These are the top 9 improvements that ASUS have made to their Zephyrus G14 gaming laptop
this year, and I’ll also cover what I didn’t like about it afterwards.
Let’s start out with what I think is the best addition to the G14 this year, the MUX
switch.
This gives us the option to disable the integrated graphics and run games with just the more
powerful discrete graphics.
I’ve got a whole video you can check after this one where I show the performance difference
that this can make in games, but basically it just means we get better FPS, so it’s
great to see it finally included this year.
Next up is the screen, which also gets a nice improvement this year.
We’ve got a 16:10 screen now, so slightly more vertical space compared to previous versions
of the G14 which were 16:9.
The screen also now has a resolution higher than standard 1440p and gets much brighter
at over 500 nits compared to the 340 or so that we had with older models.
The screen also gives us a much faster response time compared to previous G14’s, making
it much better for competitive gamers.
We’re also getting thermal improvements this year.
The new 2022 G14 introduces a vapor chamber cooler that covers the heat generating components.
Additionally, both the CPU and GPU have liquid metal, last year only the CPU had liquid metal,
but not the GPU.
This year it’s both.
Yeah the actual temperatures can still get relatively high in a heavy load, but more
thermal headroom contributes to our next point
Which is number 4, more CPU and GPU power than ever before.
It of course depends on the specific game, but the Radeon RX 6800S graphics was outperforming
the RTX 3060 that was available in last year’s G14.
Sometimes the difference was small in games like Control that seem to favor Nvidia, while
others like Red Dead Redemption 2 that seem to favor Radeon were able to get a nice boost
compared to last year’s version.
AMD’s new Ryzen 9 6900HS processor also gives us a performance uplift compared to
last generation.
Granted the boosts aren’t as high as what we’re seeing compared to Intel’s new 12th
gen processors because those go right up to 14 cores and 20 threads now, but hey it’s
still an improvement.
Not only that, but Ryzen 6000 also improves performance on battery power.
This is the same selection of laptops to the previous graph, but now the G14 is second
best.
You’re actually able to still get good performance when you’re not plugged in, especially compared
to most Intel options.
AMD’s Ryzen 6000 mobile processors also offer us a number of extra features.
Including the addition of faster PCIe Gen 4 storage, something Intel options already
had last year with 11th gen.
But now new AMD based laptops like the Zephyrus G14 are also able to benefit from faster storage.
Well, at least in theory, because I didn’t actually find the SSD in my G14 to be any
faster than what’s available with PCIe 3.0, but technically you could upgrade to a faster
drive.
There are also other changes like the move to DDR5 memory this year, and despite using
MediaTek Wi-Fi, it’s one of the fastest I’ve tested so far and close to other Intel
based options.
Next up is the addition of a 720p camera.
It sounds like such a small simple change, but previous versions of the G14 didn’t
have a camera built in, not exactly ideal in the age of zoom calls.
I didn’t find the camera super amazing or anything, but it does the job, and it’s
got IR for Windows Hello face unlock.
The touchpad also gets larger this year.
I already thought last year’s G14 had one of the best touchpads around, but it was a
little small.
This year’s touchpad is 50% larger and I found it just as nice and accurate to use.
It’s definitely one of the better options in this regard.
The speakers also just sound better this year.
Although we do still have front facing speakers like last year, they’ve been moved up to
the back rather than down the front so that when you’re actually using the laptop your
hands don’t cover them.
There’s some bass, and although I found it to start sounding a bit muffled after about
70% volume with a lot of palm rest vibration, it sounded pretty good with more reasonable
volume levels.
Number 9, and last before we get into the bad parts of the G14, we’ve got improved
I/O.
The port layout is basically the same as previous G14 versions, though the USB Type-A ports
are now the faster 3.2 Gen 2 compared to last year’s slower Gen 1.
We also now get a MicroSD card slot on the right hand side, so a nice little bonus for
content creators.
So then, what’s worse with this year’s G14?
Honestly, not too much.
There are some cases where Radeon graphics may not be ideal, particularly if you’re
a content creator as generally Nvidia graphics do better in that regard in Adobe Premiere.
That said, things can go the other way in applications like Adobe Photoshop due to the
increase in CPU performance, as graphics matter less there.
Purely in terms of gaming though, I did find the 6800S graphics quite capable, but there’s
no denying that Nvidia still has the edge in both ray tracing and DLSS does exist in
more games right now compared to FSR.
The battery life while actually gaming wasn’t as good as previous generations of G14, however
battery life outside of gaming in my video playback test was definitely a leap forward
compared to older versions of the G14, most likely thanks to Ryzen 6000.
Sometimes even with fairly light workloads running I did notice that the sides of the
laptop could feel a little hot.
Right now it’s just idling and not doing anything so it’s cool.
You don’t really need to touch that spot so it’s probably not that big of a deal.
Under heavy stress test the actual palm rest and WASD areas were notably cooler, so it’s
fine where you actually touch, but yeah it’s something I noticed.
Hot air does blow out onto the bottom of the screen, but given this is something ASUS have
tested for extended periods of time I can only assume that they don’t have any problems
with it - or at least that there’s not going to be any problems within the warranty period.
Unfortunately without actually using this laptop long term like for a period of years
I’m just not able to comment on how a design like this is actually going to hold up.
Unfortunately all of these nice improvements aren’t for nothing, this year’s G14 does
cost more money, but that’s also just the market that we find ourselves in right now
with both part shortages and higher inflation levels.
Prices will of course change over time and you can check updates with the links below
the video.
Now although I do think that this year’s G14 has a lot to offer compared to last year’s
version, if you’ve already got last year’s version unless there’s something specific
here that you absolutely must have, I don’t think there’s any point in upgrading.
I pretty much always say that there’s no point upgrading between single generations.
Generally the improvements just aren’t worth it.
But hey, it’s your money so you do what ever you like.
Check out my full review of the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 over here next if you want all of the
finer details, I go into way more depth in that one, or this one if you just want to
see how well it performs in different games, so I’ll see you in one of those videos next.