Technology has improved so much these days, and of course, gaming laptops are getting slimmer and powerful. ASUS ROG Zephyrus series gaming laptops are well-known for its slim body size, while the latest Zephyrus S pushes the limits of being slim even more. Check out our ROG Zephyrus S review (GX531GM) below as we got the chance to get our hands on it!
Design
Continuing the classic Zephyrus design, Zephyrus S has a metal chassis and CNC-milled unibody lid with the original SLASH design. The ROG logo on the lid stands out a lot thanks to the hairbrush finish and the matte black colour scheme, the logo lights up when the laptop is active too!
At just 14.95~15.75mm thin, Zephyrus S adopts a brand new Silky scissor-door hinge design that opens up when you lift up the display. The 15.6-inch dual side narrow bezel display offers refresh rate up to 144Hz and 3ms response time for breathtaking and blur-free visuals.
The keyboard is lowered and paralleled to touchpad due to the ultra slim and improved heat dissipation designs. Interestingly, the Numpad is shared with the touchpad – you can switch between them just by pressing a button. It features RGB backlights on both the keyboard and the sides, you can switch between different effects (such as Music, Rainbow and Strobing) easily through the Armoury Aura.
Although the laptop is slim, it still packs up all the I/O ports that we need. There are 2 USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C ports and 1 USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A on the right side, while DC-In, USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-C, 2 USB 2.0 and a 3.5mm audio jack are located on the left side. On the back, there are a HDMI 2.0 port and a Kensington lock.
It is worth to mention that you can actually recharge the laptop with a mobile power bank or Type-C power adapter thanks to the “USB Type-C Power Delivery” technology. Quite a useful function in case your laptop is running out of battery but you can’t find a power socket for charging or don’t have the AC adapter!
Zephyrus S Specifications
ROG Zephyrus S is powered by the 8th Gen Intel Core i7-8750HQ hexa-core processor with HM370 chipset. It offers the 6GB GDDR5 VRAM NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card as well, not the top-notch setup but more than enough for heavy gaming.
Also, it offers 8GB 2666MHz DDR4 SDRAM which you can expand up to 24GB. For the hard disk, it features 512MB of M.2 NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD, you can not worry about its processing speed. However, it doesn’t come with a high volume HDD so you might need to add on an extra HDD hard disk.
As we mentioned earlier, the laptop features a 15.6-inch FHD (1920×1080) super-narrow bezel display onto the chassis. The width of the super narrow bezel on both sides are merely 6.5mm, along with the 144Hz refresh rate and 3ms response speed it guarantees a big game screen with gorgeous graphics performance. The dual speaker is placed just below the display to offer louder and clearer audio outputs.
Overheating would be one of the biggest issues for gaming laptops, Zephyrus S is featuring the AAS (Active Aerodynamic System) system with superior heat dissipation. The CPU and GPU can be cooled down via copper heatsinks and 5 heat pipes that leads them to the 4 exterior heatsinks. There are 2 sets of 12V high voltage fans with 83 fins on each fan for improved airflow intake. It comes with the Anti-Dust Cooling thermal design as well!
Other than the basic GameFirst V, the laptop comes with plenty of useful software such as GameVisual, Sonic Studio III, Sonic Radar and XSplite Gamecaster. The newly designed ROG Armoury Crate allows you to monitor its system, adjust fan rotational speed, switch between different Game Profiles and more. You can also access the Armoury Crate functions via the mobile app.
Benchmarks
- 3D Mark
ASUS ROG Zephyrus S got an impressive result of 4021 in 3D Mark test, the graphics score is 3765 while the CPU score is 6551. It manages to get 21 to 25 FPS on both graphics test, while on CPU test it manages to get a result of around 22 FPS. It could handle high-graphics video games at ease.
- PC Mark 10
5130 is a pretty good score for PCMark 10 test. It got an amazing;y high score of 9366 on App Start-up Score, while for Digital Content Creation, it got a great score at 5789. The score indicates that Zephyrus S is suitable for video content creators too.
Gaming Performance
We tested the laptop with some of the most popular games including Monster Hunter World, Far Cry 5, Dragon Ball FighterZ and Final Fantasy XV. All the game runs seamlessly under high graphics settings, we could get an average of 50 FPS too. Gaming on ROG Zephyrus S has been a pleasure especially thanks to its super-narrow bezel display!
Conclusion
ASUS ROG Zephyrus S is a decent gaming laptop that meets the performance requirements for gaming along with a stylish appearance and slim body size. Of course, the visual and audio outputs are very satisfied thanks to the super-narrow bezel display and dual speaker. However, the area around the heat dissipation system still heats up after prolonged gaming period. This is due to its slim body size but fortunately, it doesn’t really affect our gaming experience.
ASUS ROG Zephyrus S is especially suitable for the heavy gamers who travel (or staying outside from home) a lot. It is slim and lightweight, which allows you to bring it around easily for gaming anytime or anywhere you want. If you are interested, you can visit the official site for more information!
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