ASUS ROG GL702Z Ryzen Gaming Laptop Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

This is where I let you sit down and wait for the shocking news. Despite beating out ASUS’s own monster laptop, the Zephyrus in the number crunching rendering benchmarks, the Ryzen equivalent is about half the price… HALF! At just £1449.99 the GL702Z is a rendering powerhouse of a laptop, and with the RX 580 packing some gaming punch, it’s easily one of the better value for money laptops on the market today.

Overview

I see a lot of laptops come and go here at eTeknix, and for the most part, there’s not a whole lot of them that is different. They usually use the same Intel CPU that’s popular that year, such as the i7-7700HQ, and the same mid-to-high specification GPU, such as the GTX 1060. To have something that’s completely different come through is a breath of fresh air, and only makes me sad that we’ve not had more competitive AMD laptops in recent years.

Rendering Monster

The Ryzen CPU range for desktops is impressive, delivering 8-cores of raw power that makes multitasking and rendering a breeze, without spending a small fortune. It seems not of that performance is lost in the move to mobile either, as the GL702Z delivered some earth-shattering performance that blows any Intel laptop we’ve tested clean out of the water. If you’re stuck rendering a lot of videos on the go, you have two choices to get this performance. You can either get a Ryzen laptop or spend 3x as much on a workstation grade Intel laptop.

Home and Office

For day to day work and gaming, the AMD hardware has a lot to offer. Obviously, it makes light work of multi-tasking. However, when it comes to getting through a days work, it’s fast and responsive as you would expect. Furthermore, when it comes to kicking back on an evening, it’ll deliver some very competitive gaming performance. The GPU is punchy enough to play any of the latest games. However, it’s that huge 17.3-inch display and the FreeSync technology that really help it shine, giving you plenty to feast your eyes on.

Everything Else

All this laptop had to do is compete with similarly priced Intel offerings, and it certainly did. It beats Intel in the multi-tasking and rendering, and it’s almost as fast when it comes to gaming. Throw in a few bonus features like an LED lit keyboard, punch speakers, impressive cooling, robust connectivity, and FreeSync, and you’ve got a great value for money bundle. It’s not as light and mobile as some may desire, but few 17.3-inch display laptops are, if any!

Pros

• Huge 17.3-inch FreeSync Display
• Competitive gaming performance
• Class-leading rendering performance
• Full-size keyboard
• Competitively priced
• A viable alternative to Intel/Nvidia solutions
• Robust build quality
• Great cooling capabilities

Cons

• None

Neutral

• It’s quite heavy, but it does feature a large display. It’s not like there aren’t small systems on the market if you require them.