AMD's Ryzen CPUs have come out of the gates swinging, and have maintained that momentum still. Besides democratizing core-counts and SMT (Simultaneous Multi-Threading), these AMD chips brought about a revolution of sorts for AMD's CPU power efficiency, with Ryzen frequently going up against Intel's solutions - and even besting them frequently in this area. As such, that the Zen architecture would make its way to laptops was only a matter of engineering, design and testing - which usually translate to time. Ever since we reported ASUS was working on a Ryzen 7-powered laptop, the folks at ASUS have been working on it. And now, they've finally introduced the ROG STRIX GL702ZC.

The ROG STRIX GL702ZC is the world's first Ryzen 7-powered laptop, and marks the beginning of the end for AMD as the "budget" option when it comes to mobile solutions, with lower ASP of products based on AMD's platform justifying sometimes horrendous specs and configurations. The ROG STRIX GL702ZC features a 17.3" FHD IPS anti-glare display with FreeSync, driven by a Ryzen 7 1700 CPU paired with AMD Radeon RX580 graphics (the 4GB VRAM version) and 16 GB of DDR4 memory (expandable up to 32GB). The system can be further configured with an M.2 SSD (up to 256 GB) and/or an up to 1 TB , 5,400 RPM HDD.Other specs include a chiclet-style keyboard (this editor's favorite in laptops) with up to 30-key rollover; a multi-format card reader; an HD webcam and dual-band 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi (plus Bluetooth 4.2). Connectivity-wise, there's 1x USB 3.1 Type-C connector, 3x USB 3.0 ports, 1x Ethernet jack, 1x HDMI and 1x mini-DisplayPort. The Operating System is assured by a Home edition of Windows 10.The ROG Strix GL702ZC laptop measures 16.3" x 11" x 1.3" and weighs 6.6 pounds, which increases to just over seven pounds with the 4-cell lithium-ion battery. The Asus ROG Strix GL702ZC is available right now starting at $1,499.99.