A compact but robust gaming laptop: Asus ROG Zephyrus M GU502 review

ASUS has provided to us one from the Asus ROG Zephyrus series in the Asus ROG Zephyrus M GU502, one compact and still robust gaming laptop we review here! The Zephyrus series aims to provide portable laptops with incredible performance, allowing consumers to play AAA game titles without the heft. Let’s start off by taking a look at the specs list below:

According to Asus, this model of the ROG Zephyrus M GU502 is 45% lighter and 25% thinner, with a 18.9mm thickness and weighing merely 1.9kg. The lid is reinforced alloy magnesium, with the keyboard and trackpad having a matte finish. Below the trackpad is a honeycomb design too prevent additional flex, sheltered in a soft-to-the-touch cot.

The laptop possesses a smart cooling system with 83 blade fans with just 0.1mm thickness! Five heatsinks in the cooling system work to redirect the flow of heat from the CPU and CPU. It’s also an anti-dust tunnel that prevents any dust or stray bits from entering the exhausts.

Adjust the speed of the fans from the Armory Crate, with pre-sets. You can set it to silent when you surf the web or watching videos. Pick the Balanced option when you’re working as usual, and go Turbo at maximum power during your gaming sessions.

Going to the display of the Asus Zephyrus M GU502, it’s equipped with a wide 15.6″ (1980 x 1080) HD display at 3ms. It’s an esports grade screen, allowing for FPS players to take the shot with ease. It comes packing with 100% sRGB and Pantone as well as ASUS ProArt TruColor technology for that accurate colour display for content creators.

The 6.2mm frame translate to a more than 81% screen to body radio. It also has a matte layer to prevent reflections. The bottom most bezel is the thickest, bearing the “ROG Zephyrus” logo.

NOT ROG WITHOUT GREAT PERFORMANCE

Under the thin chassis is an Intel Core i7-9750H 9th generation processor coupled with a 6GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660Ti and 16GB RAM. The Zephyrus M unit we had for review comes equipped with 512GB SSD storage and a second M.2 slot for any expansion. You can expand it up to 1TB with a RAID 0 configuration for great read and write speeds.

You can see for yourself that this laptop is fully capable of incredible performance be it for games like Apex Legends, PUBG, Fortnite or software like Adobe Premiere Pro and more, and it’ll launch the programs without issue.

When gaming with the Asus ROG Zephyrus M GU502 for review, the chassis can get quite heated, but in that case, simply head over to the Armory Crate and select your preferred fan speed to keep it cool and maintain performance. Whether it’s Fortnite or For Honor, graphics are crisp and it doesn’t chug. The more hardcore gamers can still play to their heart’s content without worry.

As with other ASUS ROG laptops, the Zephyrus M also has the GameFirst V optimization, with smart mods for various scenarios. Game First V can also determine between cable or WiFi for select applications, so you can streamline its use effectively and with ease.

CRISP AUDIO FEEDBACK

The Zephyrus M GU502 has the ESS 9118 Sabre Hi-Fi Audio that can deliver high quality sound. Unlike most laptop sound chips, the ESS 9118 can see an up to 8 times increase in delivering a variety of sounds, with up to 92% less deviations in sound. There’s a wider repertoire of dynamic sounds and you can feel more of the of the beat with the surround sound 7.1 channels, and Smart AMP technology for a dynamic range by 3.5 times.

The speakers are located on the bottom of the laptop, so the sound might be muffled some, so headphones aren’t a bad idea. The laptop does come with specialized apps for sound, in the Sonic Studio III and Sonic Radar III.

Sonic Studio III

This program makes audio more stable and can record audio from the laptop. You have the freedom to adjust settings accordingly with bass-, voice- and treble-boost options. It has increased recording quality through the microphone with sound reduction, voice stabilizer and acoustic cancelling. Select if you’d like sound output through HDMI, DP, speakers or headphones. You can specify if game sounds are only emitted through their headphones, while YouTube and such can be through the speakers or HDMI. It’s convenient, as the audio channels don’t need to be set manually each time.

Sonic Radar III

If you want to up your game, or have hearing impairment, Sonic Radar can provide a simulated visual of sound location. It is capable of recognizing if a game uses 2, 5.1 or 7.1 sound channels and can accurately locate the direction of sound. It doesn’t do anything to the code or game operations, as it is only an analytical tool to determine game sounds in real time.

Keyboard and I/O

The Zephyrus M has a keyboard chiclet with per-key RGB lighting support and N-key rollover. The RBG lights can be tweaked from the Armory Crate utility which you can start up with just a button press with its personalized key on the left side of the keyboard. Beside it are physical keys for volume control.

The touch keypads respond well and are useful during gaming. Rapid typing even with long articles are no issue, without any sticky keys. The touchpad below the keyboard is equally sufficient. For I/O ports, you can find just about anything you’d want: USB3.1 Type-C, RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet, USB3.1 Type-A, HDMI 2.0b, Kensington Lock, two USB3.1 Type-As and two audio jacks for headphones and microphone.

BATTERY LIFE? STILL SUFFICIENT

The laptop comes equipped with 76Wh Li-ion rechargagble batteries, capable of up to 6 hours of web surfing. When multitasking with listening to music, typing, and watching videos, it more or less lasts 4 hours, roughly the same as though one were gaming. Nevertheless, it does have a Type-C compatibility which allows you to charge the laptop with a power bank when the juice dips below 10%. Quite handy!

SATISFACTORY BENCHMARK RESULTS

As typical with testing gaming laptop performance, we run it through benchmark tests. With the Intel Core i7-9750H CPU and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 GPU, it will be able to provide quite satisfying results. Configurations can change accordingly according to platform and drivers, of course. No big faults can be found in the results, apart from the battery life of the ASUS ROG Zephyrus M GU502 which we can’t do much about in this review.

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VERDICT

All in all, if you’re looking for a pretty great gaming laptop that’s lightweight, easily portable and reasonable price? You can add the ASUS ROG Zephyrus M GU502 to your list. It’s not just for gamers, as it can satisfy content creators from video editors to designers! You can get the laptop in the following models:

• GU502G-UES022T; 7-9750H/Windows 10 Home/8GB DDR4/PCIE NVME 512GB M.2 SSD/GTX 1660Ti 6GB/15.6” FHD IPS 144Hz 3ms, 100%sRGB : RM5,999
• GU502G-VAZ080T; i7-9750H/Windows 10 Home/16GB DDR4/PCIE NVME 512GB M.2 SSD/RTX 2060 6GB/15.6” FHD IPS 240Hz 3ms, 100%sRGB : RM7,499

That’s all for our Asus ROG Zephyrus M GU502 review!

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