The ASUS Zephyrus G14 has received some nice updates since it initially launched last year,
so let’s check out the changes and find out if this gaming laptop is worth considering
in this review.
My G14 has an 8 core Ryzen 9 5900HS processor, Nvidia RTX 3060 graphics, 16 gigs of memory
and a 1440p 120Hz screen, but there are other configurations with lower specs too, you can
find examples and check updated prices of the G14 with those links down in the video
description.
The G14 has a magnesium alloy finish which has a nice feel, all corners and edges are
rounded so no sharp areas.
I’ve got the eclipse gray finish, but there’s also moonlight white.
The laptop alone weighs about 1.7kg or 3.8lb, then we’re looking at almost 2.3kg or 5lb
with the 180 watt power brick and cables.
Along with the lower weight, it’s on the smaller and thinner side too, making it very
portable.
The 14” 120Hz 1440p screen is better in all regards compared to last generation.
This one has great color gamut and alright contrast.
There’s no MUX switch or G-Sync, but it has FreeSync over the following refresh range.
Brightness is able to get above 300 nits at maximum, but expect different results with
the 1080p screen option.
It’s got an average grey-to-grey response time of 9ms, there’s a link in the description
if you need an explanation on all these numbers.
It’s not amazing when compared against other laptops, but hey it’s still more than half
as quick compared to the G14 last year, so that’s a welcome improvement.
There’s no obvious backlight bleed in my unit, but this will vary between laptops and
panels.
Unfortunately, like some others from ASUS, there’s no camera here.
Although there’s no camera it does still have microphones, and this is what they sound
like.
The ASUS website notes that a 1080p 60 FPS camera is included in the box, I guess this
varies by model or by region as mine didn’t have one.
The keyboard has white backlighting with 3 levels of brightness control using the function
plus F2 and F3 shortcut keys, while F4 can be used to cycle through the 3 basic effects,
and all keys and secondary functions are lit up.
Typing was fine, I had no problems, though I’m not personally a fan of the smaller
arrow keys.
There are extra buttons above the keyboard on the left to adjust volume, mute the microphone,
and open the armoury crate software, which is the control panel for the laptop.
The space bar kind of extrudes out to make it easier to hit with your thumb in games,
this isn’t new many ASUS laptops have this, however sometimes I found pressing closer
to the edge wouldn’t actually trigger a space bar press, which in this example is
demonstrated by not jumping in game.
The power button is separate to the keyboard, so no need to worry about an accidental press,
and it also doubles as a fingerprint scanner which I found to work fast and accurately.
It actually caches your fingerprint when you power it on and presents it to Windows once
it’s loaded up to log you in for maximum laziness.
The precision touchpad clicks down anywhere and feels great, I said this last year too
but it’s easily one of the best out there, it just feels accurate and satisfying to click.
The left has an air exhaust vent, the power input, HDMI 2.0b output, USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C
port with DisplayPort 1.4 support and 3.5mm audio combo jack.
The right has a second USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C port, two USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A ports, there’s
an air exhaust on this side too, and a Kensington lock up the back.
You can charge the laptop with the Type-C port on the left, but not the right one, and
the left one also connects directly to the Nvidia RTX 3060 graphics, so if you connect
an external screen you bypass optimus that way, and I’ll show you a bit later in this
video how much that helps boost gaming performance.
The HDMI port on the other hand connects to the integrated graphics.
There’s nothing on the front, nothing to help you open it, and at times I did find
it a little challenging to open.
There’s some flex to the lid, and it moved a little when typing aggressively.
There’s some keyboard flex too, but it felt fairly sturdy during regular use.
This is probably because the back of the screen props up the laptop when you open the lid.
The only contact points between the laptop and the desk are these small rubber bits towards
the edge.
This has the advantage of giving a slight incline to help with typing and allowing more
air to get into the fans underneath for cooling.
You can get the G14 with or without the AniMe Matrix display, I’ve got it in my unit,
so there are 1215 mini LEDs in the lid which allows you to make all sorts of customizations
through software.
You can set custom designs or pick from the plenty of built in effects, though of course
this would use more battery.
The bottom panel has some air intake vents directly above the fans, and we can see they’re
not blocked.
Getting inside requires removing 14 Philips head screws.
The screws down the front are shorter than the rest, and the front right screw doesn’t
remove and instead helps you open it, which I found easy to do with the tools linked below
in the video description.
Inside we’ve got the battery down the front, single M.2 slot above on the left, and single
memory slot on the right.
The Wi-Fi 6 card is hiding underneath the SSD.
Like many other Zephyrus laptops from ASUS, there’s just the one memory slot.
The G14 has either 8 or 16 gigs of memory soldered to the motherboard, so you’ll have
to buy with that in mind as you can’t upgrade that later.
It’s kind of unfortunate, but I guess it must be necessary in order to keep the laptop
this side.
I should also note that the single memory stick that came in my G14 was the slower x16
stick that I also found in the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro and ASUS Strix G15 Advantage.
I did attempt to change this for a better memory stick and only saw a minor improvement
in a game benchmark.
Based on zentimings, the secondary timings of the soldered memory are decent, so performance
will likely vary based on which memory is in use, but I’d think using a faster stick
in the SODIMM slot would offer a more consistent experience.
There are dual subwoofers underneath towards the front on either side along with tweeters
on either side of the keyboard, so front facing speakers.
I thought they sounded pretty good for a gaming laptop, there’s some bass and they can get
reasonably loud while still sounding clear enough.
The latencymon results were alright too.
Speaking of sounds, it plays this one by default on boot.
Fortunately you can disable it through the Armoury crate software or BIOS, but according
to my recent poll more of you than I expected enjoy boot sounds.
The G14 has a 4-Cell 76Wh battery.
It lasted for more than 7 and a half hours in the YouTube playback test, a decent result,
though a little behind last year’s G14, but gaming time was longer.
By default the panel power saver option is enabled, and this automatically changes the
screen’s refresh rate to 60Hz when you unplug from wall power to save battery, and then
it automatically changes back when you plug back in.
There’s also the option to set iGPU mode to on which basically disables the Nvidia
discrete graphics to help boost battery life.
Generally optimus will have you covered, but this way random apps can’t even attempt
to use the RTX 3060 as it’s not available.
Let’s check out thermals next.
The Armoury Crate software lets us change between different performance profiles, which
from lowest to highest are silent, performance, turbo and manual.
Turbo and manual modes both apply the same overclock to the GPU by default.
Manual mode gives us some control over power sliders and fan customization.
I also want to note that while you can set the fans to max speed here, when the laptop
isn’t actively doing work they would slow down and speed up once you start doing stuff,
they don’t just stay at maximum as specified like most others do.
The G14 uses Thermal Grizzly liquid metal on the processor, and we’ve got four heat
pipes shared between CPU and GPU.
The idle results down the bottom are on the warmer side, but not really an issue.
I’ve run stress tests with both the CPU and GPU loaded up to represent a worst case,
as well as playing an actual game.
The RTX 3060 graphics, shown by the green bars, was apparently thermal throttling according
to hardware info at about 75 degrees Celsius.
I also noticed this same behavior in this year’s TUF A15, so can only assume that
ASUS has decided to go with a lower thermal throttle limit, as most other laptops typically
cap Nvidia graphics to 87 degrees Celsius.
Worst case the CPU, shown by the blue bars, gets to 94 in manual mode, but using the cooling
pad, link for the one I use can be found in the video description below, could lower temperatures
by 5 degrees.
These are the clock speeds from those same tests.
Given the cooling pad is boosting GPU performance in the stress test, it would seem to confirm
that the 3060 was actually thermal throttling at 75 degrees as adding more air allows it
to go 100MHz higher.
Otherwise 4GHz over all 8 cores even without the cooling pad looks like a decent result
for this smaller laptop.
The processor was able to go above 50 watts in manual mode while the GPU was able to get
up to 60 watts.
In combined CPU plus GPU workloads this is as high as it can go, however the 3060 can
go up to 80 watts with dynamic boost if the processor isn’t active.
Here’s how an actual game performs with these different modes in use.
Turbo and manual modes were the same, performance was a little lower and the quietest silent
mode was still close to 60 FPS in this test.
Here’s how the different modes perform in Cinebench R23, a cpu only workload with the
gpu now idle.
Again turbo and manual mode were quite close, but manual mode did have a slight edge.
It’s doing quite well compared to others, beating some larger and thicker Ryzen 7 5800H
models, though the same 5900HS processor in the larger Zephyrus G15 is able to score a
bit higher for multicore.
Things turn around on battery power, the G14 is now offering some of the best CPU performance
when running on battery, despite turbo and manual modes being unavailable when unplugged.
The top of the list is dominated by ASUS, so it seems like they just let their laptops
use more power for higher performance when on battery.
The keyboard is in the low 40s when sitting there idle, so warmer than others, but I guess
it is also smaller than most others too.
It gets to the mid 40s in the center with the stress tests going, and then it’s low
to mid 50s once we step up to the higher performance mode.
Turbo mode is similar, it’s hotter up the back but you shouldn’t need to touch there.
It’s not much different in manual mode with the fans maxed out, but at least the WASD
section where you’ll sit while gaming is cooler compared to the rest.
Let’s have a listen to the fans.
When idling I found the fan would ramp up and down which may be annoying.
It’s still relatively quiet when the stress tests are going, then it gets progressively
louder with the higher performance modes.
Manual mode with the fans maxed out is quite a lot louder compared to turbo mode, you’d
probably want to use headphones.
Personally I see crazy high fan noise like this as an advantage because there’s user
control.
At least this way you can customize it to get it to a volume you like, and I think it’s
better to have options than be stuck one way or the other.
If you don’t want it that loud then just lower it, like I always say, user choice is
best.
Now let’s find out how well the Zephyrus G14 compares against other laptops in games.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested with the games benchmark.
I’ve highlighted both this year's G14 and last year’s G14 in red so that we can see
how far we’ve come in about a year.
I tested with the highest specced config of G14 in both cases, and a 22% boost to average
FPS in that time is a pretty nice improvement.
The lower wattage 3060 in the G14 is even ahead of the higher wattage 2060 in MSI’s
GL65 just below it, while of course it’s beaten by higher wattage 30 series options
in larger 15” plus designs.
I’ve tested Battlefield 5 in campaign mode at ultra settings, and again this year’s
G14 is reaching 22% higher average FPS compared to last year’s model, and there’s a 14%
boost to 1% low too.
Again the new G14 is able to beat the higher wattage 2060 in MSI’s GL65 just below it,
at least in terms of average FPS.
Meanwhile last year’s 2060 g14 was below GTX 1660 Ti options, so again a nice single
generation improvement.
Far Cry 5 was tested with the games benchmark at max settings, this time the newer G14 was
reaching 9% higher average FPS compared to last year’s model.
This test typically depends more on the CPU, so we might be looking more at Zen 2 vs Zen
3 here, though the 1% lows are essentially the same.
In any case quite impressive when considering the higher specced Strix G15 from ASUS with
5900HX and 6800M is scoring about the same.
I’ve also tested the G14 in 13 different games at both 1080p and 1440p resolutions
in this video over here if you want to get a better understanding of how well it performs
in games.
As mentioned earlier, that type-c port on the left connects directly to the Nvidia graphics,
so let’s see what sort of a speed boost we can get by connecting an external screen.
We’re looking at a 7% boost to average FPS in Shadow of the Tomb Raider with this simple
change, so not quite as big compared to some other laptops I’ve tested such as the ASUS
Strix G15 Advantage Edition, but hey still an easy way to get some additional performance
out of the laptop.
Here are the results from 3DMark for those that find them useful.
Now for some creator tests.
Adobe Premiere was tested with the Puget Systems benchmark.
Unfortunately the benchmark changed since I had last year’s G14 so I can’t compare,
but it’s in between two other RTX 3070 laptops, so looking decent.
Adobe Photoshop was again in between 3070 laptops, though this test tends to be more
processor heavy, and the 5900HS does have a 200MHz higher single core boost speed than
the 5800H.
DaVinci Resolve is more GPU heavy, though it’s still able to beat the 3070 in the
ASUS TUF Dash F15 with similar power limit just below, otherwise all the other larger
30 series laptops are ahead.
I’ve also tested SPECviewperf which tests out various professional 3D workloads.
The 512gb NVMe M.2 SSD was doing well for the reads, but not so great comparatively
on the writes.
The BIOS is pretty much the same as all of the others from ASUS, just the usual basic
options that you’d expect to see.
I booted an Ubuntu 21 live CD to test Linux support.
Out of the box the touchpad, keyboard, and speakers worked, but Wi-Fi wasn’t recognized.
The volume keyboard shortcuts work, but screen and keyboard brightness shortcuts do not.
Now let’s discuss pricing.
This will change over time, so refer to those links down in the description for updates.
At the time of recording it’s a little difficult to find it for sale, the best I could see
was $1450 USD for a similar configuration I’ve tested, but with double the SSD storage
space and with a 1080p screen.
Normally at this point I’d probably give some examples of how the G14 costs more than
slightly thicker laptops with similar specs that can perform better.
Generally with a device like this you’re paying more for the portability, and while
generally I still believe that, at the moment prices are kind of just all over the place.
For example the lenovo legion 5 with RTX 3060 is $1600, so that G14 doesn’t look so bad.
Of course I am expecting the legion 5 to beat this in performance as it is a thicker machine
and probably has higher power limits, the point I’m trying to make is usually those
types of machines would be cheaper than the G14, but that doesn’t seem to be the case
at the moment.
My general advice would be that if you can find a 15” gaming laptop that performs better
than the G14 for less money then it’s probably worth considering unless you seriously need
the G14’s increased portability.
The main differences that I think are worth noting with this year’s G14 compared to
last year are of course the new CPU and GPU, but also the new screen.
Not only do we get 1440p high refresh this year, the screen response time is also at
least half as quick compared to what we had last year, so welcome improvements.
The only thing I’m concerned about is the GPU thermal throttle limit being set seemingly
low at 75 degrees Celsius, but this isn’t the first ASUS laptop I’ve seen that in
this year so that might just be what they’re going with.
I don’t know, to me it just seems a bit low and they might be leaving performance
on the table compared to letting it get a bit warmer like most other laptops do.
Now those improvements of the G14 this year are great and improvements are always welcome,
and until very recently the G14 was pretty much the only 14” gaming laptop on the market.
That is of course until the Razer Blade 14 arrived.
Now this did only just come and I haven’t actually fully tested it out yet, but I think
it’s going to be very interesting to see how these two laptops compare, so if you’re
new to the channel then make sure you get subscribed for that upcoming comparison and
of course for future gaming laptop reviews like this one.
Come and join me in Discord and get behind the scenes videos by supporting the channel
on Patreon, and if you want to see how well either of these gaming laptops do then you
can check out how well they perform in games over in these videos.
I’ll see you over in one of those next!