ROG Zephyrus G14 :
The ROG Zephyrus G14 2024, there are a lot of things to unpack with this laptop no pun intended, Asus is doing some cool stuff with it, I’m really excited to do a live unboxing for you.
It is the new zephyrus G14 let’s start, so Asus has redesigned the new G14 from top to bottom despite using the same GPUs from last year, the switch to the new ryzen 8000 series from amd, is not revolutionary, since it is essentially ryzen 7000 sprinkled with AI.
Which means that these new chips come with faster NPUs than the previous generation, but let’s talk about this new design, because I think Asus has managed to create one of the best 14-inch gaming laptops, high-end on the market.
They basically took the G14 that we all love, and simply dialed it to 11 to compete with the likes of the Razer Blade 14, and if the new HP Omen transcend 14 which is to be reviewed by the way.
But anyway, you are hungry for a chassis made from CNC aluminum, which is a day and night difference compared to the previous generation G14 in terms of handling, it is much stiffer 16% thinner, and surprisingly lighter too.
I think we’re talking about 3 pounds difference, which is pretty amazing, it’s actually pretty close to my 14-inch MacBook Pro in terms of size, which is a pretty big achievement for Rog engineers, this platinum white model is also absolutely gorgeous Asus has toned down the aggressive style this year, while retaining a bit of Rog DNA like this integrated SL lighting function, which allows the user to customize the lighting models via the Armory crate software.
Now you can choose to disable this for a year, the interior space has been updated to match the aesthetics of the exterior, thanks to the unibody aluminum construction, the keyboard does not flex as much as the old model, the keycaps are slightly larger.
Now offering 1.7mm of key travel distance.
Now after testing both the old G14 and the newer one honestly, I wasn’t able to tell a huge difference between the two, because it was already great to begin with, so why fix something that’s not broken properly, I’m also not a big fan of the fonts they used, because it just doesn’t seem out of place with the general subtle design of the laptop.
Now, despite these keys having RGB lighting, I simply disabled them completely throughout my tests, because a it clashes with the white caps and B, the LEDs lack consistency.
They just haven’t taken steps to diffuse the lighting properly, I really wish they would take care of it this year, because it was a problem with last year’s g4ce 14.
But yes, that’s one thing they’ve just released, you still get dedicated keys for volume control, microphone mute and access to the armory cash register.
Unfortunately, they eliminated the fingerprint scanner from the power button, but you can count on Windows Hello, for the connection as a backup.
The trackpad is slightly different, but it still retains its glass surface, although I noticed that it took a little more force to click compared to last year’s G14, it could be tiring over time if you prefer to click on tap for validation, I prefer clicks, so it was really difficult for me to get used to it, but other than that, it was a fairly smooth browsing experience.
Now the other change in the keyboard is the displacement of the front speakers, now Asus has added more speaker holes to fit larger tweeters, for better audio performance.
Now, in total I think you get about six speakers, including the woofers at the bottom and the end result is one of the best audio systems, that you can get on a Windows laptop in this form factor.
The bass is more powerful, the treble is sharper, it’s not as loud as my 14-inch MacBook Pro, but it certainly stands above all other Windows laptops, with downward-facing drivers, so this is what the webcam looks like on the new G14.
Now they use the same 1080p sensor from the previous model, so you won’t notice a huge difference in the details, but what I will say is that the microphone quality is superb on this laptop, I mean Asus has built a lot of integrated processing modes like stereo directional recording enhanced to 360° recording modes, and there is an AI noise cancellation that works behind the scenes, to eliminate all the background noise.
So for conferences and all sorts of things, this microphone works great now, the port configuration has been revised for this year’s G14, so on the right side you get USB 3.2 Gen 2 type c, which also doubles as a 1.4 pass through display port, which is linked directly to the USB type a discrete GPU, and a Micro SD card slot I don’t know how many of you would actually use it, but I would actually have preferred another type c port, or type A.
By switching to the left side, you get audio from your second USB port of type a USB 4, type-c with display port, although this one is linked to the internal graphics card.
The radium GPU, and it also supports the supply of energy up to 100 Watts, you also get HDMI 2.1.
And finally the power port has been replaced by their proprietary slim port now, there has been a lot of discussion about the reasons for this, was USB type-c, but according to Asus, this new port has been designed to provide more power than USB C at 40 W Max.
I think this one can push 330 ws and more, while being much more efficient both in terms of heat production and cost, the more reversible it is, so that’s a nice bonus.
Now the power cable itself is quite long, and I’m glad Asus didn’t go for a braided solution like Razer did or does with their razor blade laptops, so this one is just a lot easier to handle, and the AC adapter is a really nice and compact 180 wat unit.
So this whole package fits in my backpack no problem, if you are a student you will love this configuration, so let’s talk about this new screen, let’s go, there have been some interesting updates this year.
First of all, they replaced all the IPS and Min LED options with OLED, which means that you are greedy with a really sharp and vibrant 3K 120 HZ panel, they kept the 16 X10 aspect ratio that I like and the color reproduction is fantastic with better Adobe RGB coverage, which makes it suitable for creators, 3D artists or simply programmers or anyone who needs a really sharp and vivid screen.
But choosing OLED means sacrificing peak SDR brightness performance.
Last year’s G14 is much brighter than the OLED offerings, so it’s something to watch out for more, last year’s panel was faster at 165 htz compared to this 120HZ generation.
So, while you get a visually stunning display, you sacrifice in a few other areas, but there is one more thing that you see Asus, being Asus has added something called vrr or variable refresh rate, you see conventional IPS panels projecting an entire image at a time where the brightness levels, are not affected regardless of the speed of your screen, when you are in a gaming setting, because there is only one source of backet.
The Ola screens light up several times for each image, because each pixel is its own light source and this can cause irregularities in brightness, and color which can also lead to a little brightness, tearing of the screen.
Now to solve this problem, Asus has teamed up with Nvidia and Samsung to improve the refresh rate, and brightness synchronizations by essentially setting the pixel emission rate to 960 HZ on the G14, which essentially translates into a consistent gaming experience, and tear-free thanks to g-sync support.
Now and you are also not affected by the brightness and color irregularities, it is quite amazing to witness it on a portable gaming laptop, we have seen it on TVs, but it requires a lot more calculations, but to get this in such a small form factor is quite amazing.
You have to see it in person to appreciate this technology that being said, all this technology has a correct price.
So Asus is offering two skes this year in the United States, the basic specification includes an RTX 460 with a ryzen 9 PROCESSOR, 16 GB of RAM a terab of storage and the OLED panel for $ 1600, which is the same as last year’s specification.
But the 470 specification unfortunately costs 100 more than the G14, from last year equipped with the same GPU.
So it ends up costing you a lot Asus doesn’t offer a premium 4080 or 4900, which is quite logical, because it didn’t really work on the previous generation considering how restrictive they were, in terms of power allocation, these models or these GPUs are reserved for the g16.
Now, for our Canadian friends, Asus is offering an exclusive 4050 model to get you those $2,200 Canadian, which is absolutely absurd in my opinion, it seems that inflation is only playing its part.
But you may be asking, if you really gain or lose something with this new redesign, and the price difference with the high-end specifications, of course well why don’t we start with the upgrade, because the first thing you give up is access to the Ram modules.
That’s right this year you’re stuck with sold memory, and the maximum you can configure is up to 32 GB, which is devastating news for anyone looking to expand beyond that, but they had to do it to keep up with the SIM card form factor, but at least you have access to the only populated m.
SSD 2 gen 4×4 which works in much the same way as the last generation, you will also notice that they have equipped the waer chamber cooling system, with a brand new triple fan design accompanied by seven heat pipes.
Now that the third fan is supposed to direct the air to the internal components, to keep the CPU and GPU under control, it is interesting to note that there is a built-in dust filter, which is quite thoughtful, but at the end of the day, when you put it all together, how does it actually help the CPU and GPU, let’s see how they behave.
Now in the same way as last year, we have three performance modes, silent performance, and turbo we will focus on performance and turbo, for the G14 2023 we have and the new G14 2024.
Because this is what most people are interested in, keep in mind that the G14 reviewed last year, has an RTX 460, so it’s not a perfect comparison between apples.
But this should give you a good idea, of what has changed with the new model and if you sacrifice everything, starting with the PROCESSOR power levels.
The turbo mode behaves very similar to the 2023 model, with just a tiny 2- what a difference between them that is not very significant, however, last year’s model maintained these levels longer, compared to a slight decrease of the 2024 G14, during the first minutes of our performance mode test.
There is a slight advantage for the 2023 model, but both end up consuming the same 45 Watts, but surprisingly, when we look at the clock speeds, it seems that we could have won a silicone lottery, on the 2024 G14 frequencies, were actually slightly higher on this model, with a difference of 120 MHz, in turbo mode, and about a difference of 90 MHz in performance mode.
Now while these frequencies were slightly higher, the lines of the temperature graph are completely different, these two laptops finally end up in the same place, it’s just how they get there is very different.
It is very clear that the profiles of the fans, and the general performance characteristics of the cooling system have changed a lot, which is logical since Asus has completely reorganized the cooling system, this generation to make it smaller and lighter, while adding a third fan.
But if you switch to the GPU, you can clearly see that Asus has restored the power allocation, for the RTX 470, compared to the 2023 G14 with the RTX 460, was actually 120 watts in turbo mode.
So a difference of 30 W is quite significant.
Now you may be asking about last year’s G14, with a 470 and I can confirm that it also ran at almost 120 watts, so it’s pretty clear that this new design has had a negative impact, in terms of the power that these chips can consume.
Now comparing the performance modes, we see a very similar pattern with the G14 2023, pulling about 20 watts more than the G14 2024.
Now, the difference in power obviously has an impact on the clock speeds over time, but it is difficult for us to demonstrate that since we are dealing with two different GPUs the 4060, on last year’s G14, still runs at higher clocks, than the 47 at the same power level.
And obviously this leads to clock speeds, significantly higher in this comparison, because it has even more power to play with, I guess the only positive aspect, of these restricted power levels, is in particular GPU temperatures, lower both in Turbo and in performance modes.
The new G14 stabilizes at about 76°C, compared to 85°C, on the old G14, so I guess that’s good news.
So in the end, how does all this translate into real performance, I’m going to start with some test topics, just to get a baseline, and let’s move on to longer tests, so in multi-core cinebench, will be repeated in almost all of these results, basically with regard to intensive multi-core workloads.
The Ryzen 98945 HS, does not necessarily give a significant improvement compared to the 7940 HS, although it works at clock speeds, slightly higher in performance and turbo parameters.
Because it is essentially the same chip, even the performance of a single horn, is neck and neck compared to the huge jump, which we have seen from ryzen 6000 to ryzen 7000, of course AMD systems can compete, with Lake of Raptors from Intel offers.
But it is a fact that these ryen processors are taking the lead in terms of energy efficiency.
Now that I’m reviewing the rest of the benchmarks, it’s pretty clear that the new G14 brings an improvement of 2 to 3% compared to the previous generation.
Now, although this is a minor improvement, it may not be substantial enough, to justify an immediate upgrade, it just shows that ryzen 7000, is still a great option in 2024, if you are looking to save a few dollars, you can definitely get a lot of performance, by activating turbo mode.
But this is not enough to overcome, the previous generation guys, plus allowing this mode can have a cost, and this is an increase in noise levels.
In fact, our test revealed that the new model, is significantly noisier than its creative focusing applications, pressing like Da Vinci resolve Studio, work very well on this new G14.
It has actually managed to beat the new Legion 7i, with a 14 HX processor, and this is a small improvement compared to the last generation 7940 HS, Adobe premiere Pro on the other hand has provided a generous improvement, compared to the last generation, but as we mentioned earlier.
If you are using Premiere Pro, getting an Intel-based device, will save you a ton of time for rendering the outputs, due to their fast sync engine optimizations.
Moving up a gear, and although what can I say, I kind of saw this coming as soon as I analyzed the power, and the GPU frequencies over time, the RTX 47 on the new model just leaves a ton of performance, on the table due to its restricted power allocation.
I mean that the RTX 460 on the old model, looks a lot like right now, because it’s pretty much neck and neck, with the 470 in both performance and Turbo modes.
The 4070 just takes a slight advantage, because it has 50% more shaders than the 4060, but if you were to test the latest generation 270 G14, there is no doubt that it would be the case I wiped the floor, with this new model in all games, the story at 1440p is almost the same despite the RTX 470 running at a lower power.
It closely reflects the performance of the RTX 460, from the previous generation, this represents one of the main disadvantages of this iteration, Asus have favored aesthetics over functionality, compromising.
Finally the performance, maybe they could have increased the height of the Zed devices, to accommodate a more robust cooling system, allowing better GPU performance.
But we have to face reality, and it is the results that fall short of previous generations, which is worrying given the increasingly competitive landscape of the gaming laptop market.
The last thing I wanted to address is the battery life, and honestly there are no surprises in these results.our test showed that the new model performed better under light loads, which we attribute to the integrated energy savings, to the ryzen 8000 series with regard to medium workloads.
Both laptops work in the same way, but when you push them to their limits, the new model has succeeded to outlast the previous generation G14.
I think they have definitely added improvements, quality of life to this new model.
The first thing is of course, the superior build quality, which you get with it is much better, than what you get with the older generation.
The new speakers are fantastic, I mean I have never really experienced anything good, in this form factor much better than the old model.
You also know that the OLED screen which is a chef’s kiss, it’s not the fastest there, it’s certainly not the brightest, but I think we have to give it to Asus, for pushing the boundaries of implementation, of something new, something different if we analyze the performance factor, it is slightly better than the G14 of the previous generation.
Even if they are basically the same, but you lose a lot of FPS, on the table with the GPU and you know that there is nothing like a free lunch when Asus decided to make it smaller and thinner.
They had to sacrifice something and unfortunately, it’s the game FPS, it’s just reality.
Conclusion :
So if you are someone who is looking for the best shot for the new gaming laptop, in the 14-inch laptop space, there is no denying the fact that the old G14, is still a great option, they are still selling it in fact.
I found one for sale for about 1,400, with an RTX 470.
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