so the day that we've all been waiting for is finally here and I don't mean by
what's going on right now I really hope that you guys are staying home and safe
but it's more along the lines of technology and and notebooks so what I
have in front of me is the Asus Zephyrus rog g14 and it features AMD's Ryson
4000 series Zen 2 CPU that's right Zen 2 has finally made its way into the
notebook space now we're already aware of its outstanding performance on the
desktop platform but how does that translate into notebooks most
importantly how does it tackle important factors like battery life well the G14
is something a bit different for a me notebooks since it's being put out there
as a premium slim yet super powerful laptop that's supposed to represent the
best Ryzen has to offer right now now asus is
targeting the g14 towards the premium gaming market and that's actually pretty
big deal because in the past any notebooks were relatively affordable and
while they offered acceptable performance they didn't sacrifice on
some key areas like the overall build quality and things just didn't feel that
right but the G14 is taking a complete no compromise approach and that's
amazing because in the past at least for a really long time
Intel used to be dominating the high-end notebook space so after all the hype
does the Ryzen 4000 series have what it takes to compete with in the mobile
market let's find out right after this
the razor Huntsman tournament edition has arrived it's linear optical
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light learn more the links below ok so let's quickly talk about how AMD
was able to translate that rise in 4000 into the notebook space so I covered a
lot of the details back at CES in fact if you're interested in learning a
little bit more about them you can check out that video right over here I'm gonna
be focusing on the 8 Series since that's what's being used on the G14 now but
those of you wondering the eight series processors is really the higher
performance parts from AMD that's really targeted towards gamers and creators
whereas the u series is really more towards the thin and light devices that
are later coming on to the market so right now
AMD will be launching eight and six core variants and all of them have SMT
enabled creating 16 and 12 thread CPUs they've been a lot of questions and
confusion about the differences between H and HS names so let's put that to the
rest so HS is design specification used by AMD to create notebooks with a
thickness of 20 millimeters or less on more than 10 hours of battery life and a
discrete graphics card to achieve that CPUs like the Ryzen 9 4900HS in the
Zephyrus g14 are simply lower TDP versions of standard processors but
unlike the other HS series the 4900HS also makes do with lower boost and base
clocks another thing I want to mention is that AMD made some pretty odd
positions on the connectivity front so with the desktop CPUs were aware that
Zen 2 does feature support for PCI Gen 4 both on the graphics and the storage
side of things but these notebooks don't support that in fact they're back to Gen
3 with these new notebook processors and that's kind of unfortunate because
you're only getting or Indies only allocated
8 graphics lanes for the discreet graphics card which shouldn't really
cause any bottlenecks but it would have been cool to at least
see support for Gen 4 and me me drives at least on these new notebooks
but that's not the case supposedly Andy did this to boost overall efficiency
which I guess is good news if you really want longer battery life okay so you
might remember the g14 back from CES as the notebook with the fancy LED matrix
display on the lid unfortunately the model that I have over here doesn't
feature that since issues will be planning to launch that matrix model a
little bit later in the year in fact it's a specs packed inside that got me
really excited so it's got the new Ryzen 9 4900HS 8 core CPU with 16 threads 16
gigabytes of RAM running in a dual channel mode at 3200 megahertz
a one terabyte nvme SSD and a 14 inch 1080p 120 Hertz display and an rtX
2060 max-q GPU all for less than $1500 say that's right at least that's where
things stand right now but that could change given the current situation
that's going around these days in fact the G14 starts at about $1,000
for the GTX 1650 with a Ryzen 7 4800HS processor and it goes all the way up to
$2,000 that high inversion has essentially the same specs as a model
that I have over here but it adds that matrix LED display with a qHD panel and
60 Hertz so with all the specs out of the way let's get into the exterior
impressions and I really like what Asus has done here guys you can pick up this
notebook with either a dark grey or a white top cover and it's refreshing to
see something different from ROG instead of the traditional red and black theme
that they're known for build quality is really good the entire chassis is
constructed out of magnesium alloy topped off with a coating that resists
fingerprints and it sure does a trick love this feature and it's very
thoughtful of Asus I also like the fact that you can open the notebook with just
one hand plus the keyboard tilts at an angle to optimize typing and it helps
with air flow and for those of you wondering about the CNC holes on the lid
don't worry about liquids getting in and damaging the components because there's
a secondary backer to prevent that from happening I really like this design in
fact weirdly enough it does provide a bit of a grip when you're holding this
notebook so it's really nice I should mention that the color scheme isn't
consistent throughout the notebook the lid
screams pure white whereas the keyboard and the trackpad
is a silver finish it no world looks like a razorblade mercury white finish
just without the white keyboard but putting the g14 next to a previous
generation rise in notebook like these Zephyrus GA 502 d you I still remember
that off the top of my head you can see that Asus kept the overall design look
but they've modernized it a lot and that's something that I love about the J
14 I'm really impressed with the size of this laptop it's smaller than my razor
blade 15 so it can easily throw this into a smaller backpack and not worry
about the weight because it only weighs less than 4 pounds and the included
power adapter is also fairly lightweight too so nothing to worry there in fact
this notebook it's only about seventeen point nine millimeter stick which
definitely fits the HS specification and like I said I'm really still shocked at
how much asu's named you were able to cram inside such as small chassis it is
really really impressive moving on to the keyboard and trackpad
you still get the same layout just like any other Zephyrs notebook with the RG
fonts on the key caps dedicated volume adjust keys along with quick access to
rog armory which is a software that lets you switch between three different
performance modes I really wished if there was an additional mute key since
that would have been more consistent instead of relying on function for just
that command I like the separation with the arrow keys it makes it easier to
navigate through spreadsheets the power button also acts as a fingerprint reader
appreciate the subtle implementation there the keys themselves are excellent
with good tactile feedback and adequate amount of travel distance it reminds me
of bees n book 15 that I looked at not too long ago the backlighting on the
other hand though is the worst that I've come across on a notebook it's just
almost impossible to read the keys at night especially when you have it during
daylight you're actually better off disabling it completely because asu's
seems like they win with micro LEDs instead of the center-mounted system
underneath the key caps I guess that didn't really tell her that great now
asus did confirm with us that they're gonna address this issue with the mass
production units now the trackpad on the other hand is phenomenal it features a
glass surface feels very similar to my razor blade 15 and it features Windows
position drivers now typically with every other notebook I would switch
right away into the webcam quality test but there isn't one on the G14 in fact
yeah it's just completely it's not there and I guess I can't complain about that
but a lot of people seem to not care about
having a webcam on their notebooks so I'm just gonna I'm just gonna skip that
part the speakers on the g14 are front-facing so you get two tweeters at
the top and a couple of wool first at the bottom and this results in one of
the best sounding notebooks that I've ever come across
I'm serious guys the trebles are well defined in fact the sub underneath
really adds a great depth to any genre that you're listening to and this
outperformance my razorblade 15 by a longshot
without losing clarity at max volume moving on to the i/o it's really good
for a 14 inch notebook I mean on the left-hand side there's power in HDMI 2.0
USB 3.2 gen2 type-c with DisplayPort 1.4 pass-through and power delivery and just
to clarify on that power delivery this notebook can only accept 65 watts over
that type C port but also do keep in mind that it does limit the performance
of the laptop if you really want to take advantage of the rtx graphics and the
Ryzen processors full potential you'll definitely have to use the hundred
eighty watt included adapter unfortunately issues does not include
the type C power adapter it's just a standard one that you get switching to
the right side there's a Kensington lock a couple of USB type eight ports but
sadly those are genuine five gigabits per second instead of Gen 2 which is
twice the bandwidth it's really weird to see Asus cut corners especially in the
spec department because this is AMD's latest offering especially on the
notebook front and not getting that up-to-date spec is frustrating because
mostly Intel notebooks in the market do feature that now I do have something
that I also want to bring up and that is the port location because you might
notice or you might wonder that I have a mouse sitting right beside me if I plug
the same on the side I for one am definitely gonna end up bumping into
that cable every once in a while because it's so close and I'm sure it's gonna
end up being a problem now I really don't know if I can blame this on the
design of this laptop because Asus definitely had to make room for you know
ventilation and the heatsink to breathe so it's really just a design limitation
but I thought that was something worth bringing up I should mention that there
are no Thunderbolt 3 ports on this laptop but that's expected given that
Intel still hasn't licensed that to AMD yet
now moving up the display it's 14 inches 1080p IPS like not necessarily true IPS
however it does come factory calibrated and Pantone certified meaning that they
claim to cover up to a hundred percent of the srgb color range from our testing
there's number only covers 95% srgb and 75% DCI p3 which isn't too far from the
blade 15 you can definitely get away with photo and video editing on this
notebook the view angles are excellent as well but unfortunately the screen
doesn't get that bright so viewing content outdoors is definitely going to
be a challenge I didn't notice any backward lead on my
sample overall for the price I really can't complain about this display guys
cuz you know it's running a 120 Hertz gaming on it was absolutely amazing
getting me a fast fluid response with the discreet graphics card really I mean
you can't go wrong with this screen when it comes to upgrade ability there are a
couple of things that can be tweaked on the g14 so when you look at the memory
you only have access to a single memory slot which is already populated because
this laptop comes with 16 gigabytes of RAM eight gigabytes is onboard memory so
that means you can only expand this up to 24 gigabytes and there's a single M
dr. salon that's already populated with the Intel 660 PS se that unfortunately
doesn't have the greatest read or write performance now the battery life on the
G14 surpassed my expectations you see when you take a 76 one hour battery and
combine them with AMD's Zen to power fish and processor you really get a
laptop that can last you all day as you can see with our light load test
refreshing Chrome on a loop our sample lasted for about nine hours and 30
minutes guys that is ultra book level battery life coming from a gaming laptop
with an RTX 2060 it's it really goes to show how well AMD has improved its power
state selection with these new processors fascinating stuff now under
heavy load it only lasted for about an hour and a half which is right on par
with the other gaming laptops that we've tested and now the moment that you've
all been waiting for performance in one word it's just fast like really
really fast guys in fact these numbers would make Intel cry so if anyone from
Intel's watching this video you better have a box of Kleenex handy
because it's about to get real so jumping right into our standard
synthetic tests starting with sentiment ar-15 in our 20 the 8 core 16 thread
Ryzen 9 4900HS is a good 50% faster than intel's 6 core 12 thread eye 797 58
and what's even fascinating is how well it outperforms the core I 9 1980 HK 8
core 16 thread processor that's on the arrow 15 OLED model that I tested last
year something I should mention is that the arrow 1500 LED was returned to
gigabyte so you'll only see it in the synthetic tests single core performance
is very impressive as the clock speeds boost up to four point three gigahertz
as per spec and it's just as good as Intel's offerings so was you two more
real-world tests this blender results says it all folks I mean he took half
the time to complete the render compared to my blade 15
this is desktop 99 hundred K level performance guys those extra cores do
come in handy for video transcoding as well as you can see with our handbrake
test the 1400 HS is just way too fast for Intel to keep up with moving on to
DaVinci Resolve with exports it's really interesting to see how those four extra
threads managed to close the gap between it and my blade 15 featuring an RT X 20
max Q but keep in mind that the g14 features in RTX 2060 max Q and resolved
loves GPUs however if you're an adobe premiere user I'd stay away from this
laptop because it doesn't feature a quick sync support which is an Intel
exclusive feature and Adobe embraces dad for accelerated rendering now about this
window our test a lot of this has to do with the SSD speed along with the single
threaded performance well that Y740 from lenovo has one of the fastest SSDs
we've seen on a notebook and it also has really high clock speeds so it literally
kills everything else here alright so switching to gaming as you can see with
these 3d mark benchmarks the g14 does pretty well for having an RTX 2060 max
Q but it is a different matter when you're actually playing some titles
so first of all there's a known issue with tomb raider and NVIDIA and Asus are
both working on it and we did get a confirmation with that but in other
games it's pretty evident that Asus is limiting clock speeds to remain within
their thermal specs it's important to remember that this is a slim and light
notebook but there's also a way around these limits by using the turbo mode
more on that later taking a look at temperatures the CPU did shoot up to 96
degrees Celsius under a full multi-core workload but after a few minutes to
clock speeds did throttled down to three point three gigahertz maintaining 71
degrees Celsius the Arctic's 2016 ran pretty cool too I think the max peak Tim
that I saw was around 70 C which is pretty respectable for a 14-inch gaming
laptop even with the relatively low component temperatures these surface
temperatures were pretty high especially at the center of the keyboard and
directly on your lap now for those of you wondering issues has implemented
three performance modes on this notebook so you have silent performance and turbo
I ran all of my tests in the performance setting because to me it looked like the
optimal setting now when you take a look at the performance difference between
all three modes silent really limits the CV performance and the benefit of it is
that you get a relatively quiet system but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it
for gaming as it applies a significant power limit on that RTX 2060 max Q but
there's a catch there's always a catch when you see these numbers that are just
so great so the g14 unfortunately is not a silent
or a quiet gaming laptop because the fans ramped up significantly when you
put it through a gaming load or anything that has to do with rendering or any
sort of multi-core workload so I guess this brings us to the conclusion and
guys I am still shocked at the performance of this g14 monster I mean
the fact that it completely destroyed my razor blade 15 in all the tests I mean
blender Cinebench even resolve in some cases when you set it to turbo it just
outperforms that laptop with an RTX 2080 max Q that's just crazy
most importantly this is a gaming laptop with a battery life of a thin and light
like how amazing is that AMD has certainly caught up with the best that
intel has to offer and this is huge news and of course at a competition is great
now are you making any compromise with his notebook definitely I mean yes
the lack of a webcam can be considered as one the backlighting isn't
necessarily the greatest and I'm not really a fan of the aisle placement I
really wished if there was a type a USB port on the side because having just two
type of ports on this is definitely a bit frustrating but for the price it
really is amazing you see right now we're seeing a slim
view of what these new Ryzen processors can offer and I hope to see a lot of
other rise in laptops perform to the level just like the g14 I should also
mention that this is the HS series processor and not the fully spectat H
processor so it's a lower power state so just imagine what that fully Specht out
eight series processor can perform and what it's going to be compared to
Intel's upcoming tension series it's gonna be an interesting one to
definitely witness and that's it that's all I have to say about the g14 I hope I
was able to cover everything that you needed to know about AMD's new horizon
CPUs on notebooks in fact are you looking if you're looking for a fairly
small compact gaming laptop would this be on the top of your list
I would certainly consider this because of the performance but I want any other
thoughts about the g14 in the comments I mean board Hardware Canucks thank you so
much for watching make sure to subscribe and hit the notification bells so that
you don't miss out on new videos and I'll talk to you guys in the next one