This is the Asus rog Zephyrus g14. yes it is a 14 inch gaming laptop but with looks that are not too out there gamer. This has never got us a review loaner so I actually had to pick this one up to see for myself.
Overview
Just how groundbreaking this ain’t and the processor isn’t here you know. The Zephyrus g14 gives me hope tomorrow for laptops. Actually – which is a cool thing you know we’ve all hoped for portable gaming laptops. I didn’t set your legs on fire or destroy themselves and all that sort of thing.
Going back to the original razor blade which was a 14 inch model which you could fry eggs on let’s face it and had thermal challenges and all that sort of thing because it’s not easy technology there and part of that has to do with Intel.
Who seems to be creeping along really slowly with their CPU in Turin iterations and having trouble getting things smaller and using less power generating less heat ie the struggle they had just to get down to 10 nano meter well.
Amd ryzen in 4000 series CPU’s which this has inside are just finally done. There’s Zen2 architecture Renoir whatever you want to call it. This is something special. Now I’ve already reviewed an Ultrabook from Lenovo that has the Ultrabook version of this process. We’re gonna review the HP Envy x-360 with it.
We’re also gonna look at the Dell G5 SE special edition. Which has the full 45 watt h-series equivalent processor inside. But this one right here is interesting because if you can get it with a Ryzen 7 or a Ryzen 9. It’s the HS variation of those so we have the Ryzen 9.
Which roughly would be equivalent in their lingo to a core eye 9. More like the latest generation Intel Core i7 8 core CPU. Perhaps in terms of performance. Anyway HS means it’s basically the 45 watt processor but they dropped it down to 35 watts without really compromising performance and for this special sauce kind of thing.
Asus has an exclusive until we think the end of Q3 so by Christmas time. We’ll see more manufacturers with this. Because they have to work so closely with the manufacturers to ensure the performance and all that stuff. Now it’s really pretty neat here so this is a 14 inch gaming laptop and it’s available with a Ryzen 7 and NVIDIA GTX 1650.
Our model is the Ryzen 9 with a Rtx 2016 max Q. So, at the lower end of the higher tier shall we say for gaming laptops. There with the RTX 2060 max Q but that’s still powerful enough to get you high to ultra and getting at least 60 frames per second.
Generally considerably more on high settings ultra settings. You get the idea in a game so. That’s still pretty capable stuff especially considering the fact that we have a 1080p display Full HD resolution. Now there is one model that goes up to wqhd maybe more for the content creators a 14 inch I think Full HD is good.
It’s a full HD 120 Hertz display, no less so good for gaming. That the least expensive model has a 60 Hertz Full HD display by the way so if you’re 120 Hertz you’re looking at generally speaking the rise of 9 configuration but it’s also gonna vary by country.
It’s a pretty good full HD IPS display. it’s what you would expect in this price range based on. Its full srgb color gamut. Its Pantone calibrated at the factory they do a pretty good job. If you’re looking for super high gamma and super high resolution for content creators that’s not.
It’s because I think they wanted to keep this in the premium category but not the obscenely expensive category. Asus has laptops that hit $3,000. if you’re looking for that sort of thing but this is an int that’s another appealing thing about this. It starts at $12.99 with the Ryzen 7 and the gtx 1650.
The Ryzen9 is 1449 but right now at Best Buy it’s on sale for like 13 49 which is like a steal. That gets you the RTX 2060 max Q and that 120 Hertz Full HD. That’s a lot of laptop for that price especially given the fact that. It’s pretty premium stuff.
Other good things so you can see the way it’s on screen this thing weighs about the same as a 14-inch ultrabook yet. It has a whole lot more power. It’s a little thicker though. It compared to the Lenovo ThinkPad x1 yoga which is their thinnest most premium 14-inch Ultrabook.
It’s a little thicker than that granted but you know you might notice the pattern on the lid. It still has the signature suits well cut out along the hinge area in the back. That diagonal line that they like but you see a whole lot of holes on there don’t you and by the way this is available in our white color.
They have what they call it eclipse gray your choice as to which one. You want and which one you can find in your country but there’s over 6000 little CNC holes on the lid they think it looks pretty cool. But it’s also there for the $2,000 model they have. That’s the enemy certainly written like anime events enemy matrix despite.
what that is is twelve hundred and fifteen little mini LED’s underneath there so you can have like animated gif’s or static JPEG’s they have a little designer app. That you can use to light up the lid personally. I don’t feel the need for that and I believe that one comes with a wqHD display.
So if you’re looking for the higher resolution you might get the extra dots to anyway party trick. Then beyond that it’s not overly game looking that’s another nice thing the one concession to gaming.
You kind of have room for cooling and the AMD processor is really impressive here and said the same thing with the Ultrabook but this is a harder thing to do here. Now you’re getting it to the higher wattage 35 to 45 watt processors. This thing really keeps its cool. There’s a trick to keep it even cooler when you’re gaming.
I’ll talk about it in a minute but much better than Intel. Intel Has a lot of the problems we’ve seen with the razer blade 14 inch in this day and much better with the razor blade 15 inch but granted that’s a better chassis is the challenge of the thermals.
Because the processes are just getting awful hot somehow. This one just keeps its cool which means less fan noise. It doesn’t mean a cool chassis though because it’s relatively thin the area above the keyboard that’s strip above. Where like the volume keys are and stuff like that gets very hot to the touch.
If you’re gaming the bottom will get hot so we still have a gaming laptop here in terms of chassis temperatures. If you’re just using it for productivity or streaming video no problem whatsoever. It’s just been pushing it using the CPU and the GPU handling gaming.
But the core temperatures on this I mean running today’s demanding games like Battlefield 5 on ultra settings. I’m saying core temperatures like 85. Where Intel would be thermal throttling getting closer to a hundred.
If you use one little trick here it’s not this enabled out of the factory but it’s pretty easy to do with the registry. You can actually disable turbos. You usually feel like I shouldn’t have to do this right but the base clock speed of the CPU is very high. It’s 3 gigahertz versus Intel being it like 2.3 gigahertz typically.
So it’s high enough and games are generally GPU bound not CPU bound that I didn’t see any difference in frame rates biden’s disabling turbo. Having it run and just stay to three gigahertz and the core temperatures. We’re talking like 75 Celsius and 105 is the allowable maximum very very good given the really strong CPU performance.
It’s really great for games like sip 6 for example the turn times are so fast. It’s delightful in this given the portability of this. The relatively speaking of a fordable price tag for what you get. This is like the ultimate college laptop for those who’d like to game or who are going to schooling and are doing engineering work or 3d rendering
Keyboard
It’s class-leading in terms of performance the casing on this. By the way the lid is aluminum. Keyboard deck is magnesium alloy. I believe the bottom is magnesium alloy as well magnesium. Alloy tends to feel a little bit more plasticky. So don’t be fooled by that but it’s quite light and keeps the weight down without cutting the battery capacity.
The chill arms on the keyboard other than their usual space-age looking triangular power button. Which doubles as a fingerprint scanner is the space bar that’s taller on the left-hand side that’s for people who are gaming using the WASD keys.
You need to hit that Spacebar. It gives you a more realistic tap on speaking of the keyboard. It’s really very good I missed the days of keyboards that actually travel. Given the fact that it’s not fairly slim. I’m impressed that they could manage us and have great key return and feel it reminds me of a think pad keyboard.
That’s surprising especially because a lot of us Asus gaming laptops especially the thin ones don’t have such awesome feeling keyboards. Also if you’re used to the older Steel Series keyboards that were on MSI gaming laptops like that feeling to but a little bit more crisp a little bit more return a Zen key rollover and all that.
So white back-lighting is not the most brilliant thing on light silver keys turning it on can actually reduce visibility in certain lighting situations. It’s not even at all you might look at anything. I got a dud but they’re all like this. why that isn’t why they couldn’t fix it. I don’t know if the laptop it’s actually been released.
Trackpad
Now there’s time to address this. The Microsoft precision Trackpad is wonderful. I mean precision. Trackpad is always a good thing but some are better than others and this one is one of my favorites.
It’s just very responsive, very accurate and very neutral in its behavior as It has bezels around the top and the sides are quite small. You know it looks to me like they had room for a webcam but here’s a gotcha. There is no webcam now with everybody doing the work at home thing that is a drawback of course.
Everybody doing the work at home thinks a lot of us are discovering how crappy looking your average 720p is. Webcam is and you’re going out and getting a USB $20 or a better camera and getting better results. That’s what you would have to do here Asus makes one that hangs on the top.
If you want to buy there is or you can get any other one you want but it’s not there. Also that bottom bezel is pretty tall to match the footprint of the bottom of the chassis so that’s why sometimes bottom bezels are big. They couldn’t shrink that bottom chassis anymore which is understandable.
Speakers
The speakers on this are unexpectedly good afternoon just reviewing the Msi ge62 or the 15-inch chassis. It had really tinny speakers, this one has stereo speakers. That is up firing on the edges front edges and keyboard deck and woofers that fire downward. So the sound is not only loud but it’s quite full and pleasing sounding.
It doesn’t have an annoying tinny kind of Sound and better yet because of the AMD CPU really managing heat so well. Especially if you disable boost on. It the fans are not going to drown it out at all the fans are pretty much close to silent for productivity working when you’re gaming you’ll certainly hear them but they will not fill the room with noise.
Fingerprint
it’s good this does have a fingerprint scanner embedded into the power button. Which is a perfectly nice place. It’s not the best though I did get an update. it improved and I had to delete my fingerprints actually in the process because it wasn’t any better at first but it’s a little bit hit or miss.
I don’t know what the deal is here today fingerprint scanners are typically pretty good. This one isn’t one of the really good ones. Will they get it better? I don’t know maybe there’s that so the Asus army creates the same song for these and all their gaming laptops. I would suggest leaving it installed.
It has a variety of performance and power profiles that integrates really tightly with AMD’s design spec. I didn’t have any problems by the way. I know that when this first came out nearly two months ago that some people had problems with the screen blacking out when just watching a video or something was an AMD driver issue or BIOS issue.
There have been updates for that which we have on board here. I haven’t seen any problems or weirdness with this. It’s been a very stable laptop.
Battery Life
So, battery life, battery life must suck right, something must be wrong well. You have a 76 watt hour battery which is very big for a 14 inch laptop that’s approaching what Razer does in the blade 15 which is an 80 watt hour battery so plenty of juice right there. when you’re using an unplugged and you’re not doing things like gaming.
Which really you better plug in if you want your maximum performance though AMD does do a little bit better than Intel. When it comes to unplugged gaming performance but for productivity work and all that sort of thing not hitting the GPU much battery life on this well.
Windows first project in 10 hours when I first started using and I thought yeah right and I actually at 115 its brightness seen about nine hours of use for light productivity work in streaming video.
If you’re doing harder stuff and you’re doing Adobe Premiere or Photoshop or that sort of thing or doing serious coding and number crunching and compiling of course. Your run times are gonna be shorter than that likewise. if you crank up the brightness but that’s pretty good too
Benchmarks
Benchmarks on this are what you would expect to see from the equivalent eight core i7 10th gen CPU pushing even into a core i9 territory which is phenomenal for something this small. If you need something really powerful on the go that fits into a laptop bag easily like any Ultra book would.
This would be if you’re doing video editing. If you’re doing 3d rendering kind of work or you’re doing heavy duty scientific or number crunching kind of stuff all those sorts of use cases where you need a lot of CPU power. Not only the benchmark number is excellent on this but in real-world tests they like doing a hand brake video in code this thing actually rocks.
I took a one gig 4k h.264 video file and encoded it down to 1080p h.264 again and I compared that to the razer blade pro 17 until the 10th gen model that we just reviewed with an RT X 2080 Q max that doesn’t matter. It just uses the CPU for this anyway though and he was actually faster by 25 seconds that’s significant.
When you’re talking you know 2 minute in code time versus 25 seconds less than that. It’s actually a little faster than the Dell G5 SE that we have with our Ryzen inside so it’s very good. I think I would buy one of these but there are so some drawbacks here for the price.
You don’t get Thunderball 3 Why that it was an Intel product they have finally let’s open up that silicon and actually I believe they’re laying the USB C USB consortium run that. So we’ll start to see if more Thunderball 3 with AMD processors but not there yet.
So it’s getting close to perfect but not quite there we do have USB C ports. One this supports power if you wish to do that though it’s not going to charge it nearly the rate of the power brake that comes with it which is 180 watts. It’s a sports display and we have another USB C for storage on the side so you can use USB C docks you can’t use Thunderbolt three dunks.
If you want to use an e GPU that’s Thunderbolt 3 based you can’t do that here. You get two USB ports. Both of them are on the right side. You have HDMI 2.0 if you need many Display Port that a USB C port can handle and a headphone jack as well.
Technical Specification
Processor
- Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 4600HS Processor, 3.0 GHz (8MB Cache, up to 4.0 GHz, 6 Cores, 12 Threads)
Operating System
- Pre-loaded Windows 10 Home (64bit) with lifetime validity
Memory
- 8GB DDR4 3200MHz onboard RAM, Upgradeable up to 24GB using 1x SO-DIMM Slot with
Display
- 14-inch (16:9) Full HD (1920 x 1080), 300 nits Brightness, Anti-Glare IPS-level panel, 120Hz Refresh Rate, 100% sRGB, Pantone Validated, Adaptive sync, 85% screen-to-body ratio
Graphic
- Dedicated NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650Ti GDDR6 4GB VRAM
Storage
- 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 3.0 SSD
Keyboard
White Backlit Keyboard
Networking
Wi-Fi
Intel Wi-Fi 6 (Gig+) (802.11ax) 2*2
Bluetooth
Bluetooth® 5.0
Interface
- 1x 3.5mm combo audio jack,
- 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C,
- 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A,
- 1x Type C USB 3.2 Gen 2 with Power Delivery,
- Display Port 1.4 and G-Sync Support, 1x HDMI 2.0b
Battery
- 76WHrs, 4-cell Lithium-Polymer Battery
Weight
- 1.60 Kg
Manufacturer Warranty
1-year limited international hardware warranty
Summary
I really like what you get here for the price and the portability of this is insane given the horsepower and performance in here. I mean you know we dreamed of this years ago when the razor blade stealth was announced and that really turned out to just be an everyday Ultrabook back in the day.
It’s creeping up there and capabilities but wow this one is very powerful. It’s not perfect yeah I mean they like I said the keyboard back-lighting is not terribly even on it. It doesn’t have a webcam solved by a USB webcam but still a couple of little niggling things.