SLEEKER, SHINIER, and now with the most recent AMD Ryzen mobile processors, give it up for the latest Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 for 2024. Without wanting to give away too much, too soon, it looks, feels, and performs better than ever.
The most immediately noticeable improvement with the new G14 is the all-aluminum chassis. Built from CNC-machined aluminum and covering the laptop from head to toe, it’s a big improvement in both look and feel over the previous model, which uses some plastic parts. The underside is now aluminum where it was once flexible plastic, which should strengthen it, though one downside is how hot it gets to the touch while gaming.
The new G14 chassis also helps shed some thickness—the new model comes in at 0.62 inches, compared to 0.78 inches on the previous model. Moreover, the new styling makes the G14 feel like a direct competitor to the likes of the Razer Blade 14. The all-metal body and slightly more subdued lighting system on the lid—a single strip of programmable white LEDs runs diagonally across it—make the G14 feel a much more premium device.
Specs wise, AMD’s Ryzen 9 8945HS serves eight cores and 16 threads of Zen 4. It’s a powerful chip for both gaming and multithreaded tasks, such as editing, but not massively different from the AMD Ryzen 7 7940HS that preceded it in earlier G14 models. Likewise, it has an NPU to accelerate some local AI workloads, but it’s not fast enough to qualify as an official AI PC, according to Microsoft’s new Copilot+ standard, for whatever that‘s worth.
Our review unit is configured with an RTX 4070 mobile GPU, which is really a rebadged 4060 Ti desktop or thereabouts, minus some clock speed, thanks to a 90W power limit. Still, the G14 stays well ahead of the RTX 4060 laptops we’ve previously tested, and in that sense, it still feels like you’re getting your money’s worth from the higher-spec RTX 4070 chip—even if not quite the same level of performance you’d expect out of a chunkier, more power-hungry gaming laptop.