Asus Zephyrus G15 Review – Don’t buy the 3080..

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Asus’s Zephyrus G15 is a stunning laptop. It offers a Ryzen 5900HS, RTX 3080, 32GB of RAM, and a 1440p 165Hz display, all in a crazy thin and fairly light chassis. But I wouldn’t buy one – at least this model. Let me run you through why.

We have to start with the monster spec. That AMD CPU, the Ryzen 5900HS is an 8 core, 16 thread chip with boost clocks up to 4.5GHz – all while drawing just 45W in performance mode or 65W in turbo mode – that’s the same as Intel’s fake i7 11370H quad core, but with double the cores and double the horsepower.

Speaking of horsepower, this thing monsters productivity tasks. Starting with Cinebench single threaded, in Turbo mode, the G15 sprints to the top of my charts even beating out the 5900HX in the Zephyrus Duo by three points. In performance mode it’s only 5 points down, and clearly a strong chip. In multi threaded the HX shows its legs compared to the G15’s HS, where even in turbo mode the G15 peaks at 4700 versus over 5300 in the Duo. It does trade blows with the 5980HS in the Flow X13 though which is interesting to see.

In Blender and the BMW scene, the slightly thicker STRIX G15 with it’s 5800H actually performs a little better, which is explained by it’s 65W base TDP and 80W turbo mode rather than this thinner Zephyrus G15’s 45W and 65W TDPs. The 5900HS still offers incredibly strong performance, beating out Intel’s now last gen top of the line chip, the 10980HK. In Gooseberry the 5900HS takes the lead from all bar the 5900HX, even beating the 5800H.

Lastly, in the Puget Bench suite for the Adobe CC apps, it shows a strong lead over the 5980HS in the Flow X13. You also get a reasonable score bump by using the turbo mode over the standard performance one, even if fan noise is increased a fair bit.

Now you might be thinking, why am I talking about CPU performance so much on a ‘gaming’ laptop? Well, Asus reckons the people that buy these want to “Game, Create and Beyond”. That’s one of the reasons this top end model comes outfitted with a whopping 32GB of 3200MHz DDR4, and yes it’s a 1x8R module – although the other 16GB are soldered in and not upgradable.

They’ve also fitted it with one of the best laptop displays I’ve possibly ever seen. This is a 1440p, 165Hz, IPS-Level panel with an astonishing 100% coverage of the DCI-P3 spectrum and an excellent calibration from factory – I verified the coverage by the way with my SpyderX, it’s absolutely spot on. On top of that, it’s immensely fast. I’m seeing about 3ms of black to white response time, and about 10ms of white to black. Short of an OLED, that’s about as fast as I’ve seen.

A look at the UFO test for ghosting shows there is next to nothing. Image clarity is again one of the best I’ve seen, with each displayed frame being crisp for around 3ms, and transitioning for the other three. Obviously the ideal would be 0 transition time and clear for the full 6ms, but for an LCD this is excellent. Even the input lag results are phenomenal for a laptop, with LDAT reporting 33ms of average input lag across 20 incredibly consistent shots. To say I’m impressed is an understatement.

So, why don’t I like this model then? It’s all to do with that GPU. An RTX 3080. Now since Asus themselves don’t make this clear on the damn landing page for the laptop, this is not an RTX 3080 like you’d buy in a desktop card. Not only is the TDP a meagre 80W in this compared to 320W for a desktop card, but it’s not even the same core. It’s based on the GA104 core, the same as the desktop 3070 – and it’s got 6144 cores instead of the desktop 3080’s 8704. But that’s not what bothers me here, the problem is because of this thin and light chassis, this is the 80W TDP version of the 3080, which as it turns out is about the same speed (or slower) than the 115W version of the 3070 laptop chip.

Now, at the native 1440p resolution, the G15 does fairly well. At ultra settings it does struggle and if I was gaming on this I’d definitely be turning things down to high to make better use of the stunning display – although having adaptive sync does make the playing experience even at lower frame rates pretty good. CSGO is the only game to exceed the 165Hz limit, with everything including Fortnite all sitting well under 100FPS.

Here’s the kicker though, in Cyberpunk, even with a more recent driver and updated game, the Zephyrus G15 with it’s 80W 3080 is only on par with the 115W 3070 in the STRIX G15 at 1080p. It does hold better 1% lows, but as I said Cyberpunk has been updated since I last ran the STRIX results so that’s quite a plausible reason. The performance gap between the 80W and 115W versions of the 3080 can be seen with the Zephyrus Duo. A full 10FPS higher is a significant advantage here.

In Watchdogs the STRIX G15 is again pretty much tied with the 3080, with the Zephyrus Duo and the XG Mobile 3080 again storming ahead by 6 and 7 FPS respectively. As for Fortnite, I have to point out this is the hardest to directly compare to as the FPS difference from being in buildings, outside, in gunfights and your location on the map swing wildly, but even taking that into account it’s still not keeping up with the 3070 in the STRIX G15 and the Zephyrus Duo holds a whopping 30% performance advantage here. That’s sizable.

So it’s not quite as fast as I’d like, but why does that matter? It’s still a decent performer and a generally great laptop, what’s the big deal? In short, the price. This model, with it’s 1440p 165Hz display, Ryzen 5900HS, RTX 3080 and 32GB of RAM, will set you back £2,600. Over 2 and a half grand! And, if you need a reminder, the STRIX G15 with it’s faster RTX 3070 costs £900 less – and you get a 300Hz display. Sure, the STRIX isn’t quite as nicely built or just as slim, but for £900 I know which one I’d rather buy.

It’s a shame, because the Zephyrus G15 is a really, really nice laptop. The keyboard feels fantastic for both typing and gaming. It’s got just the right amount of travel and actuation force, and importantly for me doesn’t feel mushy at all. The track pad is massive and works brilliantly. The I/O is decent with two USB A ports and two Type C ports, ethernet, HDMI, a headphone jack and a microSD card reader. The gaming experience is pretty good too – looking at that stunning display is amazing, and you can even use it as an editing machine especially thanks to the 32GB of RAM and powerhouse of a CPU.

But, there is some good news. If you want all this, but don’t want to spend £2,600, you can buy the same machine with an RTX 3070 – still 80W, Ryzen 5800HS and 16GB of RAM for just £1,900. That’s still not as good of a deal as the STRIX G15 as it has a higher TDP version of both the CPU and GPU and still costs £200 less, but if this chassis and panel is what you want, that’s the version I’d recommend.