Review on ASUS ROG Zephyrus Keyboard Bluetooth by Mike Kies

Very disappointed with the performance of this laptop. It looks good on paper, but you'd be surprised. Since it has two PCI Gen 4 MVNE slots, I chose two Western Digital Black SN850 drives for it. According to the drive software, they run at PCI Gen 3 speeds, which is about half the speed they should be. The wireless card is a joke. My phone is 3-5 times faster than this laptop and the screw holding the card is cheap and I took it off to get it out. All of the screws (and one other) were too tight so I now have to cut them off to insert a new card (hopefully a problem). I can't even stream 4k HDR videos hosted on my own network! Everything I've seen online said 16GB of RAM needed to be soldered onto the motherboard, but it was only 8, so the extra 32 I took makes 40, not 48. So instead of 32GB, that running in dual channel, only 16. As for the battery, I haven't had the laptop long enough to really test it, but it claims to last between 3 1/2 - 5 1/2+ depending on the capacity installed can last for hours. If you want to push your laptop to its limits, be sure to use the included 200W power adapter. They don't allow you to boost performance over balanced when running on battery power or using a 100W USB-C charger. On PassMark with 100W USB-C I have 3289.5 at the 44th percentile and with 200W 3962.1 at the 52nd percentile, so there isn't much of a difference between the two, just know that they limit you. The monitor is really good, I have an old Spyder 5 Pro that I use to color calibrate my monitors and it's probably the first device where you don't see much difference between before and after. It also gets really bright. Sound I would say this is the best laptop I have owned in my 20+ years in IT. With those upward-firing speakers, they're really good. You really hear everything when playing 4k videos with Dolby audio. The downside of audio is the total lack of a base. I mean it doesn't exist at all. If you're playing a quality flac with a decent base, you can really hear it's missing. It has such a high pitched, tinny sound and it looks like the singer didn't use any pop/hiss filter at all. You don't see that in films. Dolby Atmos is interesting, not perfect, but noticeable. This PC also comes with Windows 10 HOME and not Pro if you want to know. If you are planning to upgrade to Windows 11 (supported), you MUST have an MSN account unless upgrading to Pro. I had (B07SH6GV5S). My speed has increased from 50-90 Mbps to 280-410 Mbps.