ASUS ROG Zephyrus S GX502GW review: powerful gaming notebook with GeForce RTX 2070 weighing only 2 kg

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The range of compact and light gaming laptops with top-end iron is becoming more and more. My line

Such models continues to expand and ASUS. The Zephyrus line appeared in 2017 and recently received another update. New models showed in late April in Istanbul, and recently they reached Ukraine. Fresh models received not only actual components, but also a number of important design changes. To the editor gg the 15-inch ASUS ROG Zephyrus S GX502GW has already arrived, with which we will meet today.

What is it?
What is interesting ASUS ROG Zephyrus S GX502GW?
What is in the box?
What with the look and design?
How convenient is it to use?
How good is the screen?
What about performance and autonomy?
In the dry residue

What is it?

ASUS ROG Zephyrus S GX502GW - gaming laptop with15.6-inch IPS-display with support for G-Sync, 14-nm Intel Core processor of the ninth generation, up to 32 GB of RAM, nVidia discrete graphics card GeForce GTX 2070 with 8 GB of video memory and fast solid-state drive.

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What is interesting ASUS ROG Zephyrus S GX502GW?

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The laptop got the most current at the momentinteriors: a powerful 6-core Intel Core i7-9750H processor with a clock frequency of 2.6-4.5 GHz with integrated graphics Intel UHD Graphics 630, 32 GB of RAM DDR4 with a frequency of 2666 MHz and a discrete graphics accelerator NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on board. Not a “lightweight” Max-Q, but a full version. The storage uses 256, 512 GB or 1 TB NVMe PCIe SSD with support for RAID0. To cool all of this, a proprietary CO Active Aerodynamic System (AAS) with two fans and six heat pipes is used, and for better air intake, the design already familiar from the past Zephyrus with a slightly open bottom lid of the laptop is used. The laptop is equipped with a 15.6-inch IPS-screen with a resolution of 1920x1080 and a refresh rate of 144 Hz (and this is the “basic” version, 240 Hz in the top). There are almost the entire set of necessary ports: RJ45, USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C (with support for DisplayPort 1.4 and USB Power Delivery), 2xUSB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A, 1xUSB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A, HDMI 2.0b and separate 3.5- mm headphone and microphone jacks It uses its own power supply for charging, but it supports Type-C charging for “everyday” tasks from any power supply unit with 65 W USB Power Delivery. The laptop is powered by a 76Wh battery.

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What is included?

We arrived kit ASUS ROG Zephyrus SGX502GW with power supply, power cable, documentation, and a metal “designer” from which you can assemble the ROG logo. In the commercial samples there will be options for complete sets with a backpack, an external webcam (the laptop has no built-in one) and a Gladius II mouse in different combinations.

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What with the look and design?

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Compared with previous models, for example, ASUSROG Zephyrus GX501, there are really a lot of changes in the design and materials. And they (subjectively) went exclusively for the benefit of the laptop. The body is made of magnesium alloy, thickness - 18.9 mm, weight - slightly less than 2 kg. The laptop is black, this time without bronze inserts. The keyboard moved to the usual notebook place, like the touchpad. We should also note the rubberized material of the working surface. It is incredibly pleasant tactile, reminds Soft-Touch, but does not collect traces of work so actively. The metal top cover has a diagonal grinding, it looks cool, but it collects prints slightly. In the lower part there is a trapezoid cut-out of the display unit:

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Logo ROG, of course, with the backlight:

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At the back end there is a plentiful number of ventilation holes and engraving with the inscription Republic of Gamers in the middle:

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All connectors are located on the side faces on themthere are also symmetric architectures with air vents. On the left are the power port, the network RJ-45 connector (which the predecessor did not have), HDMI, full-sized USB 3.1, and separate headphone and microphone connectors:

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Right - USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C with support for DisplayPort 1.4 and Power Delivery technologies, another 2xUSB 3.1 and a Kensington lock slot. Unfortunately, there was no place for the card reader:

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Front - only cutout:

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Above the keyboard is a wide panel withperforation. In its upper part there are three LEDs. The gap under the impressive width of the screen, on it - the designation of the line Zephyrys and small holes built-in microphones:

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From above and on each side the frame is very thin. The webcam was decided to be removed in a laptop. There is a certain logic in this: it takes up space, it is regularly stuck, it increases the cost, and the quality of such solutions is not suitable for streams. Some trim levels will have a separate webcam:

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For stability there are two solid ones below.rubber bands almost the entire width of the laptop. In the same place - stereo speakers and additional ventilation holes, and along the perimeter of the bottom cover - the screws that hold it:

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As in past Zephyrus, for more effectivean air intake design is used with a bottom lid opening. This happens with the opening of the laptop. The decision may seem controversial because of the likelihood of hitting third-party objects. Although, it seems to me that ASUS engineers have also provided for this version of events:

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The laptop is assembled perfectly, used qualitymaterials, nowhere stagger nothing, no backlash. The bottom flap in the open state bends just a little, but this does not affect the performance and it can be felt only if you lift the laptop with one hand from the bottom. Visual changes in the direction of a more relaxed, rigorous design went to the benefit of the laptop: it looks very stylish. Dimensions and weight make it easy to carry it daily in a backpack.

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How convenient is it to use?

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Hinges allow you to open the laptop for about140 °. I think this is quite enough for a gaming laptop. Thanks to the design with the opening of the bottom panel, the keyboard is at a minimum angle. Not as much as in the ASUS ultra-portables with ErgoLift, but also not bad. About the coating of the working surface is already written above, but I repeat: it is very pleasant.

The keyboard this time is located on the familiarfor laptops location, and not pushed to the front edge, as was the case with its predecessors. Keyboard layout without any special distortions: both Shift are long, one-story Enter, an increased “space”, the block of arrows is separated and slightly extended to the user. The upper function buttons are reduced in height and divided into groups of 4 each. Above there are 4 additional separate buttons to adjust the volume, mute the microphone and launch the proprietary ROG application. The power button is also separated from the main unit. The digital block is missing, but a row with Home, End, PgUp, PgDown buttons was added to the right:

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The keys have a scissor mechanism. The move is not very big, but clear and informative, the keyboard turned out to be comfortable. There are Aura RGB lights with the ability to customize and all sorts of effects:

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The touchpad is located in the usual place. It is large, with a pleasant coating and good sensitivity. Buttons are not separated from the main plane:

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How good is the screen?

ASUS ROG Zephyrus S GX502GW installedIPS-screen with a diagonal of 15.6 inches, a resolution of 1920 × 1080, a maximum refresh rate of 144 Hz, support for G-SYNC and a response time of 3 ms (in Overdrive mode). It is argued that the color gamut is 100% of the sRGB color space, they promise excellent color reproduction, the screen has received Pantone certification. Matte finish, maximum viewing angles. The picture is very nice, games and movies look great.

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The application ROG Game Visual allows you to select one of the existing picture presets and manually adjust the color temperature.

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The measurements by colorimeter were made in the modeDefault with activated Overdrive. The maximum brightness is 255.729 cd / m2, the black field brightness is 0.323 cd / m2 and the contrast is 792: 1. The stock of brightness is small, but for a gaming laptop is enough. The screen is calibrated very sensibly, very little goes to cold colors (which can be corrected if desired), the color coverage is close to sRGB:

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What about performance and autonomy?

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ASUS ROG Zephyrus S GX502GW equipped with six-coreIntel Core i7-9750H ninth generation processor. Clock frequency - 2.6 GHz and Turbo Boost up to 4.5 GHz. Typer Threading 12 threads are supported. There is integrated graphics Intel UHD Graphics 630 and discrete NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 with 8 GB GDDR6. This is a notebook version with frequencies of 1215-1440 (Boost) MHz. They are slightly lower than the desktop version from 1410 - 1620 (Boost) MHz, but higher than the Max-Q version 885-1080 - 1185-1305 (Boost) MHz. Technology is supported Nvidia Optimus: a laptop automatically switches between embedded and discrete graphics, depending on the tasks. The laptop supports overclocking of the ROG Boost video card up to 1540 MHz. Our configuration is set to 32 GB DDR4 2666 RAM. This is the maximum, the base will be 16 GB. The laptop is equipped with modules Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 5.0 and a gigabit Ethernet-port.

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As it was already possible to guess, the laptop copes with any tasks without any problems. In benchmarks, the results are very high. Although there was no doubt about it:

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But the cooling system was not the mosteffective. It makes a noisy noise, which is typical of all gaming laptops. Although this is not the loudest CO, that I have heard in gaming models lately. Built-in speakers do not shout over. The stress test showed that with long maximum loads there is overheating of the processor, it is roasted to 90 or more degrees. Throttling on average is about 15%, but sometimes it can reach 30%. At the same time, the video card is on average 10-15 degrees cooler and feels comfortable:

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But in general, it is not critical: in real tasks such a load is very difficult to achieve. The case is heated in some places, but within reasonable limits. In Metro Exodus at maximum settings, you can drive while holding the laptop on your lap without problems (personally verified).

SSD format M.2 with PCI Express Gen3 x2 or x4 interface is used as a drive, depending on the configuration. We had a 512 GB version of Intel production:

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When reading, the speed reaches 1715 MB / s, and when writing - 960 MB / s:

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Any modern games can be unscrewed onmaximum graphics settings. The laptop “pulls” everything without any problems. Interestingly, the lowest FPS was in Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands and averaged 60 frames per second, dropping to 50 at some points. Perhaps something with optimization. Metro Exodus and Shadow of the Tomb Raider with RTX and other goodies of new video cards work fine. FPS does not fall below 80 frames, but on average it is kept at the level of 90-100. Destiny 2 and Apex Legends give out 100+ and 120+ frames per second, respectively:

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The laptop uses a 76 Wh battery. A short battery life is a familiar feature of gaming laptops, but in this case, not everything is so bad. In the “office” mode with a Wi-Fi connection, the laptop can withstand a little more than 4 hours, and after watching a couple of films, 20-25% of the battery remains. So with not too long flight in the plane, it is quite possible to entertain yourself by watching a couple of blockbusters. From a complete 230 watt power supply, it charges about 2 hours. USB Type-C port supports Power Delivery 3.0 up to 65 Watts. So for office tasks, you can take a compact power supply unit, but for games you need to connect a large bundled one.

The laptop has 2 speakers installed, they soundvery good and loud (given the class of the device), they are enough for games and video. Plus, an ESS Saber DAC is installed inside for high-quality sound in headphones.

In addition to the ROG Game Visual, the laptop is installedArmory Crate's proprietary application, in which the entire configuration of the laptop is made, including modes of operation, backlight and updates. There is also a kind of hub with recommended applications:

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There is also its mobile version for smartphones:

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In the dry residue

ASUS ROG Zephyrus lineup since its inceptionThe appearance was extremely interesting, but the new models are even better and the ASUS ROG Zephyrus S GX502GW is a great example of this. The laptop is not only added to the performance. The company has significantly updated the design and appearance: the laptop has become more stylish and restrained, the frame around the perimeter of the display has become thin, and the keyboard has moved to its usual place, which greatly added points to the laptop in terms of ease of use. At the same time, the laptop remained compact and light. The remaining obvious advantages are quite expected: a very productive hardware, fast and high-quality IPS-display with G-Sync support and a decent number of ports, including network RJ-45. The cooling of such productive systems in a compact package is still a difficult task. And, unfortunately, ASUS ROG Zephyrus S GX502GW did not become a revolution in this regard. With long-term peak loads, the CO does not cope a bit, the processor throttly. Well, the price, as one would expect, is very impressive: from 77 000 UAH. Although cheaper similar configuration will be difficult to find.

5 reasons to buy ASUS ROG Zephyrus S GX502GW:

Very high performance;
fast and high-quality IPS-screen;
compact size and low weight (considering productivity);
stylish design, excellent materials and build quality;
comfortable keyboard and touchpad.

2 reasons not to buy ASUS ROG Zephyrus S GX502GW:

not the most efficient cooling system and throttling;
high price.

ASUS ROG Zephyrus S GX502GW

Very productive, with a compact, stylish and light gaming laptop with the latest top-end hardware, fast and high-quality IPS-display, comfortable keyboard and RGB-backlit

Comfy

F.ua

Brain

Citrus

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Specifications ASUS ROG Zephyrus S GX502GW

Display
15.6 inches, 1920x1080, IPS, 144 Hz, support for G-Sync, matte anti-reflective coating

Dimensions
360x252x18.9 mm

Weight
2 kg

operating system
Windows 10 Pro 64bit

CPU
Intel Core i7-9750H (2.6-4.5 GHz), 6 cores, 12 threads, 2.8-3.8 GHz (Coffee Lake, 14 nm)

Ram
32 GB DDR4-2666

Graphics
nVidia GeForce RTX2070, 8 GB GDDR6, Intel UHD Graphics 630

Storage device
SSD 512 GB (M.2)

Communications
Wi-Fi 802.11a / b / g / n / ac, Bluetooth 5.0, Gigabit Ethernet

Connectors
1xUSB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C (DisplayPort 1.4, USB Power Delivery 3.0), 1xUSB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A, 2xUSB 3.1 Gen1 Type-A, HDMI 2.0b, RJ45, Kensington Lock, 2x3.5 mm audio

Optical drive
Not

Battery
76 Wh

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