Asus ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition G513 review: an AMD gaming powerhouse

The Asus ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition G513 is quite a mouthful but in short this is a mid-range contender for our best gaming laptop list, and it's packed with top-end AMD technology in an attempt to show gamers that there are options beyond Intel and Nvidia.

With an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX CPU and an AMD Radeon RX 6800M GPU, it succeeds too – you get a lot of performance for the price if you go for this particular model for your next laptop, and there's the extra peace of mind that comes with a respected brand like Asus.

In our Asus ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition G513 review we'll take you through everything you need to know about this model, from its gaming performance to the sort of battery life you can expect between charges. Read on for the full story of this laptop.

Asus ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition G513 review: screen and design

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We very much like what Asus has done with the design and build of the G513: it's chunky but in a stylish way, with a large flash of colour under the hinge and above one of the cooling vents. There's nothing subtle about these four fan vents but again they're well designed and in keeping with the overall aesthetic, and other touches like the metallic Republic Of Gamers logo on the lid and the dotted textures at the side of the keyboard add to the visual appeal of the laptop. It weighs in at 2.5 kilograms.

There's RGB lighting control for the keyboard and the light bars underneath, all controlled with software preinstalled on the laptop. This of course is compatible with any other Asus gaming gear that supports Aura Sync, and it's possible to create some dazzling effects if you want to – or just turn everything off. The W, A, S and D keys are translucent to help you find them more easily while gaming, which may or may not be to your tastes, and there are a couple of other unconventional layout choices – like media playback keys down the right-hand side of the laptop.

As for the 15.6-inch IPS LCD display, it runs at a 1,920 x 1,080 pixel resolution, with a 300 Hz refresh rate and a 3 ms response time – another set of impressive specs that show the laptop can hold its own against its competitors (a 1440p alternative is also available). We found the screen to be great at showing off games, though it could use just a touch more brightness and vibrancy to really stand out from the crowd. It's still a great display panel, but it's perhaps one area where the G513 isn't quite top notch.

In terms of ports and connectivity, we've got a 3.5mm audio jack, an HDMI 2.0b port, one USB-C port, three USB-A ports, and an Ethernet port, spread around the sides and the back of the laptop (the power cable also connects around the back). The latest Wi-Fi 6 standard is supported – very handy if you have a Wi-Fi 6 router at home – but there's no webcam, which is an odd choice in an age where we're all doing so much video calling. You don't get a fingerprint sensor either, which is a shame as it makes logging into Windows a much simpler process.

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Asus ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition G513 review: performance and features

Our Asus ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition G513 review unit came with an AMD Ryzen 9 59H00HX CPU, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of NVMe SSD storage and an AMD Radeon RX 6800M GPU – the best mobile graphics card AMD offers right now. In short, you won't have any complaints about the performance of this gaming laptop, and it should run the very best PC games of the day without any issue. The AMD SmartShift technology is on board as well, which optimises CPU and GPU load depending on the current task, and FreeSync support ensures gameplay stays smooth and fluid.

In the well-known Time Spy benchmark in 3DMark, the G513 scored an impressive 10,569 in our testgs, which is better than 89 percent of results – it's very close to the 11,085 average for high-end gaming PCs, and well above the 5,730 average for gaming laptops. We got a good 50-70 frames per second in Red Dead Redemption 2 and Cyberpunk 2077 at a 1080p resolution with most graphics settings ramped up, though enabling ray tracing in Cyberpunk 2077 knocked that figure in half – it still looked fine, but not super-smooth.

Even AAA games run without a hitch then, and the laptop stays impressively cool too – the big vents around the side and the back of the main chassis ensure the underside of the laptop remains okay to touch, even if the vents themselves do warm up very quickly. Keyboard and trackpad responsiveness was good in our testing, and there was no problem with the audio output from the two 4W speakers (with Dolby Atmos), which was surprisingly decent for gaming, music and video.

Speaking of sound, the laptop does get reasonably loud under heavy load, but doesn't get to distracting or annoying levels. As for battery life, no one's usually going to buy a gaming laptop for the time it lasts away from a mains plug, but the G513 does well for a high-powered portable computer like this: an hour of streaming video at maximum brightness and a low volume knocks the battery down by about 7 percent an hour. That's with the power-saving mode enabled though – Intensive tasks and gaming will of course accelerate that battery drain very quickly.

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Asus ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition G513 review: price and verdict

The Asus ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition G513 has been put together to demonstrate what a full AMD CPU and GPU combination can do, and it ends up being a pretty fantastic showcase for the tech. First and foremost you want your gaming laptop to run the best games well, and here the G513 passes with flying colours. Not only does it game well, it manages to stay relatively cool and relatively quiet while doing it, which is just about all you can ask for from a gaming laptop.

You may or may not like the design of the laptop, but in our eyes it's definitely well done. The typing and touchpad experience are first rate, you've got plenty of ports and Wi-Fi 6 on board, and it'll do just fine when you're not playing games as well – other laptops perhaps hit that creativity/gaming sweet spot a bit better than this, but really it's a great all-round computer (remember that it's particularly good at streaming video without running down the battery particularly quickly).

While there are more powerful gaming laptops out there – which probably have a webcam as well, unlike this one – for the price you're paying, we think the G513 gives you value for money and then some. Areas like the display could be improved, but for a price around the £1,900 mark (with 1TB of storage rather than 512GB) you get plenty of return on your investment in terms of gaming performance.

As we say at the end of many a gaming laptop review, the competition continues to get fiercer when it comes to the best gaming laptops: there are some genuinely fantastic options out there now, which means you're really spoilt for choice as a buyer. Picking out the best one for you is a lot about the design choices and the brand names you like, and this is an obvious contender for AMD fans. There is room for improvement with the Asus ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition G513, but it's still a great piece of gaming hardware.

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