ROG Zephyrus GX502G Review: for the Gamer and Worker

Women Love Tech recently covered the launch of the powerful Zephyrus G14 gaming notebook. With innovative LED, high-quality and high-res visuals, and high-speed performance; it seems to be a very impressive product indeed. Now, I’ve had the opportunity to put one to the test. The ROG Zephyrus GX502G, although not the same as the G14 remains part of the same gaming family from Asus. How good are its gaming notebooks?

What is the ROG Zephyrus GX502G?

The unique selling point of this particular model of gaming notebook from Asus is its ability to produce both a professional gaming and working experience for those looking to use this notebook for more than just videogames.

With GeForce RTX 2070 graphics, the GX502G gives users fluid frame rates to make high-intensity games an incredibly smooth cinematic experience with top-of-the-range graphics and colour ranges. The reason it’s also good for the artists, designers and creatives, in general, is its ability to complete high-intensity tasks thanks to the new 9th Gen Intel Core i7-9750H CPU.

This is what Asus says it provides, let’s see if it lives up to the expectations.

Design and feel

Asus hasn’t exactly focused on making the GX502G an aesthetic masterpiece, instead, Asus has stuck with a classic-looking and -feeling notebook. The back has a neat metallic design that has the Republic of Gamers logo engrained in it.

The actual lid itself is very thin, compared to its other half and the display is quite large at 15.6 inches making up a screen-to-body ratio of 81%. Although it is relatively thin and light enough to carry around, 2kg is still quite heavy for a portable notebook.

The GX502G is equipped with RGB backlit chiclet keyboard with 1.2 mm travel distance & N-key rollover that provides a smooth and pleasant typing experience while also adding an element of colour with the changing colours shifting across as you type.

Performance

Moving onto the most important part. How does it perform?

Personally, I used this notebook for video-watching, work and a bit of gaming to test it out. The first thing I noticed was its crisp FHD 240Hz/144Hz display. When watching Netflix or YouTube videos in 1080p, the image quality was fantastic.

For work

Working with the GX502G was also great. Most of the time, multi-tasking was easy to do, downloading files was rapid, and typing text was enjoyable and efficient. Although, there were times when typing text within a webpage software, like WordPress for example, would produce some lag and bug out. This was frustrating. The touchpad was also inconsistent in terms of sensitivity. There would be times where I’d click something by accident or underline something without even meaning to, and then times when I wouldn’t even be able to underline anything. Its responsiveness is iffy to say the least.

Gaming

Gaming was extremely smooth even with the graphics on the highest level. Funnily enough, it was smoother to play games than to type on a webpage. I tried playing both Football Manager, a less demanding game, and Metro 2033 Redux, a far more demanding game. Metro 2033 Redux played brilliantly. The graphics were fantastic, there was no lag, the colours were vibrant and balanced and it was generally a top-notch gaming experience.

Its powerful gaming capabilities are of course what sets it apart from other notebooks, but it’s equally important to see how long it can handle such high-demanding performances. If you’re not gaming, you’ll most likely get about 4 hours without the battery saver on which isn’t fantastic. Naturally, when you’re gaming, the battery drains a lot faster, so you’re going to want to keep this bad boy connected as often as you can. Unfortunately, this means that gaming with the GX502G while travelling isn’t exactly ideal, although, thanks to its Type-C port, charging it with a power bank could be an option to extend its battery life.

Verdict

Although on the whole, my pros and cons list states that the GX502G has more cons than pros, that doesn’t mean that I think it’s bad, on the contrary, I think it’s excellent. But Asus’ ROG Zephyrus GX502G, in my opinion, heavily leans on it gaming. Working on it is good, but if the sole purpose is to work and only work, then I wouldn’t recommend this notebook; after all, it’s a gaming notebook.

For the gamers who want a powerful system that’ll play games out smoothly in high-definition, with next-level colour ranges and frame rates, then this is definitely a more than suitable option.

I’d give the ROG Zephyrus GX502G a 7/10 and has to be considered one of the best gaming laptops of the year.