Gaming Laptop Analysis

Is the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15 R7 4800HS GTX 1660 Ti 16GB RAM 1.0TB M.2 good as a gaming laptop? Good

Processor - This laptop has an excellent processor in it for meeting modern AAA CPU requirements during 2021 gaming. The 8 cores that this processor has is excellent and very capable for today and future AAA gaming.

Graphics Card - The GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 6GB Mobile is certainly a good gaming graphics card for a 2021 laptop. This GPU has 6GB of VRAM. This is considered a good amount of VRAm for modern games but some graphics solutions have more.

System Memory - This laptop system memory is excellent at meeting today’s 2021 system requirements demands and with its 16GB of RAM it will certainly meet the requirements of games into the near future as well.

Screen Size - Our review laptop has a 15.6" panel. We certainly feel this is a good gaming laptop size in 2021 and gives a happy balance between portability and physical gaming viewability. When laptops get much smaller, it makes it harder to see in-game menus and some of the game huds can take up a lot of the screen area, leaving less space for you to see main game playing areas on physically smaller screens. We would probably prefer the larger 17 inch size laptop for an ideal gamers laptop, but perhaps this smaller size would tick your requirement for smaller and more portable.

Refresh Rate - The higher the screen panel refresh rate, the better for gaming laptops. The refresh rate is the number of times a second the screen is capable of refreshing the game’s image. If a laptop can deliver 100 frames per second (FPS) in a game and your laptop has a 60Hz refresh rate, then you will only get a max of 60 frames per second. The higher the refresh rate and the game’s FPS the smoother the sharpness is as the screen view moves around in game. If you were to get the 240Hz laptop screen option that we see this is available with then this would be an excellent refresh rate gaming laptop choice.

GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 6GB Mobile graphics card gaming performance in the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15 R7 4800HS GTX 1660 Ti 16GB RAM 1.0TB M.2 laptop

No two laptops are the same. But one of the primary gaming laptop components is of course the graphics card. Often a slightly weaker mobile solution, when compared to its desktop equivalent. Today we will consider this laptop's hardware, when running modern popular and sometimes demanding games, like Far Cry 6, New World and Battlefield 2042 which will help us know if this mobile graphics card and the overall laptop hardware is considered a good price to performance point. We consider it running these titles at its native 1080p resolution, and at Ultra video settings. A good way of considering performance of this mobile graphics card is by seeing how many of today's 500 most demanding games can be run at recommended graphics settings by the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 6GB Mobile found in this laptop. We can also then look at the weaker minimum requirement to see how many this laptop card can run of them, and it is 489 games at their min specs and then 280 games can be run at recommended graphics requirements.

Comparing ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15 R7 4800HS GTX 1660 Ti 16GB RAM 1.0TB M.2 to today’s best price to performance laptop ranges

We really want to see how the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15 R7 4800HS GTX 1660 Ti 16GB RAM 1.0TB M.2 will compare across all permutations of the ROG Zephyrus G15 model range. This will give us a good sense of how well it sits in terms of cost to performance within its own lineup, and will better help us decide if this laptop represents good value to us today.

A 9.3 P2P score rating out of 10 has been allocated today to the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15 R7 4800HS GTX 1660 Ti 16GB RAM 1.0TB M.2. This value will adjust automatically as hardware and modern performance requirements from laptops improve over time. This laptop’s configuration, when compared to its own ROG Zephyrus G15 lineup, is currently placed at 1st once we order it by the price to performance figure. Obviously scoring towards the 1st position is preferable.

How about we compare our ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15 R7 4800HS GTX 1660 Ti 16GB RAM 1.0TB M.2 laptop to the laptop with the leading P2P rating out of all laptops and see how it compares. Today's best gaming laptop for Price to Performance is the ASUS TUF A15 R7 4800H GTX 1660 Ti 16GB RAM 512GB M.2 ($999) and our laptop is 56% worse if we directly compare the price to performance rating against that best hardware performance to value laptop. Moving to the 2nd position of the P2P ranking list sits the MSI Bravo 15 R7 4800H RX 5500M 16GB RAM 512GB M.2 laptop, where it has a price of $1049. Our ROG Zephyrus G15 laptop currently has 36% worse Price to Performance rating against this 2nd best model.

How does the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15 R7 4800HS GTX 1660 Ti 16GB RAM 1.0TB M.2 laptop compare to the best CPU performance focused laptops and today’s most popular games?

Now the processing power is one of the primary areas that we will pay for in any PC and so let's see how our ROG Zephyrus G15 laptop is when compared against CPU performance with a top CPU focused laptop thats available today. The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 R9 4900HS RTX 2060 Mobile 16GB RAM 1.0TB M.2 is today’s best performer in the laptop CPU department. It has a Ryzen 9 4900HS 8-Core 3.0GHz processor in it, which currently has 6% better performance than our laptop’s Ryzen 7 4800HS 8-Core 2.9GHz.

Today there are 497 games recommended system requirements that are worse than our CPU’s performance capability, this is when we look at the top 500 most demanding games right now. This figure becomes 500 games, when we look at the 500 demanding games for minimum processor system requirements.

Some of the most popular games today are really the primary benchmark for any laptop’s ability, so we thought we should compare our laptop CPU Ryzen 7 4800HS 8-Core 2.9GHz against Far Cry 6. This CPU performance comparison saw our laptop deliver 0% better performance against the game’s recommended CPU system requirements. Then we have New World and our laptop was 58% better in processor performance and another popular title today is Battlefield 2042 which we saw our review laptop get 12% better compared to our laptop cpu.

How does the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15 R7 4800HS GTX 1660 Ti 16GB RAM 1.0TB M.2 laptop compare to the best graphics card performance focused laptops and today’s most popular games?

Graphics power is a primary laptop hardware area for consideration and so let's check our ROG Zephyrus G15 by comparing it against a top GPU focused laptop thats available today. Lets grab a graphics focused laptop for comparison then. We have chosen the MSI GT76 Titan i9-10900K RTX 2080 Super 64GB RAM 2.0TB M.2 4K laptop for its graphical performance. This big hitting GPU laptop comes with a GeForce RTX 2080 Super 8GB video card in it that performs 67% better if we bench it against our laptop’s GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 6GB Mobile graphics hardware.

Today’s performance comparison for all games shows our laptop GPU can currently meet or beat 280 game’s recommended system requirements when we put the 500 most demanding games into a list. With a list of 500 Minimum system specs put ina similar most demanding order this changes to it being able to run 489 games.

Today’s games are getting more demanding so let's see how our gaming laptop performs against their recommended gpu system requirements. First off we have the New World which currently our GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 6GB Mobile is 25% better next let's see how well it runs against Battlefield 2042. We can see it is 33% worse. Ok finally lets see it against Far Cry 6. Here our laptop is 23% worse.

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15 R7 4800HS GTX 1660 Ti 16GB RAM 1.0TB M.2 has a 1080p screen resolution, should I get a 4K resolution gaming laptop instead?

This laptop’s panel has a physical 15.6" screen that delivers 1920x1080 pixels natively. But should you consider moving from this 1080p laptop and searching for a 4K laptop instead, with the intention of getting better visuals for your games or movies? We normally see a 60Hz screen refresh rate accompanying most 4K laptop panels. Which means a game would reach a top 60 FPS before it maxed out, even if the laptop’s hardware was powerful enough to deliver frame rates that were better than that. Today’s AAA games are usually too demanding for a 4K resolution anyway. You can find the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15 R7 4800HS GTX 1660 Ti 16GB RAM 1.0TB M.2 panel with 240Hz refresh rate variants.

To get back some of those missing FPS on a AAA game we lower the game’s displayed screen resolution and get some stability in the game’s performance. This is usually a last resort for gamers though and not the sort of action taken by someone who has just shelled out for a new 4K laptop. Lowering down from a native 4K resolution, perhaps to 1080p or 1440p ups the game’s FPS but veering from the native 4K resolution leaves a game looking blurry. Definition of graphics drops and surely this puts forward the need to question someone’s choice for a 4K gaming laptop. However, a 1080p laptop could very well have some good hardware in it, capable of playing AAA games comfortably at 4K with a few graphics setting tweaks. If this is the case then hook up the gaming laptop to a 4K or 1440p desktop monitor, for some serious home based gaming sessions. A decent desktop monitor is not going to have 60Hz getting in the way of extra FPS and is going to be enjoyably larger than the 15inch or 17inch screen thats most common on laptops.

If you are looking to view 4K streaming content, while keeping yourself mobile with your laptop, then maybe a 4K resolution panel would be a better experience than the normal 1080p. In general, we think it's probably not worth the extra money for any visual gains you might not spot, without a direct comparison, especially if you are thinking to game on your laptop as well.

We think don't spend your extra cash on getting a 4K laptop to game on, as it's likely to feel disappointing to buy a super shiny new 4K laptop, then have to lower the resolution while playing your games, delivering a blurry in-game experience, and only getting up to a maximum 60FPS due to the usual 60Hz 4K panel restriction.

Today’s best 1440p desktop monitor for a laptop is - ASUS ProArt Display PA278QV 27 inch 1440p 75Hz 5ms IPS

Incidentally our research shows the ASUS ProArt Display PA278QV 27 inch 1440p 75Hz 5ms IPS as our best priced 1440p monitor today. This monitor has a 75Hz refresh rate and a price tag at the moment of $311.99. To help provide some further information into this desktop monitor price trends we saw it cost a recorded low of $229.99, which we tracked on 9th Mar 2021.

Today’s best 4K desktop monitor for a laptop is - Asus Predator XB273K 27 inch 4K GSYNC IPS 1ms 144Hz

Perhaps you could grab something like the Asus Predator XB273K 27 inch 4K GSYNC IPS 1ms 144Hz 4K gaming monitor we have spotted today. It is our current best priced 4K monitor at $618 with a 144Hz refresh rate. During these recent weeks we have price tracked this 4k monitor and noticed that it has increased its price by $618, so keep an eye out for deals, as this great value monitor might still be found for cheaper. To give a bit more info about this monitor we saw it cost its lowest of $549.99, which we recorded on 13th Nov 2020.

[Note - check that monitor display connectors are compatible between a monitor and a laptop before purchase]

If you are looking to view 4K streaming content, while keeping yourself mobile with your laptop, then maybe a 4K resolution panel would be a better experience than the normal 1080p. In general, we think it's probably not worth the extra money for any visual gains you might not spot, without a direct comparison, especially if you are thinking to game on your laptop as well.

At the moment our advice would be, stick to the 1080p laptop panels for now. Your laptop remains portable and 4K laptop’s just aren't quite there yet. The 4K needs to be a no brainer but at the moment you will still have to lower resolution in game to get playable but sub par visuals that still can't raise above 60FPS.

Today's Best Priced Mouse and Headset for ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15 R7 4800HS GTX 1660 Ti 16GB RAM 1.0TB M.2 laptop

A well priced gaming mouse at the moment, that will go nicely with the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15 R7 4800HS GTX 1660 Ti 16GB RAM 1.0TB M.2, is the Kayinuo M738 Gaming Mouse 3200DPI wired 6 Buttons. Today it is priced at $12.99. Our suggested mouse has actually lowered its price during these past two weeks, dropping by $32.26. This was part of the reason we selected it as a good mouse for the price and a great accompanying peripheral for this laptop. Another point of interest was that we saw this mouse priced at $11.99, which we tracked on 15th Aug 2020.

Incidentally our price track research shows us that a good gaming headset is the Corsair HS45-7.1 Surround. Its price tag today is $36.99 and is topping our price tracking charts as a best value headset. Checking our records our lowest tracked price for this headset was on 28th Nov 2019, which had it priced at $34.99.