Asus ROG Zephyrus G14(2022) - Full Review with Pros and Cons

The Zephyrus line of gaming laptops from Asus’ ROG brand is well known for powerful yet portable gaming laptops. This Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 targets people who want portability in their gaming machine but cannot compromise on the performance. It is a 14-inch gaming laptop and claims to be the most powerful in its category. It is also one of the first laptops to come with AMD’s new Ryzen 6000 series CPUs. Another interesting feature of the laptop is the AniMe LED display matrix on the lid which features several programmable LEDs and can be used to display text, animations and graphics.

The laptop is available in three processor variants, two GPU variants and three display variants. The one in this review has a Ryzen 9 6900HS CPU with AMD Radeon™ RX 6700S graphics and a FHD 120Hz display.

Build and Quality

On first sight, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 does not look like a gaming laptop at all. It comes in a white finish which makes it look more like a business-oriented laptop. The build is made of magnesium-aluminium alloy and feels premium to the touch. The finish is slightly roughened to prevent fingerprint build-up. Overall build quality is good and the laptop feels sturdy thanks in part to the materials used.

The lid contains the AniMe matrix display which houses 1215 white LED with adjustable brightness inside the small perforations. These can be customised with Asus’s included software and can display text, animations and graphics.

The hinge has an ergo-lift design prevalent in the Zenbook lineup which lifts the base up by a bit when the hinge is opened. This helps cool the laptop by improving the airflow as well as make the typing experience a bit better by slanting the keyboard.

The 14-inch form factor is something rare for a gaming laptop these days. This helps the laptop be compact and portable. It weighs in at just 1.72 kgs with the AniMe matrix lid and 1.65 kgs without it.

Ports, I/O and Connectivity

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 has a conventional I/O layout. On the left there are the charging jack, HDMI 2.0b, USB Type-C Gen. 2 3.2 w/ DisplayPort 1.4 and Power Delivery and 3.5 mm combo audio ports. To the right there are USB Type-C Gen. 2 3.2, 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2. 1 Type-A and a Kensington Lock slot. There is no port on the back of the laptop. The USB Type-C port, sadly, is not Thunderbolt enabled.

The laptop comes equipped with Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2. As a result, transfer rates over Wi-Fi are significantly faster than previous standards.

Maintenance

Getting into the laptop is relatively easy. By just removing 14 screws from the bottom panel and popping it off, one gets access to the 1x SODIMM, M.2 SSD, WLAN module and the battery. The laptop has 8GB of soldered RAM and a 8GB SO-DIMM for a total of 16GB 3200MHz dual-channel memory.

Input Devices

Keyboard – The keyboard on the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 has the same layout as other larger Zephyrus laptops. The keys have better travel and tactile feedback when compared to slimmer laptops like those on the Zenbook series. One issue here is that the grey font on the white keycaps can make the keys difficult to recognize because of the low contrast. The keys have white backlighting but it would have been better if we had per-key RGB backlighting especially considering the price point.

Touchpad – The trackpad is of decent size, comparable to other 14-inch laptops and has a smooth glide to it. This makes cursor control easy which is visible on the 120Hz display. The trackpad is of a click pad design and the clicks feel a bit shallow, making tasks like drag-and-drop difficult.

Display

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 comes with a single display configuration. This is a WQXGA 120 Hz IPS display. All of these are advertised as having 100% DCI-P3 with Pantone Validation & Dolby Vision HDR.

It supports AMD FreeSync to prevent screen-tearing while gaming and has a peak brightness of 320 nits. One of the major issues with the previous generations was the high latency, now at just 3ms response time, it is a no brainer for gamers.

The IPS panel has great viewing angles and contrast. Zephyrus G14 has a 720 HD IR Camera which supports Windows Hello.

Performance

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 comes with Ryzen 9 6900HS. This chip is a special 35 Watt TDP variant of the H series chips. The best thing about them is the core count. The ryzen chip is 8-core/16-thread processor which would put them on par with Intel i9 mobile processors. The model in review has the Ryzen 9 6900HS processor. In benchmarks, the CPU trades blows with the Core i9 in most cases even in single-core benchmarks, which used to be Intel’s strength for a long time now.

The laptop does run on the hotter side though. This is partly due to the use of high performance components in such a small chassis but it is nothing to be worried about.

Storage

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 has a 1TB M.2 NVMe™ PCIe^® 4.0 SSD. Read/write speeds are upto NVMe standards and load times for games are very fast. There is no extra M.2 slot or 2.5-inch drive bay so to upgrade the storage, one has to replace the existing SSD.

Speakers

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 comes with a quad speaker arrangement with dual 2.5 W main speakers paired with dual 0.7W tweeters. The main speaker are bottom facing present at the front corners while the tweeters are top facing. The maximum volume does not get loud enough though.

Battery Life

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 has a 76 Wh battery which is the same size as the larger model. Inspite of the large battery, battery life is nothing exceptional. This is partly due to the use of high wattage HS series processors instead of the more efficient and less powerful U series. Battery life lasts up to 6 hours on light loads. The laptop comes with a 100W AC Adapter for faster charging.