Tis the season…to get a new gaming laptop! As the year starts to steamroll towards the madness of the upcoming gaming season, laptop manufacturers have begun rolling out a number of new flagship devices that pack a ton of hardware into a lithe frame. Asus isn’t skipping out on the party, and has revealed its new ROG Zephyrus S17 and M16 gaming laptops that’ll be up for sale in August. Prepare thine wallets, and let’s take a look at these new beasts that have been set loose from their pens.
Asus ROG Zephyrus S17
The big kahuna of the Asus offerings this year, the Zephyrus S17 packs a punch with a 17-inch screen, can be equipped with up to an 11th-gen Intel Core i9-11900H processor, and should be able to easily run a few rounds of Spider Solitaire (the best Solitaire, coming at me you Klondike normies) with its NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 laptop GPU.
Depending on your visual needs, you can grab the S17 with a WQHD panel that has a 165Hz refresh rate and G-SYNC support, or you can splurge on a setup that has a 4K panel with a 120Hz refresh rate and Adaptive-Sync. Interestingly, the sound system features six speakers with dual force-canceling woofers, dual smart amps, and Dolby Atmos. Sounds good. Haw. Laptops are notorious for having a tinny sound to them due to their form factor, although it sounds (Again, I saw haw) that Asus is giving Sony a run for its money on this aspect of notebook design.
What will likely grab eyeballs though is the S17’s keyboard, which can be raised upwards thanks to its hinged design which also allows excess heat to more easily escape from it during a few intense gaming sessions. As for price, you can expect the S17 to set you back R69,999 if you purchase it from Evetech when it arrives in August, with fancier configurations naturally increasing the price.
Asus ROG Zephyrus M16
If you’re in the mood for something that has a more compact design, the M16 will float your boat. Slightly smaller, the M16 has a 16-inch WQHD panel with a 165Hz refresh rate, weighs 1.9kg, and comes equipped with up to an 11th-gen Intel Core i9-11900H processor and a GeForce RTX 3070 laptop GPU. You can cram up to 48gb of RAM into its lithe frame. It has a 94% screen to body ratio, which ain’t too shabby.
Otherwise, it has a similar six-speaker setup to the S17 that also includes dual force-canceling woofers and Dolby Atmos, with this device’s claim to fame being a 90Wh battery that can provide up to ten hours of video playback. According to Evetech, pricing starts at R36,999 for the base model and goes up to R48,999 for the premium version.
Last Updated: May 18, 2021
