Gaming laptops was—by definition!—hefty, cumbersome machines. However these days, even muscular gaming notebooks might be slim and trim. The 2024 Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 (begins at $1,999.99; $2,699.99 as examined) is the most recent gaming laptop computer to pack severe energy in a skinny, transportable bundle. It faces stiff competitors from equally modern Alienware and Razer methods, however the Asus nonetheless caught our eye because of its gorgeous 240Hz OLED show and potent Intel Core Extremely 9 CPU and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 GPU inside. That is the kind of {hardware} that prices a fairly penny, however ensures prime efficiency. Or it will, if the Zephyrus G16 wasn’t held again by the constraints of thermal administration and battery life.Configuration Choices: Constructed for Gaming and Content material CreationThe Zephyrus G16 is available in a number of varieties, differentiated largely by the GPU inside. Probably the most primary mannequin pairs an Intel Core Extremely 9 185H processor with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 laptop computer GPU, together with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD storage. It sells for $1,999. The maxed-out mannequin retains the Core Extremely CPU however ranges as much as RTX 4090 graphics, plus double the reminiscence (32GB) and storage (2TB), for $3,299.
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(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)
Our evaluation unit falls neatly between these extremes, with an Intel Core Extremely 9 CPU, a GeForce RTX 4080 laptop computer GPU with 12GB of VRAM, 32GB of reminiscence, and a 1TB solid-state drive. This mid-tier mannequin sells for $2,699, which is fairly cheap given the extent of {hardware} and the premium chassis design.
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)
Because of the same parts and design shared by these methods, this evaluation ought to largely apply to any of the 2024 G16 fashions, although efficiency benchmarks and body charges will not carry over throughout all configurations. Asus says one other iteration of the Zephyrus G16 with AMD Ryzen AI 300 collection processing is coming quickly, however we’ll have to attend to get that mannequin into the lab.
The Zephyrus has two completely different show choices. Our evaluation unit and its two siblings talked about above share a 2,560-by-1,600-pixel OLED panel with 240Hz refresh fee, however customers who tilt extra towards workstation-style content material creation than hardcore gaming can select an IPS display with 500 nits of brightness, 100% protection of the DCI-P3 gamut or palette, and Pantone colour validation.
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)
Design: Dressed Up for Execs Extra Than GamersThe latest G16 maintains the ultraportable design pioneered by early Zephyrus fashions, with a slim aluminum-alloy chassis that measures simply 0.7 inch thick and weighs 4.3 kilos. The bigger 16-inch display pushes this unit out of the ultraportable weight class of the 14-inch mannequin, however the compact footprint and lightweight weight put it in the identical sleek-looking ranks because the Razer Blade 16 or the Apple MacBook Professional 16. Accessible in two colours—Eclipse Gray or Platinum White—the design contains a matte end with a mirrored stripe that cuts diagonally throughout the lid.
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)
Asus calls this the Slash Lighting array, a considerably simplified successor to the AniMe Matrix show of earlier Zephyrus fashions, which had a grid of LEDs to allow customized designs and animations. This new stripe contains far fewer LEDs and gives 15 preprogrammed animations, but it surely would not depart almost as a lot room for expression or creativity as AniMe Matrix did.In truth, the entire look is much less gamer, extra skilled. This displays a shift in emphasis for the Zephyrus line—nonetheless gaming laptops and nonetheless a part of Asus’ Republic of Players (ROG) household, however pitched extra as hybrid gadgets, as a lot for media creation as for gaming.Underneath the hood, the Zephyrus makes use of some superior cooling to fulfill the temperature challenges confronted by a skinny gaming rig. A trio of followers retains air flowing, a vapor chamber and liquid steel thermal compound rein in thermals, and ROG Clever Cooling helps steadiness fan noise and cooling wants on your chosen energy profile. Silent Mode nearly lives as much as its title, however at the price of efficiency, whereas kicking it into Turbo Mode could have your laptop computer sounding like a leaf blower. And regardless of all of the thermal engineering, this laptop computer runs sizzling. Throughout a few of our gaming benchmarks, the steel chassis close to the vents hid within the hinge turned painfully sizzling to the contact.Show and Audio: OLED and Atmos ImpressOne of the standout options of the Zephyrus G16 is the gorgeous 16-inch OLED show. Its 2,560-by-1,600 decision is razor-sharp, and the mixture of 240Hz refresh and Nvidia G-Sync help makes it good for gaming. In a fast-paced brawl in Cyberpunk 2077, I used to be thrilled to see not solely stutter-free gameplay however good superb particulars introduced out by the panel’s extraordinary distinction. The mixture of OLED and G-Sync is an actual win for players.
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)
The colour high quality is not only for gaming however for artistic work as effectively. Dolby Imaginative and prescient HDR help makes video and pictures look higher than ever, and colour accuracy is topnotch even with out the Pantone certification of the IPS mannequin. The result’s a professional-grade show for visible work, in addition to video games.The six-speaker sound system is sort of nearly as good, with boosted quantity, enhanced bass, and Dolby Atmos sound help. The audio is superb, at the very least when it isn’t struggling to be heard over the onboard cooling followers.Enter Necessities: Keyboard, Touchpad, WebcamThe keyboard is on par with thin-and-light opponents just like the Apple MacBook Professional or Razer Blade 16, however regardless of first rate key journey and a springy really feel, the RGB-illuminated keys pale compared to a correct mechanical gaming keyboard. It is good for a laptop computer board, although.
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)
The accompanying touchpad, then again, is so expansive that it feels luxurious. Neither it nor another touchpad is good for gaming, however for every little thing else, the glass-surfaced pad is splendidly snug and enhanced with an oleophobic coating that retains fingerprints and smudges away whereas letting your fingers glide simply.Above the show is a 1080p webcam with IR facial recognition for Home windows Hi there logins. Although it gives first rate colour high quality and video readability, I used to be a little bit dismayed on the lack of a safety shutter or swap for turning the digital camera on and off.Connectivity: Ports for Each NeedThe Zephyrus G16 has loads of ports for such a slim system. On the correct, you will discover a USB-C port (with DisplayPort 1.4 help), together with a USB 3.2 Sort-A port and an SD card reader.
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)
On the left are an HDMI 2.1 video output, a Thunderbolt 4 port, one other USB-A 3.2 port, and a 3.5mm audio jack. Having two USB-C ports with completely different characteristic help might be complicated, however do not forget that the one on the left is Thunderbolt, whereas the one on the correct is vanilla USB-C. Wi-fi connectivity can be wonderful, with Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 dealing with your networking and peripheral wants.Testing the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16: Robust, However Not the StrongestThough slim gaming laptops had been as soon as uncommon, the area of interest has grown significantly in recent times. We started our benchmark efficiency comparisons with the Alienware m16 R2 and Razer Blade 16 as direct opponents, however we additionally appeared on the Gigabyte Aero 16 OLED (2023), one other artistic desktop alternative that blurs the road between gaming pocket book and workstation. Lastly, we included the smaller Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 to see how effectively the 14-inch model stacked up and whether or not the bigger Zephyrus would match its Editors’ Selection-award-winning sibling.
Productiveness and Content material Creation Exams We run the identical basic productiveness benchmarks throughout each cell and desktop methods. Our first take a look at is UL’s PCMark 10, which simulates quite a lot of real-world productiveness and workplace workflows to measure total system efficiency and in addition features a storage subtest for the first drive.Our different three benchmarks concentrate on the CPU, utilizing all obtainable cores and threads, to fee a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon’s Cinebench R23 makes use of that firm’s Cinema 4D engine to render a fancy scene, whereas Geekbench 5.4 Professional from Primate Labs simulates in style apps starting from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine studying. Lastly, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to transform a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p decision (decrease occasions are higher).Final, we run PugetBench for Photoshop by workstation maker Puget Techniques, which makes use of the Inventive Cloud model 22 of Adobe’s well-known picture editor to fee a PC’s efficiency for content material creation and multimedia functions. It is an automatic extension that executes quite a lot of basic and GPU-accelerated Photoshop duties starting from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving a picture to making use of masks, gradient fills, and filters.
For our assessments, I used Asus’ ROG Armoury Crate management panel to set the G16 to efficiency mode. It is vital to make use of the ROG administration software right here, as a result of changes to Home windows’ customary efficiency modes will really be overridden by the Armoury Crate settings. I additionally tried essentially the most highly effective turbo mode, which lets the cooling followers run full blast and bumps the CPU frequency up a bit, however the outcomes had been so comparable that I opted for the performance-mode numbers for our charts.Given the G16’s Core Extremely 9 processor and beneficiant 32GB of RAM, I wasn’t shocked to see it do effectively in our productiveness assessments, rocketing previous the 4,000-point threshold for good on a regular basis functionality in PCMark 10. Its Handbrake and Photoshop outcomes had been additionally proper in keeping with its rivals’, however we noticed some noticeable variations in different CPU assessments. In Cinebench, for instance, the G16 edged each the Gigabyte and the Alienware for the silver medal, however the Razer Blade posted a considerably higher rating, because of its 14th Gen Core i9 as a substitute of the Zephyrus’ AI-enhanced Core Extremely.Graphics and Gaming TestsFor gaming laptops and different cell gaming {hardware}, we run each artificial and real-world gaming benchmarks. The previous contains two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark, Night time Raid (extra modest, appropriate for methods with built-in graphics) and Time Spy (extra demanding, appropriate for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs). Additionally thrown into that gauntlet is the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which we use to gauge OpenGL efficiency. These GFXBench assessments are rendered offscreen to accommodate completely different native show resolutions; extra frames per second (fps) means greater efficiency.Past these assessments, our real-world gaming testing comes from the in-game benchmarks of F1 2021, Murderer’s Creed Valhalla, and Rainbow Six Siege. These three video games—all benchmarked at 1080p decision—characterize simulation, open-world action-adventure, and aggressive/esports shooter video games, respectively. Valhalla and Siege are run twice (Valhalla at Medium and Extremely high quality, Siege at Low and Extremely high quality), whereas F1 2021 is run as soon as at Extremely high quality settings and once more with Nvidia’s performance-boosting DLSS anti-aliasing turned on.
With a laptop computer RTX 4080 underneath the hood and 12GB of VRAM, we anticipated the G16 to do effectively in graphics assessments, however we anticipated to see a little bit extra space between the G16’s RTX 4080 and the 4070 of opponents just like the Alienware m16 R2. As a substitute, the lower-tier GPU really gained some pure rendering assessments; it is higher suited to the decrease wattage that such skinny methods necessitate.Once more, the Razer Blade 16 led this pack, because of its top-of-the-line GeForce RTX 4090 GPU. However even with the efficiency distinction, the Zephyrus was no slouch, providing extraordinarily succesful efficiency in each recreation we threw at it (whereas coming in effectively beneath our Razer configuration’s $4,199).Battery and Show Exams We take a look at laptops’ battery life by enjoying a regionally saved 720p video file (the open-source Blender film Tears of Metal) with show brightness at 50% and audio quantity at 100%. We make certain the battery is absolutely charged earlier than the take a look at, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off. We additionally use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and software program to measure a laptop computer display’s colour saturation—what share of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 colour gamuts or palettes the show can present—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per sq. meter).
The Zephyrus G16 confirmed the least stamina of the quintet in our battery rundown, lasting lower than six and a half hours. After seeing the compact Zephyrus G14’s battery life, we had been fairly bummed that the bigger G16 managed solely roughly half the runtime. Clearly the real-world battery lifetime of any laptop computer will differ extensively based on what you are doing—gaming will drain a battery far faster than streaming video or offline doc modifying—however the distinction right here is stark.One vibrant spot on this set of take a look at outcomes was show high quality. The G16’s OLED panel gives very good colour copy and brightness, even in comparison with different OLED shows like that of the Razer Blade 16.Verdict: Sizzling Stuff, in All of the WaysPutting high-end gaming {hardware} into a skinny, transportable design will all the time demand some trade-offs. The truth that the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 runs sizzling, whooshes loud, and gives a blended bag of efficiency and battery life is no surprise, only a bit disappointing. A number of that is because of how effectively the Zephyrus line has historically navigated these challenges, however confronted with competitors from the likes of Alienware and Razer, the 16-inch Zephyrus merely holds its personal.To make sure, there’s nonetheless lots to like about this machine, from the elegant chassis to the sumptuous OLED display, but it surely’s a succesful gaming laptop computer that falls wanting the elite. If you would like a big-screen pocket book that may play demanding video games with buttery-smooth body charges, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 is a worthy alternative. However if you’d like one of the best, flip to both the extra pricey Razer Blade 16 or the extra compact ROG Zephyrus G14, which does a greater job of delivering gaming on the go.
Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 (2024, Intel Core Extremely 9)
Execs
Premium skinny and lightweight design
Very good OLED show
Expansive, ultra-comfortable touchpad
Nice port choice
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Extra
The Backside Line
The Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 (2024) is a premium gaming rig, elegantly skinny with a stunning OLED display, however its efficiency is erratic and its case will get painfully sizzling.
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About Brian Westover
Lead Analyst, {Hardware}
Should you’re after laptop computer shopping for recommendation, I’m your man. From PC opinions to Starlink testing, I’ve acquired greater than a decade of expertise reviewing PCs and expertise merchandise. I acquired my begin with PCMag however have additionally written for Tom’s Information and LaptopMag.com, and a number of other different tech shops. With a concentrate on private computing (Home windows, macOS, and ChromeOS), Starlink satellite tv for pc web, and generative AI productiveness instruments, I am knowledgeable tech nerd and an influence consumer by way of and thru.
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