In a world of flashy, RGB-equipped gaming laptops, theASUS ROG Zephyrus G16can seem quite uncanny; it’s a laptop that doesn’t scream “gamer” at first glance, but digging a little deeper, it’s certainly one that fits that category, with some caveats.
With a stunning screen and a relatively low profile, if you’re looking for a powerful workhorse laptop with dedicated graphics, either for gaming or for content creation, the Zephyrus G16 makes for a compelling choice. That said, you will be compromising a little on its performance and battery life to achieve its portability.
Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 (2024)
The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16 offers a blend of subtle design and proper power, making it a solid choice for those who need a gaming laptop that doesn’t overtly look like one. It boasts a slim aluminum design that resembles a MacBook, a high-quality OLED display, and a distinct customizable lighting strip that appeals to both gamers and professionals. However, the laptop’s portability comes with trade-offs in performance and battery life.
Pricing and Availability
Our review unit is equipped with the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor, coupled with the NVIDIA RTX 4060 laptop GPU, 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM, and a 512GB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD. You can spec this up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H processor with a NVIDIA RTX 4080 GPU, and up to 4TB of storage. That said, before you go crazy about the specs, you should understand the apparent limitations of having these parts in this, the main one being thermals.
Specifications
Design: Subtlety is King
Starting with the design, the 2024 Zephyrus G16 is thinner and more premium than its predecessor, thanks to its aluminum unibody, coming in at around 1.64cm and weighing 4.08lbs for what is a 16-inch laptop, the Zephyrus G16 feels much less bulky than what you’d expect from a gaming device with dedicated graphics.
The entire body of the laptop has a very MacBook-esque feel to it, and I like it—it doesn’t draw too much attention to itself, while still having subtle accents of ASUS’ ROG branding, with the logo tucked away in the corner of the lid, and a Zephyrus logo on the hinge of the laptop. It looks very chic.
That said, for gamers, this is still an ROG laptop, and that means some form of fancy lighting is apparent. In this case, a dashed LED strip that spans the lid of the laptop in a diagonal design can be customized to cover a couple of different light animations and sounds to match. I think compared to most other gaming laptops that have these types of lighting setups, the Zephyrus is much more subtle and can be more versatile for a wider range of users who may not want to draw attention to their expensive laptops, but can still have the ability to customize it should they choose.
Moving onto the deck of the laptop, you’ll be greeted with a very generous full-sized keyboard and the biggest trackpad I’ve seen on a Windows laptop to date. The keyboard consists of chiclet-style backlit keys that have 1-Zone RGB, and it provides an excellent typing experience; the keys are tactile and have a good amount of travel, and there is virtually no keyboard flex, which is a plus.
The trackpad is a similar story, with its massive glass surface, though I wish ASUS had opted for a haptic-based system that had uniform feedback on the top portion of the trackpad.
Versatile Ports
In terms of connectivity, the Zephyrus G16 has a solid port selection with a Thunderbolt 4 port, a separate USB-C port, an HDMI 2.1, two USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A ports, an audio jack, and an SD card slot. The laptop also has a proprietary charging port for its massive 240W charger, but you may also have 100W PD charging through the Type-C ports, which is quite convenient.
Overall, if you’re looking to turn heads with the Zephyrus G16, you will probably be a little disappointed, but as a super minimal gaming laptop, it looks and feels excellent, and it’ll be one that you won’t dread carrying around in a backpack.
An Impressive OLED Display
Aside from the laptop’s hardware specifications, the most notable aspect of the ROG Zephyrus G16 has to be its display, which is quite stunning. This laptop offers a 16:10 aspect ratio display that has a 2.5K resolution, and options for OLED or TFT panels which meet the ROG Nebula Display Standard. The bezels have been kept relatively small, giving way to making this display feel as expansive as possible. Both display options support Pantone validation, G-Sync, DCI-P3 color, and Dolby Vision.
Our review unit is the OLED variant, and it’s genuinely one of the better gaming laptop displays I’ve used—movies and content streaming look stunning, with deep blacks and vibrant hues, and thanks to the laptop’s 240hz refresh rate, games also look excellent on this large 16-inch screen.
For gamers and content creators, I think this screen makes for a compelling choice for those looking to maximize a relatively portable gaming or editing setup.
Solid Atmos-Powered Audio
The G16 features six speakers with Dolby Atmos support for an immersive acoustic experience, and these speakers sound very good. I wouldn’t say they match the same performance of a MacBook Pro, but they have decent separation and solid bass that makes content streaming enjoyable, and gameplay immersive.
ASUS also equipped the laptop with what it calls a 3D Mic Array that has cardioid, stereo, and omnidirectional modes, along with ROG Two-Way AI Noise Cancelation, and in my testing, I think the microphones do a decent job at canceling out outside noise and focusing in on your voice.
Hardware Performance: Powerful but Held Back
Powered by the Intel Core Ultra series of processors and NVIDIA’s RTX 40 series graphics, the G16 can handle demanding tasks and games, but you will begin to notice the drawbacks of its slim form factor.
ASUS says it’s using an intelligent cooling system for the Zephyrus G16, which features liquid metal and a vapor chamber to ensure optimal performance while keeping temperatures low, but when you get into some heavier workloads and games, you start to see the device’s performance diminish fairly quickly.
The fans aren’t as loud as you would expect, but they’re still certainly audible, even when doing menial tasks like web browsing. On Geekbench 6, the laptop got a score of 2,335 on single-core and 13,014 on multicore, which while not bad, isn’t as impressive when stacked up against smaller ultrabooks like the M3 MacBook Air, which got a higher single-core score and marginally lower multicore score of 12,030.
That said, the real benefit to the ROG Zephyrus G16 is its GPU, and here you can see the laptop shine with its OpenCL score of 111,381. These scores render to real-world use quite well; the laptop handles everyday tasks like web browsing and streaming without much hassle, and slightly more demanding workloads on Photoshop and PyCharm are also handled well with very few hiccups.
On the gaming side, running games like Genshin Impact are also excellent, especially on this fluid display. I encountered little frame drops if any in my testing on normal settings, though the laptop’s fans were audibly loud throughout gameplay, and the top portion of the laptop’s deck did get warm to the touch, as expected.
The battery experience on the Zephyrus G16 is probably the worst aspect of this laptop, and that’s in part due to its thinner design but also its specs. The G16 is equipped with a 90Whr battery which ASUS quotes lasting up to 13.7 hours on 1080p video playback, but under general usage, you’ll expect around 5-6 hours, and if you’re doing anything more intensive, you’ll need to carry around the charging brick, which is massive.
The charger on the G16 is 240W, and allows the laptop to draw much more power—plugging in the laptop automatically enables the performance mode, and that’s where you’ll be able to best utilize the processor and graphics card you paid for. However, it also means that on-battery performance is significantly throttled, with my testing showing a drop of about 46% on single-core (1,252) and 35% on multi-core (8,521) on Geekbench 6.
A similar story can be said about GPU performance, which dropped by about 23% (85,754) for the same OpenCL benchmark.
While it’s not surprising to see this type of battery performance on a gaming laptop, it is accentuated further due to the G16’s slimmer form factor, so it’s a compromise you might want to consider when choosing between performance, battery life, and portability.
Should You Buy the ROG Zephyrus G16?
If you’re looking for a gaming laptop that doubles as a productivity powerhouse, theASUS ROG Zephyrus G16is worth considering. It blends the performance of a gaming laptop with the aesthetics of a more traditional, professional device. This makes it ideal for those who need a machine for both serious work and gaming.
However, keep in mind that its slim design leads to reduced performance under intense workloads and a shorter battery life. If you often work on the go and depend on long battery life, this could be a significant issue. But if you’re mostly using your laptop at a desk near a power source, the benefits of the Zephyrus G16 might outweigh these drawbacks.
I think if you value a laptop that offers strong performance, a great screen, and good connectivity, without the typical gaming laptop appearance, the Zephyrus G16 is worth considering. Just be sure you can live with its battery and performance limits when not plugged in, and be prepared to lug around the massive power brick when you inevitably need to plug in.
