Conclusion
At $1450, the G14 represents an incredible value and bucks many of the trends we normally see with gaming laptops; the G14 does not compromise on battery size, the trackpad, size, display color accuracy, CPU performance, etc. When you compare this to previous and current generation Intel mobile CPUs, it’s hard to make a case against AMD (to be clear, I do not have such a laptop to test against but this is the general consensus of other reviews). To my knowledge, no OEMs offer 8 core Intel CPUs in a similar chassis and only the chonkiest of Intel based laptops can even hold a candle to the 4900HS.
But, for those simply looking for a gaming laptop, the G14 might not be the best option. Its RTX 2060 Max Q GPU isn’t really that fast, the display suffers from ghosting issues (though I personally found them to be very minor), and it gets decently hot and loud while gaming. If you’re wondering whether or not the G14 is for you, ask yourself one question: are you going to use this for anything else? There is a very strong argument for the G14 as a PC that can do everything decent enough while compromising on very little. You don’t have to choose between a laptop that can game or get you through the day on a single charge, or a between a laptop that is small or is large.
This is not to say that the G14 is perfect. It has driver and battery life issues that need to be fixed. Not everyone is like me and is fine with killing processes in task manager upon every fresh boot. Not everyone wants to make sure Steam isn’t running in the background. Not everyone has the time to deal with this sort of stuff. The battery life issue has probably already affected at least one person, and that person is probably really confused why his battery life is not even half of what all the reviewers got. I notified AMD of this issue almost a month ago now and nothing has been done about it as far as I can tell. AMD and ASUS should have caught these issues before it even left the factory and it’s extremely disappointing that the issues remain.
I didn’t get this laptop as a review sample; I chose it very intentionally. For me, this laptop is excellent for college. My previous HP Spectre x360 was thin enough, but it was rather large and heavy since it was a 15 inch model. Nor did it deliver that great of battery life, even though it had an 84 Whr battery (larger than the 76 Whr battery in the G14). My Spectre also really couldn’t game, whether it used the Intel integrated graphics or the Vega M discrete graphics, though this is largely down to a very poor heatsink and VRM design. In general, the Spectre was just really slow, especially since it used a quad core i7. I bought the Spectre For about $1350 back in 2018. The G14 improves my experience in almost every way: gaming, portability, battery life, fingerprint scanner (the one on the Spectre is terrible), speakers, display refresh rate, trackpad, and noise. The only things the G14 is deficient in compared to the Spectre is the display and the keyboard. I can give up 4K in exhange for 120 Hz, but giving up touch did not make me happy. Thankfully, the G14’s keyboard is still really good, even compared to the great keyboard on the Spectre. Think about this for a moment, though: the G14 does the thin and light experience better than the HP Spectre, and the G14 is a gaming laptop. I am very happy that I chose the G14 as my daily driver, the overall experience is great.
$1450 is alot to put down for a laptop, but I feel like for the G14 it’s worth it for most people. There are other configurations for the G14 to better fit your budget and needs. There are actually more expensive models with the AniMe LED display and a 1440p 60 Hz display, and these models go up to about $2000. If you want something cheaper, ASUS should have configurations with cheaper CPUs and GPUs; for CPUs, that would be the 4800HS (about the same as the 4900HS) and the 4600HS (with 6 cores, not 8), and for GPUs the 1660Ti, 1650Ti, and 1650. The lowest end 4600HS and 1650 equipped model will cost around $1100. In my opinion, it’s absolutely worth upgrading to the 4900HS and 2060 for just an additional $350, but if you find gaming to be secondary to battery life and basic, light tasks, then the $1100 model is pretty decent.
The Zephryus G14 is simply a great laptop for almost anyone, which is why I feel comfortable awarding it with our gold medal. It’s one of the cheapest laptops for its performance class, has great battery life (with some exceptions), and has a small 14 inch chassis. ASUS and AMD have alot to be proud of here, but they do need to work on fixing these bugs, so they shouldn’t celebrate too early.
