Best Gaming Laptop

 Best Gaming Laptop

 

 Asus ROG Zephyrus G14

Highly recognized as a gaming laptop, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 has garnered favorable reviews from a number of publications. The 2022 model of the G14 received a 4.5 out of 5 rating from PCMag, which praised its Ryzen 6000 update and superior gaming performance. The G14 was also reviewed by Tom's Hardware, which commended its AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS processor and named it one of the best AMD-based laptops currently on the market.

The G14 is renowned for its portability thanks to its small size and lengthy battery life. Tom's Guide said that it had an 11-hour battery life and an extremely portable design[3]. It also features superior audio and a display.

It is usually advised to read a variety of reviews and compare features to ascertain whether the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 satisfies your own requirements and preferences.

ASUS ROG ZEPHYRUS G14 (2022) SPECS

Laptop Class	Gaming
Processor	AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS
Processor Speed	3.3 GHz
RAM (as Tested)	32 GB
Boot Drive Type	SSD
Boot Drive Capacity (as Tested)	1 TB
Screen Size	14 inches
Native Display Resolution	2560 by 1600
Panel Technology	IPS
Variable Refresh Support	FreeSync
Screen Refresh Rate	120 Hz
Graphics Processor	AMD Radeon RX 6800S
Graphics Memory	8 GB
Wireless Networking	Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth
Dimensions (HWD)	0.73 by 12.28 by 8.94 inches
Weight	3.64 lbs
Operating System	Windows 11 Home
Laptop Class	Gaming

 

For a best gaming laptop, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (starts at $1,649.99; $2,499 as reviewed) almost seems too wonderful to be true. Although the small shape makes it as portable as a typical notebook, the sheer amount of power within previously called for a bulky gaming equipment. Additionally, the battery life is unaffected by the small size, lasting more than 10 hours on a single charge.

The Alienware x14 and the Razer Blade 14 are two other 14-inch gaming laptops that are tough competitors to the Asus Zephyrus. However, the Asus has constantly impressed us with some of the greatest performance and portability on the market when it first launched. Even better, the new model for this year boosts performance without altering the chassis' outstanding slimness or reducing battery life. This laptop should be purchased if you wish to play intense mobile games.

Zephyrus, Upgraded: Compact Gaming Levels Up

The gaming laptop Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 follows the pattern established by the model line over the last couple of years, staying loyal to tradition. For a gaming computer, the slender construction is surprisingly light and small, and the lid sparkles with a lavish arrangement of LED pinpoints (Asus calls it the "AniMe Matrix") that can show customized animations, quenching the desire for blinking lights without going crazy with RGB components. Additionally, the white color appears incredibly refined and tidy. Despite being a long cry from the stereotypically large, heavy gaming laptops of the past, the Zephyrus nonetheless manages to deliver significant gaming power.

The gaming laptop Zephyrus G14 is remarkably thin and light, with dimensions of just 0.77 by 12.3 by 8.9 inches (HWD). This is even after accounting for the extra thickness caused by the AniMe Matrix technology, which increases the lid's thickness by a tiny amount. One of the numerous things that have improved since last year is the array of 1,449 tiny LEDs, which provide brighter lighting for more dramatic animations.

The main display is somewhat larger and brighter, with a taller 16:10 aspect ratio promising less scrolling and 500 nits of brightness, as well as a higher 2,560-by-1,600-pixel native resolution, an amazing 120Hz refresh rate, and a quick 3-millisecond response time.

The Zephyrus G14 competes with some of the market's most amazing thin and light gaming laptops, such as the Razer Blade 14. It weighs 3.86 pounds, making it lighter than other conventional laptops yet containing far more power. The thin chassis, however, is constructed of aluminum, magnesium alloy, and durable polycarbonate, giving it strength and substance despite its portability.

The enviously small screen bezels remain, but Asus has managed to cram in a webcam, complete with IR face recognition for Windows Hello biometric logins. Asus has removed the fingerprint sensor from earlier models because the webcam handles security.

The touchpad is also 50% bigger than last year's model, with a wide glass-covered surface that glides smoothly. Touchpads aren't normally given much thought on gaming rigs because an external mouse or controller is better suited to gameplay, but that extra space seems massive whether you're browsing the web or working on productivity.

The only criticism we have with the Zephyrus G14 is that the keyboard backlight, while handy in low-light situations, may actually reduce visibility in bright light. It was clearly an issue with our white test device, but the darker Eclipse Gray color choice should not have the same issue.

The tiny gaming machine has a plethora of ports to offer. A pair of USB 3.0 Type-A connectors, a USB-C port, and a microSD card slot are located on the system's right side. On the left, there's an HDMI video output and another USB-C port, this one with DisplayPort video output as well. A headphone jack enables audio connectivity, and a power connector is located in the chassis's center. Wireless communication is also improved, including Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2.

Power to the People: Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2022) Evaluation

The Zephyrus G14 2022 model is based on the most recent AMD hardware. That means an AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS (3.3GHz) processor with 32GB of DDR5 memory and AMD Radeon RX 6800S graphics with 8GB of VRAM on our review model.

Even the more basic base model, which uses the same Ryzen 9 6900HS CPU, is outstanding. The memory capacity is reduced to 16GB, and the Radeon RX 6700S GPU is a half-step down, but the price is reduced to $1,649.

We compared our machine to some of the best 14-inch gaming laptops on the market for testing reasons. The Alienware x14 is similarly priced and equipped, however it uses Intel's latest "Alder Lake" processors and Nvidia graphics. The Razer Blade 14, which helped usher in today's tiny 14-inch designs, is still powered by AMD hardware from last year.

For reference, we also included the Zephyrus G14 2021 and one of our favorite budget gaming laptops, the 15-inch MSI Katana GF66, to show what kind of performance boosts the Asus' greater pricing truly provides.

Tests of Productivity and Content Creation

When assessing any system, we start with UL's PCMark 10, which replicates a comprehensive range of productivity tasks, from word processing and online surfing to videoconferencing, and provides a good overall estimate of system performance. We also utilize the Full System Drive storage subtest of the benchmark to evaluate drive performance. However, because SSDs are now common on so many gaming PCs, the latter figures won't transfer as easily into notable performance improvements.

In order to determine a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads, we perform three benchmark tests. Maxon's Cinebench R23 stress-tests a processor's multi-threaded performance by rendering a complicated scenario repeatedly in a 10-minute test run using the Cinema 4D engine. Geekbench 5.4 Pro from Primate Labs replicates real-world applications such as PDF rendering, speech recognition, and machine learning. Finally, we compare how quickly devices execute this tough operation by using HandBrake 1.4 to transcode a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p.

Our last productivity test used Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud 22 and the PugetBench testing extension from workstation manufacturer Puget Systems, assessing performance as the system runs a script of editing operations and filters on a test image.

The outcomes speak for themselves. The 2022 Zephyrus G14 uses its new AMD hardware to give outstanding performance across the board, often outperforming the competition. It's not unusual to see good performance from a gaming laptop—they're all designed to be powerful computers. But, with one so capable of photo editing and video transcoding, it's apparent that you'll be able to rely on this laptop for all kinds of media creation, whether you're buying it as a committed gamer or as a work-and-play switch-hitter.

Graphics and Gaming Evaluations

On almost every machine that comes into PC Labs, we run two 3DMark game simulations: 3DMark Night Raid and 3DMark Time Spy. Night Raid provides a simple baseline for all systems, whereas Time Spy is ideally suited to high-end PCs with discrete GPUs.

We want more than an abstract performance score for a gaming PC, so we also run three real-world tests utilizing the built-in benchmarks of F1 2021, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, and Rainbow Six Siege. These games cover a wide range of genres, with simulation, open-world action-adventure, and competitive esports shooter games all being evaluated to see how effectively the system handles the specific needs of each. Every test is conducted twice, once with low graphics settings and once with high graphics settings (Valhalla at Medium and Ultra quality presets, Siege at Low and Ultra quality). F1 2021 is also played twice, but with and without Nvidia's performance-boosting DLSS anti-aliasing. (In this example, we used AMD Fidelity FX Super Resolution, which is the company's similar technology.)

When compared to other 14-inch gaming rigs, the 2022 Zephyrus G14 has some of the greatest graphics performance we've seen, and it shines most in real-world games. In Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Rainbow Six Siege, it tops the group, producing frame rates that other PCs could only achieve by decreasing the defaults. 

The new Asus also competes with the best in F1 2021, demonstrating that the AMD Radeon RX 6800S can compete with Nvidia's competitive GPUs and that AMD's Fidelity FX is a viable alternative to DLSS.

Tests of the Battery and Display

The last step in our battery life test is to loop a locally saved 720p video clip (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) until the laptop shuts down while lowering the display brightness to 50%, turning up the audio volume to 100%, and turning off Wi-Fi (placing the machine in airplane mode).

We utilize a Datacolor SpyderX Elite display calibration tool and software to grade notebook screens by measuring their brightness in nits (candelas per square meter) at 50% and 100% brightness as well as their coverage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts.

The Asus performs at its most stunning here. The battery life of the 2022 Zephyrus was within a minute of that of the model from the previous year, despite the fact that it used a lot more power, had a higher resolution display, and increased the brightness of its LED-lit lid and display. Not only is that practically a rounding error, but it also easily defeats the opposition, whether it is the costly Razer or the low-cost MSI. The screen's overall color quality and resolution are as good as anything you'll find in the 14-inch class, and it came very close to reaching its stated 500-nit brightness at 444 nits, second only to the Alienware.

The 14-inch Gaming Hill's King

We're still in awe of the amount of raw power that Asus has stuffed into the sleek design of the most recent ROG Zephyrus G14 after years of looking at bulky gaming rigs that were only portable in the sense that they had built-in monitors. Although it was a remarkable achievement when the system was first unveiled in 2020, the laptop manufacturer's collaboration with AMD has surpassed our expectations and warned the competition.

The Zephyrus G14 performed admirably in every benchmark and game we threw at it, frequently outperforming the Alienware X14 in its class. It demonstrated significant gaming skills that defied first impressions of the slim design and beautiful lid, going above and beyond simple playability. It is also easily transportable because to its remarkably long 10-hour battery life and light weight. The 2022 Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is the gaming laptop to buy if you want one without the typical restrictions.