Customer Ratings & Reviews

If you have some extra cash to invest, I’d say it’s totally worth it. I used to worry about the laptop's thermals, but since using it with a Stxnd laptop stand, the temperature stays around 75-80°C while gaming. The palm rest area barely gets hot; you only feel a very slight warmth. Maybe lifting the laptop up allows for better natural airflow. Anyway, spending a premium for high performance is a no-brainer. Just keep in mind that nothing is perfect; it’s just that these drawbacks are minimal and acceptable considering the heavy price tag.

There’s a lot to love with this laptop. I’ll list a few reasons why I think this laptop is a great buy, and then maybe some reasons that might deter you, depending on what’s important to you. ===Pros=== – Excellent OLED display. 3K Display at 240hz, with an advertised 1,100 nits, the screen gets very bright. I do not have a way to measure the brightness, but I find sitting in a well-lit room, I’m happy using around 80%. I turn down the brightness to around 40% when it’s late afternoon and I’m just browsing or watching videos. You get great contrasts, vivid colors, and all movement on the screen is butter smooth with the 240hz refresh rate. Using outside in the shade of my front porch, I do not have any issues seeing the screen, however, direct sunlight is a bit challenging, as it would be for any OLED screen. – Efficient Performance. The CPU is an Intel Panther Lake Core Ultra 9 386H. This generation, instead of improving performance, prioritized efficiency so that it could deliver excellent battery life. What you get is the same performance as last year’s 285H but much improved battery life. – Fantastic Gaming Performance. The NVIDIA 5080 easily handles games at high settings, even while gaming on a 3.5k at 240hz. Using NVIDIA’s app, I optimized both Battlefield 6 and Marvel Rivals for recommended settings. Battlefield 6 recommends high settings, and I can tell you, the game looks stunning. Because this is a thin laptop, the fans are putting in work to efficiently cool the system, but I did not experience any lag or stutter. Marvel Rivals has a bit of a different design than battlefield, however, I found the game play to be butter smooth on the 240hz screen, and while it can get busy on the screen, I didn’t notice any frame drops. I ran some synthetic benchmarks so you can see how it compares to other laptops. – Design and build quality are excellent and this truly looks and feels like a premium device. I can pick up by the corner with one hand, it doesn’t feel plasticky or fragile when doing so. The lid easily opens with one finger. The hinge is smooth. The lid is very thin, along with the chassis, making this one of the thinnest and powerful gaming laptops I’ve used. It’s comfortable to use in the lap for extended periods of time, and repositioning doesn’t feel like a chore because it is so easy to manipulate. I like the dark color and the feel of the finish. It’s fingerprint resistant but not fingerprint proof. When under stress, you do feel the heat on the bottom if in your lap, and it’s noticeable on the keyboard, but I didn’t find it uncomfortable and didn’t really notice it when I was “in the zone” on Battlefield 6. The slash lighting is a neat way to set this laptop apart. It looks great whether it’s on or off and has a neat feature where it fills in a certain percentage based upon remaining battery. – Sound, keyboard, and track pad are all great. The speakers are probably the best in a windows laptop that I’ve heard. I think ASUS is doing great work here as their Strix Scar line also sounds great. It doesn’t get distorted at high volumes, comes through clear, gets probably louder than you should have on a laptop and I love it. Keyboard is easy to type on. I find my hands are nicely centered on the keyboard and not weirdly offset. I’m able to hit my average 100-110 wpm at a comfortable typing pace. Track pad is nice and large with good palm rejection. – Excellent Battery Life. When I’m unplugged, and I know I do not need performance, I switch over to battery saver. This feature is useful when you’re just browsing around on the internet or doing some light office suite work. Just using the built-in windows estimated time remaining, at one point it was reporting over 9 hours of available battery life in settings while at 100% capacity. Now this bounces around a lot depending on power draw and windows power management, but I do not get charger anxiety when away from the wall. Only time I really want to plug this in is when I’m gaming. You can also use USB C charging up to 100W, which is very useful when not used for gaming. – Armory Crate and MyASUS. Armory Crate has improved over the years, and while still a bit clunky, is a great way to set up customizations and features on your laptop. There are various display, performance, and lighting features you can customize. Access Aura wallpapers that offer dynamic animated wallpapers. You can set up scenario profiles to custom settings depending on what applications you’re running. I believe it’s a very robust application with a lot of features. MyASUS has much of the same settings, however, it is a bit more simplified and built around general device settings rather than customization and gaming. – A few more things to love. You have both a USB type A and C on either side of the device. Along with an HDMI, SD Card Reader, and a headphone jack. The USB C on the left is also a Thunderbolt port for high-speed peripherals. Although it shipped with a Gen 4 SSD, I discovered it supports a PCIE Gen 5. Speaking of speedy memory, this is running super-fast 8533 mts RAM. Sports Wi-Fi 7, love to see it, along with Bluetooth 6.0. For login, this also uses windows Hello facial recognition, which is hands down the best way to login to your laptop. I also noticed a 2nd slot for another M.2 Drive for expandability. ===Cons=== – Single Zone RGB should not be the default for a flagship device. While the keys get plenty bright and the colors do look good, I feel like per key lighting wouldn’t have been too far of a stretch to include. – Ships with a PCIe Gen 4 SSD. I’m sure this decision was made to help keep costs down, it has the capability to support Gen 5 and does so wonderfully (see screenshot), however, you’ll have to have an extra one laying around or will need to buy your own. On the same subject of upgrades, I’d love to see similar toolless access as the Strix Scar series to get to the internals. I also feel like RAM doesn’t have to be soldered to the main board. I know there are speed and design benefits to this, however, I’d rather see innovation that lets us keep the ability to upgrade the RAM. – Webcam is just okay, it’s nothing special. If the lighting is good, it looks fine, however, in dim lighting, it does get a bit grainy. Should be fine for office use but I wouldn’t be using it to demo any products. – Less of a con but more of a tradeoff for performance, but the fans, if tuned to max speed, can get rather noisy. This is just a part of owning a high performing gaming laptop. At the cost of performance, you can use silent power setting. ===Final Thoughts=== This laptop does everything you want a laptop to do plugged in and unplugged. When plugged in, I want a powerful machine for gaming or creative work. When unplugged, I want to do everything else without having to worry about if I’m close to a power outlet. I like the idea that I can pack this into a sleeve with its power adapter and a mouse or controller and play visually demanding games on a beautiful OLED then take it to a coffee shop or park and spend a few hours doing productive work without worrying about having to charge it.

Overall Impressions I think I’m in love with another Asus laptop, but will it have issues later on down the line like my two other 14‑inch ROG Zephyrus laptops? There’s nothing I can do but wait and see, but so far it’s been a fantastic laptop that I’ve been gaming on for a solid week, and it’s as beautifully designed as it is powerful. This laptop could definitely serve as a desktop gaming PC replacement that fits comfortably on a lapdesk while you sit on the couch. Design & Build Quality The Asus design team really outdid themselves with the Zephyrus G16. It’s beautiful. When I say that, I mean it. The Eclipse Gray is stunning without going overboard, and the Slash Lighting now has 35 zones for more customization, but you can leave it off if that’s not your style. The aluminum body makes for a light and slim laptop, with strong hinges and a design that keeps the laptop cool where it counts, even when gaming. It does attract some fingerprints, but they’re easily wiped off with a microfiber cloth. The keyboard and trackpad aren’t the best I’ve used, but they’re very good. The key travel feels good, and typing on the keyboard feels nice and crisp. The trackpad is one of the better ones I’ve used, but all the Zephyrus laptops have had pretty stellar trackpads, so this was expected. Also, Asus didn’t do anything too weird with the keyboard layout, thankfully, because I loathe when keyboards have non‑standard length keys or oddly placed ones. Display Over a year ago I tested the Zephyrus G14 and thought a laptop screen couldn’t get better than that one. I was wrong. The 16‑inch 2.5K G‑Sync OLED display has a 240Hz refresh rate, a 0.2ms response time, and a crazy 1100 nits of peak brightness. Yes, that means you can use HDR effectively with this display, unlike many others that just aren’t bright enough to display HDR accurately. This display is not only absurdly bright, but it’s also very uniform, with no noticeable lighting abnormalities or other common display issues you’ll see in laptops. G‑Sync worked perfectly out of the box, and I didn’t have to tweak settings at all, as this screen just looked good and popped right out of the box. Performance The ROG Zephyrus G16 is an absolute beast when it comes to gaming, and I say that while owning a lot of very nice gaming desktops, other gaming laptops, and all the gaming consoles out there. The G16 upgrades the cooling in the RTX 5080 model to use a vapor chamber along with a new fan setup, and it works. Compared to the 14‑inch Zephyrus line, the unit stays significantly cooler, especially under the keyboard where it was noticeably hot to the touch on the G14. When plugged into power the G16 tears through just about any AAA game on high or ultra settings. You’ll even be able to turn ray tracing on in some titles without having it completely cripple your FPS. That’s not a small feat, but I believe the reason it performs so well is because of the bigger chassis, better cooling and the ability to have more power delivered to the RTX 5080. After playing games like Forza Horizon 6, Halo Campaign Evolved, Crimson Desert, and a bunch of smaller indie titles, I can honestly say that the G16 would be a very suitable gaming desktop replacement, even for a hardcore gamer. All of these games performed at over 60 FPS – some well above 100 FPS – sometimes even without DLSS. Once you turn on DLSS you’ll be able to squeeze out even more performance on supported titles, and if you’re playing something where higher FPS is the priority, you could also enable Frame Generation, but I prefer to not rely on that as it can introduce artifacting and other issues. Of course you can game on battery power as well, but you’ll be limited in battery runtime and performance when gaming, and you won’t be able to unlock the manual setting, which allows you to tap into the full power of the RTX 5080 by using Armoury Crate to enable manual mode and give you 160 watts of power. That’s 30 more watts than the G14 can muster, even with its 5080. Remember, even if the video cards are technically the same, max wattage dictates much of the performance you can get out of it. If you want to squeeze out even more performance, you can always toggle the MUX switch in Armoury Crate, which will turn off the integrated Intel GPU and only use the RTX 5080 for everything. I don’t really recommend this unless the only use of the laptop is for gaming, because the extra heat just can’t be healthy for components when you don’t need it. Battery Life Let’s be real, you’re going to plug this in when you’re gaming because you want all 160 watts of power, but if you don’t, expect a couple of hours max when playing anything graphically intensive. Office and productivity is a different story, as it drains much slower when you’re just shopping online or scrolling cat videos while avoiding making your credit card payments. If you’re buying a laptop for amazing battery life though, this one isn’t going to be the one. There are many thin and light alternatives that would suit that need much better. Storage & Memory The 1TB NVMe is plenty speedy, but it’s kind of small. Why only 1TB Asus? Well, probably because AI has caused a shortage of these components and putting a 2TB NVMe in here would make this already expensive laptop even pricier, so I can see the reasoning behind the 1TB choice. But with games reaching 200GB or more, 1TB just doesn’t go very far these days. You’re getting 32GB of DDR5X at a bajillion MHz (or 8533MHz) though, and it’s plenty to run any game, or any virtual machine, or a game and a virtual machine simultaneously. Really, RAM isn’t going to be an issue with this machine, so let’s just call it good here. Ports & Connectivity Unlike my fruit named work laptop that has about three USB‑C ports, the Zephyrus G16 provides you with all kinds of ports. There’s a full‑size HDMI 2.1 port on the left side, accompanied by the power jack, a USB 3.2 Type‑A port, and a TBT4 Type‑C port which supports DP 2.1 and PD 3.0 at 20V/5A. On the right‑hand side you have an SD card reader, a USB 3.2 Type‑C port that also supports DP 2.1 and PD 3.0, and a plain old USB 3.2 Type‑A port. If none of that means much to you, then just know that when it comes down to plugging something into this laptop, the port you need will most likely be there. Wi‑Fi 7 comes baked in and works very well, even though I’m only running Wi‑Fi 6 at my house. I had no issues with wireless while playing online games, with latency being relatively low and no noticeable disconnects to speak of. Bluetooth is also included, which is pretty much standard these days. I paired my headphones just fine, but I’d recommend getting a pair of headphones with a dedicated USB dongle because there will always be some latency with Bluetooth. Audio Six speakers power the audio system in the G16, and it shows in the clarity and volume this thin laptop can produce. It also has two woofers on either side, which help with the low end. Will this be enough to start a dance party between Battlefield 6 matches? Probably not, but it’ll be plenty loud for watching cat videos, movies, or gaming. Dolby Atmos helps widen the sound a bit as well, and I typically leave it on unless I’m listening to music. Software & Features Asus doesn’t bundle a whole lot of bloatware with the G16 line, because I think it knows how much gamers hate anything that can take up valuable RAM or waste precious CPU resources. You’ll want to get all the updates provided by the MyAsus app and Armoury Crate though. Asus makes it pretty easy to update everything from drivers to the BIOS with just those two apps. Of course you’ll want to update Windows 11 as well, so expect a couple of hours of initial updating and rebooting to get caught up. Armoury Crate is also slowly growing on me, as that’s where you can tinker with your performance settings, like activating the manual mode so you can get all 160 watts to the 5080, and adjust everything from battery charging settings to display settings. You can also toggle the MUX switch in there if you want to disable the onboard GPU altogether and always run the laptop with the RTX 5080 active. Price & Value Ah yes, the price part of the review. This thing is expensive, but so is anything that has memory in it these days. The starting price is over $3,000, so be prepared for a bit of sticker shock, but you’re paying for incredible gaming performance in a laptop that weighs 4.3 lbs and is 0.70 inches tall. Yes, you could get the same performance for maybe 30% less if you went with a desktop, but that’s not why you’re reading this. The value proposition with the G16 is still tough because it’s really built for gaming and portability, which narrows down its potential customers significantly, as people usually want one or the other. It’s not quite as portable as its smaller 14‑inch siblings, but it offers a whole lot more performance than they do. So it’ll be up to you whether having a mobile RTX 5080 gaming powerhouse is worth the premium over a standard gaming desktop. Final Verdict The Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 is a beautiful laptop that delivers incredible gaming performance in a thin and light package. It excels at just about everything you throw at it, has the brightest and most vibrant display I’ve ever seen on a laptop, and has great I/O connectivity and all the latest AI features that you’ll probably never use. If everything mentioned checks your boxes and you don’t mind the price, the G16 is one of the best high‑end gaming laptops you can carry around in a regular bag without back pain.

I’ve been using the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16 for a while now, long enough to get a real feel for it beyond the first few days of excitement. There’s a lot to say about this laptop, and most of it is positive. A few things surprised me, and a couple things weren’t what I expected, but overall it’s been a great experience. The first thing that stood out to me is the screen. I knew the OLED display would be good, but seeing it in person is something else. Colors look rich and natural, and the contrast makes everything pop in a way that’s hard to describe until you see it. Even simple stuff like browsing or watching videos looks better than on any laptop I’ve owned before. The 3K resolution feels just right. Text is sharp, games look amazing, and it doesn’t feel like the system is wasting power trying to push a resolution that’s too high for the hardware. Performance has been excellent. The Intel Ultra 9 and the RTX 5080 handle everything I’ve thrown at them. I’ve played Cyberpunk, Baldur’s Gate 3, Helldivers 2, and a handful of older games, and everything runs smoothly. Load times are quick, and I haven’t run into any stuttering or weird slowdowns. The fans do get loud when the laptop is working hard, but that’s normal for a gaming machine, and various people at home have noticed this during my gaming sessions. I never notice because I’ve got headphones on. The important thing is that the heat stays under control. It is worth noting that when compared to last years’ models, Asus has been able to amp up the TGP from a measly 115W to 165W and this is due to their latest cooling design. This alone was the Achilles’ heel of owning such a high end thin gaming laptop. This is not a problem anymore. Portability is another thing I appreciate. This laptop is lighter than most gaming laptops I’ve owned, and it feels solid without being bulky. Carrying it around in a backpack is easy. Battery life has also been better than I expected. For regular daily use like browsing, watching videos, doing work and attending meetings, I can get a full day’s work out of it without plugging in. Gaming will drain it quickly on battery, and best suited when plugged in. The keyboard is actually really nice. It’s not a mechanical desktop keyboard, but it feels good for a laptop this thin. The keys have a nice balance between softness and responsiveness, and typing on it feels natural. I didn’t have to adjust much, and I haven’t had issues with missed presses or awkward spacing. The trackpad is huge and smooth, and while I’ve had a couple accidental touches, it’s accurate and easy to use overall. The speakers were another pleasant surprise. I wasn’t expecting much because thin laptops usually struggle with sound, but these speakers are genuinely good. They’re clear, they get loud without sounding harsh, and they have more depth than I expected: it has bass! Movies and music sound full, and even games have a nice punch to them. I still use headphones for gaming, but for everyday use, the built‑in speakers are more than enough. The fans can get noisy when the laptop is under load. It’s not unbearable, but you’ll definitely hear it during heavy gaming or demanding tasks. The cooling system seems to do its job well and I haven’t run into any performance drops from heat. I will say that I can comfortably set this on my lap during normal productivity use and simple browsing without any hiccups, and set this on a table when I start a gaming session. Upgradeability on this laptop is pretty limited. The only part you can actually replace is the SSD, and getting to it is simple once you open the bottom panel. Everything else, including the RAM, is fixed. So if you’re thinking about buying this laptop, it’s worth considering what you won’t be able to add later. This is my only gripe with the laptop really, and I must take a star off for this. Make sure the configuration you choose is something you’ll be happy with down the road. Which leads me to the price – the one thing that might make people hesitate. This is an expensive laptop. You’re paying for the OLED screen, the thin design, and the high‑end hardware. I knew that going in, but it still hits you a little. If you’re on a budget or don’t need top‑tier performance, there are cheaper options. But if you want a powerful gaming laptop that doesn’t feel like a brick and has one of the best displays you can get, this one is worth looking at. I’m not going to penalize this laptop due its pricing as it is affecting all hardware today. Overall, I’m really happy with it. It’s gaming fast, it’s portable, the screen is incredible and the speakers are better than I expected. It’s not perfect, and the price is definitely high, but the combination of performance and display quality makes it stand out. The bottom line is that this laptop does everything I want and need. If you want a gaming laptop that can also handle everyday work without feeling heavy or clunky, this is a great choice.

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.

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.

This is the second asus zephyrus I have own in the last 6 years. My old one was an Intel 9 with a 3070ti and that thing was beautiful but ran crazy hot. Asus has been upgrading the zephyrus line over the years and it really shows with this iteration. This model is just as beautiful but now with amazing cooling thanks to the new cooling system that now incorporates a vapor chamber and liquid metal(thankfully) put those together and you feel the difference in heat output, literally! With an Intel ultra 9 series 3 you get maximum performance with great efficiency, which is important in any laptop, Intel has come along way in my opinion with the series 3. This pc comes with 32gb of lpddr5x ram running at a crazy 8553 MT/s speed which is on the higher end and is stable in all games I have tested. A pretty standard 1TB gen 4 SSD is plenty fast but isn’t gen 5 unfortunately. What you are paying for is the GPU and you are definitely getting your moneys worth with a nvidia 5080 laptop with 16gb vram. The 5080 while technically not a full fledged gpu like its desktop counterpart deserves its respect as it can handle some very demanding games like hellblade 2,hogwarts legacy and similar games with ease at max settings. Tho hellblade was around 60 fps which is fine by me. No stutters, artifacts or crashes. Every game looked amazing on its 3k oled screen as you would expect. The panel is beautiful with a very respectable 1100 nits peak brightness especially when using HDR. Super vivid colors and deep contrasty blacks with a 0.2ms response time and 240hz refresh rate helps every thing look and feel great/smooth. Most gamers use headphones but I have one ear that is damage from an infection years ago so nowadays I mainly use speakers while gaming and trust me when I tell you, this laptop has the best speakers I have ever heard on any laptop and i’ve had many of them over the last 20 years. The sound is full, rich and loud without getting any kind of distortion whatsoever.they are Amazing! RGB keyboard feels nice and looks nice but I use a controller to minimize the clutter while I game on the sofa with my 9 year old son. Asus added a light strip on the back and I think it’s subtle but a nice touch(no RGB unfortunately). All lighting can be changed via the armory crate app easily. Windows hello face unlock is fast and convenient, no need to type in a Password. WiFi 7 is super fast for downloads and copilot is cool even if I don’t need it, it’s nice to have if I ever do. Works great if you are into AI thank to the NPU. The only real downside is the price. While I recommend this beast of a laptop, I wish all of the shortages didn’t drive up the prices so much so that these laptops can be pretty unattainable for most! Hopefully things get better because we all love to game. But yea this laptop is a beast and it’s so well made and asus fixed all the heat problems of past generations and I love it.

The real rating I wanted to give this unit was closer to 4.5 stars. The reason that makes me want to deduct a star is the same reason I want to give it another one if that’ll make any sense by the end of this review. I’ll get more into that shortly…but I currently have a gaming desktop that runs a CPU that’s a few years old, with an OLED monitor, and has the RTX 5070ti, so I was looking for a good desktop replacement when I’m not at home and wanting not to settle for less, whether it comes down to gaming or productivity. What really surprised me is the size and weight of this laptop. On paper it’s a beast, a near top-tier gaming laptop, but when you handle it, it feels like a regular basic laptop because its so lightweight and compact (for a top of the line computer). Let me start by sharing the things I really like about it. First off, the OLED is just hands-down gorgeous! The loading screen with the ultra black and the perfect white contrast of letters hits my serotonin. You get 240hz screen and 1100 nits, which is surprisingly bright for an OLED! Besides gaming, just Youtube some OLED demos and watch it side by side to an another monitor or laptop. Next, is the compact size of it. I used bulky gaming laptops from 15 years ago, now you can put this side by side to another regular laptop and not tell the difference. It has a minimalistic design to it, clean, and aesthetically pleasing…the slim bezel OLED display, and a minimal keyboard station that has your standard keys plus 4 others for quick functioning access. Speakers on the side leave no room for a numpad which is unfortunate for me but does provide the slim, uncrowded look. The built-in speakers do sound pretty good and get loud. They have a nice spatial sound effect to them which was kind of surprising when playing a FPS game. Instead of the sound coming at you, you can hear different angles, something I normally need gaming headphones for. Now for the performance side of things. Once you get this computer updated this thing does get snappy, even on battery. Seamless execution of apps and multitasking. Gaming being the real test of course, which I was getting impressive framerates with. These were the 3 main games I’ve played since I’ve had this laptop: Modern Warfare 2 Multiplayer – Ultra Quality settings: 130-160 FPS Black Ops 6 Single Player – Extreme Quality settings: 85-105 FPS Palworld – Max quality settings (no lag whatsoever) I also briefly streamed No Rest for the Wicked, and the colors looked amazing All the games look spectacular with this display as well. No stutter and lag, the wifi-only option worked great with Wifi 7 and downloaded my games very fast. The area around the laptop does get quite hot, particularly the back so it best to make sure to game on an open desk so it can properly vent out the heat. The fans weren’t even very noticeable during my gaming. Some of the not so great things IMO about this laptop include the Windows Hello camera feature, I use the face unlock feature to log into Windows and majority of the time it can’t detect my face even after I re-registered it. I’m not sure if it’s the angle or the camera quality, but it struggles for me, even in a well lit room. Haven’t had this issue on previous windows systems. The other aspect is the value comparison, which I was hinting at earlier in my review regarding the ratings. On one hand you get this amazing compact laptop which has much more power efficient components that handle everything you throw at it and it really does well as a desktop replacement, but on the other hand it still under performs compared to my desktop based on benchmarks. While this is not quite so surprising going against full size desktop hardware and cooling, I did have higher expectations for this CPU/GPU combo being some of the best available and at the price point of it. I ran 3D Mark (multiple), CrystalDisk Mark, Cinebench, and Geekbench AI to compare my desktop and this laptop, and the desktop outperformed in CPU and GPU on all tests except for the Cinebench GPU tests where this RTX 5080 came ahead. But to reiterate, benchmarks don’t always reflect real-world performance, and so far my experience with this laptop has been great performance. A few other things to note…I wish there was an ethernet port that I can plug into as that is my preferred connectivity when possible. The touchpad is quite large, and actually hasn’t caused problems while gaming on the keyboard, which of course you can disable with a function key, but I like to see how well the system knows how to not register accidental touches while gaming. There is also an expandable SSD drive which I think is great, especially with how big games are getting. Another reason I chose this particular model was because of the 32GB of memory included. 16GB is hardly enough to run Windows with medium to heavy multitasking, 32GB is essential for high end gaming and to future proof your setup. The slash lighting on the lid is a subtle and unique option ASUS has introduced, and I have to say I kind of like it. Battery life has been pretty good for a high end machine, as I would have hoped for with this energy efficient system. I even was playing Palworld on battery in the living room for an hour the other night, with great performance and no lag…not bad when the highest quality setting even on a medium-demanding game. I have the system setup to use a balanced mode when on battery, and it quotes me currently at over 4-5 hours of usage remaining while I’m currently at 89% left. Overall this is the highest quality gaming laptop I’ve ever owned, with an OLED display that looks better than my desktop one, and is quite portable/slim and can’t really be distinguished as a gaming laptop except for maybe the slash bar on the lid. Performance hasn’t skipped a beat, even on battery. The value is a stretch for me as I was hoping for more, but if you do heavy gaming, photo or video editing, or have big productivity workloads, it may well be justified, especially with AI increasing the cost of products these days. I chose to give this 5 stars because I went with real world performance over benchmark scores, otherwise it would be 4.5.

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.

I absolutely love my new laptop. It's powerful, lightweight, and super thin. Yet, runs everything I throw at it flawlessly and handles the heat exceptionally well. It is a gaming machine without looking like a gaming machine. All metal frame, excellent keyboard, and amazing trackpad. It has plenty of ports, so hooking up other devices is quite easy. The display and sound output are the best in the business, hands down, of any laptop. Last thing is the spectacular battey life! Sure, playing any high end games will only net you around 2.5 to 3.5 hours while on battey, but using office apps, browsing the web, or watching YouTube videos will get you a solid 12 to 18 hours of use. Yes, you read that correctly! Yeah, this laptop is not cheap, but if you want the best of both worlds, this laptop is the best you can buy.

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16 GU606 is a seriously impressive 16 inch gaming laptop. It’s running Intel’s new Ultra 9 processor and an NVIDIA 5080 GPU, so performance is exactly what you’d expect - fast, smooth, and able to handle pretty much anything you throw at it. With 32GB of DDR5 RAM, multitasking is effortless, and games load quickly and run without hiccups. The display is one of the first things you notice. It’s a clean, sharp 16 inch panel with a 240Hz refresh rate, so everything from shooters to racing games feels incredibly fluid. Input response is great too, making gameplay feel snappy and precise. What really surprised me is how good the laptop feels to use day to day. The keyboard is quiet and comfortable, even during long gaming sessions. The speakers get loud without distorting, and the sound quality is better than you’d expect from a thin gaming laptop. Speaking of thin, the Zephyrus G16 GU606 is lighter and more portable than most laptops with this kind of power. It’s easy to carry around and stays quiet even when you’re pushing it hard. ASUS includes Armoury Crate, which lets you tweak RGB lighting, macros, performance modes, and display settings. The diagonal LED strip on the lid adds a nice touch of personality, and the software makes it easy to customize. You also get a clean dashboard showing CPU, GPU, fan speeds, and memory usage. Even the unboxing experience feels premium. The laptop comes well protected in multiple layers of packaging, and the box itself looks and feels high end. It gives a good first impression before you even turn the machine on. The only real downside is the port selection. If you use multiple monitors or have a bunch of USB devices, you might feel limited. You get two USB A ports, two USB C ports, one HDMI, and no DisplayPort. If you need more than that, you’ll probably want a docking station. While the laptop is on the pricey side, you are getting a true gaming laptop. Regardless of what you throw at it, this laptop will handle it and display it flawlessly. If you are looking for a gaming laptop and can afford this one, get it. You won’t be disappointed.

The 2026 Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 is a light refresh to the 2025 model, which brings a few changes to the chassis and updates to the processor, which deliver some decent performance and efficiency gains. Without any new releases from NVidia, the GPU is still a 5XXX series from NVidia. The G16 is still a very capable gaming powerhouse in an Ultrabook’s body. I have a 2025 model with a 5070, so I am able to make some pretty direct comparisons. Specs Processor – Intel Core Ultra 9 386H - CPU 16C/16T @ 2.1 GHz with boost to 4.9 GHz Graphics – NVidia GeForce RTX 5080 Laptop GPU w/ 16GB GDDR7 @ 1500 MHz Intel Xe3 4 core onboard the Processor w/ max boost to 2.5 GHz Memory – Onboard 32B LPDDR5X 8533 Dual Channel (92-80-80-180) Storage – 1TB PCI-e Gen4x4 NVME SK Hynix HFS001TEJ9X101N Display - 16” 2560 x 1600p 16:10 (WQXGA) OLED screen @240HZ, 0.2ms, 100% DCI-P3, G-Sync Camera – 1080p IR Webcam with Windows Hello Network Adapter – 802.11be (WiFi 7 Triple Band) adapter / Bluetooth 6.0 Radio Ports – 1X USB 4 Type-C with DisplayPort and power delivery / 1X USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C with DisplayPort / 2X USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A / 1X HDMI 2.1 / 3.5mm TRRS jacks for headsets / 1 SD Reader Battery – 90Wh – 30min for 0-50% charging and 8-10 hours of web browsing and some light gaming OS – Windows 11 Home – a few preinstalled ASUS utilities Design This generation of the G16 doesn’t deviate much from the 2025 model in terms of design. The layout and aesthetic are almost identical with some upgrades. The body remains a machined aluminum 6063 chassis that is thin and sturdy – it retains a very premium feel. The design is sleek and while it has gaming looks it doesn’t scream it. The slash lighting and RGB keyboard are the only real hints to the gaming keyboard chops. The fit/finish of the aluminum chassis, the thin profile, and the Eclipse Gray finish makes the G16 appear to be a professional looking device. As with other ASUS devices this comes bundled with their Armoury Crate software suite. The software is what allows you to customize the lighting on the LED slash, and the RGB keyboard. The hinge has been upgraded for this year (Easy Lift Hinge 2.0), but still keeps its 135° opening range. The hinge handles the torque of opening the lid better than last years, which is true. Its’s a nice quality of life upgrade. Dimensionally the 2026 model is identical to last years with a 4.3lb weight, and a slim 0.69” thickness. The laptop is 13.94” wide, and that is entirely utilized by the 16” screen. This years G16 sticks with the Intel based system and utilizes the new Ultra 9 386H. The 386H at first seemed like a step down from last years 285H, which has a slightly higher base clock and boost clock. However, the 386H brings decent thermal/power efficiency gains while maintaining a similar performance level. My benchmarks put the 386H slightly ahead in some tasks, but where clockspeed decided things, the 386H fell about 3-5% behind. The 386H has a similar architecture with 16 cores and 16 threads of processing. These 16 cores are broken up into 3 groups – performance, efficiency, and low power efficiency. The efficiency and low power cores are where the 386H made its biggest improvements, which extends battery life and reduces the thermal load on the system. The onboard graphics card is a Nvidia 5080 16GB mobile GPU. The 5080 supports DX12 Ultimate, ray tracing and DLSS 4.0. The laptop can be connected to multiple external monitors through the HDMI 2.1 port or through Type-C ports (they all support DisplayPort). Your monitor count is limited by the bandwidth each monitor needs. The G16 comes with a 32GB of LPDDR5X 8533 RAM in dual channel mode. The RAM is integrated into the motherboard, and there are no additional slots for expansion. With the current RAM market, this is a big contributor to the cost of this machine. It’s unfortunate that the RAM is not user upgradeable, otherwise you could get a lower spec’d system to upgrade later. With 32GB there’s not much this system can’t handle, so if you think you will need the extra memory bandwidth then 32GB is the way to go. I do CAD/3D modeling, so the extra RAM is appreciated over my 2025 G16, which only has 16GB. For gaming 32GB is only a benefit to some games, and is in no way a requirement for most games. Storage comes in the form of a 1TB PCIe 4.0 M.2 2280 NVME drive from SK Hynix. There is one additional slot available so your storage can easily be expanded beyond the initial 1TB. The display is a 16” 2560 x 1600p OLED screen with a 240Hz refresh rate and a 0.2ms response time, and 1100 nits of brightness. ASUS calls this their Nebula Display. At this resolution you come away with a 188.7 PPI density. The 0.2 ms response time is right in line with what OLED’s can provide. At 1100 nits of peak brightness this years display is more than twice as bright as 2025’s, and it easily clears the brightness requirements for HDR content. The display carries Pantone color validation along with a 100% DCI-P3 color gamut, and a Delta E <1. The laptop seamlessly switches between the 5080 and the Intel Xe3 graphics with its MUX switch and Nvidia Advanced Optimus. Depending on the graphical processing load the system will toggle automatically between the onboard and discrete GPU. The screen itself is excellent to view any content on. The OLED has very good color representation and the peak brightness provides an even greater contrast to the deep blacks that an OLED can produce. Off-angle viewing is great as well and I had no problem seeing the screen in any lighting condition. Games and Benchmarking I ran the G16 through the same series of benchmarks (3DMark Time Spy and Steel Nomad, GeekBench 7, PCMark, Cinebench R23, Dirt Rally Benchmark, and Shadow of War Benchmark) that I use to test my all of my PC’s. I included a screenshot of my raw results. The gaming benchmarks show that this is a high performing system at 3K, 1440p, and 1080p. I saw real gains over my 2025 system with a 5070 and 16GB of RAM. I showed the ∆ for the relevant benchmarks. CPU related benchmarks showed a slight decrease in performance (3-5%), but areas where the additional RAM was a benefit the difference was quite large. The same goes for the GPU heavy benchmarks where the additional horsepower of the 5080 and its 16GB of VRAM (5070 has 8GB) gave it a decent edge. Benchmarks that were more CPU bound, i.e. 1080p gaming saw limited gains or even decreased performance. However, in all cases the framerates were still very high (~150fps+). One of the benefits to the refresh is the improved cooling characteristics. The CPU being more thermally efficient and the vapor chamber design for the GPU helped decrease the heat output under load. The 2025 G16 would feel pretty warm under heavy/max loads, and in some cases it was uncomfortable to rest on my lap if the bottom touched bare skin. This years G16 has made some improvements in that area, and I can feel the temp drop. The bottom of the chassis gets warm under normal usage, but definitely less than the previous gen which I appreciate. Under heavy usage the chassis still gets very warm though. The system fans under full load do a good job keeping the temps in check and they aren’t overly loud. I played several games to test the real life performance . The main game I played was Halo Infinite through Gamepass. The laptop comes with a 2-month Gamepass code. Ultra settings @3K looked great. The in-game resource monitor showed ultra settings would need just under 8GB of VRAM, so with 16GB of VRAM I had plenty of overhead. I played several matches and saw my framerate hover around 140fps, with dips down to 115 at the bottom. This is a decent step up over the 5070 based system which played around 120FPS on high settings. That extra bit of VRAM really goes a long ways towards bumping up the performance. Turning the resolution to 1080p my frames jumped to 175 with lows around 140. There really isn’t even a need to play on lower settings with this CPU/GPU combo. Keyboard and Trackpad The keyboard is a tenkeyless full RGB chiclet membrane design. The RGB lighting is not per-key addressable. The keyboard is identical to the 2025 model, which I have enjoyed typing on. It’s a quiet typing keyboard that has a good feel to the keys – better than most laptop keyboards I have typed on. The key travel is 1.7mm which means you actually have some depth to the keys. With the lighting on the keys really shine and pass the light through easily. With the lighting off you will be hard pressed to see the keys in anything other than a decently lit room. The trackpad is good as well. It sits right around 6 x 4”, and it takes up the entire distance from the front of the laptop to the spacebar. It has good gesture registration and the click feels good as well. I’m not a big trackpad user, but this is a good one that is easy to live with. Final Thoughts The 2026 G16 brings some modest system updates from the 2025 model – they really didn’t mess with the formula too much. The 32GB of RAM and 16GB 5080 provide the system resources and horsepower to make this configuration shine. The screen is beautiful and bright. It will handle any AAA game you toss at it without much issue, and do so at high/ultra settings. Its got a great lightweight design, which makes it easy to toss into the laptop bag and not feel like I’m carrying around a lead weight. The only downside to this platform, and the same was true of the 2025 model, is the use of onboard RAM modules. I can’t imagine I will need more system memory than the 32GB this one has, but in the current RAM and SSD pricing landscape, it would be nice to have the option of a lower spec’d system that you can upgrade later when the pricing returns to “normal” again. This is a great platform – I have really liked the G14/G16 lineup over the years, and have recommended it to many people. This model is no different. ASUS did a great job again.

The thing I love most about the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 is the design. Build quality is phenomenal. The all-aluminum chassis feels premium no where you touch it. Despite its aluminum exterior and incredibly powerful internals, the chassis is 0.7” thick and only weighs 4.3 pounds. It's thin and light enough to fit into a standard 16" laptop sleeve and toss in a backpack. The only external features that might give away its gaming credentials are the slash lighting on the lid and the RGB keyboard. Both can be turned off, allowing you to go incognito and look like you’re using a pretty standard 16” laptop. On the inside, the combination of the Intel Core Ultra 9 386H, 32GB of RAM, and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Laptop GPU cuts through pretty much everything like a hot knife through butter. Multitasking with tons of applications running and tabs galore in the background? No problem. Photo or video editing? No problem. The built-in SD card reader makes it convenient to pull files directly from your camera(s). Want to play virtually any AAA game? Again, no problem. I’m a Marvel Rivals addict and it runs like a dream, especially when combined with gig internet. Better hardware won’t automatically make you a better player, but it also can’t hurt, right? The OLED display is stunning and feels huge. It's the kind of screen that makes everything look fantastic. The 240Hz refresh rate and G-SYNC make the laptop a FPS gamer’s dream. Even the speakers surprised me. They produce surprisingly good sound for a laptop, with decent bass thanks to the two subwoofers, while higher-range vocals don't become tinny or washed out. I still prefer to use a headset, but using only the built in speakers and mic aren’t unpleasant if needed. I've used previous iterations of the Zephyrus G16, and one previous shortcoming was cooling. It's not exactly easy to keep this much performance cool inside such a thin chassis. I'm happy to report that Asus has made meaningful improvements here. The vapor chamber, advanced heatpipe design, liquid metal thermal compound, and redesigned high-efficiency exhaust system genuinely help keep temperatures under control while also making the laptop a bit quieter. Probably still a decent idea to use a cooling pad, but it’s no longer critical. Is the ROG Zephyrus G16 expensive? Oh yeah. Could you build a desktop with incredible hardware for the same amount of money? Absolutely. But that's also missing the point. If you need something pre-built that packs this level of performance into a genuinely portable form factor, the G16 is going to be very hard to beat. This is one of those laptops where you can actually have your cake and eat it too: desktop levels of performance, a gorgeous OLED display, phenomenal build quality, and enough portability to take it almost anywhere. Asus nailed it. I love this thing!

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.

I love absolutely everything about this laptop except for 2 things: Price - given the state of electronics prices currently it’s on par, however, the current state of prices are quite disgusting and regardless of supply and demand. Fan Sound - steady but loud if gaming on the dgpu. I am used to it and it’s steady - not an unbalanced sound but wear headphones to avoid any unpleasantries. Besides those 2 pieces - it’s quite literally the perfect laptop for gaming (I play everything at best settings with no issues) and productivity (text looks crisp, and many applications hum along without issue).

Coming from the Asus Zephyrus G16 with an RTX 4080, I expected an upgrade — but calling this “better” is honestly an understatement. The 5080 paired with the new Panther Lake CPU feels like a true generational leap. Games run noticeably smoother, 1% lows are higher, and multitasking across split monitors is effortless.One of the biggest improvements is how future‑proof this hardware feels. The 4080’s 12GB VRAM was a real limitation for ray tracing, but that bottleneck is gone here. Whether it’s productivity or play, the system handles everything: office work with multiple screens and programs, or even 4K gaming while streaming at the same time. It just does it all.

Pretty much runs everything I throw at it beautifully and build quality is MacBook Pro level. Very happy, going from a Razer Blade 15 to this is night and day.

This product's build quality was far superior to the 2025 model I tried beforehand, which had hinge creaking within weeks and a loose touchpad. It also worked perfectly from factory install, without requiring configuration to allow the computer's sleep mode to not reset the device. I use this around the house and occasionally outside as a EE/CPE student and light gamer.

Incredible performance with the 5080 Nvidia chip Classy and elegant design Expensive but amazing results