Review Verdict : ASUS has managed to cram a ridiculous amount of processing power in both the GPU and CPU in the ROG Zephyrus G14 (2024), and the result is a machine that can do almost anything you ask from it in a package that’s lighter than most of its competitors.

Pros

• It is relatively light for the amount of power that it has
• Discrete graphics make light work of most AAA games nowadays
• Fantastic 14-inch OLED panel
• Great keyboard

Cons

• Still not a fan of the slash design on the lid
• Battery life isn’t great

With gaming laptops, you usually get a heavy AF chassis with enough compute power to put your desktop rig to shame, or a lightweight that can’t even run games on medium without stuttering badly. ASUS has continuously bucked that trend with their Zephyrus line of gaming laptops, and the 2024 refresh for the G14 has made a good gaming laptop even better.

ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 (2024) Review: Design

If you saw our Zephyrus G16 (2024) review, you have a good idea of what the Zephyrus G14 (2024) looks like. You’re essentially getting the same, CNC’d metal chassis and lid.

The build quality of the Zephyrus G14 (2024) is second to none – since this is a machined chassis, there’s very little flex in the body. The only thing I don’t like is the slash LED design on the back that replaces the AnimeMatrix design that I wanted from a few years ago. It’s simplistic and feels like a downgrade, though thankfully you can turn that off via ArmoryCrate.

There are plenty of ports available on the chassis: you get 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, 1 USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C that can support DisplayPort, as well as 1 Thunderbolt 4 that also supports DisplayPort. There’s also a microSD slot on the side.

What’s even better is that the ROG Zephyrus G14 only weighs in at 1.5kg, so it’s relatively on the lighter side of gaming laptops. We usually have to contend with heavier weights when you get better hardware, so getting a powerful laptop that’s roughly the weight of a MacBook Pro is pretty cool.

 

ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 2024 Review Philippines: Display

Despite the Zephyrus G14 2024 packing a smaller, 14-inch display versus its bigger brother, it’s one of the best displays in the 14-inch category that I’ve seen so far this year. The laptop uses ASUS’ Nebula Display, their fancy way of referring to their specialized OLED panel.

It’s a 3K resolution (2880 x 1800) set in a 16:10 aspect ratio, with a refresh rate of 120Hz and a promised DCI-P3 coverage of 100%. It also has Adaptive G-Sync, and is Pantone Validated, which makes it fairly desirable as display panels go, especially if you’re the type that requires accurate colors for work.

It’s also a great display to play games on, and while I’m garbage at Delta Force: Hawk Ops, at least I’m able to enjoy the scenery in all its glory before someone puts a bullet through my forehead from a mile away.

 

ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 2024 Review Philippines: Keyboard, Trackpad, Speakers

The Zephyrus G14 has a smaller space on its chassis compared to its bigger brother, so it’s not surprising that ASUS nixed the number pad on the side.

That being said, the keyboard on the Zephyrus G14 2024 feels great to type on, and there weren’t any major adjustments on my end to type quickly. The keyboard travel is generous at 1.7mm, and I’m not exaggerating when I say this laptop has one of the best keyboards in its class.

There’s a glass trackpad that’s fairly large and responsive, and while you’ll mostly be spending your time with the laptop with a gaming mouse (either one that you already own or via the one that’s included in the box) it works well enough for its intended purpose.

Sound is one of the things that’s hard to get right in a laptop, especially in a chassis as small as this one, but ASUS managed to stuff one of the best-sounding set of speakers in a laptop in the Zephyrus G14. The speakers make enough bass that you’ll wonder if there’s a dedicated subwoofer in the chassis, and the sound quality is excellent even at maximum volume.

 

ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 2024 Review Philippines: Performance and Battery Life

The Zephyrus G14 2024 is armed with an NVIDIA RTX 4070 laptop GPU which does most of the heavy lifting, as well as 32GB of LPDDR5X 6400 RAM and a 1 TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD.

What sets it apart from its bigger sibling is the fact that AMD, not Intel, provides the CPU for this machine. To be specific, the Zephyrus G14 2024 gets an AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS Processor, which is up there in terms of performance for a mobile machine.

The ROG Zephyrus G14 (2024) is capable of rendering games at its native resolution past 60FPS at max settings, though there are caveats. You’ll have to turn on NVIDIA’s DLSS to help out the NVIDIA RTX 4070 laptop GPU, and even then you’ll have to make sure to turn on frame generation to get near the 60 FPS target if you’re not keen on reducing the resolution or turning down graphical settings. That’s not a problem with games like Helldivers 2 though, which enjoyed 76FPS with everything cranked up on the laptop’s native resolution, or Delta Force, which had frames above 100FPS with the extreme setting.

The laptop has enough juice to drive AAA gaming titles forward past the 60FPS mark and competitive eSports titles like Valorant and Counter-Strike 2 past 144FPS. It’s built for both casual gaming enjoyers and sweaty competitive try-hards, which is 90% of the PC gaming population.

Battery life is pretty good–we got around 6 hours of battery with mostly web browsing and productivity tasks. The laptop switches to the more power-efficient, built-in eGPU in the processor when it’s off the plug. There’s a way to force the laptop to run its discrete GPU on battery power, but that’s going to drain the battery quickly. As with every other gaming laptop out there, you’re pretty much relegated to plugged-in gaming if you want to enjoy this laptop’s full performance.

As for software, the laptop comes with Windows 11 and comes pre-loaded with a bunch of ASUS software that ranges from useful to bloatware. Armory Crate makes an appearance (naturally) which is where you’re going to spend most of your time if you want to tweak the laptop’s performance to your liking.

Thermal performance is relatively good, though we did notice temps of around 85 degrees Celsius while running Helldivers 2 for the CPU. That’s not hot enough to thermally throttle performance, but those temps are a little disconcerting especially if you’re coming from a desktop PC. The fans do get loud when you’re gaming, but that’s to be expected as the laptop draws more power from the wall when you’re gaming, and all that heat has to go somewhere.

ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 (2024) Review: Wrap-up and verdict

It used to be you had to sacrifice weight and portability for power, but that’s no longer the case with the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 (2024). This laptop is powerful enough for modern AAA gaming above 60FPS but weighs as much as a MacBook Pro. I love the screen, keyboard, and performance, and its asking price, while steep, is justified considering what you’re getting.

ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 (2024) Review: Price

The ASUS Zephyrus G14 (2024) is priced at Php 159,995 in the Philippines for the configuration that we used for the review.