Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 review: Ryzen 4000 makes this thin, light laptop a winner - allencambactint1987

At a Coup d'oeil

Expert's Rating

Pros

Blistering 8-cores of Ryzen performance and RTX 2060 Liquid ecstasy-Q too!
Impressively thin and light for the amount of performance you get
Reasonably priced

Cons

No web cam? Very?
Keyboard backlight is feeble
No Bombshell 3 support

Our Verdict

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is the first laptop with AMD's Ryzen 4000 nomadic Central processor, and it sets a new standard for the execution you can expect from a thin and light laptop.

We've tested the fresh ROG Zephyrus G14, which debuts with AMD's stellar Ryzen 9 4900HS CPU, and we bum safely say: Just give Asus your money. This laptop packs a stupid measure of functioning into a stupidly dwarfish and stupidly light frame.

To give you an approximation of just how impressive this 3.5-pound, Ryzen 4000-founded laptop computer is, you're talking close to a weight class that typically gives you lower-power CPUs and GPUs. Yet the G14 butt attend in CPU performance with laptops that angle 10 pounds.

Apparently the starring of the show is the Ryzen 9 4900HS CPU, which we follow-up in detail severally. But the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 as a whole package is nearly as impressive, so keep reading to find out more.

asus rog zephyrus pcworld lid — Although our unit does not feature the Gum anime Matrix Light-emitting diode, it's worth highlighting. Part of the lid essentially features embedded LEDs that let you scroll surgery dart messages happening the laptop lid.

ROG Zephyrus G14 Specs and Features

The ROG Zephyrus G14 framework we reviewed ($1,450 from Bestbuy.com) has the following configuration:

CPU: 8-core AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS

GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q

Random memory: 16GB DDR4/3200 in twofold-channel modality

SSD: 1TB Intel 660P NVMe SSD

Networking: Intel AX600 WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.0

Display: 14-edge "IPS-like" Full HD (1920×1080) @120Hz, which we unhurried at 280 nits' upper limit brightness

The G14 gives you a decent array of ports. The right side features two USB-A ports and one USB-C, along with a Kensington lock port.

asus rog g14 6 — The right side of the ROG Zephyrus G14 features a USB-C port ii USB-A ports and a Kensinton engage port.

The right side features a barrelful plug for the 180-watt power brick, and a big HDMI 2.0b port (dependant to the Processor's Radeon port). In that respect's as wel another USB-C port wine with support for DisplayPort (through the GeForce RTX card) and USB-PD (Power Delivery). While you backside't really run the laptop hard along a 100-watt USB-C battery charger, the theme is to give you a barge-weight option than the included 180-Watt brick when you're on the road (and not pushing it hard).

Thunderbolt 3 and Gigabit ethernet are notably absent from the port regalia. While we empathise why Thunderbolt 3 is much difficult to obtain (given that the technology emanates from rival Intel), it does feel wish onboard ethernet is important.

asus rog g14 7 — The left field side features a barrel sparking plug for the 180 watt power brick, an HDMI 2.0b and USB-C with support for Magnate Obstetrical delivery. In that respect's as wel a

The other glaring omission is the lack of an onboard webcam. You can see below where it should Be, in the blank maculation 'tween the microphones. The rationale from Asus was apparently that you'll personify using your far master dedicated webcam to become a Twitch star. But webcams have been standard make out on all but laptops for many years, thusly on the ROG Zephyrus G14 information technology seems like a feature Thomas More conspicuous for its absence.

asus rog g14 8 — Asus' decision to omit a intrinsical webcam May bear out to be a rude storm for many users.

Promote options

Acquiring inside the ROG Zephyrus G14 is easy, if non immediate. You'll need a small Phillips-head screwdriver and the patience to remove a million screws. You then use a spudger or a thin piece of plastic, such atomic number 3 guitar pick, to nudge the case bald carefully at the seam.

Like most diluent laptops these days, at that place isn't more to do. Thither's one and only M.2 PCIe slot that's occupied by the Intel 660P SSD, and a one DDR4/3200 SO-DIMM.

asus rog g14 1 — The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 with Ryzen 9 4900HS features seven warmth pipes to bread and butter the CPU and GPU cool.

The laptop we reviewed, with 16GB, comes with one 8GB module in place. The other 8GB is on the reverse side of the motherboard in a module. The good news is it's dual-groove musical mode, so you won't hit memory bandwidth issues that impact performance. The bad news is if you want to chafe that second one-armed bandit, you'll feature to back off the motherboard.

asus rog g14 2 — The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 with Ryzen 9 4900HS

Keyboard and trackpad

We'd rank the keyboard and trackpad experience as generally good. There's respectable travel and no oddly placed keys. We could complain about the tiny cursor keys, but at to the lowest degree they're in the handed-down anatropous-T style. The trackpad has slight metallic feel to that but works well and supports Microsoft's Precision driver.

If we had to plain about the keyboard, we'd say the backlighting is pretty medicore. We've come to expect RGB in play laptops.Equiprobable for power and space reasons, Asus sticks with boring white that's neither particularly bright nor even.

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 keyboard is a trifle slopped but has freehearted go under. There's fixed run keys along round top to let you access the Armoury Crate for changing system settings too as intensity keys and a ordained mute button.

Since we're talking abolut the keyboard deck, if you consider the picture above you'll see two small grilles to the right hand and left of the trackpad. Those cutouts allow sound from the modest speaker drivers to project direct up and at you, rather than firing out the side operating room into the desk turn up. The sound is fair overall and gets decently loud, which is nigh as safe as it gets for to the highest degree laptops.

Build Quality

Laptop build quality is usually in the eye of the beholder, but we'd rate the ROG Zephyrus G14's as generally pretty proficient. The lid and keyboard deck are magnesium, while the nates appears to make up plastic. Overall information technology feels solid and lavatory be held by one corner without spirit like it's going to buckle. Does it possess the built-like a tank feel of a Razer Blade? No, but it feels like a good compromise of performance-to-weight ratio.

Did someone read execution? Keep reading for benchmarks.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 C.P.U. performance

We'll keep most of our CPU carrying out talk concluded in the Ryzen 4000 CPU review, only we acknowledge you just now want to see one number. Down the stairs is our basic Cinebench R15 result for multi-core performance.

The results verbalise for themselves: Despite being in a weight class typically leftover to rock-bottom-power, lower performance "U"-class CPUs, the G14 is able to stand with Intel's mighty Core i9-9980HK. And that's when the Core i9-9980HK is running in a farthermost larger and far heavier laptop.

Let's just say if you deficiency multi-core C.P.U. public presentation in As light of a laptop as mathematical, IT'll be hard to beat the ROG Zephyrus G14 right at once.

asus rog zephyrus g14 cinebench r15 nt — Cinebench R15 results put the G14 in a grade itself.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 GPU performance

The most important part of any gaming laptop is its GPU. In this case, it's Nvidia's GeForce RTX 2060 Liquid ecstasy-Q chip with 6GB of GDDR6 memory. If you've never heard of the 2060 Max-Q, we harbour't either. Nvidia launched its Max-Q variants with only the 2080 and 2070 versions, only someplace on the agency it appears to hold quietly introduced the RTX 2060 Max-Q (although again, this is the first laptop we've seen with IT). Notebookcheck.com offers spectacles on the RTX 2060 Max-Q. It appears to be a 65-watt version vs. the modular RTX 2060's 80 to 90 watts.

Gaming laptops being gaming laptops, we can tell you no matter how good a Ryzen 9 is, it North Korean won't make a GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q into a GeForce RTX 2080. Stillness, it's valuable to see just where it falls, so we tested IT using 3DMark's Clock Spy Art subscore. The graphics subscore focuses only GPU carrying out on DX12 workloads.

As you can see, a fast CPU won't make the GPU blend in faster, and the higher-end GPUs rule. The RTX 2060 Grievous bodily harm-Q holds ahead amazingly well, though. Typically we've seen Max-Q laptops discontinue a lot of performance to pass around in thin and light laptops. In the ROG Zephyrus G14, the RTX 2060 Max-Q is basically inactive-on with the measure RTX 2060 in the Dell G7 laptop.

asus rog zephyrus g14 3dmark timespy graphics — The RTX 2060 Max-Q in the ROG Zephyrus G14 delivers a great deal of carrying out despite the laptop's svelte and light design.

Certain games do rely on the CPU more than others. Exploitation Acclivity of the Tomb Raider set to Very High and in DirectX11 mode, we're eyesight the ROG Zephyrus G14 outpace that standard RTX 2060 in the Dingle G7.

asus rog zephyrus g14 rotr dx11 19x10 very high — The RTX 2060 Max-Q in the G14 is an impressive look GPU.

Switching to Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, we see the standard RTX 2060 opposite with a Core i7-9750H a hair's-breadth faster than the Asus.

asus rog zephyrus g14 rotr dx11 19x10 shadows of mordor ultra 4k texture pack

Obviously, the GeForce RTX 2060 Easy lay-Q and Ryzen 9 4900HS are just fine for gaming, just one issue thin-and-light laptops can brook from is performance degradation as heat up builds up inside the chassis. To mark for information technology, we fired up PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) and ran information technology for an almost two hours. We saw no more signs of trouble. For the most part, the GPU was reportedly running above 1,500MHz with the Mainframe at 4.1GHz Oregon higher. The laptop computer may notwithstandin hit a wall at some point, but its anecdotal conduct is quite promising.

pubg 1 45 — We checked for signs of throttling aside running PUBG for 1:45 minutes. Although the fans howeled, we didn't see GPU or Processor clocks come along to back off in performance heavily.

We also wanted to see if the laptop's keyboard would get excessively het, so we shot a thermal image near the finish of our gaming workout. The laptop's keyboard was fairly comfortable, with no sections climbing above 105 degrees Fahrenheit.

g14 thermal — We ran PUBG for Sir Thomas More than an hour before pickings this FLIR thermal image of the laptop computer pack of cards. Although the fan was up to, the keyboard wasn't excessively hot.

We should likewise say that sports fan disturbance with the laptop set to Turbo mode low-level very soggy Mainframe mountain was quite pleasant and almost lignified to hear in a daytime internal environment. Gaming, nonetheless, pushed the fans to very high speeds. While not offensive, it was borderline gaudy, so counterfeit your gaming headset, folks.

ROG Zephyrus G14 battery life

Our go theme covers all-important battery life. Your gas mileage will vary greatly contingent on what you do, of course. Our summing up tryout involves grommet a 4K video exploitation Windows 10's Movies &adenylic acid; TV app. We coif the screen brightness to 250-260 nits, with airplane mode along and earbuds connected (with volume at midrange), much as you'd set the laptop piece observance a movie on an airplane with the cabin lights on. For comparison we have a stack of gambling laptops, which ran from criminally bad to decent electric battery spirit.

We'd expansion slot the ROG Zephyrus G14 right into very good—for a gaming laptop computer—with simply over six hours of run meter. Considering its smaller barrage fire, that's in reality quite decent.

Obviously, if you play a gamy, expect mayhap 90 transactions of life, if you're lucky. Work over on the CPU harshly and you in all probability shouldn't anticipate more than a couple of hours. Browsing will likewise likely cut lifespan in half. The key subject matter is there's impartial enough toughness in the G14 to make it actually quite usable.

asus rog zephyrus g14 video run down — Our picture bunk go through tests puts the Zephyrus G14 in wander of decently fresh run clock time.

Conclusion: Can't touch this

To close this out, we really think you need to understand the linguistic context of the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14. The context being, information technology's a 3.5-hammer laptop computer with real performance chops.

In the chart below we record the weight of various laptops we've reliable, from the lightest to the heaviest. We also report the hardware indoors. As you throne imag, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 weighs a trifle much a Microsoft Surface Laptop 3, which features a quad-core Processor and no discrete graphics.

asus rog zephyrus g14 weight comparison — The 3.5-pound Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 weighs about As much as a quadruplet-core Grade-constructed Laptop 3, only can hang in Processor performance with laptops that weight 10 pounds.

While its weightiness puts information technology with mostly "U-class" laptops, it performs in line with much quicker "H-grade" laptops. Retributive to remind you, here's the Cinebench R15 chart from earlier in the review, where you can see it actually outperforming a mob of larger and heavier laptops.

Is the ROG Zephyrus G14 without flaws? Certainly not (like that webcam move). But for someone who actually needs this kind of performance in as light a laptop arsenic possible, we can think of zero other laptop around that tush touch it now.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/398953/asus-rog-zephyrus-g14-review-the-first-ryzen-4000-laptop.html

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