Asus ROG Zephyrus G14: Excellent Gaming Laptop

Asus has teamed up with AMD to double down on the trend of increasingly compact gaming laptops with the ROG Zephyrus G14, a 14-inch near-ultraportable with full gaming capabilities. The main attraction here beyond the petite size is a brand-new AMD Ryzen 9 processor, the first “Zen 2” laptop CPU we’ve tested.

- MATTHEW BUZZI

We’re happy to report that it’s blisteringly fast across the board, equally ready for gaming and media workloads, and superior to the competition. Intel, on the other hand, will not be happy; this efficient CPU is also a great value, and Team Red now threatens its hold on the mobile market. This processor is just one (major) aspect of the full Zephyrus G14 package: It’s attractive and portable with high frame rates, and it’s our new midrange gaming Editors’ Choice.

COMPACT GAMING WITH A CLEAN DESIGN

The Zephyrus G14 is simply a pleasant laptop to look at and use. The style is clean and attractive, looking high-tech without screaming that it’s a gaming rig. I especially like our white-lid model, which stands out from the pack and makes the system look extra-modern (it also comes in dark gray). The diagonally split lid is a nice touch, with perforations on one half and blank white magnesium alloy on the other. The laptop feels high-quality to the touch—it’s a bit dense thanks to its form factor but easy to carry or slip into a bag, and there is no flex to be found.

The components in this machine are the stars of the show, and I’ll talk about them plenty below, but an aspect I appreciate just as much as this laptop’s size. For a long time, gaming notebooks were big, bulky, and heavy, and even the 15.6-inch models had more heft than you’d want to tote on a daily basis. The last few generations of mobile technology from Intel, Nvidia, and now AMD have allowed gaming laptops to become much trimmer, to the point where portability is expected. There are still some 17.3-inch behemoths, but thinner gaming rigs like the Razer Blade 15 are becoming the norm.