Asus ROG Zephyrus S (GX531) detailed review

The Asus ROG Zephyrus S (GX531) is a 15” gaming laptop, which Asus claims is the thinnest 15-inch gaming machine right now. It sits less than an inch thick and measures 2.1 kilograms, which really isn’t a lot when you think about it. It packs that signature “Aero Active” hinge, where the bottom opens up by a few millimeters when the laptop is open, all to aid in better air flow. Seeing how the GX531 packs an Nvidia RTX 2070 with the Max-Q design, this machine will definitely need the extra cooling. We’ve had the laptop in our labs for some days now and after having put it through a bunch of tests, we finally know whether to recommend the laptop or not. Short answer, it's not simple. For the long answer, read on.

Specifications

Build and Design

The Asus ROG Zephyrus S is all kinds of slick and sleek. With the lid closed, it measures less than an inch thick, which is quite a feat for a gaming machine. It was the primary reason for me to actually consider buying this laptop for personal use. When it's closed, it feels like an invincible tank.

Once the lid is open, another lid lifts up from the bottom, creating an opening just a few millimeters wide for the fans to pull in more air. The hinges, of both display and the metal plate that lifts from the bottom, are extremely solid and well built. They will not be the parts that left you down, but instead, it will be the metal plate itself. Holding the laptop while its open reveals just how thin and hence “spongy” this plate is. It’ll be very easy in prolonged use to cause some bends to appear on this plate. Similarly, the display panel itself is very “flexible”, exhibiting prominent wobbling when moved only from one edge. Having used metal in the lid, it was extremely disappointing to find the display panel be so flimsy.

The display lid is extremely flexible

The sturdiness of the GX531 comes from its base, which is milled out of a single piece of aluminium and is incredibly solid and leaves no room for complaint. The all-black paint job with copper trim is also quite an eye-catcher, besides all the RGB lighting on the keyboard and underneath the air vents.

At first glance, the Asus ROG Zephyrus is absolutely gorgeous to look at. Its sleek, all black and menacing. But once its open, and start to witness all the weak points. The bottom panel is incredibly thin and we feel that it will be easy to damage. The display too exhibits extreme “flexibility,” something we’re not too fond of. All in all, we’re led to believe that this power horse, if purchased, will require a little bit of careful handling.

Display

The display panel on the Asus Zephyrus S (GX531) has a number of features worth boasting about. The fullHD panel has a refresh rate of 144Hz with a 3ms response time. Additionally, the display is Pantone certified, meaning it should be colour calibrated right out of the box. We used our Spyder colourimeter designed specifically for LCD displays and found Asus’s claims of “calibrated out of the box” to stand valid.

Pantone Validates FH IPS display with 144Hz refresh rate

With a peak brightness of 340 lux, the display is bright enough to game even outdoors. The matte coating definitely helps with the suppression of reflections and we’re glad that Asus has put a display of this calibre on the GX531. The extremely narrow bezels make it even more enjoyable to game on.

The display on the GX531 is definitely very impressive. If there was one thing missing, we’d say it would be Nvidia’s G-sync, but honestly, after hours of gaming on this machine, we didn’t really miss the feature.

Keyboard, Trackpad and I/O

The Asus ROG Zephyrus S (GX531) features a regular keyboard with 1.2mm of key travel. Unlike the slightly curved keys, we found on the company’s Scar II (Review) laptop, the ones on the GX531 are totally flat. Oh, and you might just notice that the keyboard is placed towards the front edge of the body’s frame, a design choice that the Zephyrus line is rather famous for. This placement does take a lot of getting used to, and some would say, you never truly get used to it.

The Asus Zephyrus S continues the 'unique' ergonomics for the keyboard and trackpad

Typing on them is a decent experience, as they keys offer shallow travel with somewhat sharp. The keyboard island offers no flex, which is a good thing for sure, as it only lends to our earlier conclusion about the build quality. The keys unfortunately do not offer per-key RGB setting, but instead offers 4-zone RGB control.

The trackpad is placed to the right of the keyboard in portrait orientation. This is another Zephyrus signature design choice. I feel that this placement actually makes the trackpad usable while gaming or using the lasso tool in Photoshop. The individual and plush left & right click keys only further add to its usability. Don’t get me wrong, this is a good placement for the trackpad, making it very usable, but its not sensitive enough for fps gaming. Additionally, the trackpad also doubles up as the num-pad by the press of a key. Once engaged, red numbers appear on the trackpad, turning it into a num-pad. Its usable, but given the lack of any feedback, can be a little disconcerting to use at times. I found myself double checking my number entries after using the trackpad due to the lack of feedback.

Probably my biggest point of contention with the GX531 is its I/O selection. You get a Type-C USB 3.1 Gen 2 port with display port and power delivery. This is placed on the right side of the machine, along with a USB3.1 Gen2 Type A port. On the left side, you get a Type-C USB 3.1 Gen 1 port, along with 2 USB 2.0 ports. With only 3 Type A ports, there is absolutely no business for two of them to be USB2.0, especially seeing how Asus is marketing this to creative professionals as well. For a laptop that costs as much as the GX531, USB 2.0 ports are just unacceptable.

USB 2.0 in 2019? On a machine this expensive?

Performance

Finally, onto the good stuff. Packed into this 16mm thin machine is an Intel Core i7-8750H paired with an Nvidia RTX 2070 Max-Q. There’s a 512GB NVMe drive that uses x4 PCIe lanes that’s pretty much the only upgradeable thing in this laptop. The board supports a maximum of 16GB of RAM, which the machines comes pre-installed with, so there’s no point of opening this up. Sadly, for those who get this machine, there’s no possibility of a performance boost in the future.

Now in terms of price and specifications, the GX531’s closest competitor that we have reviewed is the Alienware m15. So for all performance metrics, that’s our comparison.

Alienware m15 comes out ahead in most synthetic benchmarks

While gaming, we had the machine set to Turbo mode from with the Armoury Crate software. We ran our usual favourites and clocked the below numbers.

What was sorely disappointing was the issue of frame-drops every few minutes of the game play. We’d go from 70+fps in Shadow of the Tomb Raider to barely 11fps for a few seconds, and then back up to 70+fps. We noticed this behavior in all our games and concluded that there was some kind of throttling going on. You can see the frame rates for some of the games in the charts below.

Gaming on the Asus Zephyrus S at 1080p, Ultra graphics

Gaming on the Asus Zephyrus S at 1080p, High graphics

Given the powerful components in the GX531, we expected the machine to be a hiccup-free performer. Sadly, for some reason, it stutters in every game that was played on it. We’ve reached out to Asus to verify if there was some issue with the review unit we received and will update this review with new information as it comes to light.

Another interesting aspect of benchmarking the GX531 was its internal drive. The laptop comes with an Intel 512GB NVMe drive utilising x4 PCIe lanes, but the read/write performance happened to be on the lower side. Read speeds peaked at 1709MB per second with write speeds maxing out at roughly 984MB per second.

Thermals

Perhaps the most perplexing part of reviewing the Asus Zephyrus S (GX531) was its thermal performance, and how it would relate to the CPU-GPU throughput. Under full load, the heat being blown out the side was just 56 degrees. At idle, the system clocked a temperature of just 32 degrees. Notably, the system isn’t very loud when in idle, or even under a moderate load, but set it to turbo mode where the dual 12V fans spin at full speed, and we clocked almost 70 decibels of loudness. Either which way, the system is not getting hot enough for the heat to be the reason for throttling.

The bottom lifts when the laptop is opened, allowing for more air to be pulled in

The underside of the laptop also gets uncomfortably hot, meaning you won't be placing this machine on your lap for extended use for sure.

Bottomline

The Asus Zephyrus S (GX531) manages to get a few things very right. It packs a very powerful set of components into a slim chassis, ideal for those who like to carry their gaming or editing machines around. The Pantone validated 144Hz display is great right out of the box. the keyboard will take plenty of getting used to, but the trackpad is definitely a strong point. What's definitely disappointing are the two USB 2.0 ports (should have been USB 3.0) and the flex present on the display panel. The metal plate that comprises the Aero Active cooler could have also been better. If you do get the Zephyrus S, you wont find any complaints in performance, but we do recommend some care in handling this machine.

Huawei Honor 8 Pro detailed review

The story for every great hero starts with a villain. The more intriguing, dangerous and exciting the villain, the more thrilling is the journey of the hero and his success. In the story of flagship smartphones, OnePlus emerged as the brand that gives birth to flagship killers. With the OnePlus 5 however, the price of the flagship killer has risen. At Rs 32,999, the 6GB OnePlus 5 is a great deal, but the success of OnePlus has put another company in an attractive position – that of being a OnePlus killer. We are talking about the Honor 8 Pro. On paper, it brings with it almost every spec and function to take on the OnePlus 5. Will the emergence of a new hero retire the old one?

Looks, design and build quality: A sexy design and no bulging camera

The Honor 8 Pro review unit we received is Navy Blue in colour and it makes the smartphone very attractive and appealing. Kept idle on a table, the device will definitely turn heads. Just like flagships of today the smartphone has an all metal body. 

On the front, the smartphone has a 5.7-inch display with a 2.5D curved glass and Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection. There are no physical buttons below the display keeping the back, home and multitasking buttons on-screen. Above the display, we have the earpiece and the front-facing camera. The bezels on the side of the display are quite thin and the Navy Blue colour just makes the phone pop. At the bottom of the device, you have the USB-C port, headphones jack, and the speaker grill. On the left, we have the Dual-SIM tray and the second SIM slot doubles up as a hybrid SIM slot. On the right, we have the volume rocker and the power button.

Coming to the rear of the Honor 8 Pro, the smartphone has a smooth metal back. It makes the phone slippery, but not as slippery as the Galaxy S8 which has a glass back. The fingerprint sensor rests at the back and is very conveniently located. The one place where the Honor 8 Pro gets more marks than the OnePlus 5 is how well they have fit the dual camera setup on the smartphone. There is no bulge and the two cameras merge seamlessly with the design of the smartphone. The only question that comes to mind here is why are the words “Dual Camera” written next to the two cameras? In the past, this is where Huawei has put the Leica branding when their smartphones boast of dual-Leica lenses. So just stating the obvious next to the lenses seems a bit odd.

The OnePlus 5 is 0.4mm thicker than the Honor 8 Pro, but the Honor 8 pro is about 3mm taller. The OnePlus 5 weighs 153 grams and the Honor 8 Pro weighs 184 grams. Despite such minute differences in height and thickness of the smartphones, the Honor 8 Pro has a 5.7-inch QHD display and sports a 4000mAh battery, whereas the OnePlus 5 has a 5.5-inch 1080p display and a 3300mAh battery. 

Currently, among all the flagship smartphones available out there, the Samsung Galaxy S8 takes the prize of being the best-looking smartphone out there. The Honor 8 Pro doesn’t beat it, but proves that an all metal design mixed with some sexy colours can make for a very attractive proposition. Compared with the OnePlus 5, it’s definitely the sexier of the two.

5.7-inch 1440p IPS display: is resolution the only thing that matters?

Coming to the display of the Honor 8 Pro, like we mentioned, it has a 5.7-inch LTPS IPS LCD display with a 2560x1440p resolution. In our test, the display clocks a maximum of 458 lux brightness. To put things into perspective the OnePlus 5’s 1080p Optic AMOLED display has a maximum brightness of 750 lux. When it comes to real world performance however, the display of the Honor 8 Pro worked fine in indoor, outdoor, and dim-lit situations. The auto-brightness adapts well and the screen is very visible outdoors, on a fine July afternoon in the Noida heat. 

When it comes to the colour reproduction on the display of the Honor 8, by default the display has a cool tone to it, which means that you will see hints of blue all over the place. The display settings of the smartphone offer three presets – default, warm and cool. A good thing is that you also have the ability to manually change the colour temperature of the display if you like. Setting the colour temperature to worm worked perfectly for us. 

One of the biggest downsides of the display is that the viewing angles aren’t great. Watch the display dead center and everything looks great. Move around and you will realise that the viewing angles of the phone aren’t the best. 

We watched a bunch of videos on the Honor 8 Pro, and apart from the viewing angles, the experience was good. In the Spiderman Homecoming trailer where city landscape looked lush and even Spidey’s red and blue suit looks vibrant. The the dark and gritty environments in the Death Stranding trailer also looked great. The audio output is loud enough for a bunch of people to huddle up and enjoy watching these trailers. 

Overall, the content consumption on the display is a treat. Be it playing games or watching movies. The only downside is that the viewing angles aren’t great.

EMUI 5.1

Straight out of the box, the Honor 8 Pro runs on Android 7.0 skinned with the EMUI 5.1. Those that have seen Honor's UI in action in the past will feel at home here. Since the smartphone has 6GB RAM, we didn’t encounter any EMUI related stutters in every day work, multitasking, gaming, so on and so forth. 

The UI doesn’t have childish or cartoony icons anymore, and the number of preloaded themes on the device are enough to give it a more mature look. By default, there is no app drawer and all the apps are listed on the home screen, but if you are someone that likes the app drawer, you can get that by changing the home screen layout in the settings menu.

Overall, there is nothing to complain about the UI of the smartphone. There were no random crashes and the overall experience of interacting with the UI, multitasking and accessing the quick settings from the drop down was a breeze. 

Performance: A beast on the inside?

Starting with everyday performance, there was no noticeable lag, hiccup, or problem with launching everyday apps and playing games. Be it multitasking, browsing and heavy gaming, the Honor 8 Pro can handle anything you throw at it. There were no serious heating issues with the smartphone either. Yes, when you play a heavy game like Asphalt 8 for a long period of time, the phone does get warm, but that’s normal as the metal back is dispensing heat. There was nothing alarming about the temperature the smartphone reached. Moving to the fingerprint sensor at the back, it is blazing fast and accurate. It unlocks in a heartbeat and that is very good.

Below is a look at how the Honor 8 Pro performs compared to its competition when it comes to benchmarks.

Honor 8 Pro: Dual camera

Coming to the camera, just like so many other Huawei and Honor smartphones, the Honor 8 pro sports a dual camera setup. Unlike other Huawei products we’ve seen, this one doesn’t house the Leica branding. Both the RGB and monochrome sensors on the Honor 8 Pro are 12 megapixels. The logic behind two sensors remains the same as previous Huawei devices – more light for better pictures. With some software mumbo jumbo, the Honor 8 Pro combines data from both sensors for good looking images. 

When it comes to the performance of the rear camera, in well-lit situations, the camera clicks good photos. The details are good and the colour reproduction is quite accurate. But, when it comes to low light, the loss of colour and details is obvious. The images clicked in low light are noisy too. The bokeh effect in well-lit situations comes out very well. There are good details in images, and the fact that you can control the level of blur in post-production is nice. From a subtle effect to an absolute blur the effect is impressive. Overall, the camera performs well in good lighting conditions, but not the best when it comes to low light. To put things in perspective, the Honor 8 Pro has a better camera when it comes to well-lit situation and bokeh effect, when compared to the OnePlus 5, but the OnePlus 5 has a better camera for low light photography. Below are some camera samples.

Battery life

Like we’ve mentioned earlier, the device has a 4000mAh battery tucked into that slim profile. Considering the device has a 2K display, you can expect some intensive apps like games and Netflix to guzzle the battery. I typically lost close to 15% battery with under 1 hour of Netflix viewing. You can expect considerable battery drain if you are a heavy gamer too. In both cases, the brightness was set to auto. However, if you are a basic user who makes calls, some texting, YouTubing, a bit of social media and some light games and web browsing, you will be left with 10 to 20% battery at the end of the day, depending on usage. In our PC Mark battery test the device lasted for 517 minutes. To put things into perspective, the OnePlus 5 lasted for 750 minutes. 

Bottom Line

Overall the Honor 8 Pro is a good device for what it offers. The build and design of the phone are fantastic and everyday work happens very smoothly on the device. There isn’t a game or app that didn’t perform on the phone. The battery life is decent. If there is a downside, it’s the viewing angles and overall brightness of the display. The camera offers good performs in well-lit situations, but isn't great for low-light photography.

So is this the OnePlus 5 killer we’ve been waiting for? Well, let’s broaden the horizon shall we. The Honor 8 Pro is priced at Rs 29,999. The OnePlus 5 starts at Rs. 32,999. Other smartphones in this price bracket include the Oppo F3 Plus and Moto Z2 Play. If you are looking for some modular enhancements, then you can consider the Moto Z2 Play, it is an interesting product. If you are looking for raw power and a brighter display, then the OnePlus 5 is the way to go. But if a sleek and sexy device is what's on your mind, and stock Android is not a must, then you can consider the Honor 8 Pro. It has all the makings of a phone that is great value for the buyer’s money.