell 90-watt hour
battery inside i've tested it with
keyboard lighting off background apps
disabled and screen set to 50 brightness
the asus summary crate software gives
you the option of enabling igpu only
mode this will disable the nvidia
discrete graphics to help improve
battery life you can manually enable it
through the software
or also choose for it to enable
automatically when you unplug likewise
the software will also lower the refresh
rate of the screen down to 60 hertz when
you unplug to save battery this results
in the screen flashing black briefly
while it changes
in my youtube playback test i found the
igpu only mode to give us around an hour
and a half of extra battery life with
our gpu mode off the integrated radeon
graphics are still mostly used but from
time to time
software or operating system calls will
go to the discrete graphics
drawing more power basically the only
way to completely avoid this is to
disable them so this is a cool option
that asus have added this generation
when compared against other gaming
laptops the g15 is stacking up extremely
well
especially for a machine with higher
tier nvidia graphics
which again is due to the ability of
being able to disable it let's check out
thermals next the g15 comes with thermal
grizzly liquid metal applied to the
processor by default the asus armory
crate software lets you change between
different performance profiles
which from lowest to highest are silent
performance turbo and manual manual
applies the following overclock to the
gpu by default but you can modify it
here and it also lets you modify fan
speed i've set mine to max speed when
testing manual mode and i've also set
the power limit sliders in manual mode
to maximum for best results
though as you'll see soon these can
actually hurt performance in some
workloads the idle results down the
bottom were on the warmer side in my 21
degree celsius room
stress tests were done with the ada64
cpu stress test with stress cpu only
checked and the heaven gpu benchmark run
at the same time while gaming was tested
playing watchdogs too there wasn't any
gpu thermal throttling taking place
even if there is an arbitrary 90 degree
cup personally i prefer this than just
letting it run wild manual mode lowered
the gpu temp in both tests as the fans
go to maximum here but the cooling pad
made the biggest improvement to
temperatures
these are the clock speeds during the
same tests the gpu speeds were the
lowest in silent mode during the stress
test manual mode didn't change
gpu speeds though during the game the
default overclock seems to raise the gpu
speed a bit manual mode is doing the
best as this increases the power limit
up to 45 watts
in turbo mode the cpu seems to be capped
at 35 watts with the gpu running at 80
watts
when the cpu is running at 45 watts in
manual mode the gpu seems to lower down
to around 75 watts due to dynamic boost
otherwise performance mode was capping
the cpu to 28 watts
while silent mode ran it at 25 watts
here's how an actual game performs with
these different modes in use
so despite the gpu having a higher power
limit in turbo mode manual mode was
still performing better in this
particular test for some games that are
heavy on the gpu and don't care about
cpu we could have an instance where
turbo mode does better than manual mode
i've also shown how an external monitor
helps boost performance up the top as
this bypasses optimus
now things get more confusing when we
look at a cpu only workload here's how
the power levels look with the cpu only
stress test being run with the gpu now
idle
interestingly manual mode is capped to
45 watts because this is as high as the
power slider goes in the asus software
turbo mode can actually do better this
is illustrated with cinebench
turbo mode is giving us a higher
multi-core score than manual mode as a
result of this power limit difference
for the purposes of comparing against
other laptops though i've decided to use
the turbo mode result as that was doing
the best
and with turbo mode the g15 has broken
the record for highest multi-core score
that i've recorded in this test so far
this doesn't change on battery power
either when you unplug the g15 you can't
use turbo or manual modes they're grayed
out so this was done with performance
mode and the multi-core score is far
ahead of any other laptop tested on
battery so the battery life is good but
if you need to do performance intensive
tasks on battery you're not limited
though i would expect this to mean the
battery drains faster when under a heavy
workload as it can perform better too
it's a trade-off
the g15 was on the warmer side at idle
most laptops i test are around 30
degrees celsius for comparison with the
stress tests in silent mode the middle
of the keyboard was a little warm but
not hot performance mode was reaching
similar temperatures despite performing
better because the fans increase
turbo mode was similar mid 50s right in
the center and hot up the back
though you don't need to touch there
manual mode with the fans maxed out was
cooler and in all cases the wasd area
was cooler than the rust so it felt
comfortable while gaming let's have a
listen to fair noise
the fans were still audible when idling
and remember it was warmer than most
others when sitting there doing nothing
it's still on the quieter side once the
stress tests are going in silent mode
max fans were fairly loud but as there
is some user customization
this means you've got a range you can
play with to get it how you prefer now
let's find out how well the new g15
compares against other gaming laptops
and games
it used these results as a rough guide
only as they were tested at different
times with different drivers
i've tested battlefield v in campaign
mode at ultra settings and the g15 is
highlighted in rad compared to others
the performance isn't terrible or
anything
but i was expecting better from the rtx
3080 graphics
the 2080 super max q with similar max
wattage in the zephyrus 2015 for
instance was doing extremely similar
here despite technically being last gen
hardware
although the g15 notes are 100w maximum
i was seeing more like 90 watts and
gpu-only workloads but this will of
course depend on the workload and
different games work differently that's
just the way of dynamic boost
shadow of the tomb raider was tested
with the game's benchmark tool with the
highest setting preset now my results
here are actually better than what i
showed previously in the game benchmark
video
i did a bios update to version 404 and
retested these games to see if there was
a difference and tomb raider in
particular had an improvement
regardless though it's still behind last
year's duo 15 with 2080 super max q
far cry 5 was also tested with the
game's benchmark tool at max settings
i didn't see a change in this game
compared to when i previously tested it
pre-bios update this test tends to
depend a bit more on processor
performance compared to the last two
games but the g15 is in the same spot
while the duo 15 with eight core i9
processor rose to fourth best place here
i'll be comparing intel and amd in the
same laptop chassis for a fair
comparison to find out once and for all
which is better so make sure you're
subscribed for that i've also tested the
g15 in 12 games at all setting levels in
this video over here
so check that one out if you want to get
a better idea of how well it does in
games
now for the benchmarking tools i've
tested heaven valley and superposition
from unigine as well as fire strike time
spy and port royal from 3dmark just
pause the video
if you want a detailed look at these
results adobe premiere was tested with
the puget systems benchmark the results
from the g15 were one of the best i've
tested so far though the top three
results are all from new ryzen 5000 plus
nvidia 3000 machines
so it seems that these are just a tear
ahead of most others adobe photoshop
generally depends more on processor
performance
and again the g15 was doing very well
here though it could probably do even
better if i tested turbo mode rather
than manual as outlined earlier davinci
resolve is more gpu heavy and the rtx
3080 was doing quite well here too
though not as well as the higher wattage
3070s just above it so another example
of power limit mattering more than gpu
die i've also tested spec view perf
which tests out various professional 3d
workloads
the drive speed for the one terabyte
nvme ssd was great
excellent read and write speeds the
micro sd card slot was also doing very
well
basically maxing out my v90 card in
reads and the card sits the entire way
into the machine
meaning you need fingernails in order to
actually get it out i booted an ubuntu
20 live cd to test linux support
out of the box the speakers touchpad
keyboard and wi-fi worked fine
but the keyboard shortcuts for screen
brightness and keyboard lighting didn't
work
in fact the keyboard lighting didn't
work at all by default finally let's
discuss
price you can check the links in the
description for updated prices
as these will change over time at the
time of recording it's difficult to find
it for sale probably due to a
combination of availability issues and
the fact that it's only just launched
so far the g15 has been one of the best
ryzen gaming laptops i've tested in 2021
granted i haven't tested that many just
yet but at the same time based on last
year's g15
trust me that wasn't something i was
expecting to say asus have made some big
improvements with the new redesign
the battery life is great temperatures
are decent the screen has good response
time good color gamut presync and
brightness
the ir selection is good and cpu
performance is next level the speakers
sound
excellent but the strange popping issue
that a number of people have reported
needs to be resolved it's good to see
the high power limit for the 5900 hs cpu
despite it being a hs chip which are
meant to be lower powered variants
asus are boosting it up to 65 watts in
turbo mode which results in excellent
performance
it was a little strange that manual mode
didn't let you boost beyond 45 watts
though given turbo mode does this no
problem but you would only really notice
this in cpu only workloads
in activities where the gpu is active
like gaming there's no difference
overall gaming performance is decent but
i expected more from the rtx 3080. this
is probably due to a combination of the
lack of disabling optimus and that the
rtx 3080 can't go above 100 watts
but that's something that's just
required in order to fit that in a two
centimeter thin machine like this
if you want more gpu power you'll
probably have to go for something
thicker just based on what i've seen
here i probably wouldn't go for the rtx
3080 personally you really do start
seeing diminishing returns with those
higher tier gpus so i'd probably go for
something more like the 3060 or 37e
anyway it's not all good news with the
new g15 i know some people will find its
lack of camera enough of a reason to not
consider it and this white model makes
the keyboard lighting pretty much
unusable in a lit room like this this
soldered memory can limit upgrades
though if you get the model with 16 gigs
soldered to the board like i've got here
i don't think you'll be in bad shape as
i think 32 gigs in dual channel should
still be enough for most people for a
while yet given 16 gigs still seems to
be a good sweet spot for gaming today
the configuration that just has 8 gigs
soldered to the board is a bit more
problematic though you could install a
16 gig stick for 24 gig in total
but you will miss out on some
performance as it will be running in a
synchronous dual channel mode basically
wherever possible you won't have the
memory the same
and running an a plus 8 config may be
more limiting in future look the g15
definitely isn't perfect
but for the most part these are
excellent improvements over the g15 that
i checked out last year
if you're new to the channel get
subscribed for future laptop reviews
like this one and for now why not check
out some of my other videos over here
including seeing how well the g15
performs in other games