ROG Zephyrus G14 (2024) Review - Better than you Think

all right I know we're late to the party but I finally have the 2024 Rog zeph G14 there is a lot to unpack with this laptop no pun intended Asus is doing some cool stuff with this I'm actually really excited doing a live unwrapping for you guys there she is the new zephrus G14 let's get [Music] started [Music] so Asus has redesigned the new G14 from top to bottom despite them using the same gpus from last year the switch to amd's new ryzen 8000 series isn't anything groundbreaking since it's basically ryzen 7000 sprinkled with AI meaning these new chips come with faster npus um than the previous generation but let's talk about this new design because I think Asus has out did themselves by crafting one of the best premium based 14-in gaming laptops on the market they basically took the G14 that we all love and just dialed it up to 11 to compete with the likes of the Razer Blade 14 and if the new HP Omen transcend 14 which um to to review by the way if you guys are interested in checking that out let us know in the comments down below but anyways you're greed by a chassis that's crafted from CNC M aluminum which is a day and night difference compared to the previous generation G14 in terms of handling it's much more uh rigid 16% thinner and surprisingly lighter as well I think we're talking about3 lbs of difference which is pretty amazing it's actually pretty close to my 14-in MacBook Pro in terms of size uh which is a pretty big achievement for the engineers at Rog this Platinum White model also looks absolutely stunning Asus has toned down the aggressive styling this year while retaining some Rog DNA like this embedded SL lighting feature that allows user to customize lighting patterns through the Armory crate software now you can choose to disable this for a subtle look and it can also potentially extend the battery life as well the Interior Space has been updated to match the Aesthetics of the exterior thanks to the unibody aluminum construction the keyboard doesn't Flex as much as the older model the key caps are slightly larger now offering 1.7 mm of key travel distance now having tested both the older G14 and the newer one um I honestly wasn't able to tell a huge difference between the two uh because it was already great to begin with so why fix something that isn't broken right I'm also not a huge fan of the fonts that they've used here because it just feels a bit out of place with the overall subtle design of the laptop now despite these Keys featuring RGB lighting I just disabled them completely throughout my testing because a it just clashes with the white gey caps and B the LEDs lack consistency they just haven't taken any measures to diffuse the lighting properly I really wish they addressed that this year uh because it was an issue with last year's g4ce 14 but yeah it's one thing that they just slacked off on you still get dedicated keys for volume control mic mute and accessing Armory crate sadly they did eliminate the fingerprint scanner from the power button but you can rely on Windows hello for login as a backup the trackpad is slightly different uh but it still retains its glass surface although I did notice that it requires a little bit more Force to click compared to last year's G14 uh this might be tiring over time if you prefer clicking over tapping for validation I prefer clicks so it was just really hard for me to get used to but uh other than that uh it was a pretty smooth navigating experience now the other change within the keyboard deck is the relocation of the front-facing speakers now Asus has added more speaker holes to fit larger tweeters for better audio performance now in total I think you get about six speakers including the woofers at the bottom and the end result is one of the best sound systems that you can get on a Windows laptop in this form factor the Basse is more boomy The Trebles are crispier it's not as loud as my 14-inch MacBook Pro but it certainly levels above every other Windows laptop with bottom facing drivers so this is what the webcam looks like on the new G14 now they're using the same 1080p sensor from the previous model so you're not going to notice a huge difference in detail but what I will say is the microphone quality is superb uh on this laptop I mean Asus has built a lot of uh processing modes built in like directional recording stereo enhanced 360° recording modes and it's got AI noise cancelling working behind the scenes to illiminate all the background noise so for conferencing and all sorts of stuff this microphone gets a job down really well now the port setup has been revised for this year's G14 so on the right hand side you get USB 3.2 Gen 2 type c which doubles as a display port 1.4 pass through that's linked directly to the discrete GPU USB type a and a Micro SD card slot not sure how many of you guys would actually use that but I would have actually preferred another type c or type a port Port uh switching over to the left hand side you get audio your second USB type a port USB 4 uh type-c with display port pass through although that one's linked to the internal graphics card the radium GPU uh and it also supports power delivery up to 100 Watts you also get HDMI 2.1 and finally the power port has been replaced with their proprietary slim Port now there has been a lot of discussion about why this was USB type-c but according to Asus this new Port was designed to deliver more power than USB C's to 40 W Max spec I believe this one can push 330 ws and above while being a lot more efficient both in heat output and cost plus it's reversible so that's a nice bonus now the power cable itself is pretty long and I'm glad that Asus didn't go with a braided solution like Razer did or does with their razor blade laptops uh so this one's just much more easier to handle and the power adapter is a really nice and compact 180 wat unit so this whole package fits into my backpack no problem if you're a student you're you're going to love this setup all right so let's talk about this new display shall we there's been some interesting Updates this year firstly they replaced uh the all IPS and Min LED options with OLED so this means you're greed with a really sharp and vibrant 3K 120 HZ panel they've kept the 16 X10 aspect ratio which I appreciate and the color reproduction is fantastic with better Adobe RGB coverage this makes it suitable for creators uh 3D artists or just programmers or just anyone who needs a really sharp and Vivid screen however choosing OLED means sacrificing Peak SDR brightness performance as you can see last year's G14 is much brighter than the OLED offerings so that's something to keep an eye out for additionally last year's panel was faster at 165 htz compared to this Generations 120 HZ so while you're getting a visually stunning display you're sacrificing in a few other areas but there is one more thing you see Asus being Asus added something called vrr or variable refresh rate you see conventional IPS panels project an entire image at once where brightness levels don't get affected regardless of how fast your screen is when you're in a gameplay setting um since there's only one backet source Ola displays light up multiple times for each frame since each pixel is its own light source and that can cause brightness and color irregularities which can also lead to a bit of screen tearing now to solve this Asus partnered up with Nvidia and Samsung to improve the refresh rate and and brightness synchronizations by essentially setting the pixel emission rate to 960 HZ on the G14 so this essentially results in a consistent and tear-free gaming experience thanks to support for g-sync now and you're also not being affected with brightness and color irregularities it's pretty amazing to witness this on a portable gaming laptop we've seen this on TVs but that requires a lot more computation but getting that into such a small form factor is pretty incredible you really have to see it in person to appreciate this technology that being said all this Tech comes at a price right well yes and no so Asus is offering two skes this year in the US the base spec includes an RTX 460 with a ryzen 9 CPU 16 gigs of RAM a terab of storage and the OLED panel for $1,600 which is the same as last year's spec however the 470 spec unfortunately cost $100 more than last year's G14 equipped with the same GPU so it does end up costing you a premium Asus is not offering a 4080 or 490 skew which makes total sense since it didn't really work on the previous generation considering how restrictive they were with power allocation those uh models or those gpus are reserved for the g16 now for our Canadian friends Asus is offering an exclusive 4050 model for U get this $2,200 Canadian which is absolutely absurd in my opinion it seems like inflation is just playing its part here but you might be asking are you actually gaining or losing anything with this new redesign and the price difference with the higher end specs of course and well why don't we start with upgradability because the first thing you're giving up is access to Ram modules that's right this year you're stuck with solded memory and the maximum you can configure is up to 32 GB which is devastating news for anyone looking to expand beyond that but they had to do it to keep up with the SIM form factor but at least you get access to the single populated m.2 gen 4x4 SSD which performs about the same compared to last gen you'll also notice that they've dished the waer chamber cooling system with a brand new triple fan design accompanied by seven heat pipes now that third fan is supposed to direct air to the internal components to keep the CPU and GPU temps under control interestingly there is a built-in dust filter over here which is pretty thoughtful but at the end of the day when you put all of this together how does that actually help the CPU and the GPU well let's take a look at how they behave now similar to last year we have three performance modes silent performance and turbo we'll focus on performance and turbo for both the 2023 G14 that we have over here and the new 2024 G14 since that's what most people are interested in keep in mind that the G14 that reviewed last year has an RTX 460 so it's not a perfect Apples to Apples comparison but it should give you a good idea in terms of what has has changed with the newer model and if you're sacrificing any starting with CPU power levels turbo mode behaves very similarly to the 20123 model with just a tiny 2- wat difference between them which isn't very significant however last year's model maintained those levels for longer compared to a slight dip in the 2024 G14 during the first few minutes of our test in performance mode there's a slight Advantage for the 2023 model but both end up consuming the same 45 Watts but surprisingly when we look look at clock speeds it looks like we might have won a silicone Lottery on the 2024 G14 frequencies were actually slightly higher on this model with a 120 MHz difference in turbo mode and about a 90 MHz difference in performance mode now while these temperature chart lines look completely different both these laptops ultimately end up at the same place it's just how they get there is very different it's very clear that the fan profiles and the general performance characteristics of the cooling system have changed a lot which makes sense since Asus completely revamped the cooling system this generation to make it smaller and lighter while also adding a third fan but if you switch over to the GPU you can clearly see that Asus has dialed back on the power allocation for the RTX 470 in comparison the 2023 G14 with the RTX 460 was balling at 120 watts in turbo mode so 30 W difference is pretty significant guys now you might be wondering about last year's G14 with a 470 and I can confirm that it was also running at close to 120 wats so it's pretty clear that this new design has brought a negative impact in terms of how much power these chips can consume now comparing performance modes we see a very similar pattern with the 2023 G14 drawing about 20 watts more than the 2024 G14 now the difference in power obviously impacts clock speeds over time but it's hard for us to demonstrate that since we are dealing with two different gpus here the 4060 on last year's G14 always runs at higher clocks than the 47 at the same power level and obviously that leads to significantly higher clock speeds in this comparison since it has even more power to play around with I guess the one positive aspect of these restricted power levels is notably lower GPU temperatures both in Turbo and performance modes uh the new G14 levels off to around 76° C compared to 85° C on the older G14 so I guess that's good news so in the end how does that all translate to real world performance I'm going to start with some thetic test just to get a Baseline and move on to some longer tests so in cinebench multicore what you'll be seeing here is going to be repeated throughout almost all of these results basically when it comes to intensive multi-core workloads the ryzen 98945 HS doesn't necessarily yield a significant improvement over the 7940 HS despite it running at slightly higher clock speeds in both performance and turbo settings because they're basically the same chip even single cor performance is neck to neck compared to the huge leap that we saw from ryzen 6000 to ryzen 7000 of course the AMD systems can compete with Intel's Raptor Lake offerings but it's a fact that these ryen CPUs do Take the Lead when it comes to power efficiency now as I go through the rest of the benchmarks it's pretty clear that the new G14 brings about a 2 to 3% improvement over the previous generation now while this is a minor Improvement it may not be substantial enough to Warrant an immediate upgrade it just goes to show that ryzen 7000 is still a terrific option in 2024 if you're looking to save a few bucks you can certainly squeeze a lot of performance by enabling turbo mode but it's not enough to overcome the previous generation guys plus enabling this mode can come at a cost and that is an increase in noise levels in fact our test revealed that the newer model is noticeably louder than its pressor creative Focus applications like Da Vinci resolve Studio perform really well on this new G14 uh it actually managed to beat the new Legion 7i with a 14 HX processor and it's a small improvement over last gen 7940 HS Adobe premere Pro on the other hand did provide a generous improvement over last gen but like we mentioned before if you're using Premiere Pro getting an Intel based device will save you a ton of time for rendering outputs due to their quick sync engine optimizations shifting gears to gaming and well what can I say I kind of saw this coming as soon as I analyzed gpu's power and frequencies over time the RTX 47 on the newer model just leaves a ton of performance on the table due to its restricted power allocation I mean that RTX 460 on the older model looks like a great deal right now because it's pretty much neck to neck to the 470 both in performance and Turbo Modes the 4070 is just taking a slight edge here since it has 50% more shaders than the 4060 but if we were to test last gen 270 G14 there's no doubt it would have wiped the floor with this newer model in all of the games the story at 1440p is almost the same despite the RTX 470 running at a lower wattage it closely mirrors the performance of the RTX 460 from the previous generation this represents one of the major drawbacks of this iteration guys Asus prioritized Aesthetics over functionality ultimately compromising performance perhaps they could have increased the devices Zed height to accommodate a more robust cooling system allowing for greater GPU performance but we have to face reality and that's the results that fall short of the previous generation which is concerning given the increasingly competitive landscape of the gaming laptop Market I'm actually curious about how the g16 would perform but that's another topic for another video the last thing that I wanted to cover here is battery life and honestly there are no surprises here in these results our test showed that the newer model performed better under light loads which we attribute to the power efficiencies baked into the ryzen 8000 series when it comes to medium workloads both laptops perform similarly however when you push them to their limits the newer model managed to Outlast the previous gen G14 which aligns with its lower power consumption so here's the thing I like the new G14 guys I think they've definitely added some quality life improvements to this newer model the first thing is of course the premium build quality you're getting with it it's way better than what you get with the older generation new speakers are fantastic I mean I've never actually experienced something is good in this form factor way better than the older model uh you also get you know that OLED screen which is a chef's kiss it's not the fastest out there it's definitely not the brightest but I think we have to give it to Asus for pushing the limits of implementing something new something different if we analyze the performance factor it's slightly better than the previous generation G14 even though they're basically the same ship but you are losing a lot of FPS on the table with the GPU uh and you know there's no such thing as a free lunch when Asus decided to make this smaller and thinner they had to sacrifice on something and sadly that is gaming FPS that's just that's just reality so if you are somebody who's looking for the best bang for the bug gaming laptop in the 14-inch laptop space there's no denying the fact that the older G14 is still an excellent option they're still selling it in fact I found one for sale for around $1,400 with an RTX 470 I'll leave a link down below it's a steal you also get upgradeable memory on the older G14 which is definitely a nice bonus over the newer model but if you were to bring both these laptops in front of me I feel like I'm going to end up leaning towards the newer G14 simply because of the quality of life improvements that Asus has done to this newer chassis it's truly remarkable considering how thin it is super portable battery life is slightly improved I mean it's just a really great laptop just sucks about the performance that's the only thing but I guess I'm I'm okay with that maybe you might not be but yeah I'm curious to hear what you guys have to say about the new G14 thanks so much for watching and I'll talk to you guys in the next one

Channel: Hardware Canucks

Views: 150,093

Keywords: 2024 rog zephyrus g14, 2024 rog zephyrus g14 review, 2024 g14 vs 2023 g14, ryzen 9 8945hs vs ryzen 9 7940hs, rtx 4060 vs rtx 4070, rog zephyrus g14, rog zephyrus g14 2024 unboxing, rog zephyrus g14 2024 gaming test, best laptop 2024, best gaming laptop 2024, rog zephyrus g14 2024, best oled laptop 2024, hardware canucks, hardwarecanucks

Id: TANWEN2oM7M

Length: 18min 35sec (1115 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 03 2024