Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (2022) GA503RW Review: Light, Powerful and Charismatic

Asus is a well-renowned name in the gaming laptops sector thanks to its Republic of Gamers (ROG) brand. It has a few different series spread across a spectrum of gaming laptops right from affordable ones to hardcore gaming laptops. The Zephyris G series is among the best gaming laptops paired with portable models, better configurations, great battery life, stunning display, and more.

With every year, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G series gets better and this year isn’t any different. The Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (2022). We got our hands on ROG Zephyrus G15 (2022) GA503RW with an AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS and Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti GPU that I tested for a while before penning this review. Let’s see how the Zephrus G15 2022 GA503RW fared across different aspects of its performance.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (2022) GA503RW Review: Design and Build

Gaming laptops aren’t just about processors and what they bring onboard but it’s also about the design, isn’t it? Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (2022) inclines towards a well-designed lightweight gaming laptop at a standalone weight of 1.95 kgs. It certainly makes a gaming laptop powered by 3070 Ti GPU lighter than many of its competitors.

Moving on to the design elements, we have two major colors to choose from – Moonlight White and Escape Gray where the former does show hints of dirt but catches no fingerprints or smudges so that’s partly good. The back panel of the display (lid) offers a stunning prismatic effect thanks to the thousands of small dots that cover more than half of the area diagonally reflecting light in different colors based on the angle.

Zephyrus G15 (2022) is slightly elevated when you open the lid allowing for better airflow. The bezels at the bottom of the screen are thick which prevents any hot air blasting from the rear air exhaust from causing any damage to the display. Asus could’ve gone for slightly smaller bezels although it didn’t. The screen flexes and wobbles a bit and so is the keyboard when you are using it but it’s acceptable.

The screen opens up to 180° without any hassle so you can do it in various modes. There are air vents and exhausts spread across the right, left, back, and below the laptop that calls for better airflow especially when the laptop is slightly elevated when opened. It has a magnesium aluminium lid and keyboard deck for the build that looks premium (and is).

Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (2022) GA503RW Review: Display and Audio

The display is an integral part of this epic gaming laptop. With the full-sized 15.6” IPS panel with 2560×1440 pixels resolution and 240Hz refresh rate, the display is silky smooth. It lights up at 300 nits of peak brightness, it does fall short in the category where the average is at 333 nits. The Legion 7i from Asus takes it to 488 nits of peak brightness which goes on to show how much of a lag Zephyrus G15 (2022) has onboard.

The display is Pantone-validated and in real life, it does produce great colours and contrast. The 240Hz refresh rate and a response time ranging from 3ms to 7ms (based on our tests) don’t feel short of a thrill though so yeah, it is a high-qualifying premium gaming laptop for sure.

Moving on, we have a 79.9% DCI-P3 color gamut which is again short of premium gaming laptops which average at 82.7%. I did test the Zephyrus G15 (2022) GA503RW across various use cases from binge-watching The Office US on Netflix to playing games like Forza Horizon 5 and noticed no major glitch on the display. The color vibrancy is amazing although a slightly higher display brightness would have made difference especially if you are using the laptop in broad daylight.

Display	15.6” IPS Anti-Glare 100% sRGB Display
Resolution	2560×1440 (WQHD)
Aspect Ratio	16:9
Refresh rate	FreeSync 60-240Hz (max)
Brightness	300 nits (peak)
Dolby Vision HDR	Yes
Response Time	3ms

Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (2022) GA503RW sports two bottom-firing speakers and two front-firing tweeters located on the right and left of the keyboard. During testing, I found that it was bright and loud when compared to gaming laptop standards. The speaker setup has enough bass but lacks depth with clear vocals. Overall, I enjoyed streaming YouTube and playing games on G15 2022 without a headphone attached to it for most of the scenarios.

On the microphone’s end, we have a 3D microphone setup that captures sound from different angles for better reception. It uses a 720p webcam which records quality shots although Asus should’ve gone for a 1080p webcam this time around given that the Predator series has upgraded to the same.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (2022) GA503RW Review: Keyboard, Trackpad, I/0

Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (2022) GA503RW enjoys a single zone RGB backlighting keyboard that shines bright in a single colour. Of course, you can change the colour settings using the Armory Crate software although certain keys might not be fully visible on a white-washed keyboard. Perhaps, you can switch to its Escape Gray colour variant for better lighting effects on the keyboard.

Moving on, the laptop uses a 60% keyboard with a key travel of 1.7mm. It is sturdy enough and offers good feedback, however, I noticed that the buttons around the one you click are pushed down as well, though nothing to worry about.

The trackpad is huge which is great if you are used to it. I have been using laptops with larger trackpads that allow me to have a great area for contact. It is fully clickable and offers a glass-like feel to it which is just another positive point of the Zephyrus G15 (2022) GA503RW series.

When it comes to ports, you get a tonne of ports onboard Asus Zephyrus G15 (2022). To being with, the right has a microSD card slot, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port, and a Kensington lock slot. On the left, you get a 3.5mm headphone mic jack combo, an RJ45 Etherport port, an HDMI port, a power jack, two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C Thunderbolt 4 ports, and a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port. The HDMI port can output an external display at 4K although the laptop lacks a Mini DisplayPort but hey, you can find a workaround, can’t you?

Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (2022) GA503RW Review: Performance & Benchmarks

Under the hood, you get an AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS Mobile Processor with 8-core, 16-thread, 16MB cache, and a frequency of up to 4.9GHz with max boost. On the graphics side, we have an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GPU. It comes paired with ROG Boost at 1085MHz at 120W along with 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM.

On the memory front, we have 16GB DDR5 onboard RAM along with 16GB DDR5-4800 SO-DIMM memory. Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 supports a max of 48GB of RAM using its dual channel memory. Lastly, we have 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD storage onboard G15 (2022). There’s an additional M.2 storage slot that you can use to extend its memory further.

When it comes to performance, Asus Zephyrus G15 (2022) GA503RW shines a lot. When stress tested on Cinebench R23 with the power source enabled, the laptop pulled off a score of 1,557 and 14,622 points on single-core and multi-core tests at manual 70-80W power wattage. Moving on, we have Turbo (60-80W( scoring 1,539 and 13,914 points respectively. The Performance (50-60W) mode rose to 1,520 and 12,469 points and finally, the Silent (40W) mode gave a score of 1,511 and 12,148 points respectively.

The laptop does get extremely warm when subjected to high stress. The fan does get considerably louder at approx 57.3 dBA during such mode although dropping to a very low dBA when in silent mode. GPU and CPU do get extremely hot at a max of 95.1° and 82.2° respectively on the max fan and manual mode. Add a spring cooling fan and the laptop was able to bring down the temperature by 20° at 75.9° and 68.1° respectively as per the tests.

Zephyrus G15 (2022) GA503RW uses the HS series of processors which is slightly underpowered when compared to the H and HX series although the differences between benchmarking scores won’t disappoint you.

I tested the laptop on a series of games at 1440p native resolution. Talking about the Shadow of the Tomb Raider, it managed to pull off 95FPS on Manual and Turbo mode and 79FPS on Performance Mode. The FPS dropped to 50FPS when in silent mode. Testing GTA 5 on the highest settings gave us between 110 to 140FPS while the Forza Horizon 5 on its Extreme present gives 65 to 75FPS to name a few.

On the software end, Asus Zephyrus G15 (2022) GA503RW series runs on Windows 11 Home by default. It comes paired with McAfree, Spotify, and Disney+ as some of the bloatware. There’s Armoury Crate that lets you manage CPU, GPU, and fan profiles and performance to get the best of performance. The AMD Radeon is available onboard to enhance gaming performance further.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (2022) GA503RW Review: Battery

Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (2022) draws its powers from its 4-cell Li-Ion 90WHrs 4S1P battery pack under the hood and it’s the same across all variants (in terms of GPU configurations). Even with larger battery life than Zephyrus G15 (2020) and similar to G15 (2021), the G15 (2022) ends up giving a subtle battery backup ranging from 3 to 4 hours on iGPU, 50% brightness, and with no keyboard backlit and on normal usage.

Of course, the battery life is subjective given the fact that every user has a different paradigm of usage which means you can go overboard or clock in lower battery life than mentioned based on what you end up doing with the laptop. Perhaps, this is across all the three GPU variants with tiny variations.

Moving on, the laptop comes with a 120W charging tech so you can expect a quick juicing up of the battery even when you are on the go. Zephyrus G15 (2022) supports 100W Power Delivery using USB-C which means you can take a compatible adapter with you to get 50% battery in 30 minutes of charging using a USB-C adapter without the hassle of carrying a bulky laptop adapter along.

Verdict: Should you buy Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (2022) GA503RW?

Asus has been delivering stellar performance with its Zephyrus G15 series and every year, it gets better. The Zephyrus G15 2022 GA503RW offers the best of specs with RTX 3070 Ti and AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS processor clubbed with the best of display, awesome sound quality, and an absurdly loud fan that reaches 57.3 dBA at times and of course, the high of 95° Celsius odd temperature that might put some users down if not all.

The gaming laptop is priced at a premium of INR 2,00,000/- which is still cheaper than the high-end Legion 7i among other of the Zephyrus siblings and rivals. Still, the Zephyrus G15 2022 GA503RW doesn’t fails to impress the masses making it a good daily driver for gamers.