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amazon ASUS ROG Zephyrus M15 reviews
Neutral design for those who don’t like to show off.
Contrary to the bunker, thick, and LED gaming laptops, the Zephyrus M15 hides like an office laptop. However, the basic identification points for the ROG (Republic of Gamers) series still appear on the outside of this product.
Seen from many angles the light is reflected in, you’ll see this lid is split in two diagonally, with one part having a darker part of the black than the other. Thanks to that, when you use it sitting at a cafe or in a company or classroom, anyone passing by will see the visual effect gradually change, attracting more curious eyes.
The ROG logo does not have a glowing RGB light but only a shadow. Some people will not like this point, especially gamers familiar with computer cases and laptop covers that run color-changing lights. Still, the writer himself accidentally prefers this “submerged” style because it is suitable for many different usage contexts.
The machine’s heat sink slot is pretty much equipped; you can see it at almost every corner, from the bottom, back, two sides. ASUS says it uses Thermal Grizzly’s liquid metal glue to dissipate heat more efficiently than conventional ceramic glue. About the temperature of the machine, I will mention it in the performance section later.
Returning to the appearance, the overall look of the Zephyrus M15 is quite square, with almost very few strong cutting lines, but instead just a squared frame at the edges, evenly. The only clear-cut point here is probably the end of the lid, and only when closed can you see this highlight.
The external overview of the machine is also quite thin compared to gaming laptops on the market: only 18.9mm and weighs only 1.9kg. Complementing this compactness, ASUS also offers users up to 2 different chargers: a 230W bulb to run at full capacity and a compact 65W bulb that charges via the USB Type-C protocol. That is not the thinnest and lightest gaming laptop, when currently the products on the market have the MSI Stealth 15M with 15.95mm and a weight of about 1.69kg, but with two charging options included. For two different uses, perhaps Zephyrus M15 is still more reasonable.
For those who often move, carrying a 65W charger is extremely necessary to make the page lighter, besides also focusing on studying/working, and a 230W charger at home for when they arrive. Can “play the game” more comfortably.
Contrary to the outer shell with a strong scratched texture, the interior of the Zephyrus M15’s keyboard and palm rest is covered with a fairly simple matte black coating; the personal feel is quite similar to the ThinkBook line of Lenovo. Its advantage is that placing our hands on a touchpad is quite comfortable, less awkward. Still, we have to suffer another equally annoying disadvantage of fingerprints, especially for those who sweat a lot. You will see a lot of blurs when looking at it. The only solution is to carry a towel to wipe the machine regularly to return to a more luxurious appearance.
In addition to the comfortable palm rest, the M15’s keyboard also creates a good user experience thanks to the deep key travel, just enough to feel each pressing force and return feedback. Another point to note is that this keyboard set is not full, i.e., the right NumPad part will be cut off even though this is a 15.6-inch laptop. In return, the area of the keys is larger, comfortably arranged, the operation in the game will also be more accurate, and the palm rest area is also more spacious.
Like other gaming laptop keyboards, the Zephyrus M15’s backlight is also RGB. With the help of Armory Crate software (which can be quickly accessed with the ROG eye-shaped shortcut key), users can change the key color and display styles, from static, to flashing rainbow colors or even jumping strobing continuously.
where can you get a ASUS ROG Zephyrus M15 online
ASUS ROG Zephyrus M15 (GU502LU-BI7N4) Gaming Laptop, 15.6″ FHD Display, Intel Core i7-10750H Upto 5.0GHz, 16GB RAM, 512GB NVMe, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660Ti, HDMI, Thunberbolt, Wi-Fi, BT, Windows 10 Home: Buy it now
ASUS ROG Zephyrus M15/GU502LU-BI7N4 | 15.6″ Gaming Laptop Intel Core i7-10750H | 16GB DDR4 3200/MHz, 512GB SSD | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti/6GB | Backlit Keyboard/Windows 10 Home: Buy it now
Newest Asus ROG Zephyrus M15 15.6″ FHD 240Hz IPS Premium Gaming Laptop, 10th Gen Intel Core i7-10750H, 16GB RAM, 1TB PCIe SSD, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q 8GB GDDR6, RGB Backlit Keyboard, Windows 10: Buy it now
The monitor is suitable for both gaming and photography.
Zephyrus M15 has two screen versions: 1 focused on gamers with 240Hz refresh rate, 3ms response, and FullHD resolution, the other version for content creators with resolutions up to 4K but in return only 60Hz.
The version that I am experiencing is for gamers with the code name GU502LU. Although not specialized for content creators, it still fully meets the quality of display colors, such as Pantone Validated panels with 100% sRGB color coverage. As a result, the machine is suitable for gamers and those who have a hobby of photography or amateur photographers, who are more assured in post-production.
The 15.6-inch screen has an anti-glare coating, along with a brightness of about 321 nits, which is not too bright but enough for use indoors light coming in, as long as it is not too bright. Let the screen face a light source that is too strong.
The screen is beveled on three sides to create impressive visual effects, and the webcam has also been removed on this machine. That is also quite unfortunate because “work from home” is the trend of this year and if you have to video conference with a company or customer, you must equip a separate webcam.
For every type of entertainment, like watching movies, editing photos, or playing games, you can customize different display tones, all in the very handy Armory Crate.
Particularly with 240Hz refresh rate and 3ms response, Zephyrus M15 provides a very good in-game experience, anti-tearing, and ghosting quite effectively. Of course, to be satisfied, you not only have to have a good screen but also need a strong configuration to “weigh” today’s heavy games. That is what I will cover below.
Cyberpunk 2077 achieves 4x-5x FPS with High preset configuration at Full HD
Zephyrus M15 is equipped with its 10th generation Intel Core i7-10750H processor, manufactured on the 14nm++ process in terms of machine configuration. This chip has six cores and 12 threads; the maximum clock speed has been increased to 5Ghz compared to 4.5Ghz of the previous generation, 9750H, besides supporting a higher RAM clock with DDR4-2933MHz.
Also, according to Intel, the 10750H is integrated with their new Turbo Max 3.0 technology to optimize processing acceleration and is also extremely valuable for the gaming team. Zephyrus M15 is equipped with a discrete GTX 1660Ti graphics card, belonging to the Turing generation but without RT core and Tensor core to support Ray Tracing and DLSS. However, the gaming performance that this machine brings still makes me quite surprised.
Open Cyberpunk 2077 and play for 30 minutes; I set the graphics settings for the High preset and Full HD resolution; almost all scenes are stable at 4x-5x fps. When fighting in the street with many effects, sometimes the frame is reduced to about 38-42 fps.
DURING THESE GAMES, the CPU and GPU temperature is also at 80-86 degrees Celsius, but the palm rest did not heat up, even I did not feel anything in this area and felt very comfortable. The keyboard area is still cool, so manipulating and playing for a long time is not uncomfortable.
During the experience, I tried using both chargers to evaluate the device’s performance. As with the Final Fantasy XV benchmark, the device only scored 2026 and was rated LOW when used with a 65W charger. While this number is increased to 7250 and is rated as HIGH when using a 230W charger, that is to say, if you want to focus on working and studying in school, bring a small charger.
Run Cinebench to full load CPU, the temperature of the cores increases very quickly when activating Turbo mode, from 4x jumps to 9x degrees Celsius. Still, as soon as it’s done, it immediately returns to the old level just as fast. Cinebench score measured is 7534 for multi-core and 1179 for single core. From there, it can be seen that Core i7-10750H has increased performance by 6% in single-core and 9% in multi-core compared to the previous generation.
According to the GeekBench score, the single-core of the Intel Core i7-10750H chip reached 1234, surpassing the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X (only 1207) and surpassing the previous generation i7-9750H by only 1042. With multi-core, the GeekBench score of 10750H reached 5091, while the previous generation only 4860, the performance increased by nearly 5%.
Epilogue
In terms of price, Zephyrus M15 is facing strong competition from some other competitors running 1660Ti, such as Lenovo Legion 5P or MSI GL65 Leopard.
However, individual evaluation of the experience such as 240Hz screen, better typing, good heat dissipation, or even comfort when using the accompanying supporting software, the appearance is quite “fashionable,” and the writer feels that Zephyrus M15 is quite ” fashionable ” slightly better. In particular, the equipped with two chargers shows that ASUS is more psychological and interested in the user’s luggage.
Anyway, what makes this laptop difficult to reach many users is the price. From the writer’s point of view, ASUS should still have a more reasonable price adjustment when the current market has many products running Intel Core I 11th generation and using RTX 2060 with quite similar prices; the rest is about the device. The design of the machine is too good.
Advantage:
– Neutral design, suitable for all usage contexts
– Core i7-10750H combined with GTX 1660Ti for impressive gaming performance
– 240Hz screen with 3ms response, with Pantone Validated
– Good heat dissipation
– Spacious keyboard, comfortable palm rest
– Two chargers for two different luggage options
– Thin and light
Disadvantage:
– Easy to stick to fingerprints
– Battery use about more than 3 hours (Silent mode) or 4 hours (Power Saver mode) with common work/study tasks
– The price is still high; it is difficult to compete with some other competitors