this is the zephyrus G this is
probably one of the more anticipated laptops we've seen come out in 2019. the
reason why people are interested in it is because of its price point it's an
eleven hundred dollar laptop and for a gaming laptop, that's not cheap, I mean
there's cheaper devices out there but this thing promised a lot.
the teaser videos showcased this
product that was really thin really light and had awesome performance and
because of that I think I over hyped this product for myself not that it's a
bad product, but I think I had unrealistic expectations of what this laptop
could deliver. it's still a great device but they had to take some shortcuts to
get there. the build quality let's start there is an area that they did not
skimp on this thing promises a thin and light gaming laptop and it is for the
money for $1,100. you're not getting gaming laptops thinner than this in fact
most devices in this price range and that like thousand dollar price range are
a solid like 25 even 30% thicker. it is a thin and light package and we've also
made it in a way that's like easy on the eyes there's no like super ugly red
lights and stuff like that it's a very simple design the logo on the front does
light up when it's on it's this orange e red color but it's relatively dim and
there's no other colored RGB s on the rest of the system now. the build quality
is actually pretty good it's got the kind of Zephyrus design where it's very
difficult to keep this thing free of fingerprints like it's got this brushed metal
finish but the rest of the device is plastic. the inside deck the bottom panel
everything is plastic all around, but it's a well made device like there's
nothing about this that makes me feel like it's poorly made.
okay let's talk about the screen
because this is probably it's, I mean when you're playing games is probably one
of the more important things on a gaming laptop so this screen is a 120 Hertz
panel, but this is the upgraded model there's a base model that has a 60 Hertz
panel but if you're buying a gaming laptop in 2019 with this kind of
performance you probably want a screen of this caliber.
once when he hurts or higher now
this panel was probably the biggest disappointment for me it's a fast screen
it's 120 Hertz but the color accuracy is quite poor surprisingly poor so the
past year or so for fast screens. we've seen really good color accuracy and
color gaming so when you see a screen like this it just looks a little bit more
dull that's so not super-bright not a dark screen by any means but it's just
not as bright as other competitors in its space but overall it's a fair
screen. it's just compared to what we've
seen on the market for the past year and a half it doesn't really stand out. I
can't forgive it for the price but I think that's part of the whole expectation
thing right I just was thinking that for the money you get a screen that was as
good as other people in the space it's also missing a webcam now for most
gamers, they probably don't use their webcam very often on their laptops but
for that occasional time when you do need video for whatever reason like if
you're making a Skype call or something you now have no way of doing that video
feed unless you purchase an external webcam like it's not like they include one
in the box or anything. it is a completely webcam 'less machine it does still
have some mics at the bottom of the screen but yeah no webcam ok.
the performance on this device is
something I think most people are interested in it's running the Verizon 3750 H
and a GTX 16 60 TI max-q so this is kind of where my expectations were also led
astray when they first announced this device I thought it was running a regular
16 60 TI it's actually running a lower wattage max-q version it's faster than
the GTX 1060 for laptops it's also faster than a 1060 for desktops but it's
slower than last year's 10 70 max q still a very powerful GPU but you should
know where it sits in terms of the overall ranking of laptop performance it's
combined with the four core chip and it's fast but when it comes to multi-core
applications the Intel chips that have six cores are going to do better it's a
good combination the AMD CPU with the NVIDIA GPU delivers some really good
gaming performance but to get there they had to run some pretty aggressive fans
so the thermals are fine on this machine it doesn't overheat or throttle which
is kind of impressive considering the thickness of this device it is a lower
wattage CPU so compared to some of the Intel CPUs out there it's a 35 watt CPU
so it's putting out a little bit less heat but the main reason why they're able
to achieve this is through their fans they're loud fans I did not break any
tabs they are loud fans but they cool the system properly now in the software
you'll also see a decibel reading and I think that's very inaccurate in fact I
think that's like misleading because a lot of people will look at that number
if they own the device and think that that's the actual decibel reading there's
no way that is like probably 10 decibels quieter than what it's actually
reading unless they're measuring that thing out from like 10 feet away.
these are allowed fans inside you
also get access to your Wi-Fi card it's a pretty bad card you probably want to
replace that if you get this device and you also have access to a single slot
of RAM it's a two-channel system it's just that the second channel of ram is
soldered on you can only replace this channel that's visible and you also have
access to two nvme slots so these are strangely PCIe three by two so you'll
still get really fast drives just not the fastest speed possible from your nvm
e's battery down here 76 watt hour it's actually a pretty good battery life on
this system it's a seven hour battery life I didn't think like Ryze and chips
are not known for great battery life they're usually a little more power-hungry
so seven hours pretty respectable you also see the speakers down here pretty
good sounding but they're really poorly positioned like if you take this device
and you listen to it with the speaker's facing up it just sounds so much
cleaner than it does when it's in its natural state but that's what we have
down firing speakers that blast right into your table I really wish
manufacturers would stop doing that like I don't know is there an audio
engineer that watches my channel that explains that can explain why laptop
manufacturers insist on putting speakers that face downwards it's really weird
okay keyboard track padded they're good the keyboard has a clean layout
keystrokes are a little bit shallow kind of expected on a gaming laptop like
this but there's nothing I really have to complain about this keyboard at least
nothing that really sticks out the arrow keys are small but at least they're
well positioned plastic trackpad honestly nothing I really have to complain
about the inputs on this device okay ports it has an Ethernet port despite it
being super thin it has an Ethernet jack which is nice the rest the ports are
kind of standard but keep in mind that the USB C port does not support
Thunderbolt 3 it is an AMD system and it is a kind of cheaper product so I
wouldn't expect a Thunderbolt 3 anyways but I wanted to end this video with a
kind of more important discussion of where this laptop fits in the bigger
picture of things when they first announced this I was very excited about what
this thing promised because for $1100 I mean that was the marketing price that
they pushed out in the beginning it seemed like you were getting an amazing
deal and it's still a really good device but I really feel like you get what
you pay for the $1100 variant of this system has eight gigs of ram and a 60
Hertz screen both of which are kind of underwhelming considering what 2019 has
to offer even at that price point the $1200 version has a 120 Hertz screen and
16 gigs of ram and that is a system that feels more complete just for a gaming
laptop it feels like what you would expect but at that point you're not paying
$1200 and there are competitors in this space that can give this thing a pretty
good run for its money so a lot of people will compare this thing to the Helios
300 which is a popular inexpensive gaming laptop however I don't feel like
they're really that comparable this is a much thinner and lighter device it is
a more compact and sleeker machine like they have similar paper specs but if
you're looking for portability definitely look at the Zephyrus over the Helios
300 there is however another device which I've reviewed before that I would
consider a strong competitor to this and it's the Lenovo Y 740 that has a machine
that has much better specs and is usually quite expensive but because lenovo
puts their stuff on sale so regularly and so aggressively when you catch that
thing on sale and if the Zephyrus is not on sale they are like not that far
apart in price and I feel like if I had to choose between an 1,100 or 1,200
dollars offers and a 13 or $1,400 novo that's on sale I'd probably go for that
lenovo unless i really wanted a long battery life because I feel like those
efforts does a better job at that but the moment the Zephyrs goes on sale I
feel like it's.
it's a difficult decision to make
because they're both offering such a good value and I'll be honest I wouldn't
be surprised if Lenovo dropped the price of that why 740 because of this thing
coming out they probably want to take the wind out of its sail out of the
launch and just be like you know that's not that special we got something cool
as well but that's basically I think this is a great device just temper your
expectations because it is still an $1100 device and I really think you're
getting what you pay for.
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