ASUS ROG Zephyrus Laptop: i9-12900H, 16" 165Hz, RTX 3070 Ti, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD Expired

Hmm... the Lenovo Legion Slim 7 Gen 7 with the R7 6800H and 6800S GPU is also on sale for around $1233 with coupons. Is it worth to pay extra for the i9 and 3070 Ti? They both look nice and I assume build quality is comparable.

Hmm... the Lenovo Legion Slim 7 Gen 7 with the R7 6800H and 6800S GPU is also on sale for around $1233 with coupons. Is it worth to pay extra for the i9 and 3070 Ti? They both look nice and I assume build quality is comparable.

Bottle neck by thermals , legion should have better battery life or wait for g14 sale again

Would you mind sharing these coupons?

Man, I'm just four days outside of the price match window... Sucks to be me ig when your former productivity laptop is dead and needed to be replaced ASAP

How's your experience been with it?

Runs like a turbine in Turbo, reasonable to somewhat noisy fan noise (depends on what you consider reasonable) in Performance mode, dead silent to imperceptible in Silent or Windows mode. Temps were very manageable for me, though I will say that is probably because I lucked out in the QC lottery. Battery life off the charger is alright, better than a lot of other gaming laptops equipped with Intel chips with 5-7 hrs depending on the applications currently in use and refresh rate down to 60 and you can opt for further modifications done via Throttlestop, despite all that Ryzen still is king of efficiency and battery life though at the cost of slightly reduced performance plugged in and in Premiere and other workflows that Intel leads in. Asus software (Armory Crate) can clash with Windows 11, but is an all around solid performer for a thin and light gaming laptop that also skews towards productivity. RAM is a slight downer, boasting one soldered 8 gig stick with another 8 gig running in quad channel. Storage at least is upgradeable, both slots that is configured to be one empty, one slotted with a Micron 3500, which benchmarks like a PCIe3 to early PCIe4 drive. You can replace it with another drive by cloning it. My laptop seems to have proper liquid metal application judging by the fact that by default, Throttlestop seems to report CPU temps within the reasonable thresholds for each fan profile before I modified further within Throttlestop.

The QC with this laptop is very YMMV. I seemed to have slightly lucked out. I have minor bleed that is un-noticeable in person that a camera would absolutely make worse and mainly just IPS glow. That said, other people have it worse than I do and you can find those testimonies just searching on Google.

If I really wanted a gaming laptop, I definitely would have opted for something thicker and had more airflow. I DEFINITELY would have opted for a Ryzen system but sucks for me that my workflow requires Intel.

I knew what I was going to get going into buying this laptop (It also didnt help that I watched Jarrod, Matthew Moniz, and Dave2D talk about this laptop and thought, "This is exactly what I'm looking for"). I needed a thin and light laptop with a Intel chip, moderately decent life off the charger (I am perfectly fine with USB PD charging), and can game with decent framerates if I wanted to. For the most part, I got that. I also sprang for Geek Squad 3 year considering the stories I've heard about Zephyrus QC. Personally I'm happy, but I'm not blind to the fact that other people have had a different experience than me.

Advice: $1300 is a killer price for a thin and light gaming laptop with these specs. That said, if you can find it in-store, get it and abuse (read: okay, not really abuse but more so use it liberally) the replacement policy. You will never know if you lost the QC lottery in some regard whether it be temps, IPS bleed, or speakers popping (I don't have that at all so I can't tell you what it may sound like).

Runs like a turbine in Turbo, reasonable to somewhat noisy fan noise (depends on what you consider reasonable) in Performance mode, dead silent to imperceptible in Silent or Windows mode. Temps were very manageable for me, though I will say that is probably because I lucked out in the QC lottery. 500 nits is plenty bright, I usually set to 60-75%. Battery life off the charger is alright, better than a lot of other gaming laptops equipped with Intel chips with 5-7 hrs depending on the applications currently in use, brightness set, and refresh rate down to 60 and you can opt for further modifications done via Throttlestop, despite all that Ryzen still is king of efficiency and battery life though at the cost of slightly reduced performance plugged in and in Premiere and other workflows that Intel leads in. Asus software (Armory Crate) can clash with Windows 11, but is an all around solid performer for a thin and light gaming laptop that also skews towards productivity. RAM is a slight downer, boasting one soldered 8 gig stick with another 8 gig running in quad channel. Storage at least is upgradeable, both slots that is configured to be one empty, one slotted with a Micron 3500, which benchmarks like a PCIe3 to early PCIe4 drive. You can replace it with another drive by cloning it. My laptop seems to have proper liquid metal application judging by the fact that by default, Throttlestop seems to report CPU temps within the reasonable thresholds for each fan profile before I modified further within Throttlestop.

The QC with this laptop is very YMMV. I seemed to have slightly lucked out. I have minor backlight bleed that is un-noticeable in person that a camera would absolutely make worse and mainly just IPS glow. That said, other people have it worse than I do and you can find those testimonies just searching on Google.

If I really wanted a gaming laptop, I definitely would have opted for something thicker and had more airflow. I DEFINITELY would have opted for a Ryzen system but sucks for me that my workflow requires Intel.

I knew what I was going to get going into buying this laptop (It also didnt help that I watched Jarrod, Matthew Moniz, and Dave2D talk about this laptop and thought, "This is exactly what I'm looking for"). I needed a thin and light laptop with a Intel chip, moderately decent life off the charger (I am perfectly fine with USB PD charging), and can game with decent framerates if I wanted to. For the most part, I got that. I also sprang for Geek Squad 3 year considering the stories I've heard about Zephyrus QC. Personally I'm happy, but I'm not blind to the fact that other people have had a different experience than me.

Advice: $1300 is a killer price for a thin and light gaming laptop with these specs. That said, if you can find it in-store, get it and abuse (read: okay, not really abuse but more so use it liberally) the replacement policy. You will never know if you lost the QC lottery in some regard whether it be temps, IPS bleed, or speakers popping (I don't have that at all so I can't tell you what it may sound like).

Thank you! Any suggestions on quick ways to test it? Just driving home from picking up my open box one