Review ASUS ROG Zephyrus G: compact gaming laptop with AMD and GeForce


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Typically, the main features of gaming laptops from the ASUS ROG Zephyrus line are top-end hardware, very

impressive cost, compact size and weight.Of course, by the standards of game models. Now the line includes more affordable models, which still offer very transportable dimensions, almost the same interesting design, while being much more affordable. We have one of these models for review today. This is the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G GA502D with a combination of an AMD processor and an NVIDIA video card inside.

  1. What is it?
  2. What is interesting ASUS ROG Zephyrus G GA502D?
  3. What is in the box?
  4. What with the look and design?
  5. How convenient is it to use?
  6. How good is the screen?
  7. What about performance and autonomy?
  8. In the dry residue

What is it?

ASUS ROG Zephyrus G GA502D is a gaming laptop with 15.6-inch IPS display, 12nm quad-core AMD Ryzen 7 3750H processor, 8 GB RAM, discrete nVidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti graphics card with 6 GB VRAM and a fast SSD.

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What is interesting ASUS ROG Zephyrus G GA502D?


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The laptop received an interesting configuration, whichincludes a 12nm quad-core AMD Ryzen 7 3750H processor clocked at 2.3GHz (overclockable up to 4GHz) with support for eight threads and integrated AMD Radeon RX Vega 10 Graphics for basic tasks. For games, a discrete video card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti in the Max-Q version with 6 GB of video memory on board is used. There is only 8 GB of RAM, but there is a free slot for an upgrade. The storage used is a 512 GB M.2 NVMe SSD. The screen is 15.6-inch IPS with a refresh rate of 120 Hz, but without G-Sync. All this is packed into a relatively compact and lightweight case with a good set of ports. The laptop is powered by a 76 Wh battery.

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What is included?

This is one of the most affordable (if not the most)models in the Zephyrus lineup, so waiting for some bonuses in the kit would be strange. The laptop is packed in a black box made of thick cardboard with the ROG logo. Inside is the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G itself, power cable, power supply and documentation.


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What with the look and design?


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Externally, ASUS ROG Zephyrus G has a lotthe common of ROG Zephyrus S already visited us before: almost identical shape and stylish, but not too catchy design. Among the most important differences, it is worth highlighting the absence of a hinged cover at the bottom (which is used in the older model for additional ventilation) and simpler housing materials. The top cover is still metal, with an illuminated ROG logo, diagonal strip and brushed:


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The rest of the case is made of blackmatte plastic, while the Zephyrus S uses a magnesium alloy. Although the plastic used is high-quality, tactilely pleasant and feels reliable. At the back of the laptop are two sections of ventilation holes, between which there is an engraved inset of the name of the series:


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There are slightly fewer connectors than the older model, buteverything you need is there. On the left there is a port for the power supply, an RJ-45 network connector, HDMI 2.0b, USB 3.1 Gen. 1 Type-A, USB 3.1 Gen. 2 Type-C (with DisplayPort 1.4 support) and combined audio jack:


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Right - 2x USB 3.1 Gen. 1 Type-A and a Kensington lock slot and air vents, they are located closer to the back of the laptop:


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There is nothing interesting in front, just a cutout to pry off the lid with your finger:


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Above the keyboard is a wide platform with a pattern, ventilation holes and three LEDs to indicate the operation of the laptop:


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The top and side frames around the screen are verythin, &#8220;chin&#8221; but noticeably wider. The microphone holes and the name of the line are located on it. The laptop does not have a webcam, like the older model. Apparently, the company decided that the quality of standard built-in solutions would not be enough for the potential audience. Optionally they offer an external ASUS ROG Eye GC21.


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Below there is a plentiful amount of ventilationholes, grilles of stereo speakers and a decent number of legs are visible. 4 wide along the perimeter and central - rubberized, additional - plastic. The laptop is perfectly fixed on the surface and does not slip:


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The only element of appearance that is clearlyhints at the gaming positioning of the laptop - this is the ROG logo with a backlight on the cover. The rest of the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G looks quite restrained and stylish, which seems to me rather a plus. There are no questions on the build quality: the parts are perfectly tuned, the panels do not bend, nothing creaks. Dimensions are 360x252x20.4 mm, weight - about 2.2 kg. Yes, this is not an ultraportable laptop, but for a gaming model it’s very good. The laptop fits into the corresponding standard compartment in any backpack without any problems and there is no problem carrying it with you.

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How convenient is it to use?


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The hinges allow you to open the laptop approx.140°, this is quite enough for such a model. The laptop can be opened with one hand. The screen is fixed well and does not wobble even if you shake the laptop in your hand. The keyboard is located in a place familiar to laptops (and not pushed forward, like some Zephyrus models). The layout is similar to other ASUS gaming models and is close to standard, with a couple of small features. There is no number pad, but there is a column on the right with Home, End, PgUp, PgDown buttons. Both Shift are long, one-story Enter, the arrow block is separated and slightly moved forward, &#8220;space&#8221; slightly increased in height. Above the function buttons there are 4 additional ones: for adjusting the volume, muting the microphone and launching the proprietary ROG application. The power button with LED is located above the keyboard on the right:


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The keys themselves are similar to older models: a scissor mechanism, moderately soft, informative, although not very long travel. Convenient to use. There is a backlight, but only white, not RGB:


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The touchpad is solid, the buttons are not separated. It is medium in size, but with good coverage and good sensitivity. For office tasks, it is enough, a mouse does not arise to get a desire.


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The only thing that can confuse the design isthis is blowing hot air from the right side of the laptop. But it is felt only if the hand with the mouse is almost back to back. At a distance of 10 cm, the air flow is almost not felt.

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How good is the screen?

The ROG Zephyrus G GA502D has an IPS screen with15.6-inch diagonal, 1920x1080 resolution, matte finish and maximum refresh rate of 120 Hz. There is no G-Sync support. In general, the screen is not bad and there are no questions about the viewing angles. But the brightness reserve and color gamut are not the laptop’s strongest points. This is not critical for indoor games and movies, but it is not suitable for working with videos and images.


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The proprietary ROG Game Visual application has a number of preset picture modes, picture presets and the ability to manually adjust the color temperature.


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According to the measurement results, the maximum brightnessis 236.597 cd/m2, black field brightness is 0.255 cd/m2 and contrast ratio is 928:1. Close to the stated 250 cd/m2 and 1000:1, but overall quite modest. According to official data, the display's color gamut is 62.5% of the sRGB color space. The graph obtained during the measurement process confirms this. There are no significant distortions in color temperature: a minimal amount of blue, but within reason:


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What about performance and autonomy?


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Current ASUS ROG Zephyrus G configurationsThe GA502D differ only in the amount of RAM and SSD storage. There are no variations on the processor and video card yet. The laptop has a 12-nanometer quad-core AMD Ryzen 7 3750H processor with a base clock frequency of 2.3 GHz and a boost clock of up to 4.0 GHz. Processing of up to 8 threads is supported, the volume of the 3rd level cache is 4 MB. The processor is the closest competitor to the Intel Core i5-9300H. AMD is manufactured using a more modern technology process (12 nm versus 14 nm), TDP - 35 W versus 45 W. But the performance is also slightly lower than that of its competitor from Intel, although the difference is minimal. The amount of RAM in this configuration is 8 GB DDR4-2400. It is soldered on the board, but there is one free slot where you can add another stick and the RAM will operate in dual-channel mode. The maximum volume is 24 GB.


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The laptop is equipped with an integrated video acceleratorAMD Radeon RX Vega 10 Graphics at 1400 MHz for &#8220;office&#8221; tasks and a discrete graphics card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti in Max-Q design with 6 GB of GDDR6 video memory. It is built on the Turing architecture and is one step below the RTX 2060 in the line. It does not have tensor and RT cores and, accordingly, does not support real-time ray tracing and other RTX-series gadgets. The Max-Q version is somewhat more modest in performance than the regular laptop and desktop versions. Base frequency - 1140 &#8211; 1335 (Boost) MHz, but the laptop has a turbo mode with increased frequencies, 1240 &#8211; 1435 (Boost) MHz (second and third screenshots below).


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According to the communication capabilities of the laptopstandard modern set: dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11ac 1x1, Gigabit Ethernet and Bluetooth 5.0. In terms of performance, as we have already mentioned above, the processor almost does not reach the Intel Core i5 9300H. In graphics tests, the laptop also demonstrates the expected results: not top-notch, but everything is very good.


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The laptop’s cooling system is quite noisy (althoughfar from the noisiest among game models), but it copes well with its tasks. The video card with prolonged loads heats up to approximately 70 °, no more. Processor - up to 90 °, throttling is not observed. With prolonged extreme loads, the case heats up above the keyboard and the keyboard itself in the upper part becomes significantly warm. But this is achieved only in stress tests. In games, the keyboard remains cold.


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An M. format SSD is used as a storage device.2 with PCI Express Gen3 x2 interface. We had the 512 GB variant made by Intel. The laptop has another slot for an M.2 SSD, but, sadly, they both use only two PCI Express Gen3 x2 lanes, so installing a faster x4 drive will not work.


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When reading, the speed reaches about 1300 MB/s, and when writing – 970 MB/s. Not a record, but significantly faster than SATA SSD options.


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Most modern demanding games can beSet to high or medium graphics settings. Gears 5, Steep, Destiny 2 confidently demonstrate frame rates around 60 FPS (+/-), Phoenix Point firmly shows 60 (although vertical synchronization is disabled, and the laptop display is 120 Hz). It's more difficult with Metro Exodus and NFS Heat. The first one at medium settings &#8220;jumps&#8221; ranging from 40 to 55, the second - 35-45 (again at medium settings):


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The laptop uses a 76 Wh battery.The battery life of the laptop was a pleasant surprise (considering the class of the device): under maximum load with maximum brightness, the laptop lasted about 2 hours. In &#8220;office&#8221; In energy-saving mode with a Wi-Fi connection, the laptop lasts about 6 hours, which is quite impressive for a gaming model.


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Also pleased with the built-in audio system: it consists of two speakers, which are located in front of the bottom cover and are directed, respectively, down. They turned out to be loud and pretty high quality. As much as possible with such dimensions. To adjust the sound there is an application Sonic Studio III:


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As with other ASUS gaming laptops,The pre-installed software includes Armory Crate, which does all the laptop setup and system monitoring, has its own hub with installed games and the ability to configure various profiles. There is also a mobile version of the application.


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Plus, there is the MyASUS application, traditional for all ASUS laptops, for downloading updates, monitoring and other useful little things:


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In the dry residue

It's good to see that the ASUS ROG Zephyrus lineis expanding and replenished with models of different price segments, including more affordable ones, like ASUS ROG Zephyrus G GA502D. The laptop has a balanced configuration, which is enough for comfortable playing any modern games in FullHD resolution. At the same time, it inherited from its older brothers in the line a compact and lightweight (for a gaming model) body and a pleasant, stylish design. It is worth adding that the laptop uses a fairly successful cooling system, which allows the laptop to operate stably (albeit quite noisy at peak loads). The laptop pleased us with its smart stereo speakers, 120Hz display and good battery life. In its own category, of course. Among the controversial points, in addition to noise under load, it is worth noting the budget matrix with a small color gamut and brightness reserve, as well as the lack of a built-in webcam, which for some may be extremely necessary. The laptop is now standing32 000 UAH, it cannot be said that there is absolutely nocompetitors. There are models with comparable characteristics (including those from Intel), but there are not many of them, and most of them are heavier, larger models.

6 reasons to buy ASUS ROG Zephyrus G GA502D:

  • balanced, productive configuration;
  • compact size, light weight and stylish design;
  • efficient cooling system;
  • comfortable keyboard and touchpad;
  • high-quality audio system;
  • impressive autonomy (considering the category).

3 reasons not to buy the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G GA502D:

  • low color gamut and brightness reserve of the display;
  • noise under load;
  • you need a built-in webcam.

ASUS ROG Zephyrus G GA502DU-AL005

Relatively affordable gaming laptop instylish, compact case with a balanced configuration that includes an AMD processor and a discrete GeForce graphics card. The laptop is equipped with a 15.6-inch 120-Hz IPS display, SSD storage, backlit keyboard and good battery life

Foxtrot

MOYO

Rozetka

Citrus

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Technical specifications ASUS ROG Zephyrus G GA502D

Display
15.6 inches, 1920x1080, IPS, 120 Hz, matte anti-glare coating

Dimensions
360x252x20.4 mm

Weight
2.2 kg

operating system
Without OS

CPU
AMD Ryzen 7 3750H, 4 cores, 8 threads, 2.3-4.0 GHz (12 nm)

Ram
8 GB DDR4-2400

Graphics
nVidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, 6 GB GDDR6, AMD Radeon RX Vega 10 Graphics

Storage device
SSD 512 GB (M.2) PCIe 3.0 x2

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), 1xUSB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A, 2xUSB 3.1 Gen1 Type-A, HDMI 2.0b, RJ45, Kensington Lock, 3.5 mm audio

Optical drive
No

Battery
76 Wh


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