Asus turned some heads here at IFA in Berlin today with the upcoming Asus ROG Zephyrus S laptops' display. The gaming laptops are among the first to carry displays with a 300 Hz refresh rate, which Asus calls the world’s fastest. The laptop will be released in October, with Strix-branded models coming in 2020. Prices were not immediately announced.
The GX701 is a 17-inch notebook, and a 300 Hz display will also be on the 15-inch GX502. Other specs weren’t immediately announced, with the company focusing on the displays.
These screens are poised to be the weapon of choice for eSports gamers on the go, though they may need to turn down certain game settings to achieve speeds worthy of the display and will require powerful GPUs. At IFA, Asus has prototypes of the new panel build into the 15-inch and 17-inch ROG Strix Scar II, with both running an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 graphics card.
I got hands-on with the new Zephyrus here at IFA. It looks basically the same, but the screen is incredibly soon. I demoed Rainbow 6, with the frame rate counter going as high as 269 fps. It was extremely responsive, so I could see esports players getting an advantage for it. (Others may question the utility of such speeds.)
Beyond 300 Hz laptops, Asus also announced new Zephyrus models with glacier blue chassis aimed at a wider audience of gamers who also work as creative professionals. Those laptops are the Zephyrus S GX502, Zephyrus M GU502 and Strix G G531 and G731. They will go on sale in Q3 of 2019. Prices were not immediately disclosed.
The new Zephyrus models have Pantone-calibrated displays and will come with RTX 2060 and RTX 2070 graphics cards and 9th Gen Intel processors.
| Row 0 - Cell 0 | Asus ROG Zephyrus S GX502 | Asus ROG Zephyrus M GU502 | Asus ROG Strix G G531 | Asus ROG Strix G G731 |
| CPU | Intel Core i7-9750H | Intel Core i7-9750H | Intel Core i5-9300H or Intel Core i7-9750H | Intel Core i5-9300H or Intel Core i7-9750H |
| GPU | Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 or 2070 | Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 or GTX 1660 Ti | Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 or 2070 / Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 or 1660 Ti | Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 or 2070 / Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 or 1660 Ti |
| Display | 15.6-inch FHD, 144 or 240 Hz, Pantone-calibrated | 15.6-inch FHD, 144 or 240 Hz, Pantone-calibrated | 15.6-inch FHD, 60 or 120 Hz | 17.3-inch FHD, 60 or 144 Hz |
| RAM | Up to 32GB DDR4-2666 | Up to 32GB DDR4-2666 | Up to 32GB DDR4-2666 | Up to 32GB DDR4-2666 |
| Storage | Up to 1TB M.2 PCIe-NVMe SSD with RAID0 support | Up to 1TB M.2 PCIe-NVMe SSD with RAID0 support | Up to 1TB M.2 PCIe-NVMe SSD with RAID0 support, 1TB 2.5-inch SSHD | Up to 1TB M.2 PCIe-NVMe SSD with RAID0 support, 1TB 2.5-inch SSHD |
Updated Sept 4, 2:55 p.m. CEST with hands-on impressions and photos.
