ASUS - ROG Zephyrus G16 (2024) 16" OLED 240Hz Gaming Laptop - Intel Core Ultra 9 - 32GB LPDDR5X - GeForce RTX 4080 - 1TB SSD - Eclipse Gray

The 2024 ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16 is legitimately the best laptop I’ve ever owned. I can’t find anything that’s a dealbreaker (and I usually do with laptops, especially gaming laptops). This is an excellent refinement of the ROG Zephyrus line. I had the original G14 and while I loved it, there were still a lot of things that didn’t work for me. The display, the build quality, the lack of webcam were some of the things that stood out, despite being a stellar product. This solves all of that. We get the absolutely gorgeous OLED display that’s 240hz, color accurate and G-SYNC built in. While it’s not perfect, all of my quibbles are just that, quibbles. Performance-wise, the laptop is a beast, powered by the latest Intel Core Ultra 9 processor and the formidable GeForce RTX 4080 GPU. Whether I'm tackling the latest AAA titles or working on demanding productivity tasks, the G16 handles it all. Even at maxed-out settings and native resolution, the performance remains impressive, as evidenced by the solid frame rates achieved in titles like Baldur's Gate 3 and Palword. I threw Palworld in here because of the lack of optimization this game has being in early access. Its performance is rough across all devices so the fact that settings are maxed and I’m still getting above 60 fps is amazing. Maxed out Settings at Native Resolution(2560:1600), Asus Armoury Crate performance set to "Performance" (I did not see any significant improvement when set to Turbo other than the fans getting very loud) Baldur's Gate 3 Performance: Average 90 FPS Palword Performance: Average 65 FPS The industrial design of the G16 is nothing short of spectacular. It's sleek, stylish, lightweight, and drops all of the gaming laptop stylings that I find tacky. The keyboard is excellent, providing a comfortable typing experience, and the trackpad is responsive and precise although maybe a tad too large. On the downside, the Eclipse Gray finish is a fingerprint magnet, detracting from the laptop's otherwise beautiful appearance. I would definitely go with the white color if you can. Additionally, I wish the proprietary charger was USB-C like all my other devices, I understand that USB-C doesn’t have the kind of power throughput required for this device. It at least seems quite sturdy of a connection and doesn’t have a specific top side of the charger. The light bar does nothing for me and by default is on way too much, including when asleep just ending up being a waste of energy. The absence of a 10-key number pad was disappointing but it did leave room for those excellent speakers. While the Intel Ultra chips boast AI capabilities, their practical utility are so specific that you likely won’t ever be able to use them. Even as someone that works in AI, I still haven’t. Furthermore, achieving performance that fully utilizes the 240Hz display may require dialing down graphics settings in certain scenarios which is kind of a bummer but I’m glad it’s there anyway. Don’t let these quibbles dissuade you though! This is still a 5 star laptop and as someone who’s owned a lot of laptops and usually finds big issues and tradeoffs, I don’t see one here. It’s beautiful, lightweight, powerful, and cheap (relatively). If you are in the market for a gaming laptop, or just a powerhouse laptop, look no further than the new ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16. Pros: Incredible performance Industry leading industrial design Price can’t be beat OLED display is GORGEOUS with excellent color accuracy Speakers are crisp, loud, and have excellent separation Lots of RGB customization Excellent keyboard and trackpad Still has all the ports you need Cons: Eclipse Gray is a fingerprint magnet Proprietary charger versus USB-C (although that’s due to the limitations of USB-C and not ASUS’s fault) The light bar is pretty silly No 10-key number pad Hard to get performance that utilized the 240hz unless I drop the graphics settings down The Intel Ultra chips are gimmicky when it comes to AI

About The ROG Zephyrus G16 is a high end gaming laptop brought to you by Asus. It boasts a 14-core Intel Ultra 9 processor, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card, 240Hz refresh rate, solid state hard drive, and 32GB of DDR5 RAM. Generous connectivity options are provided while keeping the laptop to a thin and lightweight design. Packaging and Contents The packaging has a nice appearance. Contents included the laptop, power adapter, and small instruction manuals. Note that Asus recommends that you charge the laptop for 3 hours prior to setting it up. General Specifications Screen Size: 16” OLED Screen Resolution: 2560 x 1600 @ 240Hz Processor: Intel Ultra 9 (14-core) Memory: 32GB DDR5 (2 16GB Sticks) Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 (12GB of GDDR6X Video Memory) Storage: 1TB SSD Operating System: Windows 11 Home 64-bit. Audio: 6-speaker Dolby Atmos RGB Lighting: Backlit keyboard with customizable keyboard lighting. Slash lighting at cover. The touchpad mouse is the biggest laptop touchpad I have ever seen. It takes up half of the keyboard. Ports and Connections WiFi: Wireless AX (WiFi 6E) Bluetooth Headphone Jack HDMI Out: 1 (2.1) USB Type A: 2 (3.2) USB Type C: 2 (3.2) USB Type C: 1 Charging Thunderbolt 4: 1 Media Card Reader: SD Card Slot Reader Power: 330 Watts Camera: 1080p Differences from Best Buy’s Website There were a few things about the laptop that currently do not show up correctly on Best Buy’s website: Media Card Reader – There is a Media Card slot installed on the right side. Mic Input – Best Buy shows a Headphone jack and Mic input listed. There is a headphone jack. There is not a separate Mic input. The webcam does have its own microphone built-in. Audio Technology – Best Buy shows a “-“ for this model under Audio Technology. It will do Dolby Atmos. Gaming Experience The screen had a very sharp picture. It was really pretty stunning. The video while gaming had an enjoyable smooth movement. It didn’t have any lag or jitter. Excellent job here. I had one issue with a Steam game not loading. I will accredit the issue as a problem with the game and not with the computer. The other several games worked very well. Other Things I Noticed Features vs Size – Asus did a masterful job with providing a loaded laptop with a larger screen while creating a thinner, less bulky device. It looks good and works well. Mouse Pad – This was one of the few things that I did not like about the laptop. The mouse pad takes up half of the keyboard space. It actually makes it harder to type because it’s so big. This isn’t new for Asus, as my 2022 ROG laptop also has this. Asus Switch – Asus has a program to transfer your files from your other computers over to help you set up the new device. I have 3 other Asus laptops/ROG Ally that have been saved to this profile. I did not want the files brought over to this laptop, but it did it anyway. I told it to set up as a new PC, but it brought over folders, files, and shortcuts against my wishes. That could be improved by Asus. Heat – For gaming laptops, this can be a big issue. I was very impressed with how the laptop handled heat. It really did not get very warm for most anything that I did. The warmest temperature I experienced was while playing a game, Batman: Arkham Knight, but it wasn’t near at hot as my Alienware work laptop just performing normal day-to-day activities. This is a win for Asus. Fingerprints – The gray aluminum finish does show fingerprints. It’s not a huge deal though for me. Overall, this is an excellent gaming laptop. The video motion is smooth and the picture is stunning. It’s simply a higher end machine. While there were a few minor things that I mentioned I still believe that this product deserves 5 stars. I think that most people will find it to be a very solid gaming machine and should be happy with their selection. Asus continues to make good products. This is my third laptop from them, and they all three still work very well.

Short answer: call it the Little Laptop that Could! This is probably the most versatile laptop I've ever owned and certainly the most satisfying. The Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 GU605MZ is the upper middle model of the line, equipped with an Intel U9 processor and Nvidia RTX 4080 laptop graphics processor. This is wrapped in an elegant and solid aluminum case with a full size keyboard and a magnificent 16in 2K+ (2560x1600) OLED display. It comes with a hefty 240w power brick. Out of the box, the Zephyrus G16 is immediately impressive. It feels solid, no plastic, no flexing and weighs in at an immensely portable 4lbs. The next thing you notice is that the chassis is incredibly thin. At 16mm, it's about half the thickness of a typical gaming laptop and a pound or two lighter. The 240w power brick adds another pound plus to your carry weight, but it is thinner than most. There is a significant but to this... the Zephyrus G16 can charge on a 100w usb-c charger. For gaming you'll obviously want to use the high power brick, but for day to day use and travel, a much smaller, and lighter, power option is available. Charging with the 240W supply took about 2 hrs from 10%. Charging with a 100W supply took around 6 hrs. The only odd note: The three LED indicators for charging, disk, and lighting are on back bottom of the display bezel and are not visible when the lid is open. Initial power on is the usual Windows setup, update, setup again cycle, then on to game and utility installs. The Asus Armory Crate app has a host of monitoring and performance/economy options and has worked well. It also mercifully lets you control or disable all the lighting effects. One thing you will notice immediately, especially if you have used a gaming laptop in the past, is the lack of noise. Even in full on gaming mode, the cooling fans are quite livable, not the jet roar of prior generation gaming laptops. The display and speaker quality are both first rate. At 16 inches the display is quite readable; I could reduce the scaling to 2/3 of the recommended scaling with no readability issues. The display is absolutely gorgeous and quite bright, with nice saturated colors. Using it outdoors is sunlight was quite workable. Additionally, the murky shadows (think Diablo or any dungeon crawler) don't hide the bad guys. The dynamic range is impressive. The speakers are good, excellent by laptop standards, but still won't replace a good Bluetooth speaker or headset. The keyboard is chicklet style with nice large keys for those of us fat fingered types. The keys have respectable throw and good tactile feedback. I do wish Asus had found a way to add a numeric keypad. I did run some benchmarks before playing any games. The SSD and WLAN were up there with the fastest of them. CPU was mid-pack as was the graphics performance. It's really remarkable that Asus was able to get the level of performance they did given the thermal limiting going on to squeeze all that power into a relatively quiet, very thin laptop. Games were a different story. So far, it's been Diablo 4, Horizon Zero dawn, and a couple of shooters. No tearing or lag, and response time has been as instantaneous as I can see. I also do a lot of video editing and rendering was exceptionally fast. Music and audio processing was similarly fast. Battery life was quite interesting. Using it as a general purpose laptop (web surfing, email), I was able to go 7 to 8 hours on a charge. Video streaming seemed to have about the same runtime. In gaming mode, even with refresh turned down to 60hz, I was only able to go about an hour & 15 minutes before the battery hit 10%. In 240hz, it dropped to an hour. it was interesting that even plugged in and in game, the laptop never became more than warm and the fans became noticeable but never objectionable. There is some really elegant cooling going on there! Bottom line, if you're looking for ultimate performance from a gaming laptop, look elsewhere. If you want a hybrid use laptop that will provide near top of the line game power, that you will actually want to carry, that can handle multimedia processing efficiently, that can run near silent in an office environment, and is an absolute joy to use, look no further. The awesome Asus ROG Zephyrus G16MZ should be the top of your list. Well done Asus!

When I first saw the description of this computer I was a little skeptical of what exactly the Intel Core Ultra 9 was and what it could do. Well I'm here to tell you that this computer is an absolute beast. Everything about this computer kicks it up to 11. The rumors about the RTX 40 series of graphics chips are true. these things offer supremely detailed graphics and optimize even some of the more basic games. I played Team Fortress 2 (a game that's almost 20 years old) and it looked incredible. in the same sitting I loaded up one of the newest and hottest games right now: Helldivers 2, and the detail and beauty was simply astonishing. But the graphics chip shouldn't get all the credit for that, The crystal clear OLED 16" screen offers an awesomely sized view so you can hit tough shots or just take in beautiful scenery. Couple this with the speaker system that this computer has and you get amazing immersion on the go! The software that the computer comes with for customizing the way the computer operates is pretty intuitive and makes it easy to throttle things back when you don't need all that power or to push it into turbo for those high-end, sweat inducing gaming sessions. But with everything good that I can say about this laptop there are also a few drawbacks. First, because it does have one heck of an engine going on within, it tends to get rather loud and awfully hot, especially when doing anything graphically intensive. It's not that the computer cannot handle these tasks but you pay for it in sound and heat. It will however mitigate the heat rather quickly once the tasks are over. but I wouldn't recommend having this thing sitting on a flat surface for too long if you're going to be doing any heavy gaming. The second thing is that while the keyboard is cool with all the flashy lights, it's not something I would use for actually doing the gaming. The main heat point is just under the top center f the keyboard and it makes it kind of uncomfortable if you plan on using any of the keys in the center of the keyboard during times when the processor is really cooking (pun intended) The trackpad while ample (which is nice for more mundane tasks) gets in the way a lot when doing any kind of keyboard use for gaming purposes. (my thumb hit it more often than I would like) And lastly, The computer came with only 1TB of hard drive space. most wouldn't see this as much of a problem and for me its not a deal breaker, BUT with games nowadays topping 80-100GB a game, that doesn't leave much room for a lot of games onboard. Like I said, not a deal breaker, just something to keep in mind These are the only reasons that I didn't give this 5 stars. Otherwise if you are looking for a mobile powerhouse of a gaming laptop you can't get much better than this one.

I recently bought ASUS - ROG Zephyrus 32GB LPDDR5X - GeForce RTX 4080 - 1TB SSD - Eclipse Gray. It is a great laptop for running editing software such as premier pro and photoshop which I mostly use. It is also a great laptop for gaming, but would suggest the RTX 4090 for core gamers as it has more storage. Only minor thing I would suggest is to not update to the most recent Intel update available since it has glitch in it since it messes with the keyboard lighting as you cannot change it. It kind of sticks to a single color. Haven't had a problem with armory crate updates though. Keys are good quality but not as sturdy as you want it to be. Overall it is overall a compact lightweight gaming and designing laptop. Ps - It does get scratches on the body easy since it is metal, would suggest opting for a white color, if you are willing to pay an extra 300$.

Beautiful machine. Chassis feels premium almost like a MacBook Display is just incredible and performances in game are pretty good. Only big downside is the wifi speed. I’m usually around 500 mbps but this guy only does 100 for no apparent reason. Updated drivers and settings didn’t solve the issue, will continue investigating and hopefully get luckier.

Build quality is mac like, speakers sound good, the 4080 does not disappoint. Definitely recommend this for a travel laptop.

?? BUILD: First impression of the G16 is that ASUS really stepped up their build materials compared to previous years. It’s an all-aluminum design from the base to the keyboard deck to the lid. It’s an overall thin profile that feels more durable and confidence-inspiring, and just feels more portable at 4.3lbs—which is great for a gaming laptop of this caliber. On the top lid you have the new Slash Lighting array which you can configure in Armoury Crate, and on the bottom you have 11 T6 Torx screws to gain access to the internals. Other than the rubber feet spanning across the bottom, the Zephyrus G16 is thinner than the MacBook Pro 16, but when placed side by side on a flat surface, the G16 stands thinner at the front and becomes taller at the rear due to the protruding rubber feet. ??PORTS: For the I/O, the G16 sports a proprietary 240W power input. Personally, I really wish ASUS would support 240W over an additional USB-C port, but I’m sure that’s additional cost and engineering time. Even so, it does support 1x Thunderbolt 4 USB-C port as well as a USB 3.2 gen 2 USB-C port—each of which supports 100W USB-C Power Delivery. I do wish ASUS would make both of these Thunderbolt 4 compliant since it would give additional flexibility when using thunderbolt docking stations, external thunderbolt storage, and potentially eGPUs. Additionally, gamers will appreciate the 2x USB 3.2 gen 2 Type-A ports—especially for peripherals like mice, keyboards and USB headsets. And if you have a modern TV that supports HDMI 2.1, you’ll be able to achieve full bandwidth for a native 4k120Hz connection as long as you have a proper HDMI cable. Lastly, I appreciate having the option for a 3.5mm analog headphone/microphone combo jack for music, gaming or meetings, and a UHS-II SD card slot for creators. ?? EXPANSION & UPGRADES: Expandability on the G16 is one of its weaker points. On the bottom of the laptop are 11 T6 Torx screws. While 9 of the screws are exposed, you’ll need to remove two smaller rubber stoppers at the rear of the laptop to expose the 2 additional screws to gain access to the bottom of the chassis. And unfortunately, the screws are of different lengths, so you may want to keep track of the locations for each screw, or consult the service repair manual from their support website if you accidentally forget. Once the rear cover is removed, you’ll really only have access to 2x PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD slots—one of which is unoccupied, and another slot for your WiFi module. It would have been nice to see a WiFi 7 module included instead of a WiFi 6E. But more importantly, you won’t be able to upgrade RAM, so you’ll need to buy the model that fits your needs. ?? ?KEYBOARD & TOUCHPAD: The keyboard has good tactile feedback and travel, and the deck is rigid without flex. I’m able to type at my normal speed ~112 wpm without constantly fumbling. For work, I use a MacBook Pro 16, but I found that the transition to the G16’s keyboard was fairly natural for me. The RGB backlit keys are also appreciated for darker environments, but admittedly, is something I don’t care much about and don’t find myself often needing. After changing some preferences, I feel that the touchpad is very good. But I think the palm rejection could be improved because I did find myself accidentally changing the cursor position while typing. The physical clicks on the G16 touchpad do feel a bit stiff, but it’s still one of the better touchpads I’ve experienced on a Windows laptop. ?? DISPLAY: The G16 sports a 2560x1600p@240Hz OLED display. ASUS says it supports 100% of the DCI-P3 color space, and is Pantone Validated for color accuracy. While I don’t have the tools to objectively measure the display, my personal opinion is that it looks fantastic, gets very bright (especially for my use-cases), and HDR content looks fantastic on the OLED display. As a content-creator who focuses more on creating rather than editing and color-grading, it’s still good to know that I’m at least working with a display that should represent colors accurately, but for gaming purposes, I am subjectively impressed with the experience, as colors pop off the screen with excellent contrast in games. And with HDR enabled, you’ll be sure to enjoy an even richer visual experience. 240Hz will be more practical for eSports and games that are just generally less-demanding, but maxing out the most graphically intense modern games will not yield this kind of framerate. However, because the display does support Adaptive Sync, you should experience much less screen-tearing while gaming. ??? WEBCAM & MICROPHONE: At 1080p, the webcam does perform better than many others, but it’s also not going to replace a dedicated camera if you’re the type of person to stream on Twitch, Discord or YouTube. But for taking a video call, it should be sufficient with not too much noise unless you’re in low-light conditions. Additionally, you can use Windows Studio Effects to leverage the Intel NPU to apply a background blur. And of course, the Windows Hello facial recognition has been more reliable than ASUS’ fingerprint sensors. The microphone also sounds quite good when you configure it correctly. Windows claims that the G16 has a 4-channel microphone, and this checks out. Flanking the webcam on both sides, you have 2 microphone channels, and inside of the left speaker of the G16 are the other 2 channels. In my experience, I got the best quality audio by opening the Realtek Audio Console and setting the microphone to Stereo-Enhanced Mode. And if background noise is a concern, I prefer to use NVIDIA Broadcast to apply AI noise reduction. ?? SPEAKERS & HEADPHONE: The built-in speakers on the G16 are a pretty significant improvement over most ASUS laptops I’ve tried in the past. While perhaps not quite at the level of the MacBook Pro, it’s still very good and makes all content sound fantastic. If you want to adjust the sound profile of the speakers (and I think you should), you can open the Dolby Access app and select different presets or set your own EQ. Personally, I created a custom flat EQ without any additional surround virtualizers or volume levelers. As for the headphone experience, this is an area where I prefer to disable Dolby Atmos entirely, since I want a flat EQ so that I can listen to my music through the sound profile of my different headphones. Overall, I found this also to be a pleasant experience and it seemed to deliver decent loudness without distortion on sensitive both in-ear monitors and power-hungry planar magnetic headphones. It certainly won’t be replacing my dedicated DAC and amp, but in a pinch, it’s great to know I don’t have to compromise a ton. ? PERFORMANCE: For these benchmarks, I opened Armoury Crate and set the laptop’s power profile to Turbo Mode and the GPU Mode set to Optimized. I also used a laptop stand for better cooling access. Sometimes I’d run Cinebench Multi Core on the same power profile and yield 14%-16% lower results than what I’ve documented here. So take these with a grain of salt. ? Unigine Superposition 1080p Extreme DirectX benchmark: 9588 ? 3DMark Time Spy: 14681 https://www.3dmark.com/spy/46231593 ? 3DMark CPU Profile: 8866 https://www.3dmark.com/cpu/1789367 ? Cinebench R23 Multi Core (10 minutes): 18649 ? Cinebench 2024 Multi Core (10 minutes): 1011 Under a full sustained CPU load, the Intel Core Ultra 9 185H can yield very respectable results. During the PL2 load (2min sustained), the CPU would eventually sustain around 4.3GHz @ 96C, then dial back to a PL1 around 3.9GHz @ 83C. During this time, both fans do get loud (~47dB average / ~50dB max), reaching a peak around 5700 RPM, but thankfully without any high-pitched whining. Putting some closed-back headphones (Audeze Maxwell) on, I don’t really notice the fan noise. But there’s no doubt that others in my environment would certainly hear it. It’s also worth mentioning that while plugged in and using the Silent power profile, I could not get less than ~1700 RPM on the fans, but it can reach 0 RPM on battery mode for a truly silent experience. The most graphically demanding games like Cyberpunk 2077, Control, and A Plague Tale: Requiem will play well over 60fps on average while on very high settings with RT and DLSS enabled. But to engage a high frame-rate experience > 120fps, it may be better to dial back some settings, and you’ll still achieve a very crisp visual experience on the native 16” display. But if you’re comparing to other “thin” gaming laptops, the G16 may not have the best performance since the graphics only delivers 95W base + 20W dynamic boost, while others might deliver up to 175W, but those laptops will be much heavier despite having a thin profile. This puts the G16 in very limited competition for all that it offers. ?? BATTERY: Battery life continues to be a struggling point for Intel-based laptops, but it’s undoubtedly improving. If you have higher-performance needs for software development purposes, you may only get a few hours of battery life. But if your battery needs are geared towards documents, basic web browsing and video streaming, then I think it’s much more likely that you can get a 6hr to 7hr day while on lower display brightness, RGB effects disabled, and the silent power profile. ?? CONCLUSION: The 2024 Zephyrus G16 delivers a lot of improvements compared to last year’s G16 and 2022’s equivalent M16. While you will pay a premium, ASUS delivered much more value this year with a very premium experience for every aspect of the build. If performance is what you’re really after, then there are certainly better options on the market to deliver performance per dollar. But if you want something that is not only slim but lightweight and delivers a premium experience with very solid gaming performance, then the G16 may very well be what you’re looking for.

My first ROG, the build quality is outstanding. Display in best in the world easily. Keyboard feels really nice. Trackpad is large and accurate (though impossible to click at the top) preformance does.not disapoint. Its a definite win. Now the negatives:The keyboard font is a bit juvenile but i can live with it. Trackpad should have been haptic at this price. Overall Id definitely recommend this as a light very portable professional laptop or a gamer laptop. Its worth checking out if you have the $ and want the best. (Almost perfect) (haptics Asus... Haptics)