Laptops usually fall under one of two umbrellas - either performance and power, or portability and function. It's nice to have a laptop powered by a 4080, but if it feels like carrying a weight of rocks on your back whenever you're travelling, that can make it a difficult sell. Alternatively, paying a lot of money for something that is sleek, but offers very little performance for gaming, can equally be disappointing.
Enter the ASUS Zephyrus G14 for 2024. Powered by the new AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS Processor and sporting an Nvidia 4070 laptop GPU, this laptop strikes a great balance between function and portability. And while it does stumble at a few points, dropping it below the perfect laptop experience, it's still one to add to the wishlist if you're looking for an upgrade.
Last year's Zephyrus G14 may seem like the better purchase, at least on paper. The 2023 model offered a powerful 4090 laptop GPU, over the 2024's 4070, so it may seem like a downgrade. While that does make sense if you look solely at the GPU, there's a wealth of Quality of Life features and an overall balancing act that makes 2024's model much more enticing.
Component | Specs |
|---|---|
Processor | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS Processor 4GHz (8 cores, 16 Threads) |
Graphics | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU |
Display | 14" ROG Nebula Display, 3K (2880 x 1800) OLED, 16:10 Aspect Ration, 120Hz refresh rate, 0.2ms response time |
Memory | 32GB DDR5-6400 |
Storage | 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD (PCIE 4.0) |
Webcam | 1080P FHD (IR for Windows Hello) |
Network | Wi-Fi 6E |
Weight | 1.50kg |
Cinebench scores | Multi-Core: 8787
Single Core: 1083 |
Firstly, the design is much sleeker this year round, with the sleek white design hiding a wealth of powerful components under the hood. Upon opening up the laptop, you're greeted with a rather large trackpad despite the 14-inch screen, with some fairly large keycaps that actually beat out the ASUS ROG Falchion RX Low Profile in size.
The back of the device features a long slash design over it, featuring a range of mini LEDs that will shine whenever you get a notification or if you get a notification. It's a lot less useful than the ASUS ROG Phone 8's mini LED display, which was pretty powerful, but it looks great and not overly flashy. The only other lighting that the laptop features is a fully backlit keyboard, which is miles better than the RGB vomit that some cheaper gaming laptops offer.
2024's version of the ASUS Zephyrus G14 also feels extremely premium. The weight is balanced across the whole device, so it feels comfortable to lift and move around, without feeling too light. It's very slim, with the base of the laptop being remarkably thin, despite the components within. That doesn't change anything when it comes to ports though, as the Zephyrus G14 features a HDMI 2.1, two USB 3.2 ports, a USB-C port, a Micro SD card reader, a USB4 port for power delivery, and an all-time classic, the 3.5mm headphone jack.
Two speakers live on either side of the keyboard, and they're fairly powerful to say the least. Opening up Cyberpunk 2077 at 50 volume completely blew me away, and while having loud speakers usually means it loses clarity and can become disorienting, that isn’t the case here. I was pleasantly surprised just how impressive these speakers are.
The 2024 model of the Zephyrus G14 features a huge upgrade in one compartment - its screen. The display is a 3K (2880 x 1800) OLED, with VESA HDR True Black 500 certification, and it looks absolutely superb straight away. While I don't use an OLED monitor for my gaming PC, this laptop certainly made me start looking on various websites for a potential monitor upgrade in the future, to say the least.
The display is absolutely gorgeous, with the grungy dystopian streets of Cyberpunk 2077 being lit up beautifully with neon lights, or the various enemy attacks in Returnal lighting up the darkness of the planet. It's a huge improvement over the Zephyrus G14's 2023 mini LED display, even if it was pretty great at the time.
ASUS' latest laptop's display also offers a 120Hz refresh rate, which can be easily reached with most triple-A games. Of course, playing Cyberpunk 2077 with high settings and low ray-tracing hit the laptop, giving me an average of 34 FPS during benchmarks, but during gameplay, it was still surprisingly playable.
I also played games like Helldivers 2 and Returnal, with excellent experiences across the board, despite taking a downgrade from the 4090 laptop to the 4070 laptop GPU. However, you'll also get Nvidia's range of DLSS benefits thanks to the RTX GPU, so you'll be able to hopefully boost your performance if you want to use DLSS 3 (and if the game has it, of course).
However, that does mean in some cases you'll have to adjust and alter settings to hit a solid 60+ FPS at full resolution, especially on demanding games like the aforementioned Cyberpunk 2077. However, switching to Full HD is an easy way of getting some great framerates, and older games or indie titles will be able to give you a generous performance without switching too many graphical settings.
Unfortunately, the ASUS Zephyrus G14 isn't without its issues. Battery life is remarkably average, with games like Cyberpunk 2077 eating away the charge in just a few hours, but you'd be able to likely get 6+ hours for general productivity tasks, especially if you switch some Power settings in Windows (such as Eco Mode).
Thankfully, the laptop arrives with two different charging options, those being a hefty 180W charging block and a smaller 100W USB-C adapter. The former will charge the Zephyrus G14 fairly quickly, but the latter is certainly more portable and good for work trips or for holidays.
Unsurprisingly, the Zephyrus G14 also offers a lot of heat during gameplay. It's not enough to be concerned about, especially since that heat has to go somewhere, but it will certainly keep your lap warm in the winter if you're afraid of wasting gas. And finally, it's a pretty pricey investment, coming in at £2,399 if you're wanting to pick one up right now.
All of that being said, my overall thoughts are very positive. The 2024 refresh of the Zephyrus G14 drops the powerful 4090 laptop GPU for a more balanced, sleeker design, with a huge improvement in the display. It doesn't offer the best gameplay for a laptop, especially considering the investment, but it provides a well-rounded experience that makes it great for most people.