Hands-on with the incredibly thin Asus Zephyrus gaming laptop

Gaming laptops are getting slimmer and more powerful and that's definitely a good thing, helping this evolution along is the new NVIDIA concept called Max Q which combines more energy efficient version of GeForce 10 series graphics chips within the laptop bodies, the first real world example of this we've tested is the new Asus Zephyrus laptop, yeah I just test them I don't come up with the name. The Zephyr is a 15-inch gaming laptop that's incredibly slim despite having an Intel core I7 and an Nvidia 1080 GPU, which is really the combo you want for a high-end gaming PC. It's just 17.9 millimeters thick and a hair under 5 pounds, which makes it the slimmest G force 1080 laptop we tested a typical laptop with a similar set of parts can weigh 8 lbs or more and be much much bigger. Part of the secret is this hidden vent under the system. Keep the lid closed it looks like any sized slim laptop open it up and the entire bottom panel lifts away creating a 6mm high air chamber to keep the system cool. It is good at gaming as other GeForce 1080 laptops were tested and even has enough power and enough ports to support virtual reality. The one thing that struck me as a bit odd though is the touch pad which gets moved to the side and can double as a number pad with a tap of a button. For a gaming laptop touchpad, it's actually not terrible. But, moving its location plays against decades of collective muscle memory, and you do that at your own peril.