ASUS - ROG Zephyrus G14 14" Laptop - AMD Ryzen 7 - 8GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 - 512GB SSD - Eclipse Gray

---- Summary ---- Pros: - Thin and lightweight - High performance - Long battery life - Large and responsive touchpad - Spacious keyboard - Crisp and colorful display - Great value Cons: - Internal fans can get loud - No webcam ---- Review ---- Design: Asus got me hooked on this laptop right away. Even the unboxing experience reflects the time and effort put into the design. For example, when opening the box's lid, the ROG Zephyrus G14 slowly lifts towards you as if you're being presented with your next best laptop. It also allows for easy removal from the box. Maybe it’s just me who found this cool, but what I’m getting at is the attention to detail is noticeable and appreciated. One of the first things I noticed about Zephyrus G14 is how small it is, and I mean small in a good way. Many gaming laptops are large, bulky, and heavy. Whereas, this laptop is the complete opposite. I’m reminded more of a professional work or daily use laptop than a flashy gaming laptop, and that’s right up my alley. While I do love to game, I prefer a laptop that is portable and easy to use as my daily driver. Typing on the keyboard feels comfortable since it’s at a slight angle towards you, there’s no compromise in size, and all the keys are very responsive. Additionally, they’re backlit. I also appreciate the dedicated keys for volume, microphone mute, and ROG Armoury Crate for easy access above the keyboard. The power button is above the keyboard as well, and it doubles as a fingerprint sensor. Another aspect of the design that I like is the touchpad, which is large and responsive. The only thing I’d wish for is a webcam. While I don’t use one regularly, it would be nice to have one built into the laptop, especially since I’m using it as my daily driver. Even with that minor inconvenience, I’m a big fan of the Zephyrus G14’s design. I’d even go as far as saying it’s one of the best-designed gaming laptops I’ve seen on the market. Performance & Gaming: I won’t bore you with a bunch of benchmark test results. If you’re into that, there’s plenty of other reviews online that can be referenced. What I’ll say is that I’ve had a phenomenal gaming and daily use experience with the Zephyrus G14. The game I’ve been playing lately, Call of Duty Warzone, exceeds my performance expectations, and I tried out a few other games as well. All have performed very well, and the display of this laptop delivers a crisp, high definition image that’s full of color. The internal fans can get loud sometimes, especially while gaming, but I don’t feel that I’ve tested enough gaming laptops to say that they’re abnormally loud or not. Fortunately, there is a “Silent” setting in the ROG Armoury Crate software that does place more of an emphasis on noise reduction, and it’s pretty effective. Although I use headphones often, the speakers on the Zephyrus G14 sound great. For a laptop of its size with just a couple of small openings for sound, I was impressed. Battery life also impressed me. I average around eight hours of battery life for normal daily use and around three hours while gaming, but I’d recommend staying connected to get the most out of the gaming experience that the Zephyrus G14 has to offer. Verdict: With its compact design, high performance, and long battery life, the Zephyrus G14 pushes the limits. It’s not what I’d expect from a gaming laptop, in a good way. When I envision a gaming laptop that’s also portable and well suited for daily use, I can’t think of anything better. The icing on the cake is that this laptop is a great bang for your buck. Overall, the Zephyrus G14 is an exceptional laptop for gaming and productivity.

Now at Best Buy ($1100), this entry level, yet speedy 14-inch ASUS gaming laptop makes the most of what’s inside and shows itself to be an unexpectedly excellent performer. Speaking of what’s inside: “ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 Laptop: Enjoy everyday gaming with this ASUS notebook PC. The AMD Ryzen 7 4800HS processor and 8GB of memory deliver fast and smooth performance during intensive gaming, while the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 graphics card renders high-quality videos for enhanced videos and games. This 14-inch Full HD ASUS notebook PC has a 512GB SSD that provides storage for all types of files.” Let’s dissect, starting with the processor. AMD is on a roll with their Ryzen processors. The base AMD Ryzen 7 in this laptop has downright respectable performance! “Only” 8 GB RAM may seem skimpy. Consider its job, however. The basic NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 graphics card with 4 GB of its own onboard RAM performs what would have required not only higher performance in the AMD processor, but also more RAM dedicated to that main processor. It gets the job done well. While on the topic of RAM, it is soldered on the motherboard. On other laptops, there might be a removable door on the laptop bottom, under which would be found the customary two modules, usually supporting up to 32 GB. While removing screws on the bottom panel will reveal a single available slot, I recommend leaving it alone on this laptop. Performance is adequate for most basic gamers and beyond. After all, this is an entry-level machine. Performance will fool you into thinking there is more power under the hood. The matte finish display on this model looks just fine. Sound is nothing short of amazing, owing to Dolby Atmos processing and well-designed speakers. I was in disbelief. I could have sworn there were speakers way out to the sides and behind, but there were none. Sure sounded that way. I asked a friend to sit in and listen. The reaction was as expected. A quick head shake, look to the sides, exclamation of shock and amazement. This is so much fun. A pair of microphones is built into the top of the screen bezel. With a 512 GB capacity SSD (Solid State Drive), there is adequate storage for more than gaming. When opened, the design of the display hinge provides a rear lift for better keyboard approach position as well as a greater air gap underneath for more efficient cooling. Pressed into high performance operations, there will be some heat! One feature absent on this series is a webcam. Also absent is touchscreen capability, though this is not important to me. Battery life is specified at 10 hours, though I did not perform the requisite tests to validate battery claims. Anecdotally, it does not appear to be a power hog. Despite my initial misgivings about 8 GB RAM, I am pleased to report that game play functions perfectly normally. Fortnite? Looks and performs just fine. Blade & Soul? Check. Nice, very nice. The excellent gaming action enhanced by Dolby Atmos sound provides an entirely pleasing overall experience. The same can be said for the streaming video experience with Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and others. Nothing at all to complain about. Only praise is due here. Everything being relative, is the action as sharp, seamless and snappy as on a high-end gaming rig feeding a wide screen, high end display? No, it is not. However, as a multipurpose and capable gaming laptop with a $1,100 pricetag, it more than fills the bill, even considering the extra cost of an inexpensive USB webcam. Sweet laptop, very sweet. ASUS provides US customers with a one-year warranty. Buy with confidence, and enjoy.

i! I am thankful that I have the opportunity to test and evaluate this sweet machine. I am not a kid anymore and I remember when the first Acer computers I encountered back in the mid-80's and they have come a long way. I used to think Acer=cheap but not anymore. This is a classy machine. The screen is beautiful, the keyboard has large keys and the touchpad is large, as well. The on/off switch also doubles with a fingerprint reader. The machine seems to have enough ports to accommodate most people's needs. You can read the specs elsewhere on Best Buy's page. or even on some of the other reviews. I got this laptop thinking it was primarily a game machine. For some, that might be true. For my purpose, it seems to be an very good home pc with some great entertainment features - specifically the video and sound hardware. I've only had this machine a few days in my possession so I am not quite ready to call this a full review. I intend this machine to be used for video editing, slideshow presentation, web browsing, email management, and word processing. I probably should test some games and I have been pretty much out of that loop for a while now. If someone has a suggestion, I'd be glad to know it. Everything seems to be much better than average as a home pc. I'm sure there are more powerful specs in gaming laptops but for the price I would have no problem recommending this laptop except for the most demanding gamer. I am writing this on August 9, 2020. I will be back at the end of the month to give my full report.

I picked this up for my son who is an avid gamer. The laptop was well packaged and when I took it out of the box I noticed that it was a very solid build. We turned it on and decided to limit test it by downloading 3 different launcher applications (Steam, Battle.Net and LoL client) and then followed that by downloading multiple games from each of those clients to see if the computer would have a problem, and it didn't slow down for a second. The machine is very lightweight and easy to use. The keyboard feels good and solid. Graphics are what you'd expect for the hardware provided. The graphics are good enough to run most games you would play on a laptop and it also works perfectly for the standard laptop functionality you'd expect (hopefully my son will use it for some homework and not just gaming?). Definitely one of the best laptops he's ever used (and he's had a number of top brands at his disposal over the years).

Tried a variety of games (no AAAs), Civ 6 runs excellent even far into a game, battery life is excellent, computer dissipates heat really well. The largest gripes I have about the laptop is no usb c charging, fans can get pretty loud, and the 8 GB of ram seemed to get bogged down pretty quick when trying to game with anything going on in the background. Overall, solid machine! oh side note, the packaging was really awesome :).

Overall, the g14 is an amazing computer. I really liked this computer, particularly the portable size and performance, but it was the lack of practical daily necessities and a defect that ultimately made me return this product. I'll breeze over some pros, since most reviewers have already covered this, and then talk more about what I thought were personal cons. Pros: - amazing performance in a small form (powerful CPU and understandably powerful GPU for its size). The only game I tried on it was Overwatch but it could run it at Epic settings at 70 fps and a max temp of 68C. - MyASUS program was an easy to understand program for managing your device with lots of options like running multiple diagnosis, driver updates, and customizing your preferred battery setting ( full charge, balanced, max lifespan) - Armory Crate. A lot of people complained about how technical or over the top this looks and it is but I appreciated how it already monitored CPU and GPU temperatures. - Battery life. This laptop can easily last a full 8-10 hours on charge depending on what you are running. - Dedicated active community. Not really a laptop pro but there's an active online community surrounding the G14 willing to answer questions. They have a megathread on how to setup this laptop, fix issues, and make the most out of it. Cons with solutions: - most people reviewed or discuss how hot the G14 runs but that is usually about the G14 with AMD ryzen 9 and a RTX 2060. Still it is recommended that you change the Boost settings from "aggressive" to "aggressive efficient" to avoid a hot laptop. Some people will tell you to disable boost, but I believe that slows down your launch time for practical application plus this weaker model already runs cooler. - Washed out color screen. The screen may appear like there's a color distortion haze over it, especially on greens and yellows. This is actually an AMD Radeon setting called Vari-bright that can be disabled. Afterwards, colors and screen quality is great. Personal cons: All of which I knew before buying this laptop but bothered me more than I thought it would - 8 GB ram is the bare minimum for laptops nowadays. I originally planned on opening up this laptop and installing another 8 GB ram chip to run dual channel but had difficulties unscrewing the bottom. I stopped attempting to as I was worried I would strip the screws. This may just be due to my own inexperience - Fan noise. This computer is never silent even with the "Silent" profile setting in Armory Crate. The fan noise isn't disturbing or loud when doing light browsing, more like a white noise that can be covered up with music. But I can see how distracting it may be in a silent environment like a library. -No webcam. I knew this beforehand but didn't realize how much it would bug me. I need a webcam for my work and thought I would buy an external one, however, most are sold out right now and it would have been nice to have one included like most other laptop have. Defects: - Coil Whine. My particular laptop had a coil whine coming from the top right corner of the keyboard, it was barely louder than the fans and sounded like a high pitch dog whistle. Some people in my household could not hear it as it was that high pitch but it gave me a splitting headache while trying to do some long productive work. I tried the fixes suggested by the online community but the coil whine persisted. Ultimately why I returned this laptop, - Backlighting. A lot of reviews mention this as a flaw, however later models such as my own (May model with L5 serial number) fixed the issue so there was even lighting across all the keys. In the end, I returned this laptop due to the coil whine, but did not ask for an exchange due to the lack of a webcam and always audible fan noise, which bugged me more than I thought it would. I am now once again looking for a new laptop. If you want powerful performance in a small package, don't mind the fan noise, and your work doesn't require a webcam, this is the perfect laptop for you.

Overall, this laptop is a great machine. Is it going to play the latest titles at Ultra 4k settings, no, for that you will want a little more powerful graphics card, but for the casual gamer and anyone else who wants a powerful laptop, this is for you! Build Quality: Is excellent, feels very sturdy, and like it will hold up over time. The screen has a bit of a magnetic closure which is a nice touch to make sure the screen doesn't come open in a book bag. Performance: So far, it has been excellent. I have played Madden 20 on Ultra Settings no problem on the laptop screen at FHD. The Ryzen 7 is an 8 core 16 threaded beast of a processor. I am ordering 8 more GB of RAM to put in the empty slot, but you can put as much as a 32gb stick and have a max of 40gb. I just simply, don't need that much. The 512 GB SSD is also replaceable, but for me, it will be just fine for now. Very snappy and quick device. The 3200mhz ram is very fast! Screen: Not the brightest screen, but it works very well in a medium lit area. 100% brightness is a little bit too bright for normal non-gaming situations, the colors seem very accurate, and overall, the screen is decent. Battery: 6-8 hours under normal use, about 2-3 if you're gaming, and about 10 if you're watching videos. So really, all in all, great battery life for a gaming laptop Aesthetics: I fell in love with the form factor, the laptop is very light and will easily fit in any backpack. The device doesn't scream gaming laptop which I like. The color is great, the keyboard and trackpad are also excellent. The backlight on the keyboard isn't the best, but it does work and it's much better than nothing. Overall, this is the perfect laptop for me. I would expect most games to be playable, and video editing/photoshop to run without a hitch. Asus's software that lets you control the fan is very intuitive and easy to use. Asus knows gaming laptops and I would definitely recommend this to anyone looking for a laptop with a great form factor and powerful graphics card.

Laptop is the perfect size for me and battery life is awesome for something than can actually do real work and game. Touchpad is the best of any windows PC I've every used and the speakers are really good too. The screes is just ok but not terrible and its a great compliment to my workstation at home. Unfortunately Asus did a few really dumb things... The usb type A ports are in the worst possible spot if you use a mouse. The laptop runs really hot unless its set on the silent profile, and even though most of the chassis is metal, the bottom is plastic. The fans spin all the time, even on idle. There is a way to change that, but you need to look up all the tweaks for the G14 on google. If you do the correct tweeks that you can find through a google search, you can really make this laptop awesome, but stock it runs hot and the fans work the whole time. Perfect laptop for my use case and way better than any other 14 inch laptop on the market. It basically makes every 13 laptop pointless as well.