The gaming laptop market is an ever evolving, rapidly changing and extremely competitive market. We’re seeing these portable and mobile units being pushed further and further to give that complete experience whilst also remaining a viable portable option. The ROG Zephyrus S17 is a powerful unit in a thin body, with some interesting additions to help it stand out from the market.

The Zephyrus S17 out of the box is interesting compared to a lot of the gaming laptops we are seeing these days. Instead of opting for a sleek blade like appearance, the S17 has a sleeker box look with a consistent height. The unit itself is pretty light, around 2.6kg, so you won’t have any issue carrying it around with you for a LAN night or taking it to university or work. The screen itself has very little wasted real estate, the framing quite sparse compared to the screen. The defining feature here however is the ergonomic keyboard that sits at a 5-degree tilt.

It cannot be overstated how much of a relief this design can be over longer use sessions, allowing for less wrist strain and a more natural position for your hands whilst in use. The lifted keyboard also allows for two other impressive things and may influence an overall design change across the industry. There is a translucent accent behind the keyboard, which for those who have an affinity to seeing into how things work, this will tickle your fancy. You can get a glimpse of the inner workings inside and what is going on to power the unit. The big addition here, however, is this allows for even more cooling and venting to keep the unit from over-heating, which can be a major problem in gaming units.

Additionally in terms of usability, my biggest gripe tends to be the lack of USB functionality. The Zephyrus has a total of five USB ports. One for USB-C charging functionality, another USB-C for general use, and then three additional USB 3.0 slots for general accessory use. I would have liked to have seen at least one extra standard USB slot, just as I typically reserve 2 for mouse and keyboard, and because of only a single analog audio input, a third is likely going to be forfeit to a headset. This leaves you with little room for an external hard-drive or a portable DVD drive if you’re a dated gamer like me.

Small gripe here, side entry AC adapter is a little bit jarring when it is halfway down the unit. Likely designed around having the most efficient layout of the internals, having the AC port so far down limits mobility of the unit somewhat, and can be quite cumbersome in some situations. Rear entry AC would be far better here, and there appears to be space on the chassis itself where this could have been implemented. Small gripe, but one to note.

Let’s get into the nitty gritty. How does the unit perform? The gaming industry demands high spec and high-power demand in return. With a 30 series RTX GPU in play, and space for up to 3 SSDs as well as support up to 48GB of RAM, you’re getting some serious power and utility out of the unit. An 11th gen Intel i9 CPU is going to give you some serious processing power. All of this means however that the unit needs some serious ability to push out heat and do it quick. Despite the aerodynamics of the lifted keyboard and a multitude of rear vents, side vents and under the body vents, the unit does get hot. Notably this is far more of a problem on softer surfaces and wasn’t too bad on the lap itself. It does heat up however, and you will probably want to get it off your bare skin when this happens.

The fan boost option is available and is a nice way to rapidly cool the unit back down during intense usage to ensure it stays cool and doesn’t end up burning you. However, the fan boost is quite loud, and you probably will need to turn your sound up to block it out. This is a common problem across most modern-day gaming units. Going forward this is going to be the major thing that hardware manufacturers and designers are going to have to address. How to keep the unit from getting excessively hot, without turning it into a jet plane to do so efficiently. The Zephyrus S17 lends itself to being a more desk-bound laptop, but you will have decent usage before it gets too hot for mobile on the lap time.

The keyboard keys themselves actually feel quite nice and have a good response time. Whilst they are a little loud when rapidly clacking away on them, they don’t feel like cheap plastic, and give a good under the finger feeling and response. Very similar to some mid-range keyboards on the market. The default backlight option is an RGB, which I’ve come to appreciate more, but would still prefer a blue or white backlight option as a default rather than a strobing RGB effect. I’m not one to fiddle with these options very much, but there is function key options here to change these somewhat easily, but I was more inclined to just turning it off, rather than changing the colour pattern itself.

The in-built speakers and onboard Dolby sound are a big plus here. The underside speakers still suffer from being somewhat muffled by the surface they are placed on, but this is rectified with speakers built into the rear bar of the unit. More units could benefit from having top side speakers, as it allows for good acoustics and sound when watching movies or videos on the laptop. It also means you won’t always have to have headphones on, which is always good for persons who suffer from head pain from prolonged headphone usage. An onboard volume control wheel makes for changing the audio levels very easy and is a small feature that really goes a long way.

For those looking for a mid-range gaming laptop, the ROG Zephyrus S17 is one to keep in mind. With relatively high-end specs across the range, and only minor issues in terms of long-term use, the power you get out of the unit is impressive. You’ll be blasting away on most modern titles at close to 4K graphics. ROG have outdone themselves here but may find themselves in a difficult place with their next generation of laptops, as they are setting a very high benchmark already.