ROG Zephyrus S17 first thoughts

I just got Asus ROG Zephyrus S17. I thought to write a kind of first impressions review here, in case someone else is considering to get gaming laptop such as this.

This is the first PC laptop I have ever owned. When I was doing tech demos for corporate they bought me a HP Omen. Remembering carrying that and it’s 300W (Mac Mini shape and size) power supply around is not something I remember fondly. It had a great screen and fast graphics, but was obnoxiously loud, had extremely bad battery life and slowed down to crawling speed if not plugged to the mains at all times. It was also thick.

So actually I wasn’t thrilled to get a gaming notebook but work required me to get one, so I did. I didn’t think I was going to really get excited about using it.

Yeah I had the impression to get a kind of cheap plastic toy that screams gamerrr with LED lights blasting into my face. I knew the specs and that this has IPS display and trackpad in weid place but that’s about it. (All trackpads I have ever used in WIndows have not been good enough for actual use).

This doesn’t feel plasticky at all, and the industrial design is surprisingly good. There is some taste in the black and muted tones on the top shell. So glad the ROG shape is not red on top, but a dark one.

Yeah, turning on the laptop did notify me that I have indeed bought a gaming laptop with a sword swoosh sound effect which got old in about first play. Annoying as heck and although easy to disable, I fear this gets accidentally switched on and I turn this on in a corporate setting…

First big surprise was the quality of the trackpad. For some reason I can’t explain actually I have no issues using this. It’s surprisingly accurate and I almost instantly got used to this location. Not as good as Mac trackpad, but pretty much nothing is. Yeah, good stuff.

Then the common snappiness of the system, it is just really good. This is just as good as my AMD desktop, but in some case seems to be even a tad faster I feel, could be the single core clocking higher than my 3950X. Especially app launch speed.

I even did some heavy work with a scene I am currently working for LA film company in Unreal, the kind of scene with really heavy assets and textures. Even though VRAM will be a limiting factor, I was surprised that the engine worked so fast even with RTX and the machine being in silent mode.

Running games in silent mode is just fine, actually I don’t notice much of a performance difference, but do notice a huge difference in fan noise. The most powerful mode is really really loud, maybe suitable if I need to leave the machine on rendering overnight in some extreme case. I guess the temps are hot but there is no therma

Software wise the package feels very robust and there is almost no crapware, except the McAfee which I changed instantly to Bitdefender. Dammit McAfee even sends me spam “You have a new
identity alert.” saying that they have discovered my personal data was leaked. Even though I have not signed up for any such service. Not this stuff please.

What they do have is the typically gamey named Armoury Crate which is the hub for all the settings including fans and performance. It doesn’t seem to get in the way, and works. Also there is MyAsus service app which has some meh-deals on software, but has decent data on typical stuff that might go wrong with the laptop and a way to email Asus.

MyAsus actually noted me that I have four months left on my warranty which prompted me to inform Asus about it. They replied in 12 hours, saying that no, this has a full year of support by default. I also can buy the extended support which I am considering. Surprisingly fast response, I would say.

This comes with 32 gigs of ram which is enough for nearly everything I do for living, except the very heavy lifting with After Effects that I need to occasionally do. I am under impression that this machine can do 64. If I would really need this on the go, I might look into upgrading that.

Overall, using this for work and fun is really pleasant. The 300Mhz IPS display is really damn accurate, I would say this is professional level stuff. I have tested several higher end monitors and use mainly Acer 27inch QHD which has relatively good color accuracy. I would say this monitor beats it in color accuracy. I am surprised how much I don’t mind this being just HD. I can’t tell a situation where this would be a limiting factor.

Just one thing that gives me some source of concern is the display artifacts I notice after waking up the display from screen. They disappear shortly after waking up. Would rather not to see them, but seems like a software or driver thing.

Yeah, really positively surprised. Seems like PC laptops have came a long way.

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