ASUS Philippines locally showcased the first ROG GX501 Zephyrus notebook in the Philippines. For those who are outside the loop, the Zephyrus is one of the showcased Nvidia Max-Q Designs at COMPUTEX 2017 back when they announced the new design approach.
Basically, Max-Q is the culmination of performance, efficiency, portability and acoustics guidelines set by Nvidia.
Having seen the notebook at COMPUTEX and on our home court, the Zephyrus never ceased to amaze me with its well-crafted design. Most notably, its 16.9mm to 17.9mm footprint. The notebook basically opens up its underside when you flip the hood. ASUS dub this as the Active Aerodynamic System (AAS). Since the underside of the notebook is actually a blank slate, you can actually use the Zephyrus on a soft surface. That’s without affecting cooling performance at all.
The Keyboard and Touchpad Layout That I Like
One another worth noting aspect of the Zephyrus is its keyboard and touchpad layout. It’s further below, with the touchpad acting as a double for the numpad. It’s not that hard to adjust to this setup, especially if you’re coming from desktops. Seriously, this is a more natural setup for gaming notebooks.
This aids temperature as well, with the keyboard out of the way from the CPU and GPU’s cooling solution. Suffice to say this is has been my favorite input design, ever since I saw the same layout years ago.
Pricing, Models and Specifications
ASUS announces Two models of the GX501 Zephyrus. A GTX 1080 model and a GTX 1070 model with price points at 179, 995 and 149, 995 Pesos respectively. The rest of the specifications are almost the same as far as these Two PH SKUs goes, so that said you’ll save 30K for the lesser unit. Either way, both are capable of pushing frame rates above 60Hz with the current titles so you’ll definitely make good use of that 120Hz panel. Even more-so its Nvidia G-SYNC feature.
| ASUS ROG GX501 Zephyrus | |
| Processor | Intel® Core™ i7-7700HQ |
| Operating system | Windows 10 Home |
| Display | 15.6” Full HD (1920 x 1080) wide-view panel with anti-glare
120Hz refresh rate with NVIDIA G-SYNC™ |
| Graphics | NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1080 8GB DDR5X or GTX1070 8GB DDR5 |
| Chipset | Intel® HM175 |
| Memory & storage |
DDR4 2400MHz (up to 24GB)
M.2 PCIe® x4 256/512GB/1TB SSD |
| Wireless | 802.11ac Wi-Fi
Bluetooth® |
| Connectivity | 1 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C™ with Thunderbolt™ 3
4 x USB 3.1 1 x HDMI 2.0 1 x 3.5mm headphone and mic combo jack |
| Camera | Built-in HD camera and array mic |
| Keyboard | ASUS Aura RGB backlit chiclet keyboard with 30-key rollover; 1.4mm key travel |
| Battery | 4 cell, 50Wh |
| Size | 37.9 x 26.2 x 1.69cm (W x D x H) |
| Weight | 2.2 kg (with battery) |
The ASUS ROG GX501 Zephyrus is slated to launch locally by July of 2017. That coincides with the ROG Masters 2017 and will definitely make an appearance on the regional qualifiers.
