Credit: ASUS
Performance
As we touched on before, ASUS claim that the Zephyrus M is world’s slimmest gaming laptop powered by an 8th Generation Intel Core CPU and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 graphics. While that does (at the time of writing) look to be case, the company can also lay claim to the title one of the best performing gaming notebooks around.
When it came to PCMark’s Work 2.0 test, the ROG Zephyrus emerged well ahead of pretty much other laptop we’ve reviewed in recent months.
Credit: Fergus Halliday | IDG It’s an impressive result, to be sure. However, for gaming laptops - it’s graphics-heavy benchmarks that matter the most. In this area the ROG Zephyrus M lead by quite so much of a margin. The result it gives here are solid, but closely pursued by not just several of its direct 8th-gen Intel-powered competiton but even some of last year’s 7th-gen machines.
Credit: Fergus Halliday | IDG Finally, in terms of how VR-ready the ROG Zephyrus M is, ASUS’ slimlined gaming machine fared quite well. In fact, compared to the recent crop of portable PCs, it led the pack.
Credit: Fergus Halliday | IDG Battery Life
In terms of battery life, we’d say that ROG Zephyrus succeeds in its promise of going above the average when it comes to battery life. Unfortunately, the degree to which it sits above the average isn’t as huge as we’d hope. Ultimately, it stops well short of offering up a category best in the area - a crown currently owned by Gigabyte’s AERO 15.
When subjected to the Battery Eater testing tool, the ASUS ROG Zephyrus M took 1 hour and 7 minutes to dissipate its entire charge. This test is designed to burn the battery down as fast as possible and show off the minimum amount of battery life you can expect.
Since everyone’s ordinary usage patterns - and the impact that those patterns will have on your battery life - are going to naturally vary, this is generally a good way to gauge how the battery on one gaming notebook compares to another but won’t necessarily reflect your exact everyday experience with the machine.
The Bottom Line
The ROG Zephyrus M’s recycled design isn’t as unique as its predecessor’s was at the time, but the gains in performance here leave it a formidable option for gamers nonetheless. It’s still one of the slimmest gaming laptops out there, not to mention one of the best-performing ones. There’s still room for improvement - but the Zephyrus M offers an upgrade where it counts most.
Credit: ASUS 
