**A Mixed Bag: Reviewing the ASUS ROG Zephyrus' Keyboard**
The keyboard on the ASUS ROG Zephyrus is an interesting beast, offering both exciting features and frustrating design decisions. One of the standout features of the keyboard is the white LED backlight, which has been upgraded to a rog red scheme. This change not only looks sleek but also provides better color accuracy and visibility in low-light environments.
Another welcome feature is the wider space bar on the left side of the keyboard, designed to promote a more relaxed WASD posture. Speaking of WASD keys, the W key now features a subtle tactile bump, making it easier to locate without having to look at the keyboard. These design decisions show that ASUS has put thought into creating a comfortable and intuitive typing experience.
However, not all changes have been well-received. Perhaps the most contentious decision is the replacement of the number lock key with an ASUS Gaming Center Launcher key. While this feature may seem useful at first glance, it ultimately proves to be unnecessary and intrusive. The inclusion of bloatware from McAfee and Wild Tangent Games is also a disappointment, as these programs do not add significant value to the system.
The introduction of dedicated macro keys is another aspect of the keyboard's design that has received mixed reviews. While some may appreciate having the ability to customize their keybindings, others prefer the layout on the left side of the keyboard. Ultimately, the placement of the macro keys will depend on individual preferences.
Perhaps the most egregious error in design is the placement of the Shadow Play button. Located near the gaming zone, this button can easily be mistaken for the Escape key, which can lead to unwanted closures of menus and stream terminations during gameplay. This decision demonstrates a lack of consideration for the needs of gamers who require precise control over their experience.
Despite these missteps, one area where the ASUS ROG Zephyrus truly excels is in its thermal management. The palm rest remains cool to the touch, with temperatures ranging from 40°C to 42°C even during extended gaming sessions. This is a testament to the notebook's design and engineering, as well as the performance of the dedicated cooling system.
The NVIDIA GeForce GPU also plays a crucial role in maintaining optimal temperatures. The 980M model delivers impressive performance comparable to last-gen 880M GPUs while consuming similar amounts of power. Additionally, ASUS has made significant strides in reducing power consumption through their proprietary Battery Boost 2.0 feature. This feature allows users to adjust the system's settings for optimal battery life, with the option to configure separate profiles for wall and battery power.
The implementation of this feature is seamless, and it provides a level of customization that was previously unavailable on laptops. By optimizing the system's use of limited battery power, users can enjoy extended gameplay sessions without worrying about running out of juice. This feature alone justifies the inclusion of Battery Boost 2.0 in the ASUS ROG Zephyrus.
In conclusion, the keyboard on the ASUS ROG Zephyrus is a mixed bag, offering both exciting features and frustrating design decisions. While some changes, such as the tactile bump on the W key and the Shadow Play button, demonstrate thoughtfulness, others, like the number lock replacement and macro key placement, raise questions about the notebook's overall design philosophy. Nevertheless, the thermal management and performance capabilities of this laptop make it an attractive option for gamers seeking a powerful and efficient device.
**Technical Specifications**
* Processor: Intel Core i7-9700K
* Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080
* RAM: Up to 64GB DDR4
* Storage: Up to 2TB NVMe SSD
* Battery Life: Up to 12 hours (Battery Boost 2.0)
* Display: 15.6-inch FHD display with 144Hz refresh rate
**Affiliate Disclosure**
This article contains affiliate links, which may earn a commission if you choose to purchase any of the products or services mentioned. These commissions will not affect our editorial content or recommendations.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: eni didn't expect asus to change much from the g750 that we reviewed way back when dinosaurs roamed the earth i mean okay it was only six months ago but in the tech world that's like an eternity because frankly the powerful brick-like desktop replacement gaming machine paradigm is fairly mature at this point but the g751 is kind of like the cat in the hat came back same animal some new tricks watch on to learn more oh and make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss any of our other daily tech videos corsair gaming rgb keyboards feature precision cherry mx rgb key switches for 16.8 million color per key backlighting for virtually unlimited customization click now to learn more first up the core specs get a shot in the arm with the top tier models available with the core i7 4860hq which on paper doesn't look that much faster but seems to turbo better than the older 4710 hq and gtx 970m and 980m graphics cards to replace the older 870m and 880m with the same five percent overclock available through asus gpu tweak utility thanks to some non-standard power delivery componentry for the gpu which leads us into the physical tour the overall size shape and weight didn't really get altered so yeah i still really wouldn't want to carry its 4.8 kilogram bulk around with me all day at school or anything but the finishing touches got some nice little upgrades on our much better imo compared to its predecessor instead of a plain black back we get a nice metal shield around the asus logo and sweet red accents on the rear vent covers that hide an otherwise very similar dual fan cooling system which is a good thing by the way because it's quiet under load near silent at idle and the entire outside of the notebook stays super cool to boot on the bottom we find vents a subwoofer and a doorway to another dimension no just kidding it's a two and a half inch hard drive bay and a pcie m.2 slot that can be removed if you wanted to add another two and a half inch drive for raid or something not bad storage options but i feel like asus could have done better with a little bit more effort here moving back up to the i o on the right side we get a standard jack for the 230 watt brick of a power supply that feeds the 6 000 milliamp hour battery ethernet with asus game first packet prioritization and bandwidth control hdmi 1.4 thunderbolt this is a great feature for a creative pro who wants to use this as a mobile workstation by the way usb 3 and audio then on the left we get usb 3 a blu-ray drive and an sd card reader well hold on a second there linus why would we want a blu-ray drive on a gaming laptop do you expect me to watch my movies on a grody tn panel no i don't and neither does asus apparently the 17.3 inch matte finish screen is where the g750 series got upgraded in its biggest most significant way other than the gpu moving to the g751 the g751 now features a 1080p ips panel that looks just great very even backlight great viewing angles just fantastic no overly blurry motion nothing like that yay which leads us to the keyboard which still has correctly laid out arrow keys and nice long travel distances on the keys for a laptop but has actually changed a lot in other ways some good stuff and some not so good stuff first the good the white led backlight is now rog red the space bar is wider on the left now for a more relaxed wasd posture speaking of wasd the w key now has a little tactile bump on it so you can find it without looking and now for the bad stuff the number lock key has been replaced by an asus gaming center launcher key that opens up a mostly useless rog metro ui thing i don't mind the inclusion of the app because it does at least let you see some system info and configure a couple different gaming profiles with different settings for lcd appearance audio eq and gpu overclocking and other than mcafee and wild tangent games and some cyberlink slideshow maker thing the system doesn't come with much bloatware but it didn't need a dedicated key and it definitely didn't need to go where the number lock key should go and on top of that asus seems to already know that we don't need some random game launcher because they went and included a dedicated steam button that launches big picture mode for some reason because everyone likes big picture mode on their laptop and doesn't have steam set to open automatically when their system boots up we also get a couple macro keys up here though i prefer them on the left but your mileage may vary having them on the top might be perfect for you and we get a shadow play button whose position i actually hate worst of all i fired up geforce experience quite a few times reaching for escape and i'm sure that the last thing any streamer wants to do is reach for escape to close a menu and terminate his stream so this button should really be somewhere really far away from the gaming zone on the keyboard but uh yeah i mean other than that the keyboard's fine and all this stuff feels really well intentioned it's just it's kind of a little bit half-baked maybe next time they'll get the layout of that stuff just right speaking of baking though now we get to move on to the best thing about the keyboard there's no baking at all it's so cool the palm rest is only a couple degrees above the temperature of the table next to the laptop the gaming zone doesn't get much hotter and even the hottest part of the top of the laptop stayed in the 40 degree celsius and change range during my stare at the flare and crysis 3 test holy crap and the bottom of the laptop was very similar too i mean i guess there's something to be said for thick gaming notebooks because cool and quiet is good for your ears and good for your hardware performance is a strong point of the notebook too we did a dedicated video on this already which you can watch here but i'll throw the graphs into this video anyway for your convenience the 980m handily beats out the last gen 880m while costing the same delivering new features having lower heat output and lower power consumption and therefore battery battery life battery battery life better battery life which leads us to battery boost 2.0 compared to last gen simple slider to select a target frame rate and control gpu power consumption version 2 tries to better optimize the whole system's use of the limited current that the battery can provide usually about half of what the wall plug can do it also allows separate in-game settings profiles to be configured for battery and wall power within geforce experience so that your frame rate target will be easier to hit and you can use less of your gpu's horsepower and it all works automatically now through g-force experience as long as you launch the game while on battery power it doesn't support just starting a game on the wall and then pulling the plug unfortunately i tried it out in tomb raider with a 45 fps target using the same settings just for an apples to apples comparison at a frame rate that i personally find very usable and it works i've actually seen reports of much better battery life improvements deep into double digits and less demanding games around the internet though so your mileage may vary with this one as well but it's a very very cool feature i guess that pretty much winds it up then doesn't it guys thank you for watching this video like it if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment if your feelings are more complicated than this guys check out the link in the video description if you want to support us you can give us a monthly contribution buy a cool t-shirt like this one or even just change your amazon bookmark to one with our affiliate code so we get a small kickback whenever you buy laptops or screen cleaner wipes or i don't know whatever else is related to whatever's in front of me and i can think of at the time thanks again for watching and as always don't forget to subscribe youi didn't expect asus to change much from the g750 that we reviewed way back when dinosaurs roamed the earth i mean okay it was only six months ago but in the tech world that's like an eternity because frankly the powerful brick-like desktop replacement gaming machine paradigm is fairly mature at this point but the g751 is kind of like the cat in the hat came back same animal some new tricks watch on to learn more oh and make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss any of our other daily tech videos corsair gaming rgb keyboards feature precision cherry mx rgb key switches for 16.8 million color per key backlighting for virtually unlimited customization click now to learn more first up the core specs get a shot in the arm with the top tier models available with the core i7 4860hq which on paper doesn't look that much faster but seems to turbo better than the older 4710 hq and gtx 970m and 980m graphics cards to replace the older 870m and 880m with the same five percent overclock available through asus gpu tweak utility thanks to some non-standard power delivery componentry for the gpu which leads us into the physical tour the overall size shape and weight didn't really get altered so yeah i still really wouldn't want to carry its 4.8 kilogram bulk around with me all day at school or anything but the finishing touches got some nice little upgrades on our much better imo compared to its predecessor instead of a plain black back we get a nice metal shield around the asus logo and sweet red accents on the rear vent covers that hide an otherwise very similar dual fan cooling system which is a good thing by the way because it's quiet under load near silent at idle and the entire outside of the notebook stays super cool to boot on the bottom we find vents a subwoofer and a doorway to another dimension no just kidding it's a two and a half inch hard drive bay and a pcie m.2 slot that can be removed if you wanted to add another two and a half inch drive for raid or something not bad storage options but i feel like asus could have done better with a little bit more effort here moving back up to the i o on the right side we get a standard jack for the 230 watt brick of a power supply that feeds the 6 000 milliamp hour battery ethernet with asus game first packet prioritization and bandwidth control hdmi 1.4 thunderbolt this is a great feature for a creative pro who wants to use this as a mobile workstation by the way usb 3 and audio then on the left we get usb 3 a blu-ray drive and an sd card reader well hold on a second there linus why would we want a blu-ray drive on a gaming laptop do you expect me to watch my movies on a grody tn panel no i don't and neither does asus apparently the 17.3 inch matte finish screen is where the g750 series got upgraded in its biggest most significant way other than the gpu moving to the g751 the g751 now features a 1080p ips panel that looks just great very even backlight great viewing angles just fantastic no overly blurry motion nothing like that yay which leads us to the keyboard which still has correctly laid out arrow keys and nice long travel distances on the keys for a laptop but has actually changed a lot in other ways some good stuff and some not so good stuff first the good the white led backlight is now rog red the space bar is wider on the left now for a more relaxed wasd posture speaking of wasd the w key now has a little tactile bump on it so you can find it without looking and now for the bad stuff the number lock key has been replaced by an asus gaming center launcher key that opens up a mostly useless rog metro ui thing i don't mind the inclusion of the app because it does at least let you see some system info and configure a couple different gaming profiles with different settings for lcd appearance audio eq and gpu overclocking and other than mcafee and wild tangent games and some cyberlink slideshow maker thing the system doesn't come with much bloatware but it didn't need a dedicated key and it definitely didn't need to go where the number lock key should go and on top of that asus seems to already know that we don't need some random game launcher because they went and included a dedicated steam button that launches big picture mode for some reason because everyone likes big picture mode on their laptop and doesn't have steam set to open automatically when their system boots up we also get a couple macro keys up here though i prefer them on the left but your mileage may vary having them on the top might be perfect for you and we get a shadow play button whose position i actually hate worst of all i fired up geforce experience quite a few times reaching for escape and i'm sure that the last thing any streamer wants to do is reach for escape to close a menu and terminate his stream so this button should really be somewhere really far away from the gaming zone on the keyboard but uh yeah i mean other than that the keyboard's fine and all this stuff feels really well intentioned it's just it's kind of a little bit half-baked maybe next time they'll get the layout of that stuff just right speaking of baking though now we get to move on to the best thing about the keyboard there's no baking at all it's so cool the palm rest is only a couple degrees above the temperature of the table next to the laptop the gaming zone doesn't get much hotter and even the hottest part of the top of the laptop stayed in the 40 degree celsius and change range during my stare at the flare and crysis 3 test holy crap and the bottom of the laptop was very similar too i mean i guess there's something to be said for thick gaming notebooks because cool and quiet is good for your ears and good for your hardware performance is a strong point of the notebook too we did a dedicated video on this already which you can watch here but i'll throw the graphs into this video anyway for your convenience the 980m handily beats out the last gen 880m while costing the same delivering new features having lower heat output and lower power consumption and therefore battery battery life battery battery life better battery life which leads us to battery boost 2.0 compared to last gen simple slider to select a target frame rate and control gpu power consumption version 2 tries to better optimize the whole system's use of the limited current that the battery can provide usually about half of what the wall plug can do it also allows separate in-game settings profiles to be configured for battery and wall power within geforce experience so that your frame rate target will be easier to hit and you can use less of your gpu's horsepower and it all works automatically now through g-force experience as long as you launch the game while on battery power it doesn't support just starting a game on the wall and then pulling the plug unfortunately i tried it out in tomb raider with a 45 fps target using the same settings just for an apples to apples comparison at a frame rate that i personally find very usable and it works i've actually seen reports of much better battery life improvements deep into double digits and less demanding games around the internet though so your mileage may vary with this one as well but it's a very very cool feature i guess that pretty much winds it up then doesn't it guys thank you for watching this video like it if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment if your feelings are more complicated than this guys check out the link in the video description if you want to support us you can give us a monthly contribution buy a cool t-shirt like this one or even just change your amazon bookmark to one with our affiliate code so we get a small kickback whenever you buy laptops or screen cleaner wipes or i don't know whatever else is related to whatever's in front of me and i can think of at the time thanks again for watching and as always don't forget to subscribe you\n"
