Gaming laptops have a reputation for being large, unwieldy machines that simply can’t be lugged to and from work or school everyday; or at least they shouldn’t. However, I really admire Asus for their ROG Zephyrus series of gaming laptops that bring high end gaming in machines that don’t look out of place in a non-gaming setting. So when Asus sent over the Zephyrus M GU502GU (Rs. 1,49,990) to us, I was excited to see what Asus had accomplished with this Zephyrus laptop. I’ve been using this laptop for well over a week now, and this is my in-depth review of the Zephyrus M GU502GU gaming laptop.

First off, let’s get the on-paper specs out of the way. Here’s what you’ll find under the hood of the Zephyrus M GU502GU:

Now that the specs are out of the way, let’s take a deeper look at the Zephyrus M GU502GU.

Like I mentioned earlier, I really admire the Zephyrus line up of laptops from Asus for bringing great gaming power in a sleek design, and the Zephyrus M GU502 is no different. It comes in a stunning looking chassis with a metal cover on the lid, a soft-touch material surrounding the keyboard and covering the palm-rest, and a great selection of ports rounding off the look of the laptop.

Display

The ROG Zephyrus M GU502 comes with a 15.6-inch FullHD IPS level panel with a 144Hz refresh rate and 3ms response time – both important numbers for gamers. Thanks to the high refresh rate, things look really smooth on the Zephyrus M. Even outside of games, the general animations, scrolling, everything just looks really smooth on this display and I’ve grown really fond of that. The 3ms response time might not matter to regular users as much, but for gamers this is a decently good response time to get.

The Zephyrus M GU502GU comes with impressive specs – there’s a 9th-gen Core i7 processor, 16GB RAM, a 512GB SSD, and Nvidia GTX1660 Ti GPU. All of that results in amazing performance.

However, that’s expected from a laptop that costs as much as this one does, but this is a gaming laptop, so the more important metric for judging its performance is how well it handles gaming.

Clearly, the laptop can handle Far Cry 5 on Ultra settings with ease. I even played Far Cry 5 for a bit on Ultra settings and it ran wonderfully, which is great.

Overall, Zephyrus M’s performance is top notch and it won’t let you down whether you’re gaming, or taking it to work and doing regular office work. It’s just an all around wonderful performer and I’m very impressed by it.

Speaking of things I’m impressed by, let’s talk about the keyboard and trackpad here. The Zephyrus M comes with a keyboard that I can only describe as “very Asus” and I mean that in a good way. Most Asus laptops have good keyboards, and this one is no different. It’s not a mechanical keyboard, but it has ample travel without being too bouncy, the keycaps are flat instead of curved, but they’re still easy to hit accurately and they’re made of high quality plastic instead of the cheap feeling ones that a lot of other brands use.

One additional thing I really liked about the keyboard is you can lock the Windows key to not open the start menu. This is really handy because I hit the Windows key a lot by accident while gaming and on most laptops it opens up the Start menu and I end up dying in my game, and that’s very annoying. On this (and probably other Asus laptops) I can simply press Fn + Windows to disable that functionality and I’m really happy that this feature exists.

The ROG Zephyrus M also comes with a decent selection of ports and I/O that should suffice for all your needs. The laptop comes with 1 x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type C DisplayPort™ 1.4 and Power Delivery, 1 x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type A, 2 x USB 3.2 Gen1 Type A, 1 x HDMI 2.0b, 1 x 3.5mm Audio Jack, 1 x Audio Jack Mic-in, and an RJ-45 ethernet port.

In my usage of this laptop I didn’t feel short on ports or connectivity options and I don’t think you will either. Plus, the USB-C port is definitely awesome to have, and with Power Delivery, it can fast charge USB-PD compatible devices, which is also cool.

If there’s one thing about this laptop that I found underwhelming, it’s the audio. The laptop comes with bottom firing speakers, which is probably why the sound is underwhelming, muffled, and honestly, not loud enough at all. I tried watching movies on this laptop, and it just doesn’t cut it.

Battery

Lastly, there’s the battery. The Zephyrus M GU502GU comes with a 76Wh battery that Asus claims lasts up to 6 hours on a charge, but the only time I noticed that happening was when I put a bunch of games on download and left the laptop to do its work while I played games on my PS4. Other than that, the laptop doesn’t last anywhere close to 6 hours on a charge. I was consistently getting around 3 hours of battery life from this laptop.

So the Zephyrus M GU502GU is a pretty decent laptop, but it doesn’t get it all right. Let’s take a quick look at the good and the bad about this laptop.

  • Excellent design
  • Amazing performance
  • Good keyboard and trackpad

Cons:

Asus ROG Zephyrus M GU502GU: Should You Buy It?

The ROG Zephyrus M GU502GU is a a pretty good laptop. It brings great performance packed inside a stylish chassis, a good keyboard and trackpad, along with a decently wide selection of ports and I/O options. However, at Rs. 1,49,990, the Zephyrus M is competing against the MSI GL63 9SEK gaming laptop (Rs. 1,47,500) which brings the same 9th-gen Core i7 processor, 16GB RAM, a 1TB HDD + 256GB SSD, and 6GB RTX2060 graphics. The only place where the MSI GL63 9SEK lags behind is the weight – it’s 300 grams heavier.