ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15(2022), 15.6″ (39.62 cms) 2K WQHD 165Hz/3ms, AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS, 8GB RTX 3080, Gaming Laptop (16GB/1TB SSD/90WHrs…

We got this for our simulation and design work, mostly for circuit simulation, 3D product model rendering and PCB routing design. While we don’t have much use of it on the go, it will become a bigger part of its job profile as more onsite work is taken on. We purchased this on our company account, but the seller was Appario so it did come from Amazon.

The design is pretty unique – it’s a nice cross between a Thin/Light machine and a high performance desktop replacement. The screen is nice (not as good as the G14, or even Legion 5/5i pro) and bright, and colours are reasonably accurate out of the box. The keyboard is RGB backlit, and one of the worst RGB implementations possible – when set to white, many keys have rainbow lighting instead. Still, it works to let you see the keys at least because the keycaps are transparent. The speakers are nice for a laptop – multimedia or gaming, both are handled quite well. The G14 has better speakers, but neither is good enough for proper audio, so it’s a bit of a moot point).

You get a very basic WD SN735 Gen4 SSD (from WD’s back catalogue, as it were, it’s pretty slow) and 16GB of soldered DDR5 memory capped at 4800MT/S. I added a 2TB SSD and another 16GB of RAM to take the total memory to 32G, which is really needed nowadays, with W11 + Asus bloatware chuggin down 6GB just sitting on desktop. Boot times become longer when memory is added, as the BIOS syncs up the timings on every boot.

Let’s get this straight – when at full tilt, this machine is absolutely awesome. We don’t do much gaming – but estimate it’s around the performance level between desktop RTX 3060Ti and 3070, which is awesome for a GPU that draws only 130W (yes, there is some additional boost available for very short bursts). The CPU is good, definitely more than enough for what we need to do with it. While the 12th Gen Intels are quicker, the AMD options are better all-rounders especially considering battery life and performance on battery.

But not this specific model. I get about 4 – 6 hours on battery in the most frugal modes with light workloads and the lowest possible performance settings (even capping CPU to 40% does not help, neither does turning off the 3080) . Was really expecting the big battery and a nice power-efficient CPU from AMD to yield longer battery life – at least as much as the G14. But, no. It is about the same as an equivalent Intel laptop.

There are some basic issues with the software design and overall implementation. Closing the lid (if the PC is set to sleep when lid is closed), the system bluescreens and restarts. It also refuses to sleep properly in any mode, always coming back to login screen. I did have it working briefly when undocked, so the laptop is probably not able to properly power down attached peripherals. The HP Victus this replaced did all of that without skipping a beat – to the point when I had left it in sleep for 4 days and came back to find it still woke up correctly. Your only options on this are shutdown, or hibernate. Every.Time.

To top all of this, this specific model has a dedicated support page on Asus website, which shows that it does not support W10, no drivers available at all. So you can’t even try W10 to see if that solves the issue (I think it might’ve, but here we are). Between Microsoft, AMD, nVidia and Asus, someone got something very wrong on this laptop. Most of the blame can be pinned on Asus’s own software, but it can’t be removed as most of the core functions of the laptop are controlled with it. Hopefully they will resolve it but from previous experience with Asus phones and motherboards, they tend to give up after a couple of attempts.

Then there’s the noise and heat. In the ‘Silent’ mode with a disabled 3080, the laptop will burn your lap to a cinder if all you’re doing is watching YT videos. And in the performance mode it’s so loud, I swear my car is quieter at full revs. It would be nice if the temperatures were low but no, you can expect 95C even in basic consumer-level loads. A cooling setup is mandatory, and even then you can’t really touch the keyboard. I measured 46C on the hottest part of the keyboard – and all I’m doing i typing this review. I have two other laptops for comparison and neither of those have the lap/keyboard heat issue (but are noisy at full tilt and do hit similar component temperatures)

To reiterate, if using it in docked mode with wired/wireless peripherals and a second monitor, you’re all set. Similar if you’re in a 20C or lower room temperature. If not, you’d probably be better off with one of the lower-powered models. The G15’s 3070Ti will yield nothing to this one in terms of performance or heat/noise (you should get exactly the same performance, but the 6800+3060 versions will/should be cooler at least. Else, if you want the maxed out config (32-48GB memory), this is the only one that allows you to do that. Then there’s the bigger Legion laptops, which perform better because of higher power limits (the 3070Ti Legion should easily beat the 3080 G15) and will run cooler because of the better overall chassis design.

Overall, I’d recommend it with the above caveats.