ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 (2022) Laptop Review

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 looks fairly stylish. It has some gamer aesthetics, like the shape of the power button and speaker grills, but it doesn't go overboard with it, so you can still use it in a professional working environment without sticking out too much. It has a perforated lid that allows LED lights to shine through, which you can customize to show anything you want. This AniME Matrix feature is optional; you can get the laptop without it. There are vents on both sides of the laptop, the back, and the bottom. The screen lifts the back of the laptop when opened, giving you a slight keyboard incline and allowing for better airflow on the bottom. It's available in two colors: Moonlight White and Eclipse Gray.

The build quality is great. Although it feels more like plastic, ASUS specifies that the chassis is a mix of aluminum and magnesium alloy. The laptop feels high-quality and sturdy, exhibiting only a little bit of flex in the display and almost none in the keyboard deck. The finish feels smooth and doesn't pick up fingerprints or scratch easily.

The ASUS ROG G14 has outstanding hinges. They feel smooth when opening and closing the laptop, and they're very stable, with almost no wobbling whatsoever. You can open the lid with one hand, which isn't the most necessary feature, but it does give the laptop a more premium feel.

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 is decently portable. It isn't as thin and light as an ultraportable like a Dell XPS 13 (2021), but it isn't bulky or heavy either. The power adapter is fairly large and even thicker than the laptop itself.

The serviceability is good. Accessing the internals is very easy as you only need to remove some Philips screws and undo the clips holding the bottom panel. You don't need a pick to pry open the panel, but you need one to remove the rubber covering three of the screws. The laptop has half of its memory in the form of a SO-DIMM module, with the other half soldered onto the motherboard, so you can only upgrade to a maximum of 24GB on a 16GB model. You can see the upgrade guide here. If you want a gaming laptop with better serviceability, check out the MSI Raider GE67 HX (2022).

• ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 laptop
• 240W power adapter
• Documentation

The ASUS Zephyrus G14 is only available with a QHD+ display. It has a very high pixel density to produce sharp images and text, making it suitable for gaming, media consumption, and productivity. Its 16:10 aspect ratio gives you slightly more vertical space than a standard 16:9 screen so that you don't have to scroll as much when reading a document or website. It supports Dolby Vision HDR and is Pantone validated. If you want a gaming laptop with a larger screen, check out the HP OMEN 16 (2022).

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14's panel has a high refresh rate and a quick response time, resulting in better responsiveness and a clearer image in fast-moving scenes. There's some image duplication, but it isn't too bad. Its FreeSync variable refresh rate also works with the built-in screen and external displays connected via the HDMI port. If you want a gaming laptop with a higher refresh display, check out the Razer Blade 14 (2022).

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14's contrast ratio is just okay. It's within the typical range for an IPS panel, though still a relatively low number compared to other panel technologies like VA and OLED. Blacks look grayish in dim settings, so it isn't the best option for dark room viewing.

The ASUS G14 gets bright enough to combat glare, even in very well-lit settings or outdoors in broad daylight. It also gets very dim to help reduce eye strain when viewing content in the dark. There's an auto-brightness feature called Vari-Bright, which automatically adjusts the screen brightness to extend battery life. It's on by default, but it only takes effect when running on battery and doesn't impact the screen brightness when plugged in.

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14's reflection handling is decent. Reflections aren't a problem when viewing light-color content because the display gets bright enough to compensate, but they're visible and distracting when viewing dark content, especially direct reflections like a lamp or open window during the day.

The ASUS Zephyrus G14's black uniformity is decent. It looks a little patchy, and there's some backlight bleed along the edges of the screen. These uniformity issues are fairly minor, and they're only visible when viewing dark content in a dim setting.

The horizontal viewing angle is okay. The image dims and washes out fairly quickly as you move off-center, which isn't an issue when sharing a text document or casual content, but it isn't ideal for sharing color-critical work. If you need perfect accuracy, it's best to be close to or directly in front of the screen.

The vertical viewing angle is passable. The image dims and washes out fairly quickly from above or below, so you have to look at the screen almost directly if accuracy is important, which might be hard when you don't have much space to tilt the screen like on a bus or airplane.

The ASUS Zephyrus G14's out-of-the-box color accuracy is good. Most colors look oversaturated because it targets a wide gamut, even in sRGB content, and the white balance is also off, especially at higher brightness levels. The color temperature is a bit cooler than the standard 6500k target, giving the image a slight, almost imperceptible blueish tint. The gamma follows the sRGB curve almost perfectly; there's only some over-darkening in dark scenes. Note that these are results obtained with Vari-Bright disabled, a feature that automatically adjusts the screen brightness to extend battery life. This feature is on by default and only comes into effect when the laptop runs on battery; however, it seems to affect color accuracy, even when plugged in. With Vari-Bright enabled, the color and white balance dEs are slightly worse, the color temperature is warmer at 6305 K, and the gamma sticks almost to a flat 2.2.

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 2022 has an outstanding color gamut. It has full coverage of the sRGB and DCI P3 color spaces, making it suitable for viewing or producing SDR and HDR content. For print photography, its Adobe RGB coverage is excellent but still missing the saturated greens that define Adobe RGB.

The backlight is entirely flicker-free, which helps reduce eye strain.

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 has a great keyboard. The layout feels spacious and is fairly standard, so it doesn't take long to get used to. The keys have a lot of travel, don't require much force to actuate, and provide satisfying tactile feedback. The overall typing experience is great, and it doesn't feel tiring over an extended period. You can customize the RGB backlight through the ASUS Aura Creator application. There's only one lighting zone, though, so you can only change the color and the lighting effect. You can adjust between three brightness levels or turn off the backlight directly on the keyboard using FN + F2 or F3.

The touchpad is excellent. It's large even though it's a relatively compact laptop, and it feels smooth, allowing the fingers to glide easily. It tracks all movements and gestures well, and there aren't any issues with palm rejection or actions like dragging and dropping. The click mechanism feels satisfying, but you can only click on the bottom half of the touchpad.

The speakers are just okay. It has a quad-speaker system with two up-firing and two down-firing drivers. They have good instrument separation and relatively clear vocals; however, they have almost no bass whatsoever, and they sound muffled and slightly unnatural. They get reasonably loud with very little dynamic compression, but they cause the keyboard deck to vibrate a lot at higher volume levels, which might bother some people. There's Dolby Atmos support, meaning the system can decode Dolby Atmos content in supported apps.

The ASUS G14's webcam video quality is good. The image looks a bit soft and noisy, but the exposure is good, and the colors look true to life. The microphone sounds loud and clear; however, voices come across as slightly hollow and nasal with noise canceling on, and there's a small amount of static in the background.

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 has a great port selection. The USB-A and USB-C ports support USB 3.2 Gen. 2 data transfer speed (up to 10Gbps). ASUS has announced that the USB-C ports will get USB4 support through a firmware update, which will increase the data transfer speed to 40Gbps. The firmware update is in Beta testing at the time of writing. You can download it, but know that it might be unstable and may cause other issues. Both USB-C ports can output a video signal to an external display; however, they don't deliver the same performance as the left USB-C port connects to the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS' integrated GPU, while the right one connects to the dedicated GPU, same as the HDMI port. The left USB-C port supports Power Delivery, allowing you to fast-charge the laptop and other PD-supported mobile devices connected to the port.

The wireless adapter is a MediaTek Wi-Fi 6E MT7922 160Hz. Wi-Fi 6E adds access to the 6GHz airwaves, providing greater speeds, lower latency, and less signal interference than previous Wi-Fi standards. However, you need a router that supports Wi-Fi 6E to benefit from these features.

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 has a single CPU option, the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS. It's a high-performance mobile CPU designed for gaming laptops and mobile workstations with a relatively thin chassis, running at a default 35W TDP instead of the usual 45W of other H-series chips. Ryzen 6000 CPUs have better efficiency than the previous generation, leading to longer battery life and a slight performance increase. They also sport a more powerful integrated GPU, resulting in a smoother overall experience in lighter workloads. The 6900HS is behind the high-end Intel 12th Gen. processors in performance, especially at higher power levels; however, it's still powerful enough to handle demanding tasks like gaming, video editing, and 3D rendering.

You can configure the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 with the following AMD dedicated GPUs:

• AMD Radeon RX 6700S with 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM (100W TGP with SmartShift)
• AMD Radeon RX 6800S with 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM (105W TGP with SmartShift)

The AMD Radeon RX 6700S is a mid-range dedicated GPU with performance equivalent to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 or an RTX 3070, depending on the game or application. It can handle gaming at the laptop's native resolution of 2560 x 1600, but you'll have to lower some settings to get around or over 60 fps in graphically demanding games. You can also get higher frame rates by turning on FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution), though only a limited number of games support it at this time. FSR is a feature that boosts performance by rendering the game at a lower resolution and upscaling the image afterward to minimize any loss in visual quality, similar to NVIDIA's DLSS. If you want to take full advantage of the display's 120Hz refresh rate, it's best to play at 1080p. The lower resolution is easier to drive and doesn't look significantly worse due to the size of the display. There's ray-tracing support, but it has a high performance cost, so it's only worth turning on if you also enable FSR to make up for the performance loss. The AMD Radeon RX 6800S is faster than the RX 6700S, giving you a 5 to 15% performance increase on average. Both GPUs are suitable for production workloads like video editing and 3D rendering.

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 has a MUX (multiplexer) switch to allow the dedicated GPU to send information directly to the display without going through the integrated GPU, resulting in better performance than a laptop that lacks this feature. The laptop is in Hybrid Mode by default, allowing the system to switch between the integrated graphics and the dedicated GPU to extend battery life.

You can configure this laptop with 16GB or 32GB of memory. Both options come with half of the memory soldered onto the motherboard and the rest as a SO-DIMM module. It means that if you get a 16GB model with the intention of adding more yourself later on, you can only upgrade to a maximum of 24GB.

You can only get this laptop with 1TB of storage.

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14's overall score in Geekbench 5 is outstanding. The AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS has strong single- and multi-thread performance and is powerful enough to provide a smooth experience, even in demanding workloads like video editing, compiling code, or 3D modeling. The AMD Radeon RX 6700S and 6800S GPUs are suitable for intensive compute tasks, but if you use an application like Adobe Premiere, it's still better to get an Intel system with an NVIDIA GPU due to better optimization and integration, so it's best to check first.

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 scores exceptionally well in Cinebench R23, making it suitable for CPU rendering and other related tasks. It beats the Apple MacBook Pro 16 (2021) with an M1 Max SoC by a small margin but is behind the Dell G15 (2022) with an Intel Core i5-12500H.

The performance in Blender is great. The AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS can complete the bmw27 render relatively quickly. Using a dedicated GPU would be faster, but Blender doesn't seem to support the AMD Radeon RX 6700S as it doesn't offer an option for GPU rendering. If you need to work in Blender, it's best to get a laptop with an NVIDIA RTX GPU, as Blender can take advantage of NVIDIA's Optix API hardware acceleration.

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 performs exceptionally well in the Basemark GPU benchmark, very close to the performance of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER Max-Q in the Dell Alienware m15 R3 (2020). The AMD Radeon RX 6700S and 6800S can handle graphically demanding titles at 1080p; however, you'll have to lower some settings to get to 60fps if you play at the display's native QHD+ resolution. The 6800S is only about 5 to 15% better on average than the 6700S.

The PCIe Gen.4 NVMe SSD performs exceptionally well. Its fast read and write speeds allow the system to boot up, launch apps, and transfer files very quickly. Its exceptional sequential read speed is great for gaming as it helps shorten loading times.

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 has great battery life. Because the system can switch to the CPU's integrated graphics in lighter workloads, you can easily get through a typical 8-hour workday on a full charge. The battery life for video playback is outstanding, long enough to get through a couple of full-length movies. The battery life for gaming and other demanding workloads is good for a high-power laptop but still very short, so you'll have to use it plugged in most of the time. The system is in Hybrid Mode by default, meaning it can switch between the integrated graphics and the dedicated GPU depending on the workload. Setting the system to use the dedicated GPU only reduces the web browsing battery life to 3.9 hours and the video playback battery life to 2.4 hours. Models with an AMD Radeon RX 6800S will have slightly shorter battery life. Battery life varies greatly depending on your usage.

Borderlands 3 runs decently well on the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 at 1080p. The average frame rate at high settings is good and well above 60 fps, and while there are noticeable stutters, they don't happen that often. The results above are benchmark scores obtained in the default Performance mode. Switching to the Turbo mode improves performance considerably, increasing the average frame rate at high settings to around 90 fps at the cost of louder fans. At 1440p in the Performance mode, it reaches 60 fps at high settings and 119 fps at low settings. Switching into Turbo mode increases the average frame rate to 64 fps at high settings and 139 fps at low settings. The AMD Radeon RX 6800S will only perform slightly better.

The performance in Civilization VI is great. The game runs smoothly at 1080p with a high average frame rate and no noticeable stutters. At 1440p in the Performance mode, it reaches an average of 114 fps at high settings and 278 fps at low settings. Switching into Turbo mode increases the frame rate to 121 fps at high settings and 283 fps at low settings. The average turn time is decent, about the same as the Dell G15 (2022) with an Intel Core i5-12500H CPU.

CS:GO runs incredibly well at 1080p. You can even run the game at 1440p and still get frame rates well above the display's maximum refresh rate. In the Performance mode, it reaches an average frame rate of 258 fps at 1440p with high settings and 428 fps at low settings. The Turbo mode increases it further to 284 fps at high settings and 461 fps at low settings.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider runs very smoothly at 1080p with high settings. The average frame rate is great, and there's almost no stutter. You can also run this game at the laptop's native QHD+ resolution without any issues. At 1440p in the Performance mode, the average frame rate is 70 fps at high settings and 75 fps at low settings. The Turbo mode increases the frame rate to 81 fps at high settings and 138 fps at low settings. The AMD Radeon RX 6800S will provide slightly better frame rates, around 10 to 15 fps more at the laptop's native resolution. The large frametime spikes are scene changes and aren't representative of the laptop's performance.

The ASUS G14 has poor thermal and noise handling. The keyboard deck is warm even when idle, but the fans are silent. The keyboard gets very hot under load and can be uncomfortable, and the fans are loud, albeit not annoying. The above results are measurements taken in the default Performance mode. You can change the profile through the ASUS Armory app; the other options are Windows, Silent, Turbo, and Manual. The Turbo mode increases fan noise slightly and is only available with the laptop plugged in. Due to the laptop's design, there's a lot of hot air blowing at the bottom of the screen. It doesn't seem to be an issue so far, though only time will tell whether it'll cause any issues in the long term.

The performance over time is excellent. Although the CPU and GPU get hot under load, only the GPU suffers from thermal throttling. The performance loss isn't significant but still noticeable. The AMD Radeon RX 6800S will likely perform similarly.

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 has a few pre-installed applications, including:

• ASUS Armory Crate: Lets you monitor the system status, change performance settings, create keyboard lighting profiles, as well as access gaming news and the ASUS online shop.
• ASUS Aura Creator: Lets you customize the AniME Matrix on the laptop's lid and the keyboard's RGB backlight.
• Disney+: App for the video streaming service.
• Dolby Access: Adds Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision support. It also lets you change the sound and picture profile or create a custom sound profile through EQ.
• MyASUS: Lets you connect your smartphone for file transfers, customer support, and power settings.
• Spotify: App for the music streaming service.

The ASUS Zephyrus G14 has a Windows-Hello compatible IR camera for facial recognition. You can use it to log into Windows, authorize purchases on the Windows Store, or auto-fill saved passwords on supported websites.