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The Asus Zephyrus GX502 is a high end laptop and as such it benefits from excellent build quality and aesthetics. You can immediately tell it is a premium laptop thanks to the RGB lighting, brushed aluminium finish and attractive thin bezel design. The entire chassis is remarkably thin yet there is no flex and it is build to a very high standard.
The lid opens smoothly to reveal an excellent display which ticks pretty much every box. You will have to disable Nvidia Optimus to enable G sync functionality but the clever Optimus technology is well worth having when you use this laptop on the go. Performance is restricted significantly but the battery life is impressive, meaning that it can be used for work during the day and play at night.
The ROG Armoury Crate software can be opened with the press of a button and it makes monitoring and changing profiles on the laptop a breeze. It's also where the Aura lighting is controlled which has plenty of effects to choose between and customize. Other functions like the keyboard and touch pad are good to use, responsive and easy to adapt to. The speakers produce a decent sound for such as small chassis however the lack of a webcam might be a disappointment for professional users.
When it comes to performance the GX502 scored well in all of the benchmarks and you won't be disappointed by its gaming prowess which takes full advantage of the 144hz display. However the updated i7 9750H provides no real improvement over its predecessor and the GX502 cooling system struggled to keep the CPU cool.
My closing thoughts for the ASUS Zephrus GX502GW are mixed and I will elaborate for those of you who haven't read the whole review from the beginning.
This ASUS laptop is finished to the highest standards, it is a beautifully designed, svelte laptop. The thin bezel adds to the modern design appearance. My main concerns are based around the cooling system and the noise and heat it produces.
Even in the silent profile fan noise is clearly audible and that is when the CPU performance is restricted quite significantly. I also found that large areas of the chassis heat up after about an hour or so of normal, non intensive use.
We feel it is acceptable for a laptop to get hot around the vent areas but with the entire keyboard and wrist rest getting uncomfortably warm it becomes a rather unpleasant laptop to use. There are other competitor products on the market which are just as loud but they cool more effectively and we feel that ASUS need to work on the cooling system for future revisions of this system for it to become a serious solution for the demanding enthusiast user.
Pros:
- RGB lighting
- Great build quality
- Excellent 144hz, G-Sync, 3ms, Pantone thin bezel display
- Responsive, easy to use touch pad and keyboard
- Good battery life for a gaming laptop
- Decent usable speakers
Cons:
- Hard to access upgradable components
- Gets too hot
- Fans make audible noise constantly
- Chassis and keyboard get hot
- Below average storage
- High price tag
- Lack of a webcam
Unfortunately we cannot find our review sample for sale in the UK however the slightly better specced 240Hz model can be found HERE
Kitguru says: The ROG Zephyrus GX502 is a fantastic looking system, its both svelte and powerful, but it runs very hot and emits a lot of noise under load.
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