The Best Budget Gaming Laptop 2020

- Hey guys, this is Austin. Usually, when you're talking about a gaming laptop,you're pretty much in the $1,000-plus budget. Now there's nothing wrong with high-end gaming laptops. Not only do you get all the fun toys like, you know, high-end displays with high refresh rates and RTX graphics, but you also get some of the nicest designs out there. However, not everyone wants to spend 1,000, 2,000, even $3,000 when it comes to a gaming laptop, and that are where Acer's Nitro 5 comes in. There's definitely something to a laptop that you can take to work or school all day and yet still come home and play some games without breaking the bank. Now specifically what I have here is the all-AMD version, so it's got a Ryzen processor as well as RX graphics. However, you should definitely keep an eye on those prices. So I was able to pick this guy up for $570, and at less than 600 bucks, there's a lot to like. What's not so hot, though,is that sometimes this laptop spikes up to around $700,and at that kind of price, it's a little bit of a harder sell,so definitely be sure to keep an eye out for when the sales are,and, well, just don't overpay for the laptop. Take a look around the Nitro 5, and it absolutely looks the part of a much more expensive gaming laptop. It's all red and black, it's built reasonably well, and you even have a back-lit keyboard which is a nice touch at the price. Now the bezels definitely are on the larger side, and the screen isn't anything all that special. So it is 15. 6-inch 1080p IPS panel, so it's good, it's decent, but it doesn't have any kind of high-end bells and whistles such as that high refresh rate. But, I mean, we're talking about less than 600 bucks. It is hard to complain about this stuff. This screen is totally fine. You also get a solid selection of ports. Not only is there USB-C and Ethernet, but you also have plenty of USB-A ports, HDMI. There's even an SD card reader. Now, at almost six pounds, this is certainly not a thin and light gaming laptop. It's a little bit on the thicker side, and yes, it is made entirely out of plastic, but honestly, it does feel reasonably sturdy. I really wouldn't worry about leaving this in my bag all day. It's what's inside that's really interesting. Now there is a standard Core i5and GTX 1050 version of this laptop. What I have here is the pure AMD version, Ryzen 5 2500U as well as a Radeon RX 560X. This is straight-up not a combo that I've pretty much ever seen before, but you know what, it's actually not bad. Sure, the Ryzen 5 does fall behind the higher-wattage Core i5. When you look at the graphics compared to the GTX 1050, it's actually a slight bit faster, which is especially impressive considering we basically never see AMD graphics in laptops. Performance-wise, when you get into a game like Overwatch, it's really no problem. So right now on 1080p on Medium settings, we're getting a very consistent 60 FPS. This makes sense, right?This is the kind of performance that you would expect out of something that's roughly the equivalent to a GTX 1050. It's not the most powerful thing in the world, you won't be able to play everything on Ultra, but games like this are 100% playable. So we were about to start playing Apex Legends until I realized that this was using the integrated GPU instead of the actual RX 560, so I'm gonna try to fix that real quick. So this actually does bring me to one of the issues that I found with this system in that the driver situation is all over the place. So this does have AMD graphics, it was included with that Ryzen processor as well as the Radeon graphics, but the issue is that even though they're going to be fixing this soon, right now you just can't go to the AMD website and download drivers. You actually have to get them specifically from the OEM, which in this case is Acer. Oh, hi, Austin from the future here, back with an important update. So, of course, the day after we filmed that segment, well, AMD dropped that driver update that they have promised, so now you can go straight to the AMD website and download all the drivers you need for the Nitro 5, and importantly, it looks like Apex Legends is now working. With everything cranked to 1080p Medium, I can see if we pull up Task Manager that the 560 is running it 80, 90% load. It looks like we should be good now. All right, that's definitely better. So, yeah, with a mixture of Medium and a couple of Low settings, we're pretty close to a 60 FPS lock now. With the driver issue fixed, this is a much more usable laptop, so disregard everything I said earlier, it's fine now. So it does look like Fortniteis properly supporting the 560X. So I hop into my settings here. I am able to run at 1080p on High, and now let's see how it actually performs. Okay. Oh, wow (laughing). We just need to make a montage of me dying in Fortnite. I mean, this is fine, like, it was running 50 frames per second until I got shot in the face. Upgrading is pretty easy, although it is a little bit on the limited side. So with a single screw on the bottom, you can upgrade the RAM, so by default, this guy comes with eight gigs, although it's me, I'm definitely gonna upgrade to 16. Not only is that just nice to have, but also considering that we're running a Ryzen processor, having fast dual-channel memory can make a big difference. Then there's the hard drive. So by default, this comes with a one terabyte drive, and that's fine, it's kinda decently quick as far as hard drives go, but it's 2019and you guys should know my stance on hard drives. Just no. Just say no to hard drives. Thankfully, upgrading this is also super-easy. Again, it's just one screw behind the door on the bottom, and I think it's actually a pretty worthwhile upgrade to go to something like a 500-gig SSD. It's not that expensive, and it'll give you a ton of capacity, but importantly, you're gonna get that SSD speed. Now as this is a gaming laptop, battery life isn't exactly the strong suit. Now it is actually pretty decent for a gaming laptop like this. I was able to get around four to five hours of standard use, but of course, you have to keep in mind that you're going to need a charger if you really want to take this out for a full day of proper use, and especially if you're gaming. I mean, you're definitely gonna need it. So when it comes to the Nitro 5, it is all down to the price. Now at $570, with just a couple of upgrades, this is absolutely my favorite budget gaming laptop that I've taken a look at all year. Unfortunately, if you're paying upwards of $600, the value proposition becomes a lot sketchier, so it really does kind of depend on where you're able to find this and how expensive it is. Once they get those AMD driver issues sorted out, there's a lot of potential with the Nitro 5. (children cheering)

Can You Live with a $200 Laptop

- Hey guys, this is Austin. We spent a lot of time reviewing high-end gaming gear, such as $3,000 gaming laptops, what we don't do enough, is check out things that are a little bit more reasonably priced and by reasonably priced, I mean $200for the entire laptop. This is the Asus VivoBook E203MA. Now at first glance, it looks every bit its $200 price tag, but when you're considering this kind of budget, plastic is kind of what you should expect oh boy, is that what you get here. Luckily, that's actually not really a big deal, I mean sure, it's not the most durable thing in the world, but I have no doubt that this will hold up for some decent use inside your bag for normal kind of wear and tear. Something I really appreciate is the size. I used to use an 11-inch MacBook Air and the portability of that was so nice to have and that's sort of where it kind of brings me back with this. Yes, it is a little bit on the small side and there are some sacrifices based on that, for example, the keyboard is a little bit of a smaller layout, compared to standard laptops,but on the flip side, I've spent enough time using things like the Surface Go and the iPad Pro, that I'm kind of used to a slightly more shrunken layout. Something that's a little bit harder to get used to is the display. Now to be fair, it is decent for such a cheap laptop, I've seen much worse. So yes, the white balance is a little bit on the cool side and the size, especially the viewing angles really aren't all that hot, but importantly, it does get bright enough and I can kind of make do with it for normal use, it is, you know, a $200 laptop screen. I've also got to give Asus props for the port selection. Not only do we have a pair of full USB 3. 0 ports as well as HDMI, but importantly, we also do have a USB-C port. Now at this point, I've moved almost my entire life over to USB-C, so it makes a huge difference having it on my laptop. Not only can I use my YubiKey, but I can use a ton of different dongles that I've collected over the last couple years to do basically everything I need to do on a regular basis with this $200 laptop and that goes for most of my experience with using this laptop. Sure, have I been tempted to go for one of the expensive laptops around the office? Yes, but you know what? This is able to do pretty much everything I need it to. I've been using the $200 version of the VivoBook, but if you wanna go even lower budget, Amazon does have a version available for $150, which cuts the RAM down from four gigs to two gigs and the storage down from 64 on my model to only 32 gigs. Now technically, this actually still can run Windows 10, but yeah, I think it's a worthwhile upgrade if you actually wanted to use this for anything more than like a Chrome Tab. Even with the upgraded RAM, you do need to temper your expectations. So for basic use, such as having a few tabs open in Chrome, as well as having Spotify and Slack running, it's usable, but the issue it's just a little bit on the slower side, it'll get the job done, just not quickly. Where the slowdown really happens when you start to push the system with some crazy over the top tasks,such as watching video at 60p in HDor trying to have seven or eight tabs open at once,but as long as you can be a little bit reasonable,and I've kind of forced myself to be over the last week, I haven't had any major issues. Are you kind of sensing a trend here? It's not fast, it's only got a dual-core Celeron, right? You're not expecting anything crazy out of a $200 laptop, but the important thing is, for the vast majority of what I do every day, this has been able to get the job done. What I'm most surprised about is battery life. Now usually, when it comes to cheap laptops,you're getting kind of three, four, maybe five hours on a charge, but this is downright impressive. That sounds so wholesome, it's downright impressive. Even with the screen set to 100% brightness and Windows on high-performance mode, I'm still getting almost eight hours on a charge, that's better than the vast majority of the laptops I take a look and especially, it is way, way better than those gaming laptops that I'm usually reviewing. It's a very, very nice change to not even think about taking the power adapter. To be fair, Ultrabooks also have great battery life,but they also cost, I don't know, like five, six times this,so yeah, I'm not complaining. After over a week with the VivoBook, I've been pleasantly surprised. No, you don't wanna do anything heavier, such as say, video editing or gaming, but I mean, it's $200, what do you expect? We recently did a video trying the cheapest laptops on Amazon and if the VivoBook was included, it probably would have won. If you're looking for a cheap laptop on a budget, I really have no problems recommending this guy, although I am gonna go back to a slightly nicer laptop as my daily now (laughs). (light music).

Is the 2019 Razer Blade Worth It

- So, your Apple sticker's still on my laptop. Just gonna take this off now. (beeping)Hey guys, this is Austin!When it comes to gaming systems, Razer is almost always on the expensive side of things. That doesn't mean that they don'tmake really nice stuff, but the value is not really going to be the strong suit here. For the money though, this delivers some of the best build quality around, but with the brand new 2019 Razer Blade 15, is this the new king of the hillor is it straight up not worth it?Inside you'll find the latest RTX Cards. The advanced version starts with an RTX 2060, but you can spec it up to an RTX 2070 Max-Qor a 2080 Max-Q, which is what my review unit is rocking. There's no doubt that it's powerful. The Blade can handle pretty much any gamemaxed out at 1080p. Pretty decent frame-rates. This includes Apex Legends, Battlefield V, Black Ops 4, you name it. It can't quite hang with the 17 inch ROG Zephyrus Swith it's crazy over the top cooling, but as far as performance goes, the Razer Blade lines right up with what you would expectout of a standard 2080 Max-Q design. A lot of the other specs are basicallyidentical across all of the Razer Blade models. You're getting the same six core i7-8750H,You're getting 16 gigs of RAM, really the main choices besides your SSD size and your screenis the 2060, 2070 or 2080. But there is a huge price difference between the three. Just going from the 2070 to the 2080 addsa full $400 to the price of the Blade. Okay, so let's just take a secondand talk a little bit about price. Now, of course, the Razer Blade has always beena premiumly priced laptop if that's a word, which I think it might be, but on top of that, RTX has inflated the price of pretty muchevery gaming laptop it's gone intoand this is absolutely no exception. At a full $3000 for the 2080 version I have here and $2600 for the 2070 version, it's just difficult to justify that kind of pricewhen other options such as the 15 inch Zephyrus Scome in with very similar specs for about $2000. The Razer also has a couple of key featuresthat the Zephyrus is missing. Mainly Thunderbolt 3. Now I get that this is not going to bea deal breaker for everyone, but for me, I actually do use a Thunderbolt 3 dock and monitorpretty much every day so that's a big featurethat I want to be included in pretty much any kind of gaming laptop or, well really, any laptop I buy at this point. Now you can't talk about the Razer Bladewithout mentioning the design. Now as far as I'm concerned, this is about one of thenicest pieces of laptop hardware out there, right up with MacBooks and the MacBook Pros of the world. It's all CNC aluminum, I know it's a very expensive processto pull off, especially with this anodization, and put simply it's a very solid, very sturdy, very nice feeling piece of technology. You're paying more, but at least some of thatcost is definitely in the actual build qualityand some of the design work that they've done here. You also get the generally solid Razer keyboardwith the per-key RGB backlighting, you get the nice large touchpad, the good speakers, you even haveWindows Hello facial recognitionand there's a lot of good stuff here, but does it justify that $3000 price tag?I will definitely admit, I have had issueswith quality on some Razer laptops in the past, but as far as I can tell, they basically nailed it this generation. I mean, hardware wise, there's not a lot to complain aboutwhich is always a good thing whenyou're spending this much money on a laptop. Is it getting old? I'm complaining about the price of the laptop?It's a big issue, it legitimately is. It's a very very expensive piece of tech, and you're paying a lot of extra moneyand I think pretty much everyone expectsto gets something when they pay that. And you're getting some stuff, like hardware wise it's a little bit nicer, but performance wise you can get a lotmore performance or basicallythe same performance for a lot less. Which I think is a compelling argument for almost everyone. As a surprise to basically no oneyou're getting a very solid display. Now, this model has the 1080p 144Hz panel, but there is an optional 4K unit as well. Now it's solid, but it's really nothing all that exciting. I mean, basically every other gaming laptopin this class has a very very similar panel. What is a little bit more exciting, are some of the new options that are comingfor the Blade a little bit later this year. At CES I got to take a look at two of these new options. One of which is a 240Hz panel, which, let's be real, I don't know ifall that many people can tell the difference,but for some people it might be nice, specifically people who are playingvery very high frame rate games, but more importantly than that, for me is a 4K OLED panel. Now I know I mentioned earlierthat there was already a 4K optionthat you can get for the Blade,but it's still a standard panel, I mean it looks nice, but the OLED panelI was able to take a look at in the Razer boothwas incredible, I mean the contrast, the brightness, it was such a massive, massive step up. Now it doesn't support those higher frame rates, but as far as I'm concerned, I want OLED all up in my Razer Blade. And well basically, everywhere else in fact just everywhere. The 2019 Razer Blade delivers a rock solid buildand good performance, but it comes at a steep cost. Now if this was sort of a no price comparisonwhere I just pick the absolute favoritepiece of hardware on the market, I actually might go with the Blade. But when you look at that Zephyrus S, for a significantly cheaper price,you're getting that better performance,you're getting a little bit of an unusual design, but I think for most people, it is totally worth the trade off. So, is the Razer Blade worth it?Well for some people, yes, but as far as I'm concerned, I'm holding out for that OLED panel. That, that is what's going to get the moneyand oh, I just realized, think about how expensive the OLED's gonna be. Oh no, I was all excited about gettinga new Razer Blade with OLED. Oh no. . .

The Best Gaming Laptop for $750 (2020)

- Hey guys, this is Austin. Recently, we took a look at a $400 gaming laptop, But this time, we're going to see what happens when you take it up a notch. This is the Lenovo Y700. It's a 14-inch gaming laptop which, for $750, has a lot going for it. So the first thing I see is itactually looks like it has a carbon-fiber finish. I mean, that is definitely plastic, butit actually looks pretty nice. Inside here, we have the power cable, some paperwork, what I assume is the power adapter which is, actually pretty big. Open this guy up and not only do we have the14 inch display but we also have what's actually really well-built, there's very little keyboard flex. It's a backlit keyboard, it's all-metal around the palm rest. This feels like a pretty premium laptop. For ports, it's pretty straightforward. We have a power adapter, a single USB port, As well as headphone and microphone. And on this site, we have two more USB 3, HDMI and ethernet. This is definitely a gaming laptop, But I'm glad that Lenovo went a little more subtle with the styling. For the most part, it's just a black laptop with a few red accents. Sure, maybe like the speakers lookA little bit gamer-y, but for the most partonce you close it up, it's actually afairly understated looking laptop. Compared with the Inspiron 15that we did a video on a few months ago, the Lenovo is a lot smaller, which I like. Especially if you're going to be taking thisto something like school, its going to be a little bit more portable. but also, it really does look a lot more understated. While this is not a bad-looking laptop, the whole Spider-Man aesthetic is not going to be for everyone. One of the big advantages is with the display. So this guy is rocking a 14 inch, 1080p IPS panel, which looks a lot better than the TN panel on the Dell. Now, while this looks good as is, for right now, you can actually get this exact same model with a 4K display on Amazon for the same price. Now sure, it won't be able to game at 4K, but for normal use, that is going to look really, really nice at 14 inches. - [From Laptop] Hey guys, this is Austin. The Galaxy Note 7 was one of the the hottest phones of last year. - Terrible puns aside, the speakers are pretty solid here. So they're actually front-facingand from the looks of them, they're actually reasonably big. They don't get super loud, but no complaints. What is pretty good is the keyboard. So like I said earlier, it isgoing to be backlit which is niceand the travel is pretty decent. Lenovo does a good job with keyboards usually. Now the trackpad isn't quite so amazing. So, it's totally usable, but it doesn't use the Windows precision drivers, which means that it's fine but for pretty much anything more than a quick little bit of use, you're going to want a mouse. Inside, this guy is powered by quad-core i7-6700HQ16 gigabytes of DDR4 memory, as well as Radeon R7 M375 graphics. It stacks up pretty well compared to the Dell. Now while is Skylake processor compared to Kaby Lake on this guy, it's going to be an i7 versus an i5, which I would definitely prefer. It has twice as much memory. It also has a 256 gigabyte SSDon top of a 1 terabyte hard drive. This guy only has the SSD. The main thing you're giving up hereis that 1050Ti on the Dell. Now the Radeon graphics should be pretty decent here and it is $100 cheaper, so let's see how it performs. First up, we have CS: GO. Now, this is by no means a new game, but it still runs pretty well on the Lenovo. We're getting somewhere between 60 to 80 frames per second, and this is with everything cranked upon high settings at 1080p, as I get shot in the face. (laughs)Next, we have Shadow of Mordor. This is a little bit of a newer game and importantly, it looks a lot nicer than CS: GO. Now the issue here is that we do have toturn settings down just a little bit. So right now we're running at 900p on Medium andwe're getting anywhere between 30 and 40 frames per second. It is playable, but it's not thegreatest experience in the world. I think that's kind of a trend with the Lenovo. It can definitely handle gaming, no doubt, but for a lot of newer titles, you are going to have to turn the settings down to around medium or so. One game the Y700 can definitely handle is Overwatch. So again here on 1080p at medium settings, we're anywhere between 40 to 50 frames per second. It's a pretty good experience, butone of the nice things about the Lenovois it can handle more than just gaming. Taking that same gameplay footage that we just recordedand bring it inside Adobe Premiere, you can seethat this is also not a bad editing PC. So with stuff like a Core i7 and 16 gigs of RAM, inside Premiere, that actually runs pretty well. Now, to be fair, this is only 1080p footage, but we are playing it at full resolution and even stuff like scrubbing through the timeline is nice and smooth. The Lenovo Y700 definitely isn'ta perfect gaming laptop, butthere's a lot to like here. The screen is great, the specs are pretty solid. The only real issue here is thatthe graphics could just be better. But, for the price, there's not a lot to complain about. So, as always, I'll have a linkto check this guy out in the description. I'm curious, would you want to pick up the Y700?Let me know in the comments belowand I will catch you in the next one. 

The Coolest Laptop Design Yet

Hey guys, this is Austin there are a lot of different 201 and laptop designs but the HP Spectre folio might just be the most unique yet when Intel wanted to sponsor a video on the Spectre folios couldn't say no.  I mean just look at this thing in addition to being a tablet you can very easily pull out the screen and use it in the video mode or if you want to go full tablet mode on it it will lie completely flat on top of having it as a tablet you don't have to have the keyboard around back like most other 201 designs.  It's like a super cool idea there isn't a case on this laptop, by the way, it's actually made out of leather what HP has done is they've combined and magnesium chassis with leather now that does it smell great but on top of that when you close it upIt looks like a nice little folio case.  OhThat one I call it the HP Spectre folio.  I just got that.  It's like a fullOkay, they've brought the entire thing up into what I think is a pretty cool looking package you tell that really like this thing open it up and you'll have a better idea of how this all works on the bottom part, we have a magnesium chassis, which is where you have your keyboard you have your battery as well as the motherboard and the screen itself is hinged not only on the bottom so you can open and close it like a laptop, but it's also magnetically attached on the bottomSo if I want to just move it over to like say another mode, it's all really straightforwardIt's a much much smarter idea than pretty much any other tool one I've ever triedDoes that being mean to other to own ones?I mean, I actually legitimately feel like this is a super clever idea just worked right fire it up and the cool stuff doesn't stop there.  So my model is outfitted with the eighth-generation Core i78500 why and that's backed up with 16 gigs of ram as well as a 256 gig SSDThat core i7 is a Y series processor which means that this is an entirely fanless system as you might have guessed considering just how thin it is but you are still getting that full window's performance and as a dual-core chipWell, it's clocked at only 1. 5 gigahertz at the base.  It can turbo all the way to 4. 2 gigahertz screen is also pretty cool in addition to it being a 13. 3-inch display with a 1080p resolution and it is a full touch screen but importantly if you take a look at it is super thin which is important for a design like this.  Did that just flash? What was that?You mean the real-life window they just flash with lightning outside scary but it's also got an Intel one watt panel, which is especially helpful for battery lifeSo traditionally with such a thin light laptop you have to have a very small battery and the screen is actually one of the main things that draw power but with this guyThey claim up to18 hours of battery life and I've easily been able to get well over a day of use with it a nice touch with this model is the touchpad positioning a lot of times was a two and one you don't quite have access to sell anything when you put it up all the way forward, but here you still get that nice angle the screens closer to you but you also have your touchpad available what really pushes this over the edge though is the built-in gigabit LTE connection if you take a look at the screen you pop it up what you'll find is that there's a tiny little SIM card slot hereWhat's really cool about this is the flexibility I get.  I don't need to deal with sketchy public Wi-FiI don't need to worry about killing my phone battery with tethering.  I mean, it's just online.  It's really simpleI just open it up and I'm online you probably know Intel for making processorsBut they also make LTE modems for all kinds of devices including the specter folioYou might even be using a phone with an Intel modem right nowNo, no, you probably won't want to do hardcore video editing or gaming on this guyBut it is powered by that full core i7 processorWhich means that things like Photoshop and of course all the staples like Chrome and Word will all work completely fine hereand since you're always connected you have access to cloud apps such as Google Docs as well as of course all the local stuff youWant it really is the best of both worlds, although I guess to be fairThis is not the only laptop in the world that does have LTEThere are other Intel options with 7th and 8th gen processors that do have LTEThis is sort of my favorite blend of not only the form factorBut also the portability and the access to the power and the speed and battery life and the leather smellThere's a lot of other great stuff with the Spector folioStarting out with we have the stylus which is included something that other companies might want to take note onAs a joke, she has a pun.  We also have like how you're all just shaking your headsThere's also Windows hello support from facial recognitionThere's the excellent backlit keyboard the HP's been using for a whileAnd there's a really solid selection of ports a USB see on the left side as well as 2 Thunderbolt threes on the right sideAnd all of them support not only power but data video out all that kind of fun stuff.  Of course, it's not all perfectSo the touchpad is good, but it does like Windows precision driversIt does have pretty solid speakers a little a lack a little bit of bassand at fifty hundred dollars for the ice of a model with LTE it is certainly not cheap overall though with the killer design thePortability the performance to run proper Windows apps and that always connected LTE really?I mean, there's not a lot to complain about this is one of the most unique devices. 

RTX 2080 Laptops Are Here 🔥

- Hey guys, this is Austin. We've had those sweet, sweet RTXgraphics in desktops for a little while now. However, today is the day that it is finally time for all of this power to come down to the laptop side of things. To test, we have the brand new ROG Zephyrus S 17 inch. Now, we actually took a brief at this laptop at CES. However, at that time, Nvidia had the performance testing side of things locked down. But with this in our hands, it's time to see exactly what we can get out of RTX for laptops. Here, we've got the top end RTX 2080,paired with a Core i7-8750H. Now, the main cutback going from the full desktop GPU to the laptop Max-Q edition is in TDP. Instead of having over 200 watts to work with,this has to fit in a 100 watt budget,which basically just means the clock speed comes down. Desktop was about 1700 megahertz,this is a little bit over 1200 as far as boost clocks go. Take a look at the benchmarks, though, and it is not a massive improvement, but you will see a pretty good performance bump over the previous generation, GTX 1080, and especially that Max-Q implementation. Now, benchmarks are one thing. But what I want to know is what will it take to get this RTX 2080 running at a full 1080pat 144 frames per second, which is what this screen can do. Now, starting off with, let's see what we can do with Overwatch. Well, three seconds into Overwatch,it looks like this is no problem. We're completely maxed out on ultra settings, the 1080p. And right now, we're about 160 frames per second. I gotta say, Overwatch looks like a solid thumbs up on this front. Next up, we have everyone's favorite game, Fortnite. So this, I think should be pretty easy for the 2080 to handle. Even on full epic settings, I don't think it'll be an issue. Fortnite is another game that is no problem to run,although we're a little bit closer here,at about what, 100, I don't know, 120?So especially paired with that G-Sync panel,144 frames per second is no problem in Fortnite,so now let's move on to Black Ops. So when it comes to Black Ops, I'm not super sure that we're actually going to be able to max it out fully and still hit 144 frames, but let's give it a try, I guess. I will mention that I am running this on the balanced power mode so you can crank the fan up to a turbo, but in my testing, it only gives you another couple percent or so of performance, but it's like twice as loud, so I'm not gonna do that. Okay, yeah, immediately I can tell that we're at 100 frames per second, which is good, and to be fair, we do have a G-Sync panel, which means that it's nice and smooth, but a 90, 100 frames per second, that's not what we're looking for. So all you needed to do is crank things down to high and we're pretty much locked at 140 fps. Next, let's see how Battlefield 5 fares. We are in the game, this is not 144 frames. This is about 50 frames. So the thing with Battlefield that's going to be difficult it does support ray tracing. And it is one of the very few games that do support ray tracing right now, but it is incredibly demanding, especially on the ultra setting. Okay, so turning ray tracing down to low gave us a big boost in frames. We're now up to about 90, which on this G-Sync panel,honestly, really is not a problem. I would be totally happy to play the game like this. Damn, like look at them, look at the reflection. Dude, every time I see a car, I have to go and like,oh, I should probably not do that. So this is a playable game, absolutely,but I want 144 frames per second,which means it's time to start cranking that thing down. Now that's more like it, we're about130, 140 frames per second right now. I did have to turn off ray tracing and then set everything down to medium, but I mean, we do have a very, very playable, 140 frames per second. I mean to be fair, medium looks totally fine and that 144 frames per second are a big deal. But if it's me, I'm going to turn the ray tracing and give up a few frames per second get that extra little bit of visual. Now gaming is great, but this also is great for content creation. So Wes, how does it handle Resolve,and specifically RED stuff?- So what we have played here is 7 and 8K RED footage playing down at quarter res. But as you can see, with a color grade on there,and a few nodes, doing kind of a punchier grade. It is playing back in real time, which is something that resolve would struggle with on lower end spec. - This makes a lot of sense as a laptop to use for content creation then, right?Because you got something that's fairly thin,you do have the Pantone color calibrated display,which realistically, eh. - Well, so, so look. Coming out of the factory, it'll be pretty good. It's going to shift over the first few hours, honestly, of use. But by having a good display, that means that if you are someone that wants to calibrate in the future, you can be fairly comfortable that you are going to be able to get a fairly good calibration out of it. - Next, let's talk about this actual laptop itself, the Zephyrus S, which there's actually a lot more to talk about than purely just the graphics side. This shares a lot of DNA with the original Zephyrus. When it's closed, it's only 18 mil thick. When you open it up, the entire deck lid raises to give more cooling from the bottom. There's also a very unusual placement for the keyboard and trackpad. So it's all put on the bottom half of the laptop, which means that this top half is entirely dedicated to cooling that CPU and especially the GPU. Now, these does take a little bit of getting used to,but it's really not so bad. Now, the same thing goes with the touchpad. While it's a little bit smaller than usual,most importantly it has a solid surface,and you do have the option of turning it into a number pad. And some of the best sounding click buttons have ever tried on a trackpad. All of this means that this is among the smallest 17-inch gaming laptops that you can buy. That being said though, it is still a 17 inch gaming laptop. Sure, it's a little bit closer to something like that 15 inch Zephyrus that came out last year. But realistically, there's no getting around that this is a very, very big footprint for a laptop. I'll give them this though. At only six pounds, it is way lighter than you would expect,considering that there is that full 2080 inside,but don't exactly expect to you know,fit this in your backpack easily. The display itself is exactly what you would expect out of a high-end gaming laptop. It's a 17. 3 inch panel, with a 1080p resolution,but importantly, not only does it run at a full 144 hertz,but it also supports G-Sync. You also have Nvidia Optimus onboard. Usually, you have to pick one or the other. G-Sync is for keeping those frame rates nice and smooth and to keep any kind of tearing out, whereas Optimus allows you to turn off that graphics card when you're not using it to save battery life. Now, in this, you do have to manually turn it as well as restart the laptop when you're switching between the two. Most of the time, when you have a laptop with G-Sync,it means that you're gonna get like an hour of battery life,so thankfully that's not the case here with Optimus onboard. Paired with a decently sized 76 watt-hour battery, I'd be able to get about three to three and a half hours of normal use with the laptop. Now that's not gaming, mind you, but this is actually a laptop that you can do some other stuff with. Not a lot of other stuff, but some other stuff. You do have the added benefit of supporting USB-C charging. Now, that's not enough to fully power the laptop. It tops out at 65 watts, so it's a lot more for a kind of, charging it overnight, or using it for lighter tasks, but importantly, this means that if you want to take this on the go, you don't have to always carry the giant 200-watt power brick. Instead, you can take a smaller one or just plug into a USB-C monitor to top off. Also, while we're talking about USB-C,it does have a pair of USB-C ports,but neither support Thunderbolt 3,something that the previous Zephyrus did. Not exactly like a deal breaker,it's just kind of an odd decision. Something interesting about this notebook is the webcam, it doesn't have one. That is where this comes in. In the box, they do include an external webcam. Now, there's a couple reasons for this. First of all, they don't have a whole lot of bezel to work with on the top. But more importantly, this is a higher quality webcam than usual. Not only does it support 1080p,but it also has a full 60 fps output. And on top of that, they also have a little stand that comes with it, so if you want to do something like Twitch streaming, you can set the webcam off to the side. You know what, this actually does look a lot better than most webcams, including on a laptop. Now sure, it's not going to be quite as good as something like a dedicated camera setup for Twitch streaming, but considering that this comes in the box, I've gotta say, really not a bad idea. (music playing from laptop speakers)- Hey, not bad. So the audio's pretty impressive here. Not only do you have a pair of speakers that are firing directly at you, but on top of that, there is this awesome little wheel to control the volume. It's like what you would find on a lot of mechanical keyboards, and I love it. Like seriously, can everyone just adopt this?Like, I want this on every laptop ever. Now as you might imagine, all of this doesn't exactly come cheap. The Zephyrus S starts at $2700, and the model I have here comes in at a full $3,200 and zero cents. I don't know why I had to say zero cents,but it just sounds more impressive that way. With that RTX 2080 Max-Q inside, you will not find another gaming laptop that's this thin as well as this light, while still giving you a full 17-inch display, and importantly, this much performance. Now whether it's worth the price tag is kind of up to you. But I've gotta say, they did a lot right with the Zephyrus S.