Asus ROG Zephyrus M15 Review! Runs Very COOL! ❄️ By Bob Of All Trades

Greetings folks and welcome to bob of all trades, this is a review of the ASUS Zephyrus, the republic of gamers dog, Zephyrus m15, and you guessed it. This is another review sponsored by my wallet, help me out subscribe to the channel, and then I may feature more laptops that are sponsored by my wallets and I can get more content out for you guys. This is the third ASUS laptop. I have reviewed this year, all three of which are again sponsored by this guy right here. So quite the expensive, endeavor, and I'll have to flip this. When I am done.

Nonetheless, this is a very interesting laptop and if it had done one, maybe two things, this could have easily been one of my favorite intel based CPU solution laptops at this price range for the year 2020, at least up into this point. You see I bought this at Best Buy for eleven hundred dollars and I do believe they typically run for 12.99, so 1300 at Best Buy links in the description below for the model number and just all the nitty-gritty details for this particular laptop. So, let's talk about what's inside this 4.4 pound magnesium, alloy, chassis and plastic, lid laptop, because there's a lot to love, there's a few things that are a little disappointing. Let's proceed with the guts right here we have this six core, 10th generation intel CPU. This is the 10750h.

We have a four screw mounting point solution for good core uniformity. I really do appreciate this ASUS. Keep it up job well done now on these particular CPUs they're, very special, because the ROG series from ASUS 10th generation intel chips. They get liquid metal on the CPU only, and that is awesome. Amazing thermal performance here rarely exceeding 80 degrees Celsius, no joke, whether I'm using handbrake or cine bench, 20 or even gaming.

Occasionally you might see it get 84.85, but then it tends to dial itself back down to around 77.78 degrees Celsius. What an amazing thermal solution they have here, coupled with the liquid metal and the power limitations on this, are very high, depending on what you use for turbo performance or silent profiles. Of course, we can set this up manual and again more on this later on in the video, but one of the cool things about these ROG laptops, and I'm happy to share with you- is that upon a cold boot, not a reboot. If the system is powered down, hold down the f2 key power on the system- and this will get you into the bios where you can have access to the advanced bios tab and from there you can undergo the core voltage offset. That's right, you can under volt in the bios by holding down f2 upon a cold boot into your Zephyrus m15 very nice.

Now! Beware! Here! Don't push this too far. I highly recommend testing this in software first 10th generation intel chips do not under volt nearly as far as ninth generation. Ninth generation does not under volt nearly as far as eighth generation. Okay, so be very careful here, a 50 millivolt under volt is kind of the standard, nearly guaranteed under volt that you should be able to get out of these chips in 80 millivolts under volt you're really playing the cards here. This could be very close to blue screen of death when rounding errors.

The best thing you could do is maybe do this in software with at or throttle stop, and once you are confident within your own testing, then proceed to under volt inside the bios, but be careful you push too far. You could break your system just a little tip, f2 upon a cold boot, advanced bios tab will give you access to under voting on these ROG 10th generation, intel CPU, laptops, very nice, so uh. We do appreciate that not to sure if ASUS wants us to know about that, but just be very careful, don't break your system. Yeah, warranty might get voided there. Now when it comes to the graphics card inside this particular unit, we do have the GTX 1660 ti.

It is the 90 watt variant and within the software it will overclock itself, and it performs wonderfully. As you can see here, our fire strike graphic score and physics score for the CPU, very nice, well-balanced system here and has been a quite a pleasure to you so nice job there ASUS. I really have two complaints on this laptop and the first one comes down to the memory. One of the dimes is soldered onto the board. Meanwhile, the other one, as you can see it is right here.

This particular unit has 16 gigabytes of 3200 megahertz memory, but it defaults itself down to 2933 speeds. Most intel based 10th generation. Laptops anyway, will feature 3200, megahertz dimes, and then they just down clocked themselves to 2933 towards the intel spec and that's a lot more normal than you think. This isn't a problem. Just a heads-up on their website and within let's say CPU.

The dimes will show themselves as 3 200 megahertz, but when you use software to actually read the factual speeds that are happening in real time on the system, it is indeed 29.33. So just a heads-up, but more importantly, one of the memory dimes is soldered, so you will have eight gigabytes soldered in this case and then eight gigabytes that you will be able to replace. Should it fail, which memory rarely fails. The problem with this is that if you desire upgrading to maybe a 16 gigabyte, a dim solution for a total of 24 gigabytes or maybe add a 32 gigabyte solution there for a total of 40 gigabytes of memory, you will only have dual channel up until you hit that 16 gigabytes of memory. Anything beyond that.

It will then revert to single channel performance, and this will definitely impact performance negatively, and you may notice this during you know heavy photoshop sessions or various things like that. So as a gaming laptop, this is okay, but as somebody who edits video, this would be unacceptable for me, but I understand that most people are not going to live the laptop life quite like I do and a solution like this might be okay, but I just thought you should know one dim is soldered. One of them is available to upgrade, which I wouldn't see why you would do that. Nor am I recommending you doing so moving forward. The network interface card is the ax201 Wi-Fi six.

It is located right underneath this heat pipe, and it too is soldered to the motherboard. Now it's very unlikely that you're going to have a Wi-Fi failure, but if you do you're going to have to send that in for a warranty, not a fan of this, I would prefer us to be able to replace it and I feel like there's enough room there without compromising the thickness of the laptop. But hey. What do I know for storage? We have two m.2 slots, both support PCIE and the first slot is occupied with half a terabyte. Now when it comes down to the battery that 76 watt hour battery was actually good for around four to five hours.

Now, yes, could you watch YouTube videos or movies and get a longer runtime? At let's say, half brightness with the RGB keyboard turned off? Yes, of course you could. You could probably get eight or nine hours no problem. I was actually able to see this idle for just a little over 10 hours, but realistically speaking when you use your laptop unplugged, generally you're going to see around four to five hours unplugged and if you're, hammering away at some editing solutions or photoshop or gaming, then of course you're going to shrink that down quite a bit, usually gaming, unplugged you're only going to get about an hour and a half, and that's not something. I feature on the channel because that's not something I recommend draining a battery. That fast is usually not a good thing, so expect four to five hours, unplugged from the wall now for those out there that were concerned about maybe blocked ventilation on this model.

Here, there's no such thing right on this particular laptop. We do have perfect airflow and once again great temperatures, which I will be revealing later on in this video okay. So now, let's talk about the display. This is the elephant in the room. For me, we do have a full HD IPS type panel.

It is 144 hertz, but it is at 66 standard, RGB, 298 nits. Now I'm okay with the brightness, but I'm just I'm, not okay. With this display, the model number is the exact same panel that they put in the a15 ASUS, the tough 506, and it's just not a good display and on that particular laptop fine. I get it, but this is not even doing the customer a disservice at this point ASUS. This is doing yourself and your reputation a disservice, because please watch this whole entire review.

This is an awesome laptop. It is so good no lie. I love this machine, and it is definitely deserving of a better display. This machine is too good for this display. It really is ASUS.

Maybe you should have made this magnesium, alloy plastic and given us a better panel or something because there's just so much about this laptop that you guys just knocked out of the park that the display stands out like a sore thumb. However, most gamers out there are they: are they gonna care? I maybe they will, I'm a gamer and I care I was a gamer before I was a content creator and I cared then you can tell immediately. That is a dull display, but I am surrounded by really nice laptops lucky me and that's great, and I was able to identify the poor color saturation on this immediately and yes, I do all of my testing with a spider 5 pro okay, so I do get the factual results of this particular panel. That is a bummer now powering. All of this is a 230 watt power supply, and it is appropriately sized wattage wise for this system.

Asus is still using their chunky and relatively sharp edge power supply unit kind of signature power supply brick for the ASUS laptops really doesn't get that hot at all. When the system is under load- and I don't have much to complain about when it comes to this now, please stick around for the rest of the review, because you're going to see why the rest of this laptop is great for the money that you are spending on this machine set aside a soldered memory dim and a poor display. Let's proceed usability of our m15, starting with the port selection over on the right hand, side. We have a four lane, thunderbolt 3. , very impressive, at this price point.

It also does charge via USB. So my 65 watt charger has been nice. When I take this with me, I can plug and play, but do not game on the USB type chargers. This performance will be quite lousy but great to charge on and after all. That is why we want it.

We also have two USB 3s the exhaust and a lock now over onto the left hand, side. Of course, we have some more exhaust the barrel power port, which features the 230 watt power supply, which can be found once again right here. We also have the local area network port glad this is here with the tab up for easy disconnect. You have HDMI another USB 3 and the headphone and mic port. Now this has a built-in DAC, so the headphone audio is some of the best that I have featured in 2020, so nice job ASUS opening this up with one hand, could not have been easier windows.

Precision touchpad is plastic, it does have good click, symmetry honestly, it gestures and works pretty well. I wish it was glass, I suppose, for this price point I really can't complain and moving on to the magnesium alloy deck does not leave fingerprints, which is nice. It is not cold to the touch, but it does not get real hot under load, either with the keyboard. Having short travel, the keys sound like this. It is pretty easy to type on.

It's definitely an above average keyboard. As far as the keyboards that I have used on laptops gaming laptops for the year 2020, it's not too loud either. No macro keys on the left, which I like ASUS, puts these up top for volume down volume, up, mute, the microphone and their ROG key, which will give us accessibility to the software. The power button has a nice click to it. There is no built-in webcam on this device, however, a bit unfortunate given certain times, although these chassis were probably put into production and mindset well over a year ago, so there's nothing.

They could have really done about that. If you need a microphone, webcam built-in type solution, then definitely look elsewhere or just go with an external device. Now the speaker audio, this is really nice. It actually has a pretty good base to it and overall I'm pretty pleased, but it did fail. The DPC latency with flying color, so maybe not use this for real-time audio, but just have a listen for yourself.

Do overall, not too bad. I am pretty pleased with the usability of this machine. Now, let's move over to the thermals gaming performance and how that works on the rock Zephyrus m15, let's proceed so when it comes to gaming on laptops. Unless there is something revolutionary that I can show you, that's really never been seen or is new to the market. That's one thing, and in that case I would like to show you how that part or parts works together in various titles, so we can see the value in such parts, but in this case we have a six core intel CPU.

We already know how that performs. We've got a 1660 ti at 90 watts, and we have seen how that performs over the last year and a half, and so there's really nothing. That's going to dictate any negativity. Any flaws out of this machine. Aside from thermal throttling power throttling, if we were running single channel memory, that would have a huge impact on gaming performance little things such as the mix switch and a handful of other things that are so minute that most of you would never even notice and as a result, I find the most important thing that I can share with you at this point is fan acoustics and real life thermal performance expectations, so you can understand what you may get should you wish to purchase one of these yourself so with that said, the game in today's demonstration will be Call of Duty, modern warfare, and I'm going to be playing this online so inside.

What we have here is Todd modern warfare, we're running in the turbo profile, and we're letting the fans just scale as they see fit. They will, at this point, run somewhere between 50 and 55 decibels in gaming for hours on end, the average temperature of the CPU and GP will be right around 80 degrees Celsius. You may see the CPU get just a little higher, sometimes and then often fall back down into the upper 80s and the GPU. It might hit 81 or 82 degrees Celsius, and that's going to be about it now. Should you desire using the silent profile this one is a little interesting, as temperatures tend to get a little hotter, but the fan acoustics will go down to 34 decibels and then back up to 44 decibels, and if you were to alt tab out it'll start to draw back down a little and then get back into again? It might ramp back up, it's very slow to do so.

Nonetheless, there's still some fluctuation there and a 10 decibel fluctuation can get a little annoying. So I had a hard time sort of controlling the fans in silent mode. Now, if you were to use something such as manual mode where you can get some perfect fan control, what I enjoyed the most was taking the GPU fan and the CPU fan and allowing them to max their speed out once the thermals hit 70 degrees Celsius on both CPU and GPU, and this gave us the best thermal performance and acoustic sanity when we weren't gaming, it offered a really nice balance, and what I'm trying to say here is that you do have some tweakability and tuning within the armory crate software. So should you desire a little more quiet, laptop, and you're willing to you know, sacrifice a little of thermal performance. You can do that, but for me, I was put on the headphones enjoying the built-in DAC, allowing the fans to map themselves out at the maximum speed once we hit 70 degrees Celsius on both CPU and GPU, and it was at this point where, no matter what I did, I could not get the temperatures above 80 degrees at this point on both CPU and GPU and as you can see here, this is what we've got excellent thermal performance, excellent gaming performance.

Maximum decibels here would hit right around 54, maybe 55 dbs, but at least they were consistent, and I really enjoyed the laptop at this point now. With all of that said, this is to the consumer. This is a really well-built machine. Okay, it offers nice port selection. I love that it has thunderbolt 3 and, as a gaming, laptop 16 gigabytes of ram should be pretty good for at least a decent long haul.

I can't imagine needing 32 gigs for games for several years down the road. Perhaps we could be wrong there. Time will tell don't upgrade the memory on this. Should you find yourself in a position where you're running out of memory, 16 gigabytes is just not enough, then definitely look elsewhere, because I can't recommend you adding a larger dim on top of the eight gigabytes that is soldered as you're likely going to have performance issues not having a webcam? It is what it is. I mean that's something that ASUS has been doing on a lot of their laptops recently, so you kind of get what you get with that the display all right, so man, I feel like now.

Now I got to talk to you ASUS. It was almost as if you were afraid to decimate the competition at this price point because I can get over the soldered memory. As a matter of fact, who am I to say any of this stuff right, anyone can get over any of the flaws on this machine should an individual find them to be so. But the display on this, this laptop is just too good to have this display inside, and I feel like that was a disservice to you guys, and this machine really deserves a better display. The brightness fine, but a hundred percent standard RGB 144 hertz, is really what this machine deserves, and I know that you can get this with 240 hertz three millisecond response time at a hundred percent standard RGB.

I know that panel exists, but I'd rather that not be held for this price ransom where I have to upgrade to you, know just more expensive SKUs to get more bells and whistles that, maybe somebody doesn't want, I mean I think it thirteen hundred dollars getting a nicer display is a feature that a lot of laptops do offer to the consumer. With that said, there's also a lot of features that this laptop has at that price point that other machines with better displays do lack, and I fully respect that, but I just have to let everyone know the pros and the cons ASUS. You did awesome with this. The thermal performance is spectacular. You put liquid metal from the factory and you guys do a beautiful job on that link in the description below for a video of how ASUS does this? Oh, it's its it's a work of art.

I love liquid metal. You folks did a great job. The build quality here is awesome. This is great laptop to look at. It is marvelous very, very nice eye candy here great port selection, USB charging.

Oh my gosh there's a lot to like, and it's just a couple little nitpicks that really keep this thing from being one of these laptops that I just would constantly recommend over and over again. But with that said, if you're cool with this display, then I say: go for it all right. Folks, that's going to do it! Hopefully you enjoyed this in-depth review of the ROG Zephyrus m15, I'm bob of all trades, and I will see you in the next video.

Source : Bob Of All Trades