ASUS - ROG Zephyrus G16 16" OLED 3K Gaming Laptop- Intel Core Ultra 9 386H 2026- 32GB Memory - GeForce RTX 5080 - 1TB Storage - Eclipse Gray

I love this laptop. It is fantastic. It's extremely sleek, although I will say, if you have no need for very long battery life, get the 2025 model. And also, just get the 5070 Ti model for the 2025. Unless you plan on doing a GPU flash, then I would just stick to the 5070 Ti 2025 model if you're not willing to shell out $4,500 on a brand new laptop. I primarily bought this for the new processor with the better battery life, and I can say that I am pleased with my purchase. I can say that I've done a lot of testing on this laptop, and in TimeSpy, my score, GPU score was 20,500 topped and gpu does run at 155 watts consistently, and that was after a tad bit of overclocking, but not that much. Everything was stable. This laptop runs pretty cool when not plugged in, but does get a little warm, obviously, when plugged in gaming. I would recommend this to another person only if they have the money and they want good battery life for simple tasks.

This ASUS Zephyrus G16 is a gaming powerhouse. The sleek metal chassis is attractively styled and feels solidly constructed. And yet, despite being packed with AAA quality gaming hardware components, it remains impressively thin. Total thickness measures less than ¾-inch with the lid closed. That’s comparable to my spouse’s everyday laptop that has an i5 and integrated graphics. Weight is also comparable to her machine. The Zephyrus does not feel heavy or cumbersome. The power brick is sizeable (6.5” length, 3” width, 1” thickness), but like the laptop, is not too heavy. It’s actually smaller and lighter than the power brick on a significantly lower spec’d gaming machine I own. Like previous Zephyrus models, the metal lid of the G16 is adorned with a diagonal slash of customizable lighting and a laser etched logo. External ports are positioned in a user-friendly manner with each side containing one USB 3.2 type A and one USB 3.2 type C port. There is no cramming of all USB ports of a specific type on one side. The left side also has a full-sized HDMI port and 3.5mm combo audio port and the right side has a full-sized SD card reader. The only thing missing compared to similarly spec’d gaming laptops is an ethernet port. The exhaust vents allow sufficient cooling without being unsightly. The slash lighting on the lid and the backlit keyboard lighting are both customizable through ASUS’s preinstalled Armory Crate app. The 16-inch HDR and G-sync compatible OLED WQXGA panel is uniform and has excellent brightness and viewing angles. Color accuracy and contrast are great and saturation isn’t overwhelming. The 240Hz screen easily keeps up with fast-paced gaming and has excellent highlights, reflections and shadows. All of this is thanks to the GeForce 5080 GPU, Intel Ultra 9 processor, and 32GB of DDR5 RAM. They combine to make gaming and content creation an enjoyable and stress-free experience. The keyboard keys are on the smaller side but it doesn’t negatively affect my gaming. There are several useful quick access keys along the top row with the function buttons. The quick access keys offer convenient instant access to controls for volume, lighting, airplane mode, and more. I’d like to say good things about the touchpad too, but I loathe it. Measuring at 6x4 inches, it’s generously sized, but swipe gestures are too sensitive for my liking. After several unintended swipes started becoming annoying, I quickly switched to an external wireless mouse. The Zephyrus handles newer releases in my Steam and Xbox libraries with ease. Forza Horizon 4 and 5 both run beautifully. In FH5 I’m averaging between 120-140fps in active gameplay under extreme preset. Cyberpunk and Flight Simulator 2020 both also run well, although I’m not surprised since they’re slightly older titles. The only gaming problem I encountered was with Forza Horizon 6. It crashes at the loading screen every time and won’t launch. The problem is due to a known driver and/or permission issue, not the laptop. I would have tinkered around with it more but the title also has a devastating cloud save wiping bug as well. I decided to leave it alone since it crashes right before the cloud sync. I don’t want to keep tempting fate and possibly wipe my cloud save. I will just keep playing FH6 on console and on my working machine. Motorfest and Cyberpunk both run smoothly at good framerates on higher quality presets without issue. Ray tracing and other effects work great and provide stunning lighting and reflections. I haven’t encountered any screen tearing or artifacts. Gameplay flows smoothly with no noticeable stuttering or frame drops. Fan noise even at full blast is never overwhelming and the machine runs adequately cool during my normal gaming sessions of one to three hours. The machine hasn’t froze or crashed due to heat. I do take precautions like taking a break every 30 minutes if possible and always use the machine in an adequate temperature environment on a smooth hard surface. All of the vents are on the bottom, so resting the laptop on soft pliable surfaces like a mattress, cushion, or pillow is definitely not advised. The G16 also easily handles desktop and content creation applications. I have no issues using Adobe Creative Suite applications or creating/editing documents in Office. The machine also has helpful features like an ambient light sensor and adaptive color sensor that adjust brightness and color temperatures respectively based on current lighting. The camera is okay but not particularly great for stills and video. It really struggles with moderate to strong backlighting. However, it is acceptable in bright even lighting with a front-lit subject. The speakers have good clarity and volume. The microphone array records reliably utilizing beamforming and suppressing background noise. Battery life is solid for a gaming laptop. The G16 is a capable gaming laptop that crams top notch components into a svelte lightweight form factor. It runs cool and reliably. It easily handles current AAA titles without breaking a sweat. It’s a solid piece of technology. My only complaint isn’t even related to performance and that’s the price. It’s an eye watering price tag. I realize this is not necessarily the fault of the manufacturer as tech prices have skyrocketed recently due to the one ubiquitous feature that I excluded from my review because I personally refuse to use it, despite it being included in the OS of nearly all new machines. The fact that similarly spec’d previous models of this machine were selling for nearly half this price is one of numerous reasons why I refuse to jump on the bandwagon.

This Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 is a very potent gaming and productivity laptop that takes the previous versions’ excellent qualities to new heights. Like everything in the PC market, such power costs more than it used to, as RAM and storage prices have climbed to stratospheric levels. But for those who want the ultimate combination of power and portability, this is very hard to beat. The specs are very impressive: 2560x1600 240Hz OLED screen, new Panther Lake-based Core Ultra 9 386H (which also grants Copilot+ PC certification with its 50 TOPS NPU), RTX 5080, 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM, and a fast 1TB SSD. But that’s all put into a relatively thin chassis that also provides a pretty good laptop speaker system along with generous connectivity. The system is driven by an Intel Core Ultra 9 386H CPU, which has 4 performance cores, 8 efficient cores, and 4 additional low power efficient cores, processing 16 total threads. Performance is very good–comparative numbers suggest an equivalency of an upper end Alder Lake desktop chip, which is quite remarkable. The CPU also has a small iGPU with four Xe GPU cores for when saving battery and disengaging the discrete Nvidia GPU. The included NPU is rated for 50 TOPS, which opens up the full range of Copilot+ AI tools. However, for running local LLMs–something this is very capable of doing–the 32GB of RAM along with the RTX 5080’s CUDA cores and 16GB of VRAM will be more useful. Those specs are sufficient for running some quite powerful local models, like GPT-OSS-20B. The mobile RTX 5080 with 16GB of VRAM provides ample power for gaming. It’s not the same as the desktop GPU of the same name, as its performance is more in line with a desktop 5070, though with more and faster VRAM. In general, you can play at the screen’s native resolution with high details at 60+fps in just about anything. Ray tracing, depending on the implementation, may well require DLSS, but since I consider that “free” performance, I almost never game at native resolution–I just can’t tell the difference 99% of the time. 4K gaming on an external display–I hooked this up via HDMI to my Samsung QN90C TV–is also within reach but will require more compromises. The gaming performance has to also be considered within the various power settings contained with Asus Armoury Crate. The cooling system on this model has been made more robust, which gives some additional thermal headroom. But the Turbo fan setting is quite loud–not a problem if you have an external sound system engaged or if you use headphones, but I suspect many will find it distracting if not in those scenarios. I did most testing at Turbo, which has the highest preset power limits (I believe Custom allows slightly higher). But if you drop down to the Performance preset, the fans are still audible, but at a far lower level, and you only sacrifice about 4-5% performance based upon my testing. Dialing in the right combination of resolution, graphics detail, upscaling, and fan noise can take a little tinkering if you want to get the best combination of all of those. I tested this using the built-in benchmarks in Cyberpunk 2077, Forza Horizon 6, and Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered. Windows was fully updated and the latest Nvidia Game Ready drivers were installed. In Cyberpunk 2077, at native resolution using the Ray Tracing Ultimate preset, the G16 yielded 68 fps with DLSS Auto enabled. Forcing DLSS Quality dropped that to just under 60fps. Using the external 4K display with the same settings saw 45fps. Interestingly, dropping the preset to Ray Tracing medium didn’t give much improvement. Cyberpunk does support frame generation, but you need a decent base frame rate to start with to control input latency. I think this is easily achieved at native resolution, but 4K might feel off to some. Forza Horizon 6, using the Extreme Ray Tracing preset with DLSS Quality, pulled 67fps at native resolution–very impressive for a good-looking game. Going to 4K yielded 48pfs with DLSS set to balanced, so 4K gaming here requires some compromises to get to 60fps. Though I didn’t test it, the Extreme non-RT preset still looks amazing and will generally yield much higher fps numbers. Since this is an Xbox title, I will mention here that a trial subscription to Xbox Gaming Pass Ultimate is included with this device. In Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, native resolution came in at 100fps when set to the Very High preset with DLSS Quality. 4K resolution gave a still very respectable 76fps. It was here that I did my Turbo vs. Performance preset testing, and found that at native resolution the frame rate dropped to 96 with much better acoustics. This game also supports frame generation, and both native and 4K resolutions would give good outcomes for frame generation. Under load, there’s a fair amount of heat generated as well, but thankfully the hottest spot is just above the keyboard (just over the F7-F9 keys) where you won’t typically ever touch. Using my phone’s built-in thermal sensor, it registered a maximum of 118 degrees Fahrenheit. The aluminum chassis, like previous Zephyrus models, is very well-built. The backlit keyboard is pleasant to type on and quiet, but despite the large screen size, it does not have a numerical keypad because of the flanking speakers. The trackpad is very large and quite responsive, and connectivity is excellent. The left side has HDMI, Thunderbolt Type-C, Type-A USB 3.2Gen2, and the audio jack. The proprietary power connector for the 250W power brick is also here. The right side has another USB-A port, along with a Type-C USB 3.2 Gen2 port and the card reader. Both Type-C ports support Power Deliver up to 100W–enough to charge the battery and run at lower levels, but not nearly sufficient for full power gaming. Above the keyboard is the 16”, 2560x1600 OLED panel. It has characteristically brilliant contrast as all OLEDS do, but brightness is an impressive 1100nits. It also promises 100% coverage of the DCI-P3 color space. So all of the powerful hardware in the lower half is given a great canvas to display that prowess on–it’s a very nice display. The back of the screen lid has Asus’s configurable Slash lighting. Storage is provided by a 1TB NVMe SSD. That’s a lot of storage, but with modern games at 100GB+ that can fill up quickly. I have not opened the chassis yet, but I believe there is a second M.2 slot for an additional SSD. On my model, the SSD was an SK Hynix PC801. Sequential reads were tested at 7130MB/s and sequential writes at 6454MB/s. The 32GB of RAM is also SK hynix, and is soldered LPDDR5-8533. No RAM upgrades are possible, but 32GB should be more than ample for just about anyone. Overall, it’s quite astonishing how much power is packed into such a portable device. This allows almost any imaginable usage–intensive video editing, running local LLMs, high framerate gaming with eye candy turned on and more. If you’re looking for a truly well-built, do it all portable PC, this Asus laptop certainly fits the bill. Highly recommended.

I’ve become a huge fan of Asus over the years, their products seem to get better every year. 2026 is turning out to be one banger of a year for Asus, from handheld PC’s, motherboards, laptops, you name it. With this said, the ROG Zephyrus G16 doesn’t disappoint. I have to say I have never seen a laptop quite like this before. The level of polish on this laptop is really nice, premium feel. This laptop is all about deception. Just look at it. Does it even look like a gaming laptop? At first glance, the G16 looks like a normal run of the mill laptop, but everything underneath is anything but. This laptop rocks an RTX5080, Ultra 9 386H processor with a very nice 32gb of RAM in a body that only weighs a bit over 4lbs. I have had this laptop several days now putting it through its paces, and I am still awe struck at just how thin and light it is. I can easily pick this laptop up with one hand for portability. If you have ever had a gaming laptop, you know they are not known for either being light or portable in any way. No, really. My previous laptop had similar specs I picked up in 2024, and that thing is easily over 7lbs, and about 10 lbs if you want to carry it around with a charger. I have to say that there really is something about having a really light, thin laptop. It has always been either you can want a light weight device for normal jobs or cross over to the gaming laptop where more thermals, fans etc. can really get laptops big. Putting this Zephyrus in silent mode, the battery will last awhile. There is LED light and rgb light on the keyboard and a slick strip on the outside, but that is it, no crazy ring of multi colored lights, just all business all around. As for software, Asus has its own app called Armory Crate that holds the settings for the lights and power levels, among other things. As you can see in the picture I took, you can see the useful information from fan speed, mode, temperature and so on. You’ll notice the icon in the bottom left, that is the desktop shortcut that really comes in handy. I can switch profiles immediately if I decide to game or just stream a movie. I mainly stay with performance mode (which are all listed at the bottom of the screen), which I believe was the default setting it comes with. The Turbo mode cranks up the system for maximum air flow with increased sound from the fans. You can tweak the settings in the manual mode like the maximum temperature ceiling for the laptop, which can come in handy if you need it. Speaking of temperature…..be very mindful about the heat dissipation for this laptop. Now on one hand, this thing is so light and thin, but also being a gaming laptop, means thermals are even more important. I found I needed to take very specific steps to keep the laptop cool during graphically intensive games like Resident Evil: Requiem or Cyberpunk 2077 for example. In an initial test, I wanted to see how it dealt with 4K via a monitor. I quickly learned that since this laptop is so thin, you must be mindful of maximum airflow. On my previous laptop, I did not need to have the lid up all the time when connected to a monitor because it was much thicker. Well I am here to tell you for this Zephryrus G16, you do! Temps can easily hit 90+ C running normal games and can hit triple digits if the lid is closed. Speaking of which, the OLED screen with the .02 response time is nigh perfect. You can’t really beat the specs ASUS packed in this thing. Wow. On a software and hardware level, this laptop is really amazing. In this day and age in 2026, having these specs in a machine feels very special. Unfortunately, I don’t mean that completely in a good way. The msrp of this bad boy is over $4,300!! By far the biggest negative for this product. I have been going back and forth on the final score. By all means this laptop is great but only held back at an enormous inflated price due the RAM & SSD shortage due to AI (Bleh!). Should you get it? By all means if possible, spoil yourself and you will not be disappointed. The price I fear will heavily affect most people from even trying the G16 out, which is a real shame. On a closing note, I want to give a big shout out to the overall packaging this laptop came in. The box and packaging was very impressive and easily beat out the Series X as the best presented piece of electronics I have seen after opening the box, but hey, that's me. This really cements Asus as a top producer of quality tech in a world of Microsoft, Dell, Acer and so forth. I am really looking forward to seeing what else ASUS has in store for the rest of ‘26.

When looking for the best fully loaded gaming PC, the ROG Zephyrus G16 is hard to beat. I've had several laptops in the Zephyrus line, and they never fail to impress me. Out of the box, the first thing I noticed was how sturdy this laptop is and, more importantly, just how thin it is. My daily work laptop is the LG Gram 17", which is one of the thinnest and lightest laptops I've owned. To think that the G16 is only slightly bigger and packs an Intel Core Ultra 9 and RTX 5080 inside is quite the marvel. The casing and hinges are very sturdy. This is not a flimsy gaming laptop. It's built to move around and go wherever you do. Once powered up, you get to see the gorgeous display in full effect. Colors pop off the screen with amazing brightness and clarity, whether you're playing games, watching videos, or streaming movies. The OLED screen is stellar, and there aren't many gaming laptops that can match it. It's stunning. Combine that with the 240Hz refresh rate, and you have a silky-smooth experience that any gamer or graphics lover will appreciate. All of your ports are intact. You get two USB-C ports, two 10Gbps USB-A ports, a headphone jack, and I'm pleased to see that ASUS kept the SD card slot for extra expansion. I still have plenty of SD cards that I use for videos and general file transfers, so it's a bonus that it's still there. With everything I've run so far, the Intel Core Ultra 9 has been a workhorse that hasn't slowed down, regardless of how much I've thrown at it. Once the gaming starts, the fans come on, and it's about what you would expect from a laptop pushing this kind of performance in such a small frame. I found the heat dissipation to be more impressive than negative. Yes, it gets warm, but not so warm that you can't rest your palms on it or even use it on your lap for a while. When you consider that it's running an RTX 5080 pushing high-quality graphics, the cooling does a very good job. The simple extras are here as well, like a backlit RGB keyboard, RGB lighting on the lid, and a Windows Hello camera for quick login. It's also a Copilot+ PC, so the Copilot key is built in, along with a dedicated Armoury Crate button. Those are nice touches that make it easy to access features I actually use. The battery is about what you would expect. You're using a high-powered laptop that's built to push quality graphics and handle demanding workloads. At full performance, expect around three hours of battery life. With lighter use, you can get around five to six hours. It's not advertised as a battery-life champion, so I judge it like any other gaming laptop, and I'd say it's pretty average. The charger is proprietary and fairly heavy. That's probably the biggest negative I found, but I also can't knock it too much because a laptop like this needs plenty of power. To round things out, the speakers are surprisingly loud, clear, and full. ASUS has done a great job improving the sound compared to previous years. The keyboard feels satisfying to type on, with good key travel that makes it comfortable for both gaming and everyday work. The touchpad placement is excellent for comfort and usability. The ASUS software gives you plenty of customization for lighting, power, and performance, so you can really make the machine your own. They clearly wanted to make this the ultimate gaming laptop, and I believe they succeeded. Would I recommend it? Absolutely. If you're looking for one of the best OLED displays you can get, a great 240Hz refresh rate, outstanding performance, good heat dissipation, and an overall excellent gaming experience, this is an easy recommendation.