The world’s first AMD Ryzen Laptop: ASUS ROG GL702ZC Hands on, First impressions

During this year’s Computex ASUS gave us a glimpse of their supposed Ryzen powered laptop. Meet the world’s first AMD Ryzen powered laptop — The ROG GL702ZC. Here’s our hands-on and first impressions of the device.

The GL702ZC is powered by AMD’s Ryzen series of desktop processors, a Radeon RX 580 GPU and 24GB of DDR RAM.

Design and Construction

The laptop takes its design cues from its other siblings in the GL series, it has that brushed Aluminum texture on the back panel along with the signature ASUS ROG Logo and two side stripes that light up when the device is on. It’s also quite big thanks to its 17.3-inch display.

You’ll also notice that it has a simplistic layout on its body and ASUS’ black and orange color scheme. It would’ve been nice to see a different design since this is the world’s first AMD Ryzen laptop. Well, at least it’s not your common red and black mobile gaming station.

ASUS gave the GL702ZC three possible display configurations — a UHD (3840 x 2160) IPS 60Hz panel with AMD’s Freesync, a Full HD (1920 x 1080) 120Hz panel with AMD`s Freesync, and a Full HD (1920 x 1080) 75Hz panel with AMD’s Freesync. What we have here is the Full HD (1920 x 1080) 120Hz IPS panel with AMD’s Freesync technology. The display has good color accuracy, reproduction, and brightness.

The keyboard is shifted slightly to the left to accommodate the numpad which is almost the standard layout for laptops. The arrow keys can feel a little bit cramped though, and accidental press’ might occur from time to time. Either way, the keyboard has good travel distance and a tactile feel to it making gaming and typing comfortable.

Moving on to the I/O, on the right side, we have the power input, an ethernet port, a mini display port, an HDMI 1.4 port, a USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C port, a USB 3.0 port, and the 3.5mm headphone and microphone combo jack. On the other side, there’s a couple more USB 3.0 ports, a 2-in-1 Card reader, and a Kensington lock.

Overall, the laptop feels solid and well constructed. There is little noticeable flex on the keyboard area and the hinges feel sturdy. It has quite the weight though and a slightly big footprint due to its size, you’d want to have a big bag to carry this one around.

Performance

ASUS gave us the chance to put the GL702ZC for a little spin. The unit we tested came with AMD’s Ryzen 7 1700 CPU, 24GB of DDR4 RAM, 1TB of HDD and 256GB of SSD onboard storage. The machine feels snappy as apps and games open without lag and basic navigation and multi-tasking was a breeze thanks to its 8-core Ryzen 7 1700 CPU and 24GB of RAM.

Here are some benchmark results:

Sadly, we encountered a few problems with some of our games during these tests. Performance is close to that of a laptop equipped with Nvidia’s GTX 1060 which means Full HD gaming won’t be a problem.

For our temperature stress tests, we used Prime95 and Furmark. CPU temps maxed out at 85°C, and the GPU temps maxed out at 80°C. This numbers translated to the laptops noise as during our Prime95 test the fans got pretty loud. But then again, these are stress tests and it would generally take a huge amount of effort to emulate this in real-world instances.

Conclusion

The GL702ZC is certainly a contender especially when it comes to raw CPU power. This laptop is also a good choice for content creators due to its CPU performance and color accurate display. Having AMD’s Freesync is also a welcome addition and would add smoother gameplay for users. Being the world’s first AMD Ryzen system means that for a while ASUS will have no competition on the red side. These are certainly exciting times and it’s good to finally see AMD’s return to the market.

ASUS ROG GL702ZC Specs:
17.3″ Full HD (1920 x 1080) 75Hz/ 120Hz IPS Display
AMD Ryzen 7 1700 8-core CPU/ AMD Ryzen 5 1600 6-core CPU
AMD Radeon RX 580 4GB GDDR5 VRAM GPU
24GB DDR4 RAM
1TB HDD
256GB NVMe M.2 SSD
1x USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C port
3x USB 3.0 ports
1x 2-in-1 Card Reader
1x 3.5mm headphone and microphone combo jack
1x HDMI 1.4 port
1x LAN RJ-45 jack
1x Mini Display Port
41.2 (W) x 27.5 (D) x 3.4 (H) cm

Pricing and Availability

The Ryzen 7 variant is priced at Php99,995, while the Ryzen 5 is priced at Php84,995. Pre-orders for the Ryzen 5 variant starts tonight and comes with a ROG Jacket and Coolermasters SF-17 Laptop Cooler. As for availability, the laptops will be released sometime in Q4, with the Ryzen 5 variant coming sometime in October.