I had a normal ThinkPad T590, for work. But I recently dropped it and the screen is busted, thought it’s better I buy something new than pay to repair. Since I’m already knees deep in image analysis, which requires a crap ton of RAM, a strong CPU and ideally a semi decent GPU, and just started getting into python coding, thought why not get a gaming laptop, it’ll make my life easier. Of course I already have access to a beast of a workstation, but sometimes it’s booked and you wanna do some work on your own laptop. Anyway, I saw the Zephyrus and thought it looks good, excellent RAM (32GB and can be upgraded to 48), excellent i9 (12900H), and of course the beloved 3080 Ti (and 2TB of SSD is greet for when I have to work because single images can be up to 4 GB sometimes).
What do you guys think? I’m fkn poor, I’m a researcher afterall, so I got this on installments from Amazon, please tell me I didn’t do an impulsive purchase.
It’s not a necessarily bad laptop at all, how much did it cost though?
2700 euros. The not necessarily bad part is making me uneasy, are there major issues with it?
No, as far as I’m aware. There are no widespread issues or anything. This was meant to be a thin and light-ish gaming laptop anyways, so performance is not the top-most priority. It does have some cons. One of the biggest in my opinion is the memory upgradability. It only has a single memory slot where you can install additional memory. The other half of the memory is soldered. There’s definitely space to add 2 memory slots in this laptop but Asus keeps doing this. Battery life is not that great, but it’s a problem inherent to Intel processors. It definitely has better battery life than many other Intel-based gaming laptops though. The GPU TGP is not the maximum that the GPU can be ran at, so some performance is being left on the table. This laptop has the 3080 Ti at 100W + 20W dynamic boost. On the bright side, the thermals are alright, especially for a laptop this size with these specifications.
I said “not a necessarily bad laptop” above factoring in the cost and not really because of issues with the laptop because I knew how expensive this laptop was. I’ll be honest, 2700 Euros is definitely a lot for last-gen hardware but I don’t think there are much options that replace this just yet, as in something thin and light with flagship specifications.
Oh wow thank you for the detailed response! Yeah the memory thing bugged me a lot, a newer version with the 4070 goes up to 64 GB max, while this one is capped to 48. But that one, despite being the same price, is not available for installment payment on Amazon, and my broke ass can’t afford to pay it all at once. Otherwise, the other things seem okay. I didn’t know about the GPU being held back, but I hope that’s not too much of reduction in its computing power.