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00:00Hey, how's it going? Dave2D here, and in front of me is the Asus GL702ZC. It's the easiest
00:09name in the world to remember. There's actually a bunch of 702 devices. This is the most powerful
00:15one because it's got an 8-core CPU. So if you don't know that much about CPU cores,
00:18the average Ultrabook has 2 cores, the average gaming laptop has a 4-core CPU. This thing
00:23is rocking a new 8-core CPU from AMD called the Ryzen 7 1700. It's actually a desktop
00:29class CPU. It's super powerful, and they were able to stick it into a laptop that's
00:32not like super thick or super large. It's still a little bit bigger. It's not like the
00:37thinnest laptop out there, but it's a very portable device for an 8-core Windows PC.
00:42Now the design isn't my favorite. It's not the color or anything. I mean, there are some
00:45red accents, but it's more just the actual aesthetic. It's more of a dated Asus look.
00:50The current Asus laptops, like the ones at the end of 2017, look pretty clean. They're
00:54more like brushed metal with silver and gray accents. This is more like the classic black
00:59with a bit of red. The port selection is pretty standard for a 17-inch laptop. There is a
01:04USB-C port, but there's no Thunderbolt 3 support. The build quality is not bad. It feels kind
01:10of like an average Asus laptop. It's not bad or anything. It's just not ultra premium.
01:14Now to get inside this laptop, it's not the easiest thing. It's doable. There's a bunch
01:18of screws, but you have to put quite a bit of force to get the plastic off. But once
01:22you're inside, the RAM and the drives are user-replaceable. Interestingly, the CPU looks
01:27to be replaceable as well. I think I see a little bit of a socket on the motherboard.
01:30It's not just soldered right on. The battery down here is 76 watt-hours, and battery life
01:34is not great. We're looking at an hour and a half, like 90 minutes of battery life for
01:39the screen at 250 nits with everything at just like normal settings. It's actually one
01:43of the lowest battery lives I've seen on a laptop, and the AC adapter is also pretty
01:47large. It's a 350 watt brick, but keep in mind that this is a desktop-class CPU. It
01:52literally is something that they pull from desktops, and they stack it in here. And it's
01:57an AMD GPU, so you're missing things like Nvidia Optimus. So battery consumption is
02:01going to be high, but the other thing is, AMD could technically improve on this stuff
02:05with some software updates over time. The keyboard and trackpad feel pretty similar
02:09to Asus laptops. I mean, it's a very standard-looking Asus keyboard. Comfortable to type on. Slightly
02:15mushier keys than I'd like, but it's good otherwise. Trackpad, Windows Precision Drivers,
02:20plastic surface, it's a good trackpad. I think most people will like it. The speakers are
02:24actually way better than I thought they'd be. These are actually one of the best, possibly
02:28the best, Asus speakers I've seen on a laptop. I guess it's because it's a bigger chassis,
02:33there's like more room for stuff in there, but they sound good. Not super loud or anything,
02:37but the clarity is there, and the bass is more pronounced than you'd expect.
02:40Alright, performance on this machine can be very impressive. Single-core stuff is kind
02:44of run-of-the-mill, nothing super special, but the multi-core stuff is crazy good. This
02:48laptop flexes so hard on basically every single other laptop that I've tested before. In the
02:53Cinebench CPU test, this thing scores over 1,400 points. That's like 40% better than
02:58even desktop-class CPUs, like the 7700K. The thermals on this thing are actually not bad
03:02as well. Temperatures are good. Cooling eight active CPU cores at once is obviously not
03:06easy, but they're able to do it. But, fan noise isn't super quiet. It's not crazy loud,
03:12but it's definitely audible. The gaming performance gives me mixed opinions. It's not bad, per
03:17se. It's running at RX 580, the mobile version, and that's similar to like a laptop GTX 1060,
03:22so very respectable. On the 1080p screen, I'm still getting very good frame rates, even
03:26on maxed-out graphics, but this is the kind of performance you'd expect for like $1100
03:30or maybe $1200. GTX 1060 laptops aren't super expensive. This thing starts at $1500. And
03:36where this thing shines, and quite frankly, this is what people should be buying this
03:40laptop for, is video editing. This thing crushes so hard in Adobe Premiere. So Premiere
03:46has always been a relatively weak performer on laptops. It's a very CPU-hungry application,
03:51and even high-end gaming laptops with four-core CPUs don't do nearly as well as desktops that
03:55have like eight or ten-core CPUs. This thing keeps up. This thing's actually faster than
04:00a lot of the systems that I've used in the past year. It's actually faster than like
04:04the $10,000 Mac Pro in Adobe Premiere, which is crazy. It's a $1500 system. The screen
04:09is okay. It's good for gaming. It's a 1080p panel. It's bright, but I wish it was higher
04:14res because that's what I would use this computer for. I wish it had like a 4K panel with really
04:19good color accuracy and stuff, but that's just not the case. So again, I feel like Asus
04:23made something that's a little bit niche, but this time, I feel like it's a little bit
04:27confusing because they have components in here that are very gamer-oriented. So I mean,
04:31it's the ROG brand. It's got some red accents. It's got a 1080p screen, and I think they're
04:36actually making a 1080p 120Hz screen option, but at the same time, the strength of this
04:41device is seriously in multi-core stuff, which most games in 2017 or even like early 2018
04:47won't be able to take that much advantage of. This thing really shines in video editing,
04:52but it's stuck with a non-4K panel and not a super color accurate panel either. So if
04:58you look at the price of this thing, it's actually a pretty good value for people that
05:01are editing videos. To be able to get this kind of performance in this kind of portable
05:05form factor for $1,500, like a year ago, this would have been impossible. But right now,
05:11if you're trying to pick up this thing for games, I wouldn't recommend it. It's not a
05:15bad machine for it, but for $1,500, you can get devices that even ones made by Asus that
05:19are just more suited for gamers. Okay, hope you guys enjoyed this video. Thumbs if you
05:23liked it, subs if you loved it. See you guys next time.