this is the rog strix g15 advantage edition eber what the heck does that even mean well for starters it’s amd’s certification program that ensures oem manufacturers that design laptops with ryzen cpus and radeon gpus past certain conditions like 100 fps gaming experience 144 hertz and faster displays faster boot times and 10 plus hours of battery life i actually think that’s an amazing strategy but so far only two laptops have been certified for the advantage edition uh the first one is the omen 16 from hp and then there is this which is the strix g15 now asus rg does offer another version of the g15 with nvidia’s gpus so if you’re shopping around for an all amd bass gaming laptop just make sure that you look for the advantage edition so i have an all amd based gaming laptop with a ryzen 9 cpu and an rx 6800m right in front of me and i think this is a dream come true for a lot of people but can it one circles around nvidia solutions also is this laptop any good from a hardware perspective well let’s uh find out because this stuff really excites me but you know what i’ve been really excited about lately ssds from keoxia because they have solutions from high performance gaming pcs all the way up to enterprise data centers by using their super versatile bix flash technology their drives offer great performance and lasting endurance their bg4 series is a great add-on to the g15 because it has an extra m.2
slot and i’m extremely pleased with its performance and form factor you can get up to a terabyte on this tiny thing uh which is just amazing for more information about koxy and their drives make sure to check the link down below okay so let’s start with pricing and availability asus is only offering one skew of the g15 advantage edition and that’s going to cost you a tad below hundred dollars us for that you get a ryzen nine fifty nine hundred eight check cpu that’s unlocked with eight cores and sixteen threads sixteen gigabytes of ram half a terabyte of storage an rx 1600 m and a 1080p 144 display the good news is that you can actually pick this up at the time of making this video from best buy but the bad news is that it’s only available in the us now i checked canadian retailers and i was out of luck i even tried the uk and i just couldn’t find anything which just really sucks so if you guys find anything outside of the states definitely let us know in the comments and we’ll make sure to ping them now from the outside the strix g15 spills out stealth vibes with a few hints of rog goodness like this diagonal matrix section with rog texts all over along with an amd logo at the corner to emphasize the advantage edition it’s all very subtle and beautifully integrated they’ve also implemented a unique armor cap for the hinge that’s user swappable and they’ve included two other colors in the box like silver and this translucent cap which is my personal favorite
because it sort of completes that whole matte black aesthetic which is just my cup of tea you can also 3d print your own design by using their template which is available on their official site so customization is just all up to you the sky’s the limit now if you’re aware of the g15 series you most likely would have come across their underglow rgb lighting beneath a chassis it just looks beautiful especially during the night although i would have wished for more diffusion because you can actually spot the leds when you set the lighting effect to the rainbow setting so it’s nowhere as closer to the renders that you see online but either way i think when you have this on a nice like you know wider desk it actually showcases that lighting really well well done asus build quality is really good the lid is made out of aluminum and the bottom panel is entirely made out of plastic overall it’s put together really well i didn’t notice any signs of creaking when manipulating the screen although there is a little bit of flex when you open the lid with one hand the hinge is smooth and stiff and it doesn’t exhibit any wobble as for
size it’s a little bit bigger than the zephyrs g15 and heavier too coming in at 5.5 pounds or roughly two and a half kilos versus four pounds on the zephyr’s g15 so i wouldn’t classify the strix g15 as a slim gaming laptop in fact i would put it up right against the legion 5 pro which weighs about the same not to mention the included power brick is just ginormous i think you really need to make some room in your backpack to fit both of them the interior space is pretty similar to other rg gaming laptops that i’ve reviewed in the past they’ve tweaked a few things on the streak series so the diagonal matrix section with the rg text makes an appearance again towards the right hand side you’ll find dedicated media playback buttons there are a few more at the top that adjust volume a mic mute button a performance mode switch button which is super useful along with an armory create button that launches the software where you can fiddle around with the lighting effects and a bunch of other things the keys themselves provide enough travel and feedback it’s certainly a step above something like the razer blade series but personally i prefer the keyboard on the legion 5 pro because it’s it just hits that right sweet spot between tactile and satisfying feel when you bottom out but i have nothing to complain here the wasp section is separated for easier distinction rgb
lighting has made its way here and it’s pretty bright there are a handful of lighting effects that you can play around with do note that the under glow lighting system is always in sync with the keyboard so you can’t actually separate both of them because of the single zone design so if you want to turn off then undergo lighting you’re gonna have to use the brightness adjustments on the keyboard to turn the entire thing off which is unfortunate the trackpad is fairly big and smooth to work with it’s a glass surface coated with a matte texture that gets a job done the primary left and right buttons have great tactile feedback to be honest this trackpad reminds me a lot of the xps series from dell it’s very similar from a texture standpoint but i will say that the accuracy with the pointer movement is more fine-tuned on the xps series the i o is laid out efficiently on the strix g15 the majority of them are located at the back for easier cable management so there’s power in rj45 hdmi 2.0 b a usb 3.2 gen 2 type c port with displayport pass through and power delivery along with a type a port now towards the left you’ll find a few more usb ports and an audio jack interestingly there are no ports on the right side which is quite convenient because you don’t have to worry about connecting devices that would then conflict with an external mouse so that’s certainly thoughtful i should
mention that all the taipei ports on this laptop are gen 1 instead of gen 2 so it’s not the fastest out there also if you have anything plugged into the back like an external hard drive or any other devices just watch out for surface temperatures because the hot air from the laptop is exhausted right at the back and that could cause an issue i’ve experienced something similar like this with the lenovo legion 5 pro so i thought it was worth mentioning also this laptop doesn’t come with a webcam it’s just a thing now with any rg laptops so that really sucks the speakers are located at the bottom and they sound good i mean i wouldn’t use them for gaming but for casual you know music or just media consumption this will get the job done moving on to the display and this is where i was a little bit let down you see it’s a 1080p screen with a refresh rate of 144 hertz which on paper it looks good but if i were to compare to the competition within the same price point um i would have preferred a faster panel that’s also sharper like qhd at 165hz i mean a great example is the legion 5 pro it it’s just an incredible panel you can check out my thoughts about that right over here but coming back to this just feels like a step back because you lose that taller aspect ratio but don’t get me wrong the quality of the screen is great i mean it covers 99 srgb 74 adobe rgb and 77 dcip3 so it’s great for gaming and content consumption brightness levels are okay it only got as far as 340 nits from my testing but honestly i just can’t wait for gaming laptops to get brighter screens bigger
sharper displays faster as well i feel like we’re getting there it’s just going to take some time now if you’re looking to upgrade this laptop you have to be really careful when opening it up because when you pop open the screws and then remove the bottom panel the cables that are connected to the underground lighting are paired to the pcb so you have to be really gentle when opening this thing up but once you do you have quick access to two memory slots maximum support capacity is 32 gigabytes the primary nvme ssd is right over here and the drive speeds are pretty good uh but it could be better in the right performance there’s also an extra m.
2 slot for storage expansion and it also supports uh smaller drives like the kiosk bg4 2230 nvme ssd pretty good stuff as for battery life well with its massive 90 watt hour unit and a zen 3 architecture that’s really efficient during light load tasks like web browsing this result was pretty much expected but it does look like the rx 6800m might be a bit less power hungry than competing nvidia cards when it’s in standby like here but we’ll see if that happens when more laptops with it are launched switching over to heavier tasks well here’s where the higher end ryzen 9 5900 hx cpu sort of works against the strix g15 advantage edition since its first place in the light load test takes a pounding here but at the same time getting just over an hour and a half puts it right in line with a lot of other laptops that sport lower wattage cpus anyways the strix g15 has three power modes the usual
silence along with performance and turbo along with a manual mode that allows you to set power limits yourself however those sliders don’t go above what performance and turbo already offer but according to asus they might add a bit of flexibility in future updates as the platform matures either way the power results are pretty interesting with silent mode hovering right around 63 watts which is actually quite a bit higher than amd’s own default then performance and turbo turned things up to 11 by hitting the ryzen 9 5900hx with almost 90 watts right across the board it seems like asus has the confidence to push this architecture to the absolute limit and while temperatures for the higher end modes almost hit 95 degrees celsius we can’t forget that zen 3 on laptops is allowed to run up to 105 degrees before it throttles so while this might look high on laptops it actually isn’t since processors are given a lot more thermal headroom to work with as for silent well it’s the best behaved of the bunch and it has some really good temperatures all things considered all of that translates into performance and turbo having really really similar performance between 4 gigahertz and 4.05 gigahertz while silent mode walks all over a constant 3.6 gigahertz and even that is pretty respectable since it’s still 300 megahertz higher than amd’s base clock those numbers don’t really come with the sacrifice of noise either since silent remains super quiet even under high load the performance setting is actually a bit quieter than some other gaming laptops that i’ve come across but at the same time you probably want to
wear headphones when using it to game finally turbo starts to get pretty loud and i actually don’t think the small increases in clock speeds it gives is worth the extra noise it’s up to you but personally i’d avoid this setting exterior temperatures are pretty much what we’ve come to expect but also remember keeping the outside cool is one of amd’s advantages promises remember advantage edition so if the strix g15 missed that well it would have been a bit of trouble right and that all leads me to real world performance starting things off right at the top and based off the power numbers this processor is pulling down nothing here should come as a surprise guys it’s right at the top of the charts battling it out with the ryzen 9 5900 hx in the rog zephyrs duo and the 5800h in the legion 5 pro just remember that legions running their cpu at almost 80 watts which is why it’s so impressive especially in the longer tests like maya moving on to gpu accelerated programs like premiere and the rx 6800m just can’t keep up at all it could just be that amd’s drivers need a bit more massaging here but then again they’re definitely doing something right in davinci resolve because we saw this with amd’s desktop gpus as well they found some sort of secret sauce here and it’s working really well now moving on to gaming performance and i want to quickly mention that i’ve already gone in depth about this in our review about the rx-6800m which you can check it out right over here or i’ll leave a link in the description down below but there was a small hiccup in that video that’s been resolved right now basically
amd’s drivers were misreporting power consumption to programs like gpuz and hw info as a result it looked like the rx 6800m was chugging back a constant 140 watts in performance mode but it actually wasn’t now just to be clear though amd does rate this thing at 145 watts and higher so those numbers seem to be within reason well it turns out that it isn’t really the case here performance mode sticks to a pretty constant average of 115 watts right across the board and it’s what we test all the gaming benchmarks in meanwhile silent mode modulates power a heck of a lot more in order to keep the fan speeds low the only mode that gets anywhere close to 145 watts is turbo which hits just north of 135 watts but we also can’t forget this is a snapshot of one game and one combination of settings the beauty of having an all aimed design is smartship technology that can feed either the cpu or the gpu with a bit more power depending on which game demands more of it so in a different game you might see higher gp power while another one is lower anyways the differences in power for each mode directly translates to clock speed separation of between 200 to 350 mhz on average between them that’s a lot less than some of the other laptops that i’ve looked at this year but that also points towards asus implementing a really impressive cooling system and you can really see exactly how good it is with these numbers i mean sure turbo runs the fans at some pretty high speeds but the performance mode strikes the perfect balance between noise temperatures and speed where the gpu doesn’t
break above 85 degrees but what does this all translate in terms of gaming performance well check this out guys it’s pretty much impossible to find anything to criticize here even when operating at 115 watts the rx1600m is able to compete really well against laptops that cost a heck of a lot more all in all it looks like it’s about to get the same frame rates as the 120 watt rtx 3080 though that really depends on the game that’s being played in some cases it’s equal in others it’s slower barely equaling the rtx 3070 and sometimes it’s faster but also shows how important power is for these laptop gpus i mean sure at times the intel systems takes the lead too because of how well their cpus perform in certain games but overall i’m really hoping we see more rx 6800m devices coming soon because it gives nvidia a great run for their money and hopefully that leads to more affordable prices for everyone so final thoughts on the strix g15 advantage edition and guys i’m impressed i really like this stealth design with the with a few hints of rog accents around the body build quality is pretty good i mean it’s not as good as the unibody constructions that we’re used to seeing on expensive laptops battery life is outstanding seriously i would have no issues taking this thing to coffee shops to get lighter more
productive tasks done it’s honestly the best that we’ve come across on a gaming laptop from a portability standpoint well it’s heavy and that’s a compromise that you’ll have to make to in order to get amazing performance along with a great cooling system that asus has implemented now personally i would have loved to see a brighter faster high-res display but you know maybe in the future that’s something that they can implement you see this combination of a ryzen cpu along with a radeon gpu is just the beginning of what amd can achieve in the next few years and i’m really excited uh to see what they embark so on that note thank you so much for watching i hope you were able to take away everything that you needed to know about the strix g15 advantage edition and if you are interested uh in picking up an all amd based gaming laptop you know would this be on the top of your list i seriously think this should be on the top of your list even if you’re shopping for a gaming laptop within the 1700 price range so yeah there you have it guys i’m ebay with hardware canucks thank you so much for watching and i will talk to you guys in the next one also spend responsibly my friends
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