AMD’s Ryzen range of processors took 2017 by storm and even stole a couple of spots in our Best CPUs guide. As powerful and efficient as those chips are though, the top-end offerings have only now become available to laptop consumers. In the Strix GL702ZC, both the CPU and graphics are handled by AMD, making for the most red-team laptop we’ve seen in some time.
This is no mobile Ryzen chip or one of its APUs though. The Ryzen 7 1700 inside this notebook is a full-desktop CPU, which means it’s just as powerful as when we reviewed it. It comes with eight-cores and 16 threads, running at 3.7GHz when boosted to give impressive multithreaded performance in a portable package. The RX 580 it’s paired up with isn’t quite as impressive, as it only sports 4GB of DDR5 memory, but it’s still a powerful enough graphics processor (GPU) to handle high-end games and virtual reality headsets.
If you aren’t covering your eyes with a set of VR goggles though, the 17.3 inch, 1080P IPS display with Freesync technology should do a good job of displaying your favorite titles. You can also expand your visuals to something larger or multiple screens if you wish, using the HDMI and DisplayPort outputs.
Other ports include a single USB 3.1 Type-C port, three USB 3.0 connectors, a 2-in-1 card reader, and a 3.5mm headphone and microphone combination jack. Storage-wise it comes with a 256GB solid state drive, and a 1TB hard drive.
As part of the Republic of Gamers (ROG) range, Asus also makes sure that its new Strix laptop includes a few features for the gamers out there. That includes a backlit keyboard, a built-in HD camera, and a Sonic StudioArray microphone which, while no replacement for a dedicated microphone, should give amateur streamers something to work with.
There’s no word on how long the battery lasts, but we’re told its capacity is 76 watt-hours. The whole laptop weighs in at seven pounds and is just over 1.3 inches at its widest point.
If you’re interested in the Asus Strix GL702ZC, we’re told that it should be immediately available. However, at the time of writing it’s listed as out of stock on Amazon, and as “coming soon” on the Asus store at a price of $1,500.
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