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The new Asus ROG Zephyrus S17 is a game laptop that has almost everything you could want. With an Intel i9 processor from the 11th generation and an Nvidia RTX 3080 GPU, you can expect a lot of power. Even though it’s not the best 4K display, the 17.3-inch 4K monitor with 120Hz refresh rate adds to the premium experience.
This laptop also has a sturdy metal body, a six-speaker sound system, and an RGB per key-lit optical mechanical keyboard, all of which are features that any serious gamer would find hard to pass up. All of this power and usefulness doesn’t come cheap, that’s for sure. But neither do a sports car or a custom-made suit, two other luxury things you might want to try at least once in your life.
Asus ROG Zephyrus S17 Specifications
| Specification | Details |
|---|---|
| Display | 17.3-inch FHD IPS, 300Hz refresh rate, 1920 x 1080 pixels |
| Processor | Intel Core i9-11900H |
| RAM | 32GB DDR4 RAM |
| Internal Storage | 1TB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD |
| Graphics | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 |
| Battery | Up to 6 hours of battery life |
Design and Build
It was a big risk for Asus to do something like this in a market where nothing like it had ever been done before. All reports say that the unique design worked, giving the S17’s fans more air to cool it and letting hot air escape through the back and sides.
Whether you like it or not, that gap is back in the new Zephyrus S17, but it’s more useful than before. I say this is practical because in the last version, this function forced the keyboard to go in a certain place, which was not ideal. It was near the front edge of the laptop, and the mouse was on the right side of the keyboard, which isn’t ideal, especially if you’re left-handed. You can buy this laptop from its official website
Asus ROG Zephyrus S17: Display
When it comes to choosing the screen for your ROG Zephyrus S17, you have two choices. You can get a super-fast WQHD screen with a refresh rate of 165Hz, or you can get a 4K panel with a refresh rate of 120Hz. The 4K choice is great if you like games with beautiful settings and do a lot of creative work. We got the 165Hz WQHD model, which means it’s for fast-paced games.
We’ll talk more about how well this screen works in a bit, but for now, let’s just say that it has plenty of light and color. It’s bright, colorful, and has a good amount of contrast. Also, the anti-glare surface makes sure that there are no annoying shadows.
Keyboard and Trackpad
The keyboard and trackpad on the Asus ROG Zephyrus S17 are hard to find fault with. When you tap the keys, they respond in a pleasingly springy but subtle way, and the trackpad is big and very responsive. The keyboard and mouse make you feel like you’re in a high-end game, whether you’re driving around a racetrack or looking at an alien world. We also like how the keyboard is slightly tilted.
Asus ROG Zephyrus S17: Connectivity
The Zephyrus’s many up-to-date inputs make it ideal for both playing games and generating your own media. Connecting to external monitors is possible via either the USB-C or Thunderbolt 4 connector.
The latter provides the fastest data transfer speeds and supports connecting two 4K screens or one 8K display. There is an HDMI 2.0b port on the left side as well. Wi-Fi 6 connectivity and a Gigabit Ethernet connector provide you respectable transfer rates when you’re not tethered to a network, and the best possible connection speeds in online games when you are.
Asus ROG Zephyrus S17: Performance
The S17 configuration that I tested was equipped with a 2TB PCIe Gen 4 solid-state drive, a 32GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 GPU with 16GB of GDDR6 memory, 32GB of 3200MHz RAM, and an 11th-generation Intel Core i9-11900H processor. The performance demonstrates that it is stacked, and it is. The following table compares the benchmark scores achieved by the MSI S17 Stealth to those achieved by the Razer Blade 15 Advanced Edition and the MSI GS66 Stealth. As can be seen, there is a significant gap between the two options pretty much down the line.
Asus ROG Zephyrus S17: Battery Life
As usual with gaming laptops, we didn’t have too high hopes for battery life. An hour of video streaming (with the brightness set to half and the sound turned down) drained the battery by 16%, so you can expect to use it for about 6-7 hours total. You’ll get much less if you play games at a high level of activity, but the laptop does have a number of technologies that save battery life. When it comes to sound, the six-speaker setup works well for both games and movies.
Final Words
The ROG Zephyrus S17 is a tough machine. It has the best performance of any gaming laptop I’ve tested so far, has a great screen, and the tilt feature on the keyboard is very comfortable. The battery life and the amount of unnecessary software are the only two problems with an otherwise great gaming gadget. You can’t go wrong if you have the money.
Asus ROG Zephyrus S17 review: The good and The bad
The Good
- Stellar overall performance
- Vivid 1440p G-Sync screen
The Bad
- It’s pretty expensive
FAQS
This includes the 1440p screen, the mechanical keyboard, and the high-quality body. The ROG Strix 17 G733 is better if you want more RGB bling and don’t mind a chunkier form. For us, though, the better screen and more subtle style of the Zephyrus win out.
When I play games, the laptop gets too hot to touch above the number row. After letting HWMonitor run for a while, the highest CPU temperature is about 100C (sometimes a couple of degrees higher).