Zephyrus S15, 32G RAM, 1G HD, 2080 S MAX-Q unboxing & first day review
Well packed in a sturdy box. Unlike the accessories some reviewers in here say they received with their laptop, with this one I got the laptop and one charger. That's it. But for the price it was going for I can't complain.
The laptop feels extremely sturdy, you feel like you're holding a metal chassis when you pick it up rather than plastic. Surprisingly small and light but I'm coming from a 2017 Alienware M15 which weighs like an anvil. Boots up quickly and the keyboard lights are beautiful. There is however one (and only one) problem I've found and it's related to the keyboard: as other reviewers have noted, the shift- superscripts above the number keys (not sure what those are called) are not visible in the dark. The number keys are, but the illumination doesn't extend to the superscript, so you have to have memorized that * is shift-8 if you're gaming in a dark room. I'm really not sure how a design decision like that made it onto a premium laptop like this.
It's -almost- a dealbreaker, and it might be for you. It's not for me because yeah, I know where the * and other symbols are, it's just a habit to look for them, and the hardware configuration of this laptop is so unusual for the price ($2299 US). 32G ram is rare, and if you mod the crap out of games like skyrim, fallout4 or new vegas you can run out of memory on 8G, if you're playing a resource intensive game on one monitor and have steam, HWINFO, process explorer and a bunch of tabs in your browser open on the other one I felt like 32G would be a better option than 16 if I could find it. Most laptops come with one 512G SSD, and how suitable that is comes down to how much you intend to install, what kind of wallpaper/mp3/mp4 junkie you are, how bad you are about downloading large mods etc. I'm bad and my backlog of games on steam is huge, so 1G is the preferred option as it means less time policing up my disk usage. All in all the hardware in this laptop far outweighs the annoyance of the dim shift-key lights.
The keys feel comfortable with a small range of travel that feels similar to my Alienware. Unlike what I read in other reviews (that seemed to be for different laptops in this family, make sure you read what device they're reviewing, does amazon stick them all together?) Armour wasn't missing, it was right where it was supposed to be in the start menu. I have the fans set for performance and the noise wasn't nearly as loud as I'd expected from reading other reviews. In fact I think my alienware fans were louder. I haven't yet played any resource-intensive games so can't speak to that, but I modded up skyrim with 100+ mods and some big texture packs and the GPU temps never got above 61 (but I wouldn't expect them to on that game). I don't buy high performance laptops for the battery (seems odd to me that some apparently do, knowing a configuration like this is going to eat the battery) so I don't care about battery life.
It doesn't include a webcam. Good. If haxxors want to look at my pretty face they can haxxor my phone.
Will post more after more use.
edit: a few days later
Crossout, 76 degrees on the GPU, 235 FPS (three wins lol)
Deep Rock Galactic, 77 degrees, 264-280 FPS
Fallout NV, heavily modded, biggest texture packs I could find: 56 degrees, 88 FPS (wtf bethesda)
edit: a few weeks later
Hardware top-notch, no complaints
keyboard lighting still consistently irritating (see above somewhere)
Armory Crate is absolutely freaking maddening. Not that it doesn't work, it does, but it's got an annoying feature. It sets a profile for each game, which is fine, but there's a setting for volume. You set the games initial volume. It ignores whatever you have windows volume set at and pops it right back to the setting in armory crate. Now you have three places to go to dick with the volume in your game--the game itself, windows, and freaking armory crate. I'm tempted to uninstall the stupid thing except the fan control is good.
Fallout3 & 4 do not run on this laptop (at least not mine). Something is conflicting and I haven't found it yet. No problems with newer games though. FalloutNV does run, which is weird as I think it came between 3&4.
Less bloatware than my alienware had.
All in all a great laptop, but quirky. I've considered sending it back for an alienware but those have their own quirks and the hardware was too good for the price. There are enough irritating quirks that I wouldn't pay list though. Wait until it goes on sale.
edit: 9 months? later
This remains a fantastic unit. No hardware or configuration problems at all, not a single hiccup out of this thing. I noted previously the keyboard lighting, but I use a reddragon mechanical keyboard so who cares. Laptop keyboard doesn't get blazing hot during gaming the way I get the impression it should from reading other reviews. Armorycrate is kind of wtf, I don't have much use for it but I ignore it and it seems okay with that. Fallout76 wouldn't run (black screen) but you'll start to notice a pattern there: all the games I have trouble with come from bethesda. On that note I stopped blaming the laptop.
Highly recommended.
edit: 2 years later
This thing has run everything I've thrown at it (79 games in my steam library, lame compared to some of you lol) without a single problem. Not. One. Single. Problem. Fallout76 started working for reasons surpassing understanding, fallout3 still won't but who cares. HOWEVER!!!! THIS LAPTOP RUNS HOT!! I mean a lot of games will have you up in the high 80's/low 90's on the GPU in hwinfo. Modded skyrim (480 mods) easily hits 91, but modded skyrim is one of the heaviest GPU loads you can throw at a computer. It bugs me to see temps that high but the odd thing is this laptop doesn't seem to care. I would think problems would have surfaced after two years of those temps but nope. If high temps on the GPU bother you, you need to look elsewhere. You'll read laptop cooling pads aren't a good idea, I haven't tried. If they don't bother you, this laptop is a must-buy-on-sale. But understand that these models run hot, like temps that might freak you out. I've screwed with MSI afterburner but it didn't seem to make much of a difference, these units just run hot and are apparently perfectly happy doing so.
| Standing screen display size | 15.6 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1080 pixels |
| Max Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1080 Pixels |
| Processor | 5.1 GHz apple_ci7 |
| RAM | 32 GB DDR4 |
| Memory Speed | 3200 MHz |
| Hard Drive | SSD |
| Graphics Coprocessor | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER Max-Q 8GB GDDR6 |
| Chipset Brand | NVIDIA |
| Card Description | RTX 2080 Super |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 8 GB |
| Wireless Type | Bluetooth, 802.11ax |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 4 |
| Average Battery Life (in hours) | 8 Hours |
