 This right here, believe it or not, is the fastest single GPU gaming laptop that we have ever had in our office. The Zephyrus GX701 is an absolute beast, rocking a 6-core Core i7 processor and a GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q that's clocked closer to a desktop spec than the laptop one. But how the heck have they managed to cram all of that power in here, and... Has the extra performance been worth the, uh, interesting design choices that, uh, you know, like the keyboard placement? Wait. Wait, where's the webcam? It's not here. It's not here. Is it under here? Oh. No, that's just our sponsor. Build.gg! Build.gg is the same folks behind CableMod, and they made a website where you can show off your new rig. Check it out at the link below and enter their 10K Challenge Contest! Go, go, go. 🎵 The Zephyrus GX701 does an excellent job of looking both classy and gamery at the same time, blending eye-catching details like the colorful ROG logos and RGB keyboard with a very sturdy black magnesium alloy chassis that gives the device a distinctly premium feel. Now, the Zephyrus does look a bit like an oddball, but at this point we've pretty much come to expect its small offset vertical trackpad, its shifted keyboard, and the ventilation flap party trick that opens up the back of the chassis for improved airflow. Speaking of party tricks, in the box you get a little metal sculpture of the ROG logo, which is cool, I guess. But honestly, Asus, I would have much rather there was a gigabit ethernet dongle in here. It's the only port that's really notably missing from what's otherwise a very solid assortment of I.O. with USB-C, with charging, and full-sized HDMI all making appearances. Now let's get into performance. As we discussed in our review of the MSI GS75, Nvidia's mobile RTX cards can have extremely varied thermal and power targets with about half of their performance depending on laptop manufacturer's ability to completely optimize both cooling and power delivery. So with that in mind, before we proceed with our testing, we need to disable the illuminated logo right here above the keyboard because according to Asus, it's possible to see a 3 degree increase in temperatures while it's on. And when push comes to shove, it turns out that we are not actually willing to give up real performance for RGB lighting. And we don't have to. In the 3DMark Port Royal test, our GX701's graphics core managed 1600 MHz for the duration of the test time, which is shockingly close to desktop performance and, as a side note, absolutely smashes the MSI GS75. This translates into real-world performance that just runs circles around last-gen laptops, enabling high refresh rate gaming and AAA titles that previously would have run closer to 60 FPS than they would to 144. Now we haven't got any other Max-Q laptops in yet, so we don't know if others on the market will be equally fast, but we do know that they won't be faster. For that, you would need something truly massive, like the ROG Mothership or the Alienware Area 51M. And there's more good news. The FPS isn't the only thing that's been turned up here. So has the screen size, with a 17-inch thin bezel display sitting where a 15.6-inch one used to be. But this did come with a sacrifice. Not only is there no webcam up here, there isn't one anywhere else on the machine. Blasphemy! Now, ASUS' solution was to pack a 1080p 60 FPS webcam in the box, with the logic being that, well, we have to choose between one of two options, including a barely usable webcam, like what MSI did with the GS75 Stealth, or include one that doesn't fit in the laptop's chassis, but is frankly good enough for Twitch streaming. Well, okay, fair point, but here's my take. Why are you guys acting like there are only two ways of doing something? Why is it my job to come up with something else? Here's an idea, free of charge. You make an indent here, and you put a camera bump there. The smartphone industry has been doing it for years, and then we could have even better front-facing cameras. Or, I mean, while we're thinking outside of the box, instead of this going on like this, how about magnets? There is no reason that they couldn't have run a USB 2 interface up here, had little contact points that power it and handle data, and you just put it on there, and it snaps into place. Now, in fairness, as it is, the quality is great, the best that we've seen on a gaming laptop, but the implementation is truly clunky. Back to the display, though. This thing is very impressive. It's a 144Hz IPS 1080p panel with G-Sync, 3ms response times, and factory calibration from Pantone. Frankly, it's awesome to game on, and it's got other benefits, too. Asus astutely noticed that a lot of people purchase gaming computers like this for professional tasks, like CAD, music creation, and video editing. So they actually tuned the display to be more suitable for these tasks. And it's great, because video editing on laptops used to be a giant bag of suck. Nowadays, honestly, for basic cutting, you can't tell the difference, and even for some light After Effects work, they are pretty darn capable. Of course, for more professional or creative work, CPU power is key, which is why desktops still have a lot of life in them, by the way. I mean, any system with a Core i7-8700K will destroy the Zephyrus for a lot less money, but Asus has done quite a bit to make the Core i7-8750H in here more potent. Its 1200 score in Cinebench is higher than most Core i9 laptops that we've tested, and under an all-core synthetic load, the CPU gets toasty while it's turboing, then settles down to a more reasonable level at around 3 GHz sustained. That's not bad. The only way to get more performance out of a laptop would be to buy something much thicker, which is kind of becoming a recurring theme here. And along with its strong CPU performance, the GX701 can be equipped with up to 24 gigs of RAM, 8 gigs soldered while the remaining 16 is on a sodium slot, and a 1 TB NVMe SSD from Samsung that really impressed us. Like this machine regularly loaded games and completed tasks faster than the two RAID 0 SSDs in the GS75. But performance only gets you so far. Let's return to the questionable keyboard and trackpad placement. I'm actually gonna let Alex, who did up the review on this, field this bit. Over the last two years here, I've used a ton of laptops, and I have to say, this design choice of putting the keyboard right here is not nearly as bad as you'd think. Like, using it on your lap is a really bad time. And so is going from one side of the screen to the other with this trackpad. But beyond that, I'm always surprised by how quickly using the trackpad on the right of the laptop becomes natural to me. After a day of using the Zephyrus, I suspect you'll be reaching for the numpad on other laptops instead of the usual trackpad placement. The only real improvement I would have made is to bring back the front firing speakers from the last Zephyrus, and use this space to make the trackpad even wider. But Linus and I ended up just debating of whether we'd end up giving up the surprisingly good sound quality Asus has been able to squeeze in here. One thing we agree on for sure, though, is the quality of the keyboard. It's got a bit of an unusual feel, but the strokes, while short, have a nice tactile feel, and the keycap stabilization is well above average, making it pretty forgiving for inaccurate typists. It's solid, and Asus was actually particularly proud of their volume knob, which really does have quite a nice feel and satisfying click for mute. You guys hear that? Alright, so that's all fine and good, but the biggest problem with the Zephyrus has always been its portability. It's small, yes, light, ish, but the last model had a wimpy 53 watt-hour battery that struggled to get three hours of light to moderate use in our testing. To address this shortcoming, Asus has finally upped the battery capacity to 76 watt-hours. Now, to get the most out of it, you're gonna have to make some tweaks. You're gonna want to switch out of dedicated GPU mode, which means disabling G-Sync and allowing the Intel iGPU to take over for lighter tasks, and, of course, you're gonna have to dial back your RGB and knock the screen refresh rate down to 60Hz, but, if you do all these things, it adds up to letting this guy run for about five hours on battery with light to moderate use. Not too shabby. And the Type-C USB charging also helps in this regard, because it allows you to pack a much smaller 65 watt charger if you don't plan on gaming, saving you a pound or two in your backpack. So as long as you have a desk wherever you're planning on working, the Zephyrus is now a much more compelling option than ever before. As for upgradability, well, no one's perfect. Opening it up and replacing the RAM or storage is possible, but there's only one RAM and one M.2 slot making upgrades more wasteful and therefore expensive, which in turn makes it harder for us to recommend the spec'd-down versions of this guy if there's any chance that you might need to upgrade them later. Which I guess brings us to the conclusion for our model here. Coming in at an eye-watering $3,300 US dollars, it's expensive. So if you want something cheaper, the MSI GS75 is a solid option, and the Zephyrus GX531 still gets you the same CPU for about $1,300 less. But the GX701 still walks out of here with a solid recommendation, thanks to ASUS's zero compromise approach to cooling, battery life, and build quality with extra marks for the Pantone calibrated display. Did you ever wonder what's actually wrong with your car when the check engine light is on? It can mean almost anything. 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