So many insanely new and improved gaming machines have been unveiled a couple weeks back during this year’s Computex show in Taipei. Since then, we’ve seen more of the fight for the greatest, and thinnest (a newly vital and important focus these days). It’s funny to think about, considering gaming rigs have long since been something we consider as alien-like, monster machines. As lifestyles have changed, and even the nerdiest of gamers want to game on-the-go now (or perhaps just not have to deal with a hefty load), the latest in gaming PCs has to be the well-built thin gaming laptop. Not just that, but also the hard-to-reach balance between that, and lit performance. As far as Dell as a comparison, the most beastly gaming unit lately has to be the Dell Inspiron i7559. Considered the best-valued, thin gaming laptop under $1,000, the 15-incher has Intel Core i5 inside, as well as Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M. It’s not a feather-thin competitor, but it’s worth taking a look at if a complete, yet small package is what you need. Now, for a complete laptop, that happens to be feather-thin, with the power and intent of a serious gaming machine, the ASUS ROG Zephyrus GX501 is going to be your new friend.

With top-level specs going on here, I don’t think it’s easy to understand just how special this guy is. With its stand-out feature being its 17.9mm thin body, the Zephyrus GX501 is somehow packing NVIDIA’s GTX 1080 GPU, and an H-series Core i7 CPU processor. When that seems impressive enough, you can then imagine its less-than-five-pound build. ASUS partly discloses this building tactic by thanking the new Active Aerodynamic System (AAS), a method of keeping the system as cool as can be within a limited physical space.

Can you tell there’s a marvel use of engineering here? As an interesting part of how this all works so well, let’s consider the laptop keyboard for a second. Moved to the front of the laptop to squish in some extra space for a large perforated section in front of the display, lies the area made for that extra cooling. There’s even tiny holes for fans in this space. On the other hand, making cooling a priority for this machine did mean there had to be a few sacrifices for keyboard comfort and ease-of-use. For example, the keyboard is generally small, and shallow, while the touchpad is a small vertical space on the right side of the keyboard. That, in itself, is strange. I wouldn’t want to use that, do you think you would?

Is that the breaking point? It seems like we were really getting somewhere with our utter enthrallment with the ROG Zephyrus, but this could be a legitimate deal breaker for some. Of course, you could go the extra mile and use an external keyboard, but why take something so fixated on ultra-thin portability, and make it more of a burden to carry? Happiness follows in terms of the touchpad palmrest, which can be turned into a digital number pad. Is that happiness? I don’t know. It’s cool, though. And so, we’ve got this tremendously portable gaming device, all set for sale with a starting price of $2,300, with configurations increasing cost all the way to $2,700 or so. We’ll soon see what consumers think.