Name: ROG Zephyrus G16 (2024) Gaming Laptop (Intel Core Ultra 9 Processor / 2TB SSD / 32 GB RAM / RTX 4080)
Brand: ASUS
Rating: 3.2 (40 reviews)

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ROG Zephyrus G16 (2024) Gaming Laptop (Intel Core Ultra 9 Processor / 2TB SSD / 32 GB RAM / RTX 4080)

Amazing laptop , good performance and very good battery life , looks professional. sleek

[Rewarded Review] Amazing Laptop

This is a beast of a computer. It’s packed with top-tier specs yet doesn’t look like a spaceship with RGB everywhere, so you can use it in the boardroom or your basement and it won’t look out of place. This is my first Asus PC and so far, I’m impressed. The build quality is outstanding. The case itself feels premium, which is always a good first impression. I’m glad to see gaming PCs are finally moving away from plastic, and Asus did it right with this machine. Fan vents downward at the back vents...fine, but make sure you pay attention to the surface you have the computer on.

On both sides are pretty standard, consisting of a power, HDMI, USB-C//Thunderbolt, USB-A, headphone jack on the left, SD reader, USB-A, USB-C//Thunderbolt on the right. You can charge using USB-PD, so if you forget your power supply, you can charge it with a high-power USB-C charger. There are no ports on the rear except for lots of vents (more on that later). It’s a sleek design and the diagonal LED on the lid is fine…you can turn it off or have it do patterns, etc. I don’t ever see it, so I don’t care, but if you want to customize the pattern, you can. These lid lights are pure white and not RGB. I consider that a good thing.

You can lift the lid with a single finger without the base popping a wheelie. This adds no actual functionality, but it’s a nice testament to the engineers at Asus. The keyboard, while crisp and quiet, is above average, but it’s no Thinkpad keyboard. The trackpad is large, glass and accurate, if not a little too big. I am getting too many accidental presses and mouse motion due to the trackpad size...there isn't really anywhere to rest your wrists since the trackpad takes up so much space. Hopefully Asus' palm-rejection software can be improved in the future.

The display is as jaw-dropping, as you'd expect. It's very bright and is essentially a flawless OLED panel. The resolution is perfect for the size. I have no complaints about the screen whatsoever. It’s not a touch-screen, but that’s a good thing on a gaming laptop.

The speakers were a pleasant surprise; they are seriously 90% as good as the MacBook Pro 16" speakers, which are amazingly full from highs to lows. I've owned a few other gaming laptops in the past and all of them had the typical tinny sounding speakers that nobody likes. These are legit and I'd feel confident saying they will likely impress you too.

It has the latest Intel Core Ultra 9 processor along with Nvidia RTX 4090. Needless to say, the gaming performance is impressive. Every game I’ve tried looks and runs smooth. Remember the rear vents I mentioned earlier? Well, in order to eliminate hot air blowing out of the sides and back of the computer, the fans blow back and down out of the rear vents. It does a nice job of hiding the blasting hot air when gaming, but you have to be careful about what surface you have it sitting on. I have a plastic desk mat and I didn’t realize the hot air was blowing directly on the desk surface, so much so that the heat warped my plastic mat! I can see it being actually painful to use on your lap, so you may want to get a desk laptop cooler or pad so it raises up, lowering the temperature of the heat that’s blasting your desk.

Overall, I’m very happy with it. Gaming is solid, the audio is impressive, and the OLED screen is amazing. If I were to give it a score out of 10, I’d comfortably put it at an 8/10. The rear downward blowing vents are kind of a bummer since I think the more logical way to expel heat is straight out the back and rear sides. I do see why they designed it like that, however, as the physical profile/footprint of this computer is really nice looking. It’s definitely an expensive laptop, but if you want the best, it’s worth the price, IMO.

[Rewarded Review] Very nice gaming laptop for more than just gamers!

Short but sweet - it's a beautifully designed, powerful gaming laptop but realize that the RAM this comes with is the RAM this is stuck with. At least you can throw in a second SSD should you want additional storage. Build quality is excellent, almost like it came from a certain orchard. The keyboard feel is amazing, better than any laptop I've ever used outside those that you have to think about. OLED - enough said.

Unboxing, first impressions, and initial setup:

First thing is the packaging feels like any other Asus laptop. While the ROG Zepherus G16 comes in a box within this box similar to what your high-end smartphone comes in, you have to get through the brown cardboard first. I feel like this takes away from the experience of opening it up.

The laptop is solidly built. The body is milled from a single piece of aluminum, the way premium laptops should be made. The bottom is one large set of vents, which is a way to keep things cool. The dark grey color looks nice, and where the light stripe is looks like a terrific accent, even when off.

Power it on that you'll be greeted by the sound of the G16 booting, which is the sound of a sword being drawn. I'm a fan of this. Also, the contrast between the foreground and background is startling if you've never seen an OLED larger than your smartphone.

This laptop comes with Windows 11 Home Edition. While there are ways to get around making a Microsoft account, plan on doing so if you haven't already. For what it costs, however, it should have with Windows 11 Pro.

The best part of the OOB experience is that McAfee doesn't come installed by default. That was enough to bring back one of the stars taken away from the upgradeability thing (more on that later).

Usage:

The Core Ultra 9-185H processor is extremely snappy and responsive. Windows boots fast and Windows updates very quickly. The SSD in this system isn't the fastest thing out there, but has adequate performance for any game you can throw at this machine. The RTX 4070 Mobile is a capable GPU, even with only 8GB of memory. Performance feels similar to the desktop RTX 4060Ti when turned all the way up to its 115-watt TDP mode. The Core Ultra 9-185H also has integrated Arc graphics that perform very similarly to the Arc A380, which is terrific for encoding and even decent for low-setting gaming.

Everyday usage for productivity is great. Internet browsing is only slowed by your WiFi connection. Office apps do whatever you need them to instantly.

Most games run without issues. While some modern titles will only allow for medium graphical settings because of how much memory they need for the GPU, almost everything else that can run on an 8GB video card will run at high, settings natively. On the 2560x1600 display, graphics look beautiful. Thanks to the display being OLED, the contrast is deep and colors are very rich.

For video editing, the combination of the RTX 4070 and Arc graphics makes for a powerhouse. The RTX chip is great for rendering out graphics while the Arc is very efficient at rendering video.

The G16 comes with a proprietary 240-watt charger. It's also compatible with up to 100 watts of USB-PD charging, which I confirmed for myself with a third-party adapter and a USB-PD cable rated for 240 watts each.

You'll also find USB-A and USB-C ports on both sides of the laptop, HDMI and headphone on the left side, and a SD card slot on the right side.

If you're familiar with Asus ArmoryCrate, that's the software used here to control the keyboard lighting, update the firmware/BIOS, and control the Slash Lighting, which is a very unique feature in that it's a multi-zone light strip that can be set to one of several animated presets. It does only glow white, however. Other Asus-branded peripherals can be controlled with this software, too.

Upgradeability:

2 SSD slots are a terrific way to make sure you don't run out of storage, especially with the price of high-capacity SSDs dropping. The included SSD is an adequate performer, with 5000 MBPS reads and 3000 MBPS writes. it does support PCIE 4 aand PCIE 5 SSDs, but I would stay away from high performance drives in a laptop because of heat and power concerns.

the WiFi card is also easily accessible with the bottom open and uses the standard form factor. As WiFi versions improve, it's good to know you can upgrade.

However, the RAM is soldered into the machine. You can't just go buy a DDR5 memory kit to upgrade from 16GB. Gaming laptops should have upgradeable memory. I would have even given up one of the SSD slots for this.

Closing:

This is almost a perfect laptop. Thin, light, powerful. Then you find out that even though you can add storage, you can't add RAM. While it's a good premium laptop for those looking for something thin, stylish, powerful, and not from the orchard, it's not something I can recommend to the core audience Asus was looking at selling this to, as 16GB will be less than the minimum spec you'll want for gaming. It is a solid laptop though. My recommendation is for those that aren't looking at this as a hardcore PC gamer.

And for the price, it should come with Windows 11 Pro.

If you're a gamer who really does want a Zephyrus laptop, I'd recommend spending a little more on one of the models with 32GB of RAM. Yes, it's going to cost more, but you'll get more enjoyment over the years out of one of those models.

[Rewarded Review] Almost a perfect thin and light gaming machine.

The ROG Zephyrus G16 is a fantastic premium laptop that is the closest thing you will get to a MBP with Windows and a powerful Nvidia RTX 4070 mobile GPU. The form factor, build quality, design, and overall aesthetics make this an absolute head-turner when people see it, especially when you fire up your favorite game and take a gaming break. The Intel Core Ultra 9 185H CPU also provides powerful performance for both multi-tasking and productivity as well as gaming and the 240Hz OLED 16" G-Sync screen is fantastic for media/photo editing, work, gaming and movie/TV/Youtube streaming.

The laptop isn't quite perfect however, and there are a number of questionable decisions and annoyances which I will briefly cover up front, because otherwise this laptop is just about perfect combination of portability, power, looks, connectivity and performance.

- Only 16GB of RAM, and its soldered on and can't be upgraded. This is really a bummer because 16GB just isn't enough for heavy multi-tasking, media editing and web browsing and then you throw gaming on top of that and 16GB becomes a major limitation. I really wish Asus put at least 32GB even on this lower end unit because overall it is still a premium design and price range for laptops.

- The included 1TB SSD is pretty low end for a premium laptop. I get that SSD prices have gone up in the last 6 months, but Asus' choice of a lower-end PCIe 4.0 NVMe drive with the WD SN560 is really disappointing as the drive only 4300MB/s Read and 3300MB/s Write speeds, which is barely faster than PCIe 3.0 drives that hit 3500MB/s for Read/Writes. Luckily, this shortcoming can be remedied, unlike the RAM situation, as there is a free m.2 SSD slot that you can use for a faster PCIe 4.0 drive that can hit 7500MB/s read/write speeds.

- This 4070 G16 model has an inferior cooler than results in hotter temps under load, but also much louder fan that has a high pitched whine. Its really unbearable at times and sounds like a Jet engine taking off. The 4070 version has a 3rd fan that is the culprit here, while the 4080 version doesn't have the 3rd fan and has a vapor chamber cooler there instead, which means much better temps and much better noise levels. This is a really big issue on this laptop and I would recommend only using Performance mode in Armoury Crate and not Turbo mode, even though you will lose some performance as a result for both CPU and GPU. I am going to look into disabling the middle fan or even disconnecting it from the mainboard, its traumatizingly loud.

- The Intel Ultra 9 185H is their latest and greatest laptop CPU based on Meteor Lake, but unfortunately, its actually slower than the 13th gen HX CPUs like the i7 13700H and 13900H used in last year's high-end gaming laptops. There is a slight difference in power consumption and maybe that is how these new 2024 laptops are so thin and light, but its odd seeing such a big drop in performance compared to the 13th gen HX CPUs which were super powerful, almost as powerful as full desktop CPUs limited in clockspeed only by their power consumption. The 4070 is fast but it seems like it is limited by the 200W power supply so it ends up not being that much faster (about 15-20%) than my 13700HX 4060 laptop.

But enough of the negatives, the Zephyrus G16 is still an amazing laptop, there's just so much to like. Typing on this laptop is a dream. The keys are solid and responsive with a good amount of travel for a full size laptop keyboard. The Speakers are on top of the laptop and are punchy and confident with good levels of Bass. The backlights look fantastic. Trackpad is huge and accurate.

And that 240Hz OLED? Wow, beautiful. I'll use this laptop for years to come even if it becomes too slow for gaming or the RAM makes it harder to use for media editing or heavy multi-tasking just because of this gorgeous screen. It'll look great for streaming movies and the laptop is super light and compact. Make sure to download the Nvidia App to enable RTX HDR which will make your videos and older non-HDR games look amazing, its much better than Windows HDR.

Full-size outputs means you can leave a lot of dongles at home and get all kinds of connectivity. The Asus proprietary power plug is very nice and sturdy and makes it easy to connect and disconnect and it doesn't feel like it'll wear or break like usb-c or the circular plugs can do over time. Full-size HDMI port and USB-C for video and charging is fantastic and the ability to get dedicated Nvidia GPU output via USB-C is excellent as well. Full-size SD Card for photographers and photo editing is excellent as well, and the TB4 ports are great for connecting high speed storage or fast devices like iPhone 15 Pro, Samsung phones, or even digital cameras/camcorders.

The ROG Zephyrus G16 does so much well its hard not to love it, but as mentioned there's just a few issues that hold it back from being perfect. The 4080 unit gets closer to that level of perfection addressing the RAM issue, the fan noise issue, but also comes with the more powerful GPU that can better utilize the 2560x1600 resolution and 240Hz refresh rate, but it also costs quite a bit more. Even with DLSS set to Quality, I was only getting 100-130FPS in Diablo 4 with everything maxed out except Textures set to High. Still, the overall package you get in such a light, compact, and stunning design is simply short of amazing and Asus ROG certainly has a winning design and concept on their hands. Maybe with a faster next-gen version of the Intel Ultra CPU, more RAM, and more efficient GPUs they'll get even closer to perfection next time, but for now, its still an amazing laptop that will serve me well for work and play.

[Rewarded Review] Beauty and a Beast

This Asus G16 is simply spectacular.
I’ve been gaming and creating video content on laptops for years. I’ve gone through high end custom builds and several other top of the line predecessors. The latest and greatest of a generation is always impressive, but this feels like an interesting and unique entry onto the market. This isn’t the machine for someone worried about cost, so I’m not even going to address that aspect.

It took me a while to settle on how I felt about this laptop. After much consideration, I think I’ve decided that it is the best all-around laptop I’ve ever used. It’s not the best gaming laptop. It’s not the best creator laptop. But it is the best blend I have ever seen.

It’s sleek, thin, and light. Easily portable with plenty of screen real-estate. The power brick is surprisingly small for something with this kind of power. Battery life is pretty good. It has a nice complement of ports. There is no number pad, but that’s not really an issue for my use case.

So, let’s talk about performance. When I first started using it, I was mildly disappointed with the frame rates I was getting in game. Don’t get me wrong. This thing is a beast, but I was expecting a little bit more out of the 4090. It’s probably due to throttling the power a bit to make it work in this form factor. Again, it slayed every game I threw at it with plenty of frames, just not quite as ridiculously high as I had anticipated. Then I took a step back and thought through the design of the machine. It’s really meant to be an overall premium experience, not just a street cred frame rate generator to brag about to your nerdy friends.

The screen is incredible. The contrast and color accuracy are off the charts. Watching movies, creating content, and gaming are all absolute joys. This screen is miles beyond the quality and capability of my last machine. I just kept watching video and calling my wife and son over to “look at how amazing this screen is”. There are all kinds of setting in the Armoury Crate software that let you control the colors and choose presets for different applications. It even has a preset to reduce eye strain that I use at night when doing simple productivity stuff.

Then there is the audio. They are very loud, and rich, with excellent performance across all frequencies. In fact, the first thing I did was play a first-person shooter. I picked up a sniper rifle and scoped in on an enemy player. When I pulled the trigger, I literally jumped! The level and depth of the rifle shot caught me completely off guard. Excellent bass! Audio when watching movies is fantastic. Obviously, external speakers or headsets can outperform these built-ins, but you will not be disappointed with these speakers.

The overall performance of the drives and processor is excellent. It’s just plain fast. It renders video incredibly fast. The read and write performance is very good. The Core Ultra is an excellent advancement in CPU technology. The wifi connectivity is stable and fast. I’m finally taking advantage of my symmetrical gig fiber. I really like the keyboard. It has enough travel to help you know you’ve pressed a button without being clunky. The track pad is huge and very smooth. It has 4 customizable hotkeys that I like. I left three of them as they are but configured the 4th to launch my favorite game at the touch of a button. Add in the Armoury Crate software that allows you to tweak a host of settings to your liking and you have the single best multipurpose laptop I’ve ever put my hands on. It’s a truly immersive experience that excels at productivity, media, content creation, and gaming, all in an easily portable package. Amazing.

There isn’t a lot to not like about his laptop. If I had to get picky… It sits low to the desk, which makes me wonder about cooling. It does vent out the back, so maybe it’s OK? It does run hot. There is a lot of power there. I suspect you could warp a cheap plastic desk pad, so be careful. It seems to throttle well enough to protect itself from the excessive heat, but you aren’t going to want this thing sitting on your lap without a chiller pad. I don’t love the lighting controls overall. I find the slash lighting on the lid cheesy and annoying, but it’s easily turned off. I wish it didn’t have a proprietary charging port, but it can accept power from a high-power USB-C charger as well. At least the proprietary port can be plugged in either way just like a USB-C. Otherwise. It’s just a fantastic entry onto the high-end laptop market.

I love this laptop now that I understand it a little bit better. I expect this to stay relevant for quite some time. If you’ve got the cash, and you aren’t trying to beat your buddy in a frame rate war, you will love this machine.

[Rewarded Review] Understand what you are buying and you'll love it!

The ASUS - ROG Zephyrus G16 (2024) 16" OLED 240Hz Gaming Laptop - Intel Core Ultra 9 - 32GB LPDDR5X - GeForce RTX 4080 - 1TB SSD - Eclipse Gray just exudes quality and high craftsmanship. From the moment I unboxed it I was very impressed. It's very solid, nice and slim, and classy looking. You can tell when you see it that it's not a budget laptop. The ergonomics are very well thought out as well. I especially like the placement of the exhaust fans. To many "Gaming" laptops shoot the exhaust heat out the sides of the chassis which blows right onto your hand if you're using a mouse instead of the track pad. Speaking of trackpads, the pad included on this laptop is nice and spacious, very responsive, and has good click tactile feedback. The keyboard works and feels decent, and the speakers sound great! The screen is amazing, very bright, nice and colorful, with inky blacks that OLEDS are known for. The 4080 graphics card is very powerful, and will handle all of the newest games, as will the 32 GB of memory. The only issues I had with this laptop is the processor, while being fairly powerful, just isn't enough to keep up with the 4080. My FPS were below what I expected for having a 4080. I get much higher frame rates from a couple other laptops I have that have lower end graphics cards in them but better processors. Even going into the included Armory Crate software and turning everything up to max, and going into the game software and lowering the settings, still didn't get the FPS I would expect. When gaming at factory settings, at factory resolution, my 1% lows were down around 15 FPS and the game was stuttering and tearing really badly. With the settings lowered and the computer tuned to the max, everything was playable, and still looked amazing on the beautiful OLED screen, but the jet noise coming out of the back of the laptop was so loud I had to turn the volume up, and the keyboard and deck of the laptop got so hot it would almost burn my fingers if I held them to long. I used a infrared thermometer to measure the temps, and the deck of the keyboard was at 115 degrees F. And the power brick was at 132 degrees F. After running for only 5 minutes at full speed. I would definitely suggest using a laptop cooler with this if you plan on gaming with higher settings. Overall I really like this laptop, even if the gaming performance isn't as good as I would have hoped it would be.

[Rewarded Review] Clean and classy, and beauty too!

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16 arrived at a perfect time. My son started college a year and a half ago, and in an effort to get him situated with something that he could work and play on, we got him an ASUS TUFF laptop to try to satisfy both. At the time it was decently powered for gaming, but was pretty robust in size with almost a 17 ½ inch screen and it was as bit chunky at almost 6 lbs. While it is still serviceable for schoolwork and browsing the web, it was definitely becoming somewhat underpowered for his gaming wants. The Zephyrus is an absolute beast with regards to those needs, packaged in a sleek new build that is more reasonably sized for both a great gaming experience and something he can easily throw in a backpack for his classroom and study needs.

Out of the box, build quality is front and center as the laptop really uses a different design language from your typical gaming rig. The G16 boasts a pretty sleek looking aluminum shell, simple in design and highlighted by a thin diagonal LED light bar on the lid (sort of a rave party in and of itself when turned on initially, but it has a few different lighting configurations or can be shut off completely in the provided ASUS Armoury Crate software), and otherwise only broken by the few ports on the left and right sides and heat vents on the underside. Coming in at just a hair over 4 lbs. while boasting a slim profile slightly over a half inch thick, It has been dubbed the ‘MacBook Pro’ of gaming machines’, and it is hard to argue the comparison from initial aesthetic impressions. I would offer that, while it certainly has the smooth and subtle presence that screams content creator, there is absolutely some signature ROG gaming snarl under the hood. We selected the buildout with the Ultra 9 185H processer, 32gb of RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 Nvidia graphics and 1TB of onboard PCIe 4.0 SSD storage. High horsepower, the perfect amount of memory for gaming, and decent but expandable storage.

Crack the lid open, and you’re greeted by elegant low-profile keycaps that are a joy to work with, whether ripping off kills in an FPS or typing notes in a class (not super important, but I’m paying the freight for college so it is a bonus feature…). ASUS provides a backlit chiclit style keyboard with single-zone LEDs, it is a really smooth journey navigating the keyboard when in a typing rhythm. The tactile clicks are there for sure, and the key actually has a decent travel depth for such a thin chassis. Total score here, as that very interaction with a laptop can make or break your comfort with it. Another big piece of the input experience is the trackpad, and this one is on point. Large in footprint, spacious enough for navigation and multi-finger gestures without feeling cramped or hurting your wrists at all. Very responsive with a minimal click action to register affect, a really nice tactile experience for such a subtle action.

This is all topped with a gorgeous 240hz 16” OLED ROG Nebula display. I’ve not had an opportunity to experience gaming with an OLED screen, and it is absolutely jaw-dropping. Contrast and color gamut are the main calling cards of OLED technology, and I just haven’t seen much that compares with the experience. For gaming, it is a vivid otherworldly experience saturated with rich deep colors and a super crisp presentation that absolutely pops. It is another class of gaming, largely what you are looking for when shopping in this stratosphere and I believe that the configuration we picked is the optimal one to really drive the best performance the screen has to offer. We were able to achieve consistent 70-90 FPS performance with zero tear or artifacts in many of our AAA titles, the gameplay was absolutely immaculate and brought an entirely new depth of experience. Nothing made this rig sweat from a performance perspective (although all games will get the fan cranking pretty well, prepare for liftoff when you hit go…as was expected with the design of the deck). Streaming movies and other media use is pretty outstanding on it, between the OLED visual experience and onboard sound he’s found another reason not to leave bed on the weekends. We are all used to needing headphones and mics in the family, as we all game and use our devices to play, chat and video chat. The Zephyrus comes with Dolby Atmos speakers that fire up and down and provide rich full sound that has him passing on the headphone port unless he needs to keep it low key, it is surprisingly good for directional gaming sound, and outstanding for music in general. The onboard camera was generally good for video conferencing, and the three-microphone array was surprisingly crystal clear and front and center – you could pass on a USB mic or headphone boom mic and be more than fine, it was a pretty good quality for group chats, you will likely certainly level up with external gear for more professional streaming. The Armoury Crate software has an audio suite that allows you to choose between a few microphone profiles.

The laptop has the normal array of ports as noted in the specs and within other reviews, the only concern I would generally mirror from other reviews is the proprietary power port. I’m not sure if this is something that will over find common ground within the industry but it remains a unique style of jack that looks prone to damage and could be expensive to replace. This is generally not my wheelhouse in terms of knowledge, but I’m praying for a magnetic power supply that can support the higher voltage needs with a clean breakaway (as I stumble through them often and ruin laptops and lives). Either way, there is enough for what you need in terms of adding peripherals, connecting devices and having alternative power solutions. I do particularly like the SD cart port for content creators, my son is starting to play with graphic digital arts and photography, this should come in handy. The onboard battery is as expected, for general use and browsing, we got a little over seven hours out of the box. For the optimal gaming experience you are not expecting to thrive on battery life- unplugged and loaded into a AAA title at max settings, we saw somewhere a little over an hour battery performance. Hard to look at this negatively, lithium has not solved for this level of horsepower, and that isn’t how he expects to use it.

The ROG Zephyrus G16 is a premium designed laptop that perfectly blends portability with performance. It has really solid gaming credentials, can perform just as ably in the creator space, and absolutely overdelivers on your daily driving media-consumption tasks wherever you want, whenever you want. Would absolutely recommend, and another win for the ROG family. I have owned and built with ROG components for over a decade, I’ve trusted my gaming with them through three of my own builds, and if you are looking for a top-end pre-built laptop experience, this is definitely it.

[Rewarded Review] Elegant build with some ROG snarl....

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16 is an incredible laptop that is capable of running the most demanding titles at the upper limits of quality and performance. While housed in a sleek, slim, and infinitely portable chassis, the G16 also somehow manages to be a gaming powerhouse that does not compromise on speed, graphics, and stunning visuals with every test I threw at it.

When unboxing the ROG Zephyrus, you’re treated to some of the most thoughtful and well-placed packaging I can recall from any tech product I’ve ever purchased. One of the first things that struck me as I removed the box containing the PC, was just how light it was. I’ve played a number of gaming laptops, and they tend to be large, bulky, and generally cumbersome to use on a daily basis. Once you remove the G16 from its box, it becomes evident that this laptop is not like the behemoths I've used in the past.

At just over half an inch thick and weighing barely over 4 pounds, this is by far the lightest and most portable gaming laptop I have ever used, considering its 16" screen size. I appreciate that the majority of this computer is a sleek, dark grey aluminum, which feels premium and far nicer than the plastic builds of many comparable products. The only downside to this finish is that it is a slight fingerprint magnet, but wiping it down with a cloth does help to keep this problem to a minimum.

Even though the G16 itself is slim and light, the charger included is a pretty big piece of tech that you will need to take with you if plan on gaming (more on this later). I don’t mind the heft of the charger, but it feels as if it weighs almost as much as the PC itself. Then again, with the kind of performance this PC offers, I understand that it needs a good power supply to run at full speed. The power cable connection appears to be a proprietary type plug, at least if it is a standard type I’m not exactly sure what it is.

Ports on the Zephyrus include standard USB and USB type-C, as well as a headphone jack, HDMI, and an SD card reader port. This laptop has an exceptional set of speakers that actually sound good, a nice backlit keyboard, a huge glass trackpad, and a set of easily accessible hotkeys that can be programmed for different functions.

The 16” OLED screen on the Zephyrus is phenomenal, with a 240 Hz refresh rate that ensured all of the videos and games I played looked smooth and stunning. I truly don’t have anything but praise for this screen, it just looks that good when playing some demanding games or high-def videos.

Inside the heart of this machine are some great pieces of hardware, which include:
- Intel Core Ultra 9 Series 1 Processor
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Graphics
- 16 Gigs of RAM
- 1 TB SSD
- And that gorgeous 16” OLED screen with 2560 x 1600 resolution

Now I would like to cover some of the games I tested on the ROG Zephyrus.

Fallout 4:
This older (2015) game ran flawlessly on Ultra settings, which I totally expected with these kind of specs. Load times were incredibly fast, and the framerate was high the entire time I played. For this title, the cooling system did run some, but was not always at full blast like some of the other titles.

Starfield:
While running on the same engine as Fallout 4, this newer title looked STUNNING on the Zephyrus. I had the preset on "High," and that seemed like the sweet spot, maximizing both graphics and framerate at that perfect level where everything looked crisp, smooth, and beautiful. I did run it on "Ultra," and it ran just fine, but I do believe that the framerate did suffer just slightly on this setting. Placing it back on "High" looked so incredible I had no problem enjoying it in that mode. In this game, the cooling fans did run pretty much the entire time I played.

Cyberpunk 2077:
Another newer title that ran flawlessly on the G16. I was able to run Cyberpunk in “Ray Tracing – Ultra” mode with no issues whatsoever. Honestly, this one left me a little bit blown away. In my experience, Ray Tracing in ANY mode is hard to accomplish for most systems, and here the Zephyrus was, running it in “Ultra” with no hints of lag, or stuttering framerates. This was THE BEST I have ever seen Cyberpunk 2077 look, on any system, and this is a game I’ve sunk about 350+ hours into. Yes, the cooling fans did run the whole time, but I’m still just amazed at how well this PC played such a graphically intense title.

Forza Horizon 5:
This game auto-detected my hardware and set the graphics to "Extreme." Wow. This is another title that just made my jaw drop on this PC. Perhaps it's a combination of the Auto-HDR that engages with compatible titles (all of these were), the refresh rate, the OLED screen, the high resolution, or just the specs of the hardware…whatever the case may be, I've never seen this game look so stunning. Just beautiful graphics, with such smooth performance that never hiccupped or lost that high framerate.

Overall, I was blown away by how incredibly well this PC ran the games that I tested. Here are some notes I took during this time:

- To get the best performance, the G16 MUST be plugged into power. I tried gaming on battery power, and performance did suffer.
- That being said, the cooling system is so efficient, that the laptop rarely got any hotter than “warm” in my lap, and was never uncomfortable during testing.
- The fans are loud, but if you’ve got the volume up, or are using headphones, it’s not that bad, just some background noise.

Battery life on this laptop is okay, but I wouldn’t say it’s exceptional. I got around 5-6 hours on a charge, and spent all of my game time plugged in. There is some cool exterior "slash" lighting that you can customize, and you can turn it off when on battery power to conserve energy. ASUS offers many ways to customize this laptop in the settings and included programs, and it seems there is an almost endless array of options to make it your own.

At the end of the day, the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16 laptop is the best gaming laptop I've ever used. Not only is it portable and relatively lightweight, but it's also a true heavyweight when it comes to playing some of the most demanding titles on the market. It managed to stun me numerous times with some of the most spectacular visuals and jaw-dropping performance I've ever witnessed. Combine this with the fact that it's simply the sleekest 16" computer I've ever seen, and the Zephyrus G16 has become THE gaming laptop to beat, hands down.

[Rewarded Review] The Best Gaming Laptop I Have Ever Used

The ASUS ROG G16 for 2024 has an all-new design that is sure to turn heads. Immediately, the sleek all Premium Aluminum CNC Unibody chassis will catch your eye. When Asus stated they were making the all new G16 thin, they were not kidding. It's .59" thin and only weighs 4.09lbs. Can you say gamer MacBook Pro, LOL.

The new G16 is packing the all-new AI Powered Intel Meteor Lake Ultra 9 185H which is one mean processor. From its powerful 6 performance cores, 8 efficiency cores and 2 low power efficiency cores, you are sure to have all the gaming and number crunching power at your fingertips.

Now let's talk about gaming! The G16 is outfitted with an Nvidia RTX 4070 GPU with 8 GB of GDDR6 Vram for all your graphics goodness. The RTX4070 has a TGP of 115w, which is a slight decrease from last year's model, however you are still getting the same raw performance from a slightly lower wattage. Less watts means less heat. More to come on that subject.

Storage is handled by a Western Digital SN560 NVMe 1TB SSD drive that has pretty good read and write speeds. There's a second PCIe 4.0 NVMe Slot for expansion onboard.

The G16 is configured with 16GB of soldered on LPPDR5X Ram running at 7467MHZ. Is 16GB of ram enough for today's demanding games or applications? This will depend on what you are doing with the laptop. For the long haul, no it's probably not enough, however the fact that the ram is running at such an extremely high MHz means very smooth operations when needed.

The display is where this laptop shines! The 240HZ 16" QHD 2560 x 1600 OLED screen is a thing of beauty! From the uber rich blacks to the stunning colors the display can produce, you are in for a treat when viewing your favorite media content or playing games. On the back of the display, are the all-new Slash Lighting effects. You can set all sorts of different lighting scenarios in Armory Crate. For me, it's ok, not my cup of tea type of thing so I just turn it off.

Rounding out the laptop are the 6 Dolby Atmos Speakers that have been much improved from last year's model. The sound is much more balanced, and the lows are very pronounced. Overall, the new speakers sound fantastic. Just remember to tweak the Dolby Atmos settings to your liking.

Out of the box, the experience was a mixed bag. Windows setup went smooth as expected however, going into the My Asus and ROG Armory Crate apps was not smooth. It took several tries to get the My Asus app to recognize the laptop had been registered and prompted to do so more times than I would like. Opening Armory Crate, I immediately had a prompt indicating that Windows is now controlling the dynamic lighting. I would have rather been given a choice on this. None of the lighting options are enabled unless you disable the Windows Dynamic Lighting Control.

Within 2 days of using the laptop I started to notice that the speakers were sounding garbled and distorted on low volume. Messing with the Dolby Atmos Settings only made matters worse. I decided to give the Cloud Recovery Option a try after reading a Reddit Post on issues with the ROG Series of Laptops. This process is made easy by being built into the bios now, which is super handy when you want to add a bigger SSD and not worry about having to clone the drive. Keep in mind, Cloud Recovery will require a network connection, wireless or ethernet and be prepared for a 1–2-hour process depending on your network speeds.

After a full cloud recovery was performed, I was amazed at how much better, quieter and less warm the laptop gets. The laptop has performed amazingly well and runs as I would expect for such a high-end spec'd laptop.

Overall, I am very pleased with this new ASUS ROG 16 Gaming laptop, just had to tweak a bit to get it to run more efficiently and produce less heat.

[Rewarded Review] Performance meets elegance that packs a punch!

I've been looking forward to the new Zephyrus G16 since it was announced at CES earlier this year. At first glance, it appears to be the equivalent of a MacBook Pro in the form of a Windows laptop. I also own a 16" MacBook Pro (M1 Pro model), so for the past week, I've been able to use them both side-by-side and see the good and bad of both machines. Bottom line: the Zephyrus G16 is a beautiful and powerful machine that will satisfy both creators and gamers, but it comes with some very notable tradeoffs including heat, fan noise, performance, and some areas of questionable build quality.

=== DESIGN & BUILD QUALITY (4 Stars) ===
- This G16 model is the "Eclipse Gray" color which I personally prefer over the other "Platinum White" color. The color is a bit darker than a Space Gray MacBook Pro. It does attract a few fingerprints, but they wipe away very easily.
- Unlike every other ROG laptop I've used, this body of this new G16 is almost entirely aluminum, which gives it a very premium feeling. There is hardly any plastic to be found outside of the keyboard. Notably, the edge of the laptop near the trackpad is rounded, so there are no sharp edges that will cut into wrists while typing.
- The laptop measures 13.9" wide by 9.7" deep, and just over a half inch thick. This model weighs about 4.3 pounds. If you've ever held or used a modern 16" MacBook Pro, you will know what to expect -- the dimensions of the G16 are almost identical.
- There are a decent number of ports available. On the left, there's the new "ASUS Slim" power port, an HDMI 2.1 port, a Thunderbolt 4 Type-C port, a USB-A 3.2 port, and 3.5mm jack. On the right, there's a full size UHS II SD card reader, another USB-A 3.2 port, and a USB-C 3.2 port. There is no Ethernet port on this laptop.
- For its 2024 models, ASUS introduced its new, proprietary "ASUS Slim" power port. I like that the plug is reversible similar to USB-C, but I was hoping that ASUS would also be able to reduce the size of the actual power brick. Unfortunately, that isn't the case. The included 240W power brick is still pretty bulky, and you'll need to find room for it in your bag if you want to get the most power out of this laptop while traveling. You can also power and charge the laptop via USB-C, but the laptop can only draw up to 100W of power via USB-C, which will limit performance.
- The new “Slash Lighting” array on the cover is neat, but I’m indifferent towards it. You can select tons of different flashing patterns, but when you’re using the laptop, you can’t actually see the lights. But if you’re a fan of minimalist decorative lighting, you’ll like the new Slash light.
- There are a couple of things about the G16's build quality that concern me. First, the hinge of the display does not feel very tight. As such, the display is a bit wobbly when it is touched. If you pick up the laptop while it is open, there is a very good chance that the display will fall further backwards due to the looseness of the hinge. Secondly, there are significant "creaking" and "popping" noises that come from the machine's bottom cover whenever there is any amount of pressure applied to the bottom of the laptop. In day-to-day use, the issue is most noticeable when using the laptop on my lap or picking it up to move it. The simple movements of my lap or changes in pressure to the bottom cover when moving the laptop are enough to cause very audible creaking/popping/flexing noises. I've tried tightening the screws on the bottom cover and I've made sure that the bottom cover is properly seated. But the noises persist, and it can definitely be annoying. I attempted to contact ASUS about these build quality issues before I posted this review, but I did not receive a response.

=== DISPLAY, KEYBOARD, TRACKPAD, & AUDIO (5 Stars) ===
- The star of this laptop is unquestionably the beautiful 16:10 2560x1600 OLED display. I thought the 16” MacBook Pro had reached the pinnacle of laptop displays, but I was wrong. The OLED panel in the G16 is a sight to behold with perfect black levels and rich, deep colors. Viewing angles are perfect from every direction. While only rated for 500 nits, the display gets eye-searingly bright. The 240Hz refresh rate and G-SYNC support mean that games look incredibly smooth with no tearing or choppiness. Creators and gamers alike will love this OLED panel, I’m sure.
- The keyboard seems similar to past ROG Zephyrus laptops that I’ve used. Keys have 1.7mm of travel and the key caps are very large and nicely spaced. The keyboard is RGB-lit, though the entire keyboard can only display one color at a time (there are not multiple RGB zones to control).
- The trackpad is among the best I’ve ever used on a Windows laptop. It is very large and made of smooth glass. It appears to be a 16:10 aspect ratio to match the laptop’s display. Gestures work perfectly. My only complaint is that the trackpad is not haptic like the one on a MacBook Pro. Rather, the G16 trackpad is a traditional “diving board” mechanism that is easily pressed at the bottom but can’t be pressed at the top. It would be nice if the entire surface was clickable like a MacBook.
- Likewise, the speakers are probably the best I’ve used in any Windows laptop. They are just a small step below the quality of the 16” MacBook Pro speakers. Bass is rich and deep and there is practically no distortion at higher volumes.

=== PERFORMANCE, COOLING, & UPGRADES (4 Stars) ===
- The Intel Core Ultra 9 processor is powerful, but it’s a significant step down from the Core i9 processors offered in other ROG laptops. Intel’s Ultra processors are designed for thin and light laptops to minimize heat and maximize battery life. As such, there are some performance compromises. In TimeSpy, the highest CPU score I was able to achieve was 11,939, which is about 15% lower than a Core i9-13900H.
- The following benchmarks were conducted with the “Turbo” setting selected in ASUS Armoury Crate: Time Spy benchmark: 16,424 (graphics score 17,874). The Last of Us Part1 (High preset, DLSS set to Quality): 70 fps average. God of War (Ultra preset; DLSS Quality): 87 fps average. Cyberpunk 2077 (Ray Tracing ultra, DLSS Quality & frame gen): 90 fps average. Dead Space (Ultra preset, DLSS Quality): 88 fps average. So yes, you run practically any game at high or ultra settings.
- Compared to other laptops with the same specs, these benchmarks are a bit lower. This is mainly due to the lower-powered RTX 4090 in the G16, which can only draw a maximum of 115W. Other, thicker laptops with a 4080 or 4090 can draw more power and deliver better performance. I didn’t get a chance to test a 4080 model of the G16, but I have to imagine the performance difference between the 4080 and 4090 in these G16 models is minimal.
- When under full load, this is probably the hottest laptop I’ve ever used. If you touch the bottom of the laptop or the area right above the keyboard while gaming, you might regret it. No joke: it’s like touching a hot stove top. I saw the CPU get as hot as 93 degrees Celsius, while the GPU seems to top out at a more reasonable 80 degrees. But the thin form factor and aluminum design of the G16 make for a VERY hot laptop.
- Similarly, if you get annoyed by fan noise, this is NOT the laptop for you. The fans aren’t very noticeable when doing simple tasks such as web browsing or light photo editing. But once you set the laptop to “Turbo” mode and start gaming or doing more intense creative tasks, you’d better grab a pair of headphones: the fans get as loud as 49 to 50 dB, and the fan noise is relatively high-pitched. I am still playing around with the fan curves in the Armoury Crate “manual” mode to find a good balance of performance and fan noise.
- Battery life is decent for such a thin and powerful machine, but it’s going to be LARGELY dependent on how you use this laptop. I was able to get about 6 hours of use with standard web browsing and day-to-day tasks (screen at half brightness). I decided to really test the battery’s limits by playing The Last of Us on Performance mode – and the battery was dead within 1 hour. So if you want to game while traveling, don’t forget the power adapter.
- The included 2 TB SSD offers tons of space and is very fast, with read speeds upwards of 7,000 MB/s and write speeds of 6,500 MB/s. There is one extra M.2 slot if you want to add more storage.
- 32GB of DDR5 RAM are soldered onto the board. As such, you can’t add or upgrade the RAM, so I’m glad ASUS decided to include 32GB rather than 16GB. The RAM clock speed is 7500 MHz.

=== SOFTWARE AND OTHER THOUGHTS ===
- There is a decent 1080p webcam (Windows Hello-capable) on the bezel above the screen. It’s not the best quality but gets the job done. This is a big improvement compared to the unreliable fingerprint readers in older ASUS models.
- The included Wi-Fi card is capable of Wi-Fi 6E. I was hoping ASUS would include a Wi-Fi 7 card as that technology is is rolling out very rapidly.
- The ASUS Armoury Crate and MyASUS apps are essential for tweaking the performance and cooling of this laptop and performing updates, but they just seem bloated and confusing, with basic options hidden behind layers of menus.

=== OVERALL ===
The Zephyrus G16 aims to please both creators and gamers with its sleek design, stunning OLED display, and powerful performance. However, it also has some major drawbacks, such as excessive heat, loud fan noise, and lower performance compared to other laptops with similar specs. Additionally, some aspects of the build quality, such as excessive heat, loud fan noise, and lower performance compared to other laptops with similar specs. Additionally, some aspects of the build quality, such as the loose hinge and the creaky bottom cover, may annoy some users and detract from the premium feeling of the laptop. Overall, the Zephyrus G16 is a beautiful and capable machine, but it comes with some tradeoffs that may not be worth it for everyone.

[Rewarded Review] Beautiful Gaming/Creator Laptop but Big Tradeoffs

Currently using this laptop as a gaming/office pc for when I'm traveling for work and still want to get some gaming in during my free time. Not only does the ASUS - ROG Zephyrus G16 (2024) meet my needs, but I have to say that it actually exceeded my expectations as a gaming laptop.

The build quality is impressive. It arrived all nice and snug in it's box, which was undamaged (big ups to my local postman). Machine has a nice weight to it. Not too heavy but not a feather weight like some of these PCs are now. Feels pretty durable. It has a very simplistic look and feel to it. Not a lot of flash or extra design details. Other than the slash on the lid that can light up (pretty cool feature), the rest is pretty straightforward.

The screen quality is amazing. The ASUS - ROG Zephyrus G16 is packing a 16-inch OLED screen with a vivid 2.5K resolution and a 240Hz refresh rate that will make your TV jealous. The colors on this thing are beautiful making every background come to life. My only complaint about the screen is I wish it was bigger!

The initial setup was straightforward and pretty typical to other machines I've setup. After all of the Asus stuff completed, I started the painful task of getting Windows Update happy with itself. Just a lot of downloading, installing and restarting. Once that was done, I began loading software.

As for an office computer, it's complete overkill: 32GB of RAM, 2TB SSD and the Intel Core Ultra 9 185H perfect for gaming or checking my Outlook calendar. The specs are far better than any PC I use while in the office. Then again, I just use those so I can remote to my servers and really get to work. Loaded it with a few things: MS Office, Adobe Acrobat Pro, iTunes(need my music) and a few other things and it's the best office laptop ever.

Now for the gaming, I currently split my PC gaming between a Alienware M17 gaming laptop and my big rig is a HP Omen 880-xxx desktop with all the fixings. Both of which have served me well. This is my second ASUS gaming laptop and I have learned from experience that these pack enough power to keep up with any brand of gaming PC on the market and the ASUS - ROG Zephyrus G16 is no exception, especially while sporting a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090.

Currently running FFXIV and I have to say, everything looks gorgeous. The game ran smoothly without any stuttering. Load times were lightening fast. Rendering was perfect. It just didn't feel like I was playing on a 16-inch laptop. I was thoroughly impressed with the gameplay. Connected my DS4 controller to give the game that familiar PlayStation feel and it operated beautifully. When I say, "I'd recommend this to a friend" I mean I actually let a friend (more like a brother) play on it for a few days (we both play FFXIV) and now he doesn't want to play on his laptop anymore. He noticed that much of a difference.

As far as sound is concerned, nothing spectacular but not a disappointment either. The speakers on this laptop serve their purpose. While gaming and watching videos, primarily on YouTube, I was able to enjoy uninterrupted sound that, as far as my ears are concerned, was what I would expect from laptop speakers.

Haven't had the chance to really test the battery life yet. The longest this thing has been unplugged is when it's shut down and not being used. I prefer running off the cord when possible and lately all times have been possible.

One of the biggest questions about gaming laptops, the cooling. I can report that this machine does a good job at that. Temps on the CPU and GPU stayed around 80ish and the unit itself never felt like it was getting too warm. I usually use a laptop cooler, force of habit, even when I don't require it. I figure the more air moving around, the better. I will admit, I played the first few days without it and felt that I really didn't need it, so that was nice.

Overall, the ASUS - ROG Zephyrus G16 has my stamp of approval. Although the price tag is a bit steep, considering all of the features of this unit, you're getting a beast of a machine that will surely have you covered for years to come, or until that 2025 model hits shelves.

[Rewarded Review] The Mobile Powerhouse brought to you by ASUS

I think you would be hard pressed to find a better gaming laptop that is currently on the market. This laptop is absolutely stacked with features, including some that aren't readily available anywhere else, like the OLED screen. The screen is truly impressive. With its native resolution of 2560x1600, it's very sharp, but being an OLED screen, the contrast, color reproduction and viewing angles all benefit and far surpass its competition. Then, you add the ability to use up to 240Hz refresh rates, and you can see how special this laptop is already. Using the screen is an absolute pleasure. This combined with the performance and design, makes this laptop an equally good choice for creatives.

As someone who's daily work uses Adobe's suite of products (Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, Illustrator), along with 3D rendering software which includes Blender and other tools, gaming machines are often the best machines to use for my variety of work. It's refreshing to see a laptop that is clearly a gaming laptop in spec and capability, but its design makes it welcome for professional use too. The color reproduction also helps in this area, as the screen has very accurate color. The outer casing of the laptop looks sleek, the slash is a subtle, and nice touch. The lighting can be disabled if you find it distracting. It doesn't gather lots of fingerprints either. Its weight isn't overly heavy either. ASUS has managed to check nearly every possible box.

Of course, I also do a lot of gaming, and the laptop does not disappoint here either. I have ran benchmarks in some of the more demanding games, or ones that have good benchmarking tools so I could share my results. Needless to say, this laptop handled everything I threw at it without much trouble. I'll start with probably one of the most demanding tests, Cyberpunk 2077. Using its Overdrive Ray Tracing mode will bring many machines to their knees. If you're playing using the OLED screen on the laptop at 2160x1600 resolution, you can easily get 60 FPS utilizing Nvidia's frame generation. As I often game on my TV or Monitor. I connected the laptop to those to push it harder at 4k for most of my testing. Cyberpunk, still using its overdrive ray tracing and ultra settings was able to run at 45-50 FPS, which is truly impressive. When using a VRR display, this makes for a very playable and incredible looking experience. This was by far the hardest test for this laptop, and I'd say it was a huge win. With minor tweaks, you could be running at 60 FPS easily. Or if you're using the laptop's OLED screen, you wouldn't have to do any tweaks and just play it maxed out. Other games were easily maxed out as well. Forza Horizon 5 is another game I like to use for testing, since its benchmark tool usually shows any weak points as well. Forza Horizon 5 was a locked 60 FPS at 4K. I imagine you could easily run at higher framerates on the laptop's screen as well. I also tested using Gears 5. It's a bit older game, but it has a great benchmarking tool, and it helps to show just how well this laptop performs. It easily pushed 60 FPS at 4k with every setting maxed. I'm positive it could push higher framerates too. I also wanted to mention that all these tests were utilizing ASUS's Armory Crate software to dial in the performance of the laptop. I used the "Ultimate" GPU setting and the "Performance" CPU setting. You could likely squeeze out even more performance by switching the CPU to use the "Turbo" setting. I liked to keep the laptop on the "Performance" setting, since the fan didn't have to work as hard while using the "Performance" setting. This laptop has the capability to be your gaming machine for quite some time.

If you are in the market for a high-end gaming or creative laptop, this laptop easily handles both. Its performance combined with an incredible OLED screen make it an easy choice. It's clear a lot of thought has gone into the design of this laptop as well. While you can charge using a USB, that won't quite provide enough power if you're trying to game on it as well. Using the included charger will allow you fully utilize the machine, and while it may seem like a minor feature, it's one that I really like. The plug for the laptop is reversible, sort of a like a USB 3 cable. There's no fumbling trying to figure out which way to plug it in. My only minor complaint is that there is no ethernet port. Not a deal breaker, since you could use a USB hub to utilize one, but it would be nice to have on the laptop itself.

Pros: Incredible Performance, Beautiful Screen, Well Designed, Good Battery Life, Compact and lightweight for a gaming laptop
Cons: No built in ethernet port

[Rewarded Review] Incredible Performance

The new G16 is not just a great gaming laptop, it’s a great laptop. I am totally blown away by the redesign. The speakers, keyboard, and trackpad, are finally on par or better (the keyboard at least) than a MacBook Pro.

The screen is absolutely incredible. I’ve never gamed on an OLED and I am ruined because I don’t want to game on any other screen anymore. Even though it’s only 16”, I”d rather game on this than any other screen in my house. One great thing about it being so small is it’s able to sustain higher brightness levels in everyday tasks, unlike desktop OLED monitors. Another thing is the text clarity is great and a non-issue at this resolution and size.

The only issue I had was the fans were constantly running no matter what I was doing, even in silent mode. Not very audible, but still, I expect a silent laptop if it’s in silent mode…I downloaded the third-party G-Helper program and changed the fan curve to turn on at slightly higher temps and that mostly solved the issue. Still, I think it could use a little tuning from the factory. Maybe the models with the better cooling performs better.

Also, the build quality could be slightly more refined. There is no notch to put your finger in to open the laptop like on a MacBook, and the hinge is quite loose in comparison with some audible creaking. Still, these are minor nitpicks but something they could improve.

All in all, it’s absolutely incredible. I no longer even want to use a MacBook, not when this has as good or better keyboard/trackpad/speakers/weight and definitely a better screen.

[Rewarded Review] The first real MacBook Pro killer

Remarkable computer with an incredible screen. Audio puts the sound system on the Blade 18 to shame with better mids and much better lows. Could the processor be better? Sure but with Asus pursuing a thinner profile it makes sense. Fans do run louder but honestly not much louder than any other gaming laptop of this size. Overall expensive but you are paying for the form factor and that screen. Great step forward Asus.

Novabench on Performance profile:
SSD Write
Sequential - 4726 MB/s
Random - 185 MB/s

SSD Read
Sequential - 6414 MB/s
Random - 72 MB/s

Ram Transfer
Peak speed - 14420 MB/s
Ram Access
Latency - 98 ns

[Rewarded Review] Dream laptop has come true

The Asus ROG G16 is beautiful looking machine. Very clean and simple styling in a nice gray body. The slash lighting design and operation is simple but can be elegant depending how you want to set it up.

The laptop only ways 4lbs total and features the Asus power connector, hdmi, USB C, USB A and headphone jack on the left side with another USB C, A and SD slot on the right side.

The mouse pad is large and almost half the width (6" of a 14" wide laptop) feels great and easy to press all over. You'll likely be using your own mouse, especially when gaming but when you can't, you can rest assured the built in pad will be great. Keyboard keys have a nice feel. Not overly noisy, with a soft touch, it feels responds the same if you hit the corner of the key vs right on center. So you can use it with confidence.

The OLED screen looks amazing, and gives a wonderful picture. Everything is smooth and the colours are vibrant.

Speakers are really good and you'll be satisfied if you're watching video on it. I imagine most would also be using their own headset when gaming.

Performance wise, it's a powerhouse. You'll not be left wanting when using this. The 4070 is a beast, so expect to be able to keep this computer relevant for a long time to come. The Intel ultra 9 is more than capable of handling your needs.

Even if someone were not big on gaming, this would be an excellent candidate for heavy duty work, such as an engineering laptop for students and professionals.

Battery life is pretty good. With video playing and gaming I got 5 hours in easily on default settings. Probably could have gotten more if I made some tweaks in Armoury

[Rewarded Review] Brilliant, sleek, well rounded gaming laptop

Great pc. Bought it to play cod mw3. Handles the game with ease. Screen is amazing. Pc is fast.

[Rewarded Review] Worth the $$$

I got this computer on sale for $1800 and at that price, it is a great deal. I was hard pressed to find another laptop with a such a solid build quality, RTX 4060, 13th gen 19 and amazing screen at this price. This computer has been a solid upgrade from my older gaming laptop.

It is thin and light which makes it great if you value portability. It only has DDR 4 RAM but this have very little real impact and it was a plus for me because I was able to swap out the ram from my old computer to upgrade.

It does get a bit loud in performance or turbo mode when playing games but you can adjust settings in Armoury Crate to change the fan speed to suit whatever task you are doing. I have not noticed any noise in normal use, especially if you have it in 'silent' mode and I usually game with headphones so the noise isn't an issue for me.

It runs all my games on ultra settings smoothly and has amazing framerates if you turn down to high settings or lower the resolution. The 240hz QHD display is bright and and a highlight of a laptop.

The speakers are also loud and punchy making them much better than my previous ROG laptop.

If a bit of noise and older ram is not a deal breaker for you, I would highly recommend this computer.

Great Computer

Screen looks amazing it's 240hz refresh rate makes games and videos very smooth. Typing experience is great. 3 month trial of Xbox game pass is a nice bonus. My only issue is this laptop is very power hungry. Around 6 hrs on moderate use and only 2 hours when gaming. So, if you plan to game make sure it's plugged in.

Great so far!

Short answer: call it the Little Laptop that Could! This is probably the most versatile laptop I've ever owned and certainly the most satisfying. The Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 GU605MZ is the upper middle model of the line, equipped with an Intel U9 processor and Nvidia RTX 4080 laptop graphics processor. This is wrapped in an elegant and solid aluminum case with a full size keyboard and a magnificent 16in 2K+ (2560x1600) OLED display. It comes with a hefty 240w power brick.

Out of the box, the Zephyrus G16 is immediately impressive. It feels solid, no plastic, no flexing and weighs in at an immensely portable 4lbs. The next thing you notice is that the chassis is incredibly thin. At 16mm, it's about half the thickness of a typical gaming laptop and a pound or two lighter. The 240w power brick adds another pound plus to your carry weight, but it is thinner than most. There is a significant but to this... the Zephyrus G16 can charge on a 100w usb-c charger. For gaming you'll obviously want to use the high power brick, but for day to day use and travel, a much smaller, and lighter, power option is available. Charging with the 240W supply took about 2 hrs from 10%. Charging with a 100W supply took around 6 hrs. The only odd note: The three LED indicators for charging, disk, and lighting are on back bottom of the display bezel and are not visible when the lid is open.

Initial power on is the usual Windows setup, update, setup again cycle, then on to game and utility installs. The Asus Armory Crate app has a host of monitoring and performance/economy options and has worked well. It also mercifully lets you control or disable all the lighting effects. One thing you will notice immediately, especially if you have used a gaming laptop in the past, is the lack of noise. Even in full on gaming mode, the cooling fans are quite livable, not the jet roar of prior generation gaming laptops.

The display and speaker quality are both first rate. At 16 inches the display is quite readable; I could reduce the scaling to 2/3 of the recommended scaling with no readability issues. The display is absolutely gorgeous and quite bright, with nice saturated colors. Using it outdoors is sunlight was quite workable. Additionally, the murky shadows (think Diablo or any dungeon crawler) don't hide the bad guys. The dynamic range is impressive. The speakers are good, excellent by laptop standards, but still won't replace a good Bluetooth speaker or headset. The keyboard is chicklet style with nice large keys for those of us fat fingered types. The keys have respectable throw and good tactile feedback. I do wish Asus had found a way to add a numeric keypad.

I did run some benchmarks before playing any games. The SSD and WLAN were up there with the fastest of them. CPU was mid-pack as was the graphics performance. It's really remarkable that Asus was able to get the level of performance they did given the thermal limiting going on to squeeze all that power into a relatively quiet, very thin laptop. Games were a different story. So far, it's been Diablo 4, Horizon Zero dawn, and a couple of shooters. No tearing or lag, and response time has been as instantaneous as I can see. I also do a lot of video editing and rendering was exceptionally fast. Music and audio processing was similarly fast.

Battery life was quite interesting. Using it as a general purpose laptop (web surfing, email), I was able to go 7 to 8 hours on a charge. Video streaming seemed to have about the same runtime. In gaming mode, even with refresh turned down to 60hz, I was only able to go about an hour & 15 minutes before the battery hit 10%. In 240hz, it dropped to an hour. it was interesting that even plugged in and in game, the laptop never became more than warm and the fans became noticeable but never objectionable. There is some really elegant cooling going on there!

Bottom line, if you're looking for ultimate performance from a gaming laptop, look elsewhere. If you want a hybrid use laptop that will provide near top of the line game power, that you will actually want to carry, that can handle multimedia processing efficiently, that can run near silent in an office environment, and is an absolute joy to use, look no further. The awesome Asus ROG Zephyrus G16MZ should be the top of your list. Well done Asus!

[Rewarded Review] Gaming Meets Everyday Laptop...Awesome!

The new ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16 has been much anticipated and I was watching the tech world with the first hands on during CES2024. I watched as many of those first glance videos as I could and it didn’t take long for me to decide that I had to get one.

The form factor shaved off a bit of thickness and weight from previous year models and I was never a huge fan of all the LEDs on the top of the screen lid so the more subtle slash is much more appealing making this laptop something I would even take to a business meeting and after hours get my game on.

The specs are outstanding. Sporting the newest Intel Ultra 9 CPU and a RTX4090 GPU gives it a ton of horsepower under the lid. Add 32GB of DDR5 ram and a 2TB NVME SSD you are tacking on some serious memory and storage. While the memory is soldered in as a compromise to get the thinner profile it does help offset that with an extra NVME slot so you can add additional storage for more gaming fun.

The OLED screen is super crisp and the high refresh rate make for a super sharp display. I did run into a bit of tearing while watching Youtube videos at full screen but upgrading to the latest drivers corrected most of that. With HDR enabled the colors pop!

While playing Tom Clancy’s Division 2, my favorite FPS game for years, with graphic settings at High and Ultra for most everything I got a wide variety of frame rates. They jumped all over the place but never below 60 frames per second while mostly running around 75-120 depending on the complexity of the graphics. I did notice a bit of performance throttling but all within expectations.

When I connected to a 34” ultrawide monitor via HDMI while playing Division 2 I noticed that the frame rate held to only 60 frames per second, constantly. With same settings as before… High, Very High and Ultra High graphics. It wouldn’t budge above 61 FPS. Game play was smooth but somehow I expected more from a RTX4090. I’ll have to dig further to see if there are any settings I can make to the hardware to unleash the potential.

I didn’t time battery life but gaming isn’t something I’d do on battery power. I’ll take the power brick with me for gaming but even my CAD workstation can’t go untethered for too long.

Now for some of the not so good… fan noise during game play got pretty loud. It was noticeable and if not playing with a headset it my become annoying. The one thing that bothered me most was the temperatures. The fans were doing their best to keep the temps down and I can live with some of the fan noise but the thing that bothered me most was the skin temps. Either side of the keyboard and the space between the keyboard and the screen were too hot to touch with temps on that section between the keyboard and screen running at a high of 133 deg F, give or take a few decimals of degrees. Underneath the temps were pretty high too so it might be that the laptop isn’t really ready to be a laptop but a more like a very portable workstation. Once I exited the game temps dropped pretty quickly to around 100 deg F so just a tad over normal body temps. To help with the temps down I had to break out a tabletop laptop cooler which did help some but the cooler is not something I’d toss in my laptop bag.

An observation of why temps might be so high with the lid open. As the lid comes up it partially blocks the heatpipe fan exhaust port that runs across the rear of the laptop. Maybe it just redirects it down more but it does seem to create an airflow restriction in my opinion. I did notice temps drop just a slight bit while playing with an external monitor and lid closed… but only slightly so this may not be as big of a deal as I would suspect.

The price tag is a bit steep but you pay for the specs and performance and it’s actually competitively priced against similar spec’d units by the other guys. I’m a huge ASUS fan and always recommend laptops and components to my friends and family. Other than the temps and the somewhat disappointing frame rates (with acceptable game play) considering this is a 4090 I think ASUS is continuing to prove they are leaders of the pack. Hopefully new drivers will help with temps and frame rates.

ROG Zephyrus G16 (2024) Gaming Laptop (Intel Core Ultra 9 Processor / 2TB SSD / 32 GB RAM / RTX 4080)

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what's important to you

ROG Zephyrus G16 (2024) Gaming Laptop (Intel Core Ultra 9 Processor / 2TB SSD / 32 GB RAM / RTX 4080)

Technical Score

Buyer's Satisfaction

Where To Buy

Shop Online

Shop Local (Toronto)

Wireless360 Wireless360

Computronic

Canadian Tire