Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 review

Our Verdict

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is an impressive 14-inch gaming laptop that delivers on several fronts, with great performance, incredible battery life and unbeatable portability.

For

Not bad performance for gaming and everything else
Super portable design paired with xi-60 minutes bombardment life
Dandy display and audio

Against

No webcam
Keyboard has backlighting issues

Tom's Guide Verdict

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is an impressive 14-inch gaming laptop that delivers on several fronts, with great performance, incredible battery life and unbeatable portability.

Pros

+
Bang-up performance for gaming and everything else
+
Super portable design paired with 11-hour battery life
+
Swell brandish and audio

Cons

-
No webcam
-
Keyboard has backlighting issues

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 Specs

Cost: $1,449
Display: 14-inch, 1080p, 120Hz
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9-4900HS
GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q
RAM: 16GB
Storage: 1TB SSD
Bombardment: eleven:32
Size: 12.8 x 8.seven 10 0.7 inches
Weight: iii.5 pounds

EDITOR'S NOTE: The Asus Zephyrus G14 won "best gaming laptop" in the Tom's Guide Awards 2021 for gaming.

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is the sort of gaming car that gamers take dreamed of for years. Equipped with the latest AMD Ryzen 9-4900HS processor and Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q GPU, it puts a lot of horsepower into its footling 14-inch chassis. And its cost is reasonable, besides, starting at $ane,049 ($1,449 for the model we reviewed). Information technology's not only one of the best gaming laptops out there, information technology'south one of the all-time laptops, menstruation. In fact, information technology earned a spot among our picks for the best products of the year in our 2020 Tom's Guide Awards, and earned a recommendation for best-sounding laptop in our Tom's Guide Awards 2021.

The Zephyrus G14 sounds almost too good to exist true: More than xi hours of battery life, crawly performance for gaming and VR, thermal management that never gets hot to the touch, and a design that tin can both satisfy gamers and wait at home in more professional person settings. All this, plus funky personalization features.

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Just it's no dream. As you'll run into in our Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 review, this is an crawly gaming laptop that'due south portable plenty to go anywhere and powerful enough to play anything. Information technology also offers some of the best battery life of any laptop, without compromising on style or capability, making it ane of the all-time Windows laptops you can buy.

At CES 2021, Asus announced the ROG Zephyrus G15, which packs upward to GeForce RTX 3080 GPU and AMD Ryzen 9 5900HS CPUs, as well every bit the ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 SE.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14: Price and configurations

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is a compact 14-inch gaming laptop that offers plenty of power for a more affordable toll than gaming enthusiasts might look. Starting at $1,049 and ranging upwards to $1,999, the Zephyrus G14 provides a ton of value in its sleek little chassis. Currently, though, discount pricing brings the G14 to $849 at Best Buy, for the base model config.

Our review unit sells for $i,449 and offers arguably the all-time mix of power and value we've seen for the Zephyrus G14. Outfitted with an AMD Ryzen 9-4900HS processor, 16GB memory and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q GPU with 6GB of VRAM, information technology's a powerhouse that volition handle near gaming demands with ease. With a 1TB SSD for storage and a 1080p 120Hz display, information technology's also ready for both gaming and productivity use.

The base model of the Zephyrus G14 sells for $1,049 with a less powerful Ryzen 9-4900HS CPU and Nvidia GTX 1650 GPU. With the RAM and storage chapters cut in half (8GB and 512GB SSD standard, respectively) and you lot'll yet get a decent gaming machine, but without the prowess offered on better configurations.

At the top of the menu is the $ane,999 configuration. It has the same Ryzen 9-4900HS CPU and RTX 2060 Max-Q GPU of our review unit of measurement, also equally the aforementioned RAM and storage allotment, but it boasts a 1440p, 60Hz brandish panel. Information technology as well gets some cool bells and whistles, such as a mini LED RGB assortment on the lid, chosen the AniMe Matrix display.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14: Design

Design-wise, the Zephyrus G14 is something of a small wonder. Every bit gaming laptops go, it is extremely slim and low-cal, cramming more gaming prowess into its 14-inch chassis than any comparable Ultrabook from the past few years.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 review — (Epitome credit: Tom's Guide)

Measuring 12.8 10 8.7 x 0.7 inches, the compact Zephyrus G14 weighs merely three.five pounds, making it the smallest and lightest gaming laptop on the marketplace. The computer owes its lite weight to the materials that make upward its sleek body, with rigid magnesium and aluminum used for the chassis, deck and lid.

But the compact design is missing a couple of features, dropped in society to cutting weight and size. Most notable is the lack of a webcam. While the brandish'due south slim bezels don't get out much room for a camera above the screen, at that place'south also no webcam below it, or on the laptop deck. If you lot want to video chat or stream yourself playing on Twitch, you'll need to pick up a dissever camera.

Our review unit came in a sleek looking white cease, paired with a metal silver deck, for a color scheme that Asus calls "Moonlight White." Asus also offers the laptop in a more subdued "Eclipse Gray," which has a near-black finish on the lid and matching deck, with black keys on the keyboard.

Around the outside edge of the chassis are several ventilation grilles, which are a necessary part of any high performance laptop that has oestrus-generating components within. The pattern has a stylish flourish along the back hinge edge, where the grilles have an angular look and a triangular three-dimensional blueprint.

That back edge of the laptop is also unique in that information technology has a drib hinge lid that raises the dorsum end of the laptop slightly when opened. That puts the keyboard at a more comfortable angle and raises up the display just a fleck for more comfy viewing.

The stylish blueprint too puts 1 unexpected twist on an frequently-ignored part of the laptop: the lid. The polish, flat surface of the chapeau appears to be embellished with a design of dots beyond half the lid's surface. Closer inspection reveals that these dots are actually tiny holes.

The upshot is a very distinctive look that is surprisingly subdued for a gaming laptop. But never fright, RGB fanatics: Asus even so has blinkenlights for y'all. While our review unit of measurement had only the hole/dot texture beyond the lid, Asus also offers the Zephyrus G14 with an assortment of micro LED lights – chosen the AniMe Matrix brandish – that allow each pinprick hole glow with RGB goodness. Y'all can then plough those dots into an animated marquee, which yous tin can further customize with text and graphics.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14: Ports

Along the sides of the laptop you'll detect a number of handy ports. On the right are two USB 3.0 ports and a USB Type-C port. A Kensington lock slot too lets you physically secure the laptop, if you're worried about someone walking off with the imminently portable gaming machine.

On the left is the ability connector, an HDMI ii.0b output and another USB-C port that offers charging for the laptop, and DisplayPort for output to a monitor. A combination audio jack gives you lot headphone and mic support.

For wireless connectivity, the Zephyrus G14 is also equipped with Wi-Fi 6 (Gig+) and Bluetooth 5.0. The outcome is enough of speed for gaming, even without an Ethernet connection, and speedy connectivity for wireless devices like mice and speakers.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 review: Display

Our review unit came outfitted with a xiv-inch 1080p 120Hz brandish. While I would take loved a higher resolution panel, Asus only offers its 1440p WQHD resolution with a lower 60Hz refresh rate, and I'll usually opt for higher refresh rates over marginal resolution gains.

The console itself offered decent color and brightness. According to our colorimeter, the panel produced 117% of the sRGB color gamut, which is slightly better than the Dell G7 15 (114%) or the Asus ROG Strix Scar III (110%), and notably meliorate than the Razer Blade xv (105%).

Its brightness is also above average, with 323 nits, topping the Dell G7 xv (303 nits), and leaving both the Asus ROG Strix Scar III (275 nits) and Razer Blade 15 (275 nits) looking a bit dim.

Every bit I was swooping through the dark alleys of Batman's Gotham City in Arkham Origins, I was pleased to see that bright neon signs glowed with the vibrant reds and greens, and shadowy environments were never likewise dark for adept visibility, or as well washed-out.

Even better: The gaming feel is smooth and judder-gratuitous, thank you to AMD FreeSync. Yous might be scratching your head over the pairing of FreeSync with the G14's Nvidia GPU, but contempo updates from Nvidia let the two technologies work together, and the upshot is buttery smooth.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 review: Audio

With a pair of 2.5-watt speakers and another pair of 0.7-watt tweeters, the Zephyrus G14 offers upwardly robust audio and great volume for such a pocket-sized laptop.

Listening to Whitey's "Somebody, Grab the Bicycle" I was impressed with the richness of the sound, whether it was the crash and pop of the drums or the heavily distorted guitar and vocals. In CheVelle's "Emotional Drought" I could feel the crushing guitars and a decent amount of bass, but the vocals also came through clearly and never got lost in the mix.

All of the audio is powered by Dolby's Atmos technology, which handles the sound processing. The included Dolby Atmos app lets you pick from several preset audio modes, optimized for gaming, movies and voice-axial media, with presets called Dynamic, Game, Moving picture, Music and Vocalism. You can also create custom presets using the graphical EQ options to fine-tune the sound to your tastes.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 review: Gaming performance

Armed with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q GPU with 6GB of VRAM, the Zephyrus G14 is a gaming beast that packs serious muscle into its 14-inch frame.

Playing games similar Batman: Arkham Origins and Doom Eternal, I did notice that there was some fan noise as the thermal management kicked on, but information technology's quieter than many other gaming laptops, and non much louder than several standard, non-gaming laptops I've used.

The display also takes advantage of Nvidia's new compatibility with AMD FreeSync, which lets you lot enjoy tear-gratuitous gaming with an Nvidia card and AMD-compatible displays. On this laptop, that means judder-gratis gameplay, whether I was brawling with thugs in Gotham or taking a chainsaw to the ghoulish baddies in Doom Eternal.

Our benchmark tests confirmed the impressive gaming prowess of the Zephyrus G14, delivering solid frame rates in a wide range of games at 1080p resolution and demanding settings. It's a testament to how much power the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q GPU and 6GB of VRAM tin fit into such a compact chassis without overheating or being toasty-hot to the touch.

In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, run in benchmark mode at the highest settings, the Zephyrus G14 cranked out 49 frames per 2d (fps), matching the Dell G7 15 (49 fps with a RTX 2060 GPU) and edging ahead of the Razer Blade xv (46 fps with a GTX 1660 Ti), while falling just a few frames short of the Asus ROG Strix Scar 3 (55 fps with a RTX 2060 GPU).

In Hitman, running at Ultra settings, the Zephyrus G14 notched 87 fps, alee of both the Asus ROG Strix Scar Iii (86 fps) and the Razer Blade fifteen (lxxx fps), only falling behind the Dell G7 15 (117 fps).

Simply the Zephyrus G14 really delivered in Thousand Theft Auto V, where information technology blew away the contest with 115 fps, nearly doubling the mid-60's frame rates of the competition, like the Dell G7 15 (66 fps) or the Asus ROG Strix Scar III and Razer Blade 15 (64 fps for both).

And the Zephyrus G14 too gets you lot gear up to strap on a headset for VR, scoring a solid 9.8 out of 11 in the SteamVR performance test. But while the system will let you game in VR, it didn't pb the pack on that front end; the Asus ROG Strix Scar III (10.3) and the Dell G7 15 (eleven) both scored better.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 review: Performance

But life's not all gaming and VR, and the Zephyrus G14's AMD Ryzen nine 4900HS processor and 16GB of memory also make information technology a formidable productivity and media-editing machine. During my use of the laptop, I was able to run dozens of Google Chrome tabs at once, without whatever slowdown, and most not-gaming uses never fifty-fifty kicked on the fans to absurd things down.

In general performance tests, like Geekbanch 4.3, the Zephyrus G14 scored thirty,181 points, well above average for a 14-inch laptop, ahead of both the Dell G7 15 (23,863) and the Scar Three (23,196), and dramatically better than the Razer Bract 15 (xix,542).

Video conversion barely fabricated the Zephyrus break a sweat, performing a 4K-to-1080p Handbrake conversion in just nether vii minutes (half-dozen:59). That sort of transcoding work normally slows even the fastest systems. The Dell G7 15 (8:05) was closest with more than an actress infinitesimal, while the Asus ROG Strix Scar III (10:34) and Razer Blade Pro (10:47) were much slower.

The Zephyrus G14 owes some of its speed to a zippy 1TB SSD, which copied our 4.97GB test folder in iv.5 seconds, at a transfer rate of i,131 megabytes per second (MBps). That'due south twice as fast equally the Razer Blade Pro' 256GB PCIe SSD/iTB HDD combo (565.five MBps). The Zephyrus G14 leaves the G7 15'due south 256GB SSD (127 MBps) and the Scar Three's 1TB SSD (525 MBps) in the dust. Even among non-gaming systems, it's a speed demon, compared to the Dell XPS 13 2020's 512GB SSD (627 MBps).

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14: Keyboard

The keyboard is a standard QWERTY layout with tiled keys, with decent spacing between the keys to ameliorate replicate a gaming keyboard typing experience.

Despite the G14's smaller size, it doesn't accept an edge-to-border keyboard, and typing on it can feel a petty cramped. Withal, the spacing of the keys helps to alleviate this, and the key travel feels reasonably deep, with an passably responsive typing feel.

The keyboard'due south backlight, however, is just lousy. Each key has transparent lettering that glows white when the backlight is turned on, which is a fairly standard design choice. Notwithstanding, each letter appears to be positioned directly on superlative of the keycap mail service, which doesn't allow equally much light through. This design gives each key a dark shadowy spot correct in the center of the letter.

The backlit letters also aren't sufficiently contrasted past the light silver coloring of the keys, making them less legible when the backlight is on in all only adequately night weather condition. This may not be an issue on the black-finished model, only it certainly was a trouble on our review unit.

The bigger issue, however, is the calorie-free leakage effectually and through the edges of each keycap. When viewed at a normal bending, the LED backlight tin actually be seen through the gaps of each primal well, lighting up the keyboard similar a Christmas tree. Additionally, the argent coating of the keycaps appears much thinner effectually the edges of each tile-shaped fundamental, significant that the edges of the keys will sometimes glow white when they shouldn't. The lighting is not entirely consequent across the whole key. The result is very uneven, and makes for a surprisingly unpolished annotation in otherwise impeccable design.

One other odd quirk on our review unit of measurement – both the "I" and neighboring "M" keys looked similar they had been depressed, and wouldn't spring back up to proper height to match the rest of the keys. Whether this was a defect in the review unit we were given, or the upshot of harm from shipping, or from prior reviews, I don't know. We reached out to Asus nigh this issue, and will update this review once we know more than.

In a higher place the keyboard are dedicated buttons for volume command and mic muting, and a Republic Of Gamers control panel that lets you optimize system performance. Chosen ROG Armoury Crate, this tool gives y'all a handy dashboard interface for managing the CPU, GPU and fan performance, letting you lot tweak other settings.

While information technology may not get much use in gaming, the Zephyrus G14 also has a surprisingly adept touchpad. The four.1 x 2.four-inch touchpad has a glassy smooth surface, with clean, distinct clicks and adept correct/left click stardom, fifty-fifty if the bodily clicking depth is a bit shallow. Multitouch gestures and 2-fingered maneuvers all worked flawlessly every bit I used the laptop to browse, piece of work and play.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 review: Battery life

But for all of the Zephyrus G14's gaming prowess and raw power for daily productivity, we didn't expect the battery life to be particularly impressive. Subsequently all, gaming laptops are notorious for their short endurance, frequently coming in at times also short to make it through a full 24-hour interval of work or school.

Only the Zephyrus G14 blew us (and the competition) away with an outstanding 11 hours and 32 minutes of continuous spider web surfing at 150 nits screen brightness. That'due south longer than the Dell G7 15 (3:12), the Scar 3 (5:09) or even the otherwise long-lived Razer Blade fifteen (v:48). The Zephyrus G14 nearly doubles that fourth dimension, giving y'all hours and hours of usable bombardment without ever having to notice a wall outlet. Heck, that's long enough that y'all tin can head out for a day without having to even bring the charger along.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 review: Oestrus

Despite the presence of serious heat-generating components within a slim metal chassis, the Zephyrus G14 didn't have any trouble with estrus.

In our standard heat test, which involves fifteen minutes of streaming total HD video, the underside of the laptop peaked at 88 degrees Fahrenheit — well under the 95-caste mark where we consider the heat uncomfortable. The topside keyboard and touchpad temperatures also stayed cool, measuring 82 and 74 degrees, respectively.

Under a heavier load for longer periods, like gaming for 45 minutes, the laptop does get noticeably warm, only the Zephyrus G14 doesn't seem to go the dangerously hot-to-the-bear upon hotspots that some gaming systems have.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 review: Verdict

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 isn't simply a great gaming laptop; information technology's besides the smallest gaming laptop on the market place, and boasts the longest-lasting battery of any gaming laptop we've seen. The display is rock solid, the audio rich and robust, and the functioning offered by the G14'southward AMD Ryzen 9-4900HS processor and Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q graphics carte are some of the best you'll find this side of a gaming desktop. The fact that you can go all of this for a not-insane amount of money is also pretty amazing.

The system has some obvious problems, similar the missing webcam and the surprisingly shoddy-looking keyboard. Just aside from those relatively pocket-sized issues nosotros encountered in our Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 review, Asus' latest gaming machine is an astonishingly capable and well-designed gaming laptop. It delivers better operation than any similarly sized gaming system, and often by a large margin. It handily beats the more than expensive Razer Bract Pro, and is less expensive and more portable than the closest competitors. It's our favorite modest gaming laptop and one of the best gaming laptops always made.

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Brian Westover is an Editor at Tom's Guide, roofing everything from TVs to the latest PCs. Prior to joining Tom's Guide, he wrote for TopTenReviews and PCMag.