Gadgetory

hey how's it going Dave 2d here this is the Asus Zephyrus M the GM 5:01 we saw the original Zephyrus last year it's kind of thin and light GTX 10 80 max Q laptop really powerful but really expensive this is a much more affordable version of that whole design very similar in exterior aesthetic to the original zephyrus but they've made quite a few changes on the inside it's still a really well-built laptop the top panel is fully aluminum and the bottom section is really durable polycarbonate the rog on the logo up top still lights up red it's not like a super obnoxious red it's very subtle but it does light up and the whole top panel has this brushed texture to it actually looks pretty nice okay going around the sides the port selection is OK not amazing it's got a lot of use ba4 of them which is great and a thumb l3 but it doesn't have an SD card slot and also does not have a mini DisplayPort so I recently did a video on the vive pro with beat saber and I wanted to do that whole video on this laptop because the GPU can support it it's running on GTX 970 but because it didn't have a mini DisplayPort I couldn't use this you might be able to adapt it through the federal 3 port but I wasn't able to test that out the AC adapter is also not in a great position it's running up the middle of the side and then your cable just kind of runs along the length I don't love that but the port selection overall is fair ok let's go to the inside we're looking at a pretty big change on the input devices so the keyboard and the trackpad from the original Zephyrus didn't have the best position they were shifted to the bottom of the keyboard deck to allow for better cooling for the 1080 this new Zephyrs M is significantly improved it's more traditional layout of everything keyboard is great very easy to get used to this thing comfortable to use the spacing is good and the keystrokes are responsive the tiny arrow keys and the narrow number pad might be weird to look at but actually found them pretty comfortable to use granted I'm not a huge number pad user if you're used to like a regular full-size number pad it might take a while to get used to this but it is comfortable for me the backlighting on this keyboard isn't super customizable or bright it's more of like a subtle glow which I actually like the trackpad is also solid it's got winners precision drivers it's got a glass texture in the button mechanics are on point it'd be nice if the trackpad was a little bit larger not that it's small but I feel like in this genre of laptop like that 15 gaming laptop this is one of the smaller ones but overall inputs are good the display I have mixed feelings about it it's a great panel really fast at 144 Hertz of all the six core gaming laptops that I've used so far so that's the msi gt80 NEX and now this is FSM I think this has the best panel for gaming they're all 144 Hertz they're all 1080p but this is the one that has the fastest response rate three millisecond the other ones are rated I think at seven millisecond but it's not just that it's the colors they're a little bit more vibrant and just games look really good on this panel the bezels are unfortunately quite big and that's probably my biggest issue with this screen it's not that they're really really thick but they're thicker than the competitors and like it just doesn't look as nice the truth is and this is like an honest opinion I've been using this for about two and a half three weeks at this point and when I first opened it up I was like wow if these bezels are thick but after using it for a while like they just don't matter if you're gonna actually purchase this thing and use it the bezels will probably a non-issue in a couple of weeks the color accuracy however is less impressive the srgb is usable if you calibrate it and it worked on a couple of videos on this panel but if you're looking for something long-term and you kind of do a lot of photo or video work then you're gonna need an external monitor or just kind of skip on this laptop completely but the screen is excellent for gaming the webcam is located in the normal position up top it's a pretty generic 720p image one other thing this laptop can switch between Nvidia g-sync and Nvidia Optimus 3 software so normally you'd have to choose one or the other and your laptop wouldn't be able to have both this one can switch between the two so if you know what those are g-sync is this tech that allows your laptop to kind of reduce visual artifacting when it's in games so it just kind of smoothes out the gameplay it looks nice at lower frame rates Nvidia Optimus is this tech that enhances battery life or extends battery life so instead of using the GPU like the discrete GPU the 1070 it'll switch over to the weaker onboard GPU when it's not doing something intense and it just kind of extends battery life so this laptop can switch between the two in software I think this is the first one I've ever used that could do this so it's pretty cool in theory but I wasn't able to get great battery life you'll see in a little bit and to get inside this thing it's pretty simple you just need to remove the screws and the panel you get to ram slots to drive bays one of those nvme one of them's tuned 1/2 inch SATA and the Wi-Fi card is this new intel 9 265 it's an awesome card the battery is quite small 55 watt hours it's a little disappointing on a device like this I'm getting around three-and-a-half hours of battery life that's what the screen at 250 nits and that's with Nvidia Optimus if I had this on g-sync it's even less it's like two two and a half hours the thing is it's got a really small battery so all that tech that I was talking about before like the ability to switch between Nvidia Optimus and gsync like it just it would have made a much bigger difference if this battery was bigger but because of the two and a half inch drive there's less space so the battery smaller which is unfortunate because a lot of the laptops on this segment just have to nvme drives which is more space efficient but this one does not okay performance on this laptop is really good GTX 970 with the new six core CPUs from Intel it's a really good combination the CPU is excellent for multi-core applications and I'll leave a link below if you want more details the GPU is also really good it's basically the third most powerful GPU for laptops on the market right now you're gonna get really good frame rates across any of the titles at 1080p and when you pair that with 144 Hertz green stuff just looks awesome and because it's a regular gtx 1070 and not a max q version the thermal output should be a little bit higher but the Zephyrus has this feature where when you lift the lid the bottom panel opens up and it gives it better thermal characteristics the temperatures and benchmarks and in games are actually a little bit lower than the competitors not by a lot but it is noticeable especially on the stress tests the fans can actually be really quiet if you want you get software control on balance mode it's reasonably quiet but on overboost the fans can get quite loud you do get better temperatures though the speakers on this laptop are located on the bottom and actually sound better than I thought they're in the best location I never like speakers on the bottom but actually sound good and the bass is way better than expected so with the Zephyrus mi feel like you're getting a device that is a better value this year than it was with the original Zephyrus you're just getting really strong performance for a lot less money compared to the previous generation overall really good laptop there are a few things I don't love about it like the bezels on the screen and the smaller battery life but if those things aren't like deal-breakers for you this is a really good pick I actually think this is a better builds laptop than the other two so I think it's better built than the arrow and the GS 65 they're all like good but this is probably the best in build quality okay hope you guys enjoy this video thumbs if you liked it subs you loved it see you guys next time