7 Best Asus Gaming Laptops for Every Type of Gamer. Asus gaming laptop

Best Asus Gaming Laptops for Every Type of Gamer

You don’t have to break the bank to get a powerful, enjoyable gaming experience.

Within the world of laptops and PC peripherals, Asus products are almost unavoidable. With a plethora of well-priced computers, monitors, and accessories, any quick Google search will be loaded with Asus products.

Thankfully, most of Asus’ products are rock solid. This is especially true when it comes to their popular gaming laptops. Often making headlines with star-studded critical reviews, Asus’ gaming laptops come in a wide range of sizes and at a wide variety of price points. But the sheer number of models to choose from can make picking the “right one” overwhelming.

That’s why we’ve put together a list of seven of Asus’ best gaming laptops for anyone seeking portable, powerful gaming.

Best Asus Gaming Laptops

• Best Overall:Asus ROG Zephyrus G15
• Best 14-Inch:Asus ROG Zephyrus G14
• Best 17-Inch:Asus ROG Strix SCAR 17Reviewreview
• Best Budget:Asus TUF Dash 15Review
• Best for AMD Fans:Asus ROG Strix G15 Advantage Editionreview
• A Powerful 2-In-1:Asus ROG FLOW X13review
• A Unique Dual-Screen Option:Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo SE 15

What to Consider

Shopping for a laptop of any kind can be overwhelming. The variety of tech specs, model numbers, and price tags can make even a veteran shopper dizzy. This is especially true when it comes to buying a gaming laptop, where tech specs are crucial to smooth gaming performance.

While there are too many considerations to list here, keep an eye on these key specifications when shopping for your Asus gaming laptop:

GPU

Having a great GPU is the best way to get great gaming graphics. We recommend at least an NVIDIA RTX 3060 or AMD Radeon 6700M.

RAM

Most great gaming laptops come with 16GB of RAM, which we recommend.

Display Resolution

subjective than other considerations, a 1920 x 1080 HD display will perform well on nearly any laptop. Higher resolutions, such as 2560 x 1440 quad-HD, require more powerful components to perform smoothly.

Display Refresh Rate

The display refresh rate is a major differentiating factor between gaming and non-gaming computers. We recommend a laptop capable of at least a 120Hz refresh rate.

How We Evaluated

Many of these recommendations come from significant personal use. For the products we didn’t use ourselves, we performed intensive research, reviewing content from expert sources like Wirecutter, The Verge, CNET, Tom’s Guide, DigitalTrends, and others, as well as thousands of consumer reviews from online storefronts like Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart. As for the products themselves, we evaluated them on performance, design, build quality, and price.

Good looks and good gaming performance from Asus’ latest ROG Strix laptop

Tom’s Hardware Verdict

The ROG Strix G16 shines in gaming, and comes in an attractive and well-built chassis.

Pros

• Excellent gaming performance
• Great battery life
• Excellent keyboard
• Good build quality

Cons

Why you can trust Tom’s Hardware

Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.

Among Asus’ esports-branded Strix laptop, the 16-inch ROG Strix G16 is the option for those who prefer something smaller. (The Strix G17 and Strix G18 sit above it in size). The ROG Strix G16 features a top-of-the-line Intel Core i9-13980HX Raptor Lake processor and Nvidia’s new GeForce RTX 4070. This marks the second laptop we’ve tested with Nvidia’s Ada Lovelace-based mainstream laptop GPU.

The ROG Strix G16 also represents the latest laptop transitioning from a 16:9 to 16:10 aspect ratio, with a 16-inch 1920 x 1200 (WUXGA) 165 Hz IPS display. This laptop has the goods to contend with some of the best gaming laptops on the market and includes 16GB of DDR5-4800 memory, a 1TB SSD, and a high-quality chassis that we’ve come to expect from Asus ROG.

With a price tag of 1,999 as configured, the ROG Strix G16 offers a lot of competent hardware, but how does it stack up to the competition?

Design of the Asus ROG Strix G16

Asus has completely redesigned the chassis of the ROG Strix G16 for 2023, and I think it looks great. Asus uses aluminum for the lid and plastic for the rest of the chassis. Plastic doesn’t have to mean “cheap,” as the ROG Strix G16 has a high-quality fit and finish throughout, along with a satin-like sheen.

Asus keeps it relatively subtle with the RGB lighting; a thin “under-glow” LED strip runs along the laptop’s front edge and wraps around to the sides and per-key lighting for the keyboard. Each is configurable using Aura Sync in the Asus Armoury Crate software.

Speaking of the keyboard, Asus added five programmable hotkeys at the top of the keyboard, labeled M1 through M5. By default, they handle functions like volume, microphone on/off, and a shortcut to the Armoury Crate. The ROG Strix G16 does not feature a number pad despite seemingly being large enough to accommodate it.

The right side of the ROG Strix G16 is home to just two USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A ports. However, the left side features one Thunderbolt 4 port, one USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C port, a GbE port, HDMI 2.1 port, a 3.5mm audio jack, and a proprietary barrel-style power port. There are large vents along both sides of the laptop and rear to exhaust heat generated by the Core i9-13980HX and GeForce RTX 4070.

The laptop measures 13.94 x 10.39 x 0.89 inches (354 x 264 x 304 mm) and weighs 5.51 pounds (2.5 kg). That weight compares to 5.73 pounds for the Gigabyte Aorus 15X, 5.2 pounds for the HP Omen 16 and 4.4 pounds for the Razer Blade 15.

Asus ROG Strix G16 Specifications

CPUGraphicsMemoryStorageDisplayNetworkingPortsCameraBatteryPower AdapterOperating SystemDimensions (WxDxH)WeightPrice (as configured)

Intel Core i9-13980HX

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 (8GB GDDR6, 2,225 MHz Boost Clock, 140 W Max Graphics Power)

16GB DDR4-4800 (2x 8GB)

1TB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD

16-inch, 1920×1200, 165 Hz, 16:10

Intel Wi-Fi 6E AX211, Bluetooth 5.2

1x Thunderbolt 4, 1x USB 3.2 Type-C Gen 2, 2x USB 3.2 Type-A Gen 2, 1x HDMI 2.1, 3.5mm headphone jack, 1 Gbps Ethernet

720p

90 Whr

280 W

Windows 11 Home

13.94 x 10.39 x 0.89 inches (354 x 264 x 304 mm)

5.51 pounds (2.5 kg)

1,999

Gaming Performance on the Asus ROG Strix G16

The Asus ROG Strix G16 is a powerful gaming laptop featuring an Intel Core i9-13980HX (8 performance cores, 16 efficiency cores, 5.6 GHz max turbo boost), an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 GPU, 16GB of DDR5-4800 (two SO-DIMMs) and a 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD. The laptop has a somewhat awkward 1920 x 1200 resolution. It’s slightly more pixel-dense than a 1920 x 1080 display but well below the 2560 x 1440 panels we often see in the 2,000 price Band for gaming laptops. As a result, all the competitors in this group feature 2560 x 1440 panels because that’s what you’ll typically find in gaming laptops with GeForce RTX 3070/4070-class GPUs these days.

While benchmarking is intriguing, I wanted to spend some time gaming with the ROG Strix G16, so I fired up Overwatch 2. I set all detail settings maxed out at 1920 x 1200 resolution. I maintained 165 fps, matching the 165Hz refresh rate of the display. The 165 fps figure was maintained in just about any scenario while gaming online, even when a lot of action took place on the screen.

In our Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark, the ROG Strix G16 quickly moved to the head of the class at 1080p with 116 fps, just barely beating out the Gigabyte Aorus 15X (Core i9-13900HX, GeForce RTX 4070). The Razer Blade 15 (Core i7-12800H, GeForce RTX 3070 Ti) and HP Omen 16 (Core i7-12700H, GeForce RTX 3070 Ti) tied for third place with 90 fps at 1080p.

Moving to Grand Theft Auto V, the Razer Blade 15 and HP Omen 15 took top honors, hitting 104 fps at 1080p. Unfortunately, the GeForce RTX 4070-equipped ROG Strix G16 and Aorus 15X had to take a backseat. And as you’ll notice, all the other laptops fell significantly in performance at 1440p, which is understandable compared to the ROG Strix’s minimal drop from 1080p to 1200p.

Red Dead Redemption 2 saw the ROG Strix eke out another win at 72 fps over the Aorus 15X at 1080p. However, the Razer Blade 14 and Omen 16 weren’t too far behind. Again, the ROG Strix G16 showed a minimal drop at 1200p, compared to the more precipitous drop for the 1440p laptops.

The ROG Strix G16 and Aorus 15X ran away from their lesser GeForce RTX 3070 Ti-equipped competition in Far Cry 6, with each nearly hitting 100 fps at 1080p. The Razer Blade 15 came in third place with 83 fps, while the Omen 16 pulled up the rear with 66 fps at 1080p.

Finally, our Borderlands 3 test showed an outsized victory for the Aorus 15X, with 151 fps at 1080p. With a stronger CPU and the same GPU, the ROG Strix G16 only mustered 100 fps. We ran this benchmark multiple times to verify our results, but that’s where things stand. The Omen 16 and Razer Blade 15 came in third and fourth place, with 79 and 76 fps, respectively, at 1080p.

In games with DLSS support, such as Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Metro Exodus, quality mode upscaling can generally improve performance by 30–50 percent, sometimes more, and the resulting image quality often competes well against native rendering. DLSS 3 Frame Generation, where supported, can artificially boost the rate of frames sent to your display by 50–100 percent, but it causes additional latency and the actual feel of games with DLSS 3 doesn’t improve nearly as much as the higher FPS would indicate. It’s not a bad option to have, but personal preference becomes a real factor in what Frame Generation does to the overall experience.

To stress-test the ROG Strix G16, we ran Metro Exodus on its RTX preset at 1200p for 15 runs, which takes about half an hour. The system ran the game at an average of 79.35 fps, with all runs falling between 79.10 and 79.66 fps. The Core i9-13980HX’s performance cores ran at an average of 3.93 GHz, while the efficiency cores measured 3.3 GHz. The CPU package measured 76 degrees Celsius. Meanwhile, the RTX 4070 ran at an average 1,717 MHz and measured 65.4 C.

Productivity Performance on the Asus ROG Strix G16

Given its Core i9-13980HX processor, the Asus ROG Strix G16 packs some serious firepower for productivity tasks. This is Intel’s flagship Raptor Lake mobile processor, with 24 cores and 32 total threads. The processor performance cores have a maximum turbo clock of 5.6 GHz, while the efficiency cores top out at 4 GHz. Asus then pairs that processor with 16GB of DDR5-4800 memory using two 8GB SO-DIMMs.

Things started strong with Geekbench 5, with the ROG Strix G16 delivering a single-core score of 2,067 and a multi-core score of 18,227. These numbers just slightly outpaced the second-place Gigabyte Aorus 15X. With their less powerful Alder Lake-based processors, the Razer Blade 15 and HP Omen 16 trailed far behind, particularly in multi-core performance.

The ROG Strix G16 came in second place in the file transfer test, which involves copying 25GB of files across the SSD. We measured 1,238.04 MBps during the test, putting it roughly 30 percent slower than the first-place Aorus 15X (1,721.37 MBps). Asus uses a Micron 2400 SSD (MTFDKBA1T0QFM) in the laptop, which isn’t exactly the fastest PCIe 4.0 SSD on the market.

The ROG Strix G16 came in second place in our Handbrake test, which involves transcoding a 4K video to 1080p. It took the laptop five minutes and 5 seconds to complete the task compared to 3 minutes and 55 seconds for the Aorus 15X.

Display on the Asus ROG Strix G16

The Asus ROG Strix G16 features a 16-inch 165 Hz IPS panel with a 1920 x 1200 resolution. Laptops with thisunt of CPU and GPU power typically feature a 2560 x 1440 or 2560 x 1600 display. While our review sample came with a 1920 x 1200 panel, Asus does produce versions of this laptop with a 2560 x 1600 panel, which I think should be the standard here.

I like trying Overwatch 2 when looking at displays because of the bright and colorful palette. The greens and reds popped, and the calming blues of the Greek-focused Ilios map stood out on the ROG Strix G16’s punchy display.

For a more grounded take on the display, I watched Throttle House’s magnificent review of the Lotus Emira. The Emira, painted in a gorgeous British Racing Green, was faithfully represented, and the on-location visuals were stunning. I also caught the final trailer for The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Everything from the lava surrounding Bowser’s castle to the pinkish hues of the Sand Kingdom looked faithfully recreated.

In instrumented testing, the ROG Strix G16 wasn’t as vivid as its competitors.- namely, the overachieving Razer Blade 15.- but it’s definitely in the running. We measured 75.9 percent of the DCI-P3 and 107 percent of the sRGB color gamuts. Its brightness of 279 nits was enough to score second place behind the HP Omen 16.

Keyboard and Touchpad on the Asus ROG Strix G16

Asus provides a full QWERTY keyboard layout and additional top hotkeys. The hotkeys are programmable and, by default, control volume, microphone, fan settings, and give access to Armoury Crate. You can change the function of the programmable keys using the Armoury Crate software. All of the keys have individual RGB backlighting.

Asus says the keys offer 2 mm of travel, and I found it easy to type on. My fingers quickly felt at home on the keys, which had a soft finish that made them comfortable to use for hours at a time. My go-to test for keyboards is keyhero.com. As I’ve repeatedly mentioned, I’m not the fastest or most accurate typist, but I scored 67.81 words per minute with an accuracy of 97.1%.

Despite its large 16-inch frame, Asus didn’t find the space to fit in a number pad on the ROG Strix G16, which may be disappointing to some (some of my colleagues, however, are glad to go without it). I occasionally reached for the non-existent number pad, only to be stymied every time. Asus does offer versions of the laptop with a number pad integrated into the touchpad, but my review sample did not have this option.

Speaking of the touchpad, it is large (5.12 inches x 3.5 inches) and glass-covered. Although I prefer to use a mouse when using a gaming laptop, the touchpad proved spacious and allowed me to glide easily, be it in everyday apps in Windows 11 Home or when gaming (though for games you’re far better off using one of the best gaming mice).

Audio on the Asus ROG Strix G16

Asus uses a two-speaker system in the ROG Strix G16, which sounds fine. I decided to queue up “What You Won’t Do for Love,” performed by Bobby Caldwell. Although little bass was represented here, Caldwell’s soulful vocals soared, perfectly complemented by the horns and guitar licks.

Circling back to Throttle House’s review of the Lotus Emira, I instantly honed in on the sound of the 3.5-liter V6 engine. While the engine comes from a lowly Toyota Camry, Lotus massaged it and bolted on a supercharger to add over 100 more horsepower. As a result, I could hear the subtle supercharger whine in the background as the V6 revved to its 6,800 revolutions per minute redline. The crackling and burbling of the exhaust while easing off the throttle also came blaring through the speakers.

The audio while gaming wasn’t exactly the ROG Strix G16’s strong point; again, the lack of bass took a lot of the impact out of explosions in games like Grand Theft Auto V and Overwatch 2. However, I cranked the volume without distortion, which helped to drown out the internal fans.

The Dolby Atmos app can adjust audio profiles, including Dynamic, Game, Movie, Music and Voice. I didn’t notice much difference between the settings, so I just left it on Dynamic, which automatically adjusts based on the content being played.

Upgradeability of the Asus ROG Strix G16

I ventured inside the Asus ROG Strix G16 by first removing 11 screws. However, I wasn’t done yet. It takes some careful prying to remove the bottom panel, and I didn’t want to risk damaging the RGB strip that runs along the front of the chassis. So, I started prying near the ethernet port and was able to completely remove the panel.

This gave me access to the internals, including the Micron 2400 PCIe 4.0 SSD situated on the right. A second, unused M.2 slot is on the opposite side of the chassis next to the Intel Wi-Fi 6E card. Located toward the center of the motherboard are the two SO-DIMM slots. Our unit came populated with two 8GB DDR5-4800 SO-DIMMs, but the machine is upgradeable to 32GB (2x 16GB). The battery also appears to be easily replaceable.

Battery Life on the Asus ROG Strix G16

Gaming laptops have earned a bad reputation regarding battery life, but the Asus ROG Strix G16 bucks that trend. Compared to the less powerful Razer Blade 14, the ROG Strix G16 lasted nearly four additional hours. The laptop also lasted at least three hours longer than the HP Omen 16 and the Gigabyte Aorus 15X.

The performance is even more remarkable compared to the similarly equipped Aorus 15X with a larger 99 Whr battery. However, we must remember that the Aorus 15X drives a 240 Hz, 2560 x 1440 display.

Heat on the Asus ROG Strix G16

To test heat output on the Asus ROG Strix G16 while gaming, we ran our Metro Exodus stress test in a loop. This benchmark gets laptops plenty hot, giving us the perfect opportunity to measure heat levels.

We measured the center of the keyboard between the G and H keys, which reported 94 degrees Fahrenheit (34.4 degrees Celsius). That’s right in line with what we’d expect from a gaming laptop, and some get quite a bit warmer. The touchpad was a comparatively cool 78 F (25.5 C).

Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 (2023) Review: A Gaming Notebook Made To Be The Best

Asus kicked off 2023 with an aggressively fresh line-up of gaming laptops packing the latest silicon from Intel, AMD, and Nvidia across its ROG family. This review covers the recently launched ROG Strix Scar 17, an iterative upgrade that combines the 16-core AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX processor with the might of Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4080 mobile graphics. Asus paired those beefy innards with a 240Hz QHD screen, which is not the fastest out there, but still among the best you can get if a top-class refresh rate for high-FPS gaming is your primary concern.

Priced at 2,899, this machine is not exactly cheap, but it still firmly retains its position as the best value you can get from a mobile battle station that has AMD’s flagship CPU ticking inside. It also marks the entry of AMD in a segment where a majority of gaming laptops are rocking 13th gen Intel silicon at a rather steep price. Asus is keeping things modest in the design department and has cut a few corners too, but the overall result is a fiercely competent gaming laptop that can stand its own against the best out there. Asus provided a ROG Strix Scar 17 (2023) for the purpose of this review.

A familiar design

Asus is serving a familiar design package as last year’s ROG Strix Scar 17, with a few small modifications. It’s still a slick, all-black affair with matte finish all across, and eagerness to get smudged. The machine needed some wiping after every usage session, especially on the deck area, and worse if you got sweaty palms. The only aspect breaking the monotony is the ROG-branded plate cap in the top-right corner and the dotted pattern on the remaining area resting behind the display lid.

Toying with the looks of the hinge rib offers a neat contrasting effect to the otherwise plain looks of the top lid, which only has the backlit ROG logo outlined in white and a thin line matching the corner plate’s angular aesthetics. To justify its gaming laptop credentials, you will find a glass-like transparent RGB light strip running underneath the front deck edge, which also extends to the sides.

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There is a little bit of flex to the lid, which is noticeable when you lift open the screen, but the hinge mechanism holds things tight without any concerning sideway movements or creaking. The arched hinge is tighter and offers a more reassuring experience compared to the damage-prone hinge engineering on some ROG Zephyrus laptops that we’ve tested in the past. Overall, the ROG Strix Scar 17 is serving a design that won’t turn many heads, but the conservatively familiar looks are still pleasing to the eyes.

An uncharacteristically good keyboard

This ROG Strix Scar 17 review was initiated with a performance-first approach — and it came out swinging with a keyboard that was surprisingly robust and fine-tuned. It’s not a low-profile mechanical keyboard, but the membrane engineering underneath is one of the finest implementations I’ve ever used on a laptop, and almost in the same league as the venerable Lenovo ThinkPad keyboard.

The keycaps have a subtle inward-curved profile and flaunt a matte surface. Of course, you can also customize the backlight underneath with per-key RGB controls using Asus’ pre-installed Aura Sync software. The typing experience on this keyboard is fantastic. The keys offer just the right amount of resistance, around 2mm worth of vertical travel, acceptable upward feedback, and balanced spacing. Right from the start, it was almost natural to punch articles at the usual typing pace.

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While gaming, any mushy character to the keys wasn’t felt. A few colleagues that gave this keyboard a try also liked the execution. The dedicated num pad is a bonus, and five additional function keys at the top are also of great convenience. These can also be customized as macro keys or to launch specific apps. The only downside is the deck material, which feels good to touch, but has a bit of flex to it. The keyboard deck, especially the area right above the trackpad, also pushes down a little. It’s not exactly flimsy, but you will certainly notice it.

A fast display that gets the job done

The ROG Strix Scar 17 configuration tested for review serves a 17.3-inch WQHD (2560 x 1440 pixels) panel with a traditional 16:9 aspect ratio. But the real gem here is the 240Hz refresh rate, complemented by 3ms response time and Dolby Vision HDR support. It’s a decent screen that delivers contrasty content with acceptable color saturation, but you’ll notice the perks of a pixel-dense, high refresh rate screen from the get-go.

The viewing angles aren’t the best, but since you’ll mostly spend time staring head-on at the on-screen content, you likely won’t notice any color shifts. The mini-LED QHD panel on the Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 served was noticeably better, but it was also a heck load more expensive. The ROG Strix Scar 17’s IPS screen works with G-Sync support and color control with 100% DCI-P3 and 100% sRGB gamut coverage.

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Even outdoors under daylight, there was barely any urgent need to re-adjust the screen angle, because the brightness output is good enough for work and play, but colors tend to look a tad muted in this scenario. Asus has better screens to offer under the Zephyrus line-up of gaming laptops, but the ROG Strix Scar 17’s panel isn’t bad on its own, especially considering the premium you pay for rival machines with similar CPU GPU configurations.

Heating and tuning

At the center of all your aesthetic customization and system tuning needs is the pre-installed Armory Crate app. Depending on your usage preferences, you can switch between silent, performance, and turbo profiles, each with a pre-configured level of CPU / GPU frequency and variable fan speed, to offer the desired amount of power. By default, the Turbo profile gives you access to 230W (55W CPU 175W GPU) power, but turning to the Manual preset gives you an extra 10W juice from the CPU side.

In practical life, that won’t create any tangible difference during your gameplay sessions. The Armory Crate app already offers multiple performance presets, but if you want to get the maximum juice out of the machine without having to tinker with aspects like fan speed, the Turbo preset is what you need to enable. However, the laptop needs to be plugged into the charging outlet to deliver the amount of power draw needed to sustain peak performance for gaming sessions. The ROG Strix Scar 17 keeps cool using a four-vent system that pumps hot air outside, while a vapor chamber cooling system, liquid metal layer over the CPU and GPU, and dual arc flow fans keep things from getting toasty inside.

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The whole system actually works. In a room with the sustained ambient temperature set at 74 degrees Fahrenheit (23 degrees Celcius) and playing games at the peak performance presets the laptop kept surprisingly cool. After a 40-minute gaming session with all the ray-tracing and DLSS pizzazz in full show, the deck never got uncomfortably hot, which is something that is rarely seen on laptops of this performance caliber. The internal CPU temperature reading, however, touched the 200 degrees Fahrenheit (93 degrees Celcius) mark.

The MUX conundrum

Asus has made the task of enabling the MUX switch easier with a one-click approach in its Armory Crate app. All you need to do is select the Ultimate preset from the GPU settings section. MUX switch, short for multiplexer, essentially connects the display output with the discrete GPU, instead of having a routed connection via the CPU and the integrated graphics. Enabling the MUX switch theoretically paves the way for a higher frame rate output and reduced latency, although it’s hard to notice the difference in a majority of games.

Tests were run, both in terms of benchmarks and games, to see the difference it makes. The test mules were the Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 and another laptop with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 series GPU. To describe it in the simplest terms, the more powerful the GPU inside, the higher the gain in performance. So, if your machine has a high-end GPU like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080, the gain will easily be in the 10-15% range. But on the lower end of the GPU power scale, the benefit is barely noticeable.

The Best & Worst Gaming Laptops of 2023 at CES!

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For example, the difference in net output between running a 3DMark benchmark test with the Turbo preset, and then enabling the MUX switch, was barely 1% for a machine powered by the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 series GPU. But it looks like every PC brand wants to sing the praise of a MUX Switch these days, touting generous performance gains. But as the saying goes, don’t trust every performance graph you see on the marketing slide. There’s always a caveat, and in the case of a MUX switch luxury, you must spend handsomely on a powerful configuration to reap the benefits.

High-end gaming performance

The gaming performance of this machine turned out as good as you would expect. “Cyberpunk 2077” comfortably delivered 50-60fps at Ultra graphics preset with ray-tracing and DLSS enabled, shadow and texture cranked to their peak, all of it coming to life at the native QHD resolution. Scaling down the screen resolution to 1080p and disabling DLSS, the frame rate output jumps into the 90-100fps territory with some graphics quality tuning. There weren’t any deal-breaking stutters, even though the fans were whirring loudly to cool the innards that were being pushed to their limits.

After a healthy few hours of playing “Metal: Hellsinger” with the graphics setting set to max, this machine delivered a steady 120fps output. Not many laptops out there can offer that kind of gaming experience, especially for a game released in 2022. “Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty,” which was released earlier this year, also delivered a top-tier 120fps experience. There were a few jitters, but that was likely due to the poor quality of the game’s PC port.

“Scorn,” which was released late in 2022, offered a consistent 60fps frame rate output at the best possible graphics settings without any performance dips, delivering the best horror game experience I’ve ever had on a laptop. The Asus laptop launched “Doom Eternal” with the performance settings cranked up to the Ultra Nightmare preset and ray-tracing enabled and delivered a buttery-smooth 240fps experience. The FPS count dipped slightly during the intense melee, but those aren’t too frequent to ruin the whole experience.

A few predictable pitfalls

The game “Forza Horizon 5” consistently ran around the 85-90fp mark with all the settings set to extreme. Even at the Performance system preset, which sits below Turbo and Manual in terms of power draw, the acclaimed racing game dipped between 25 and 30fps at peak graphics and visual settings without the charging cable plugged in. The gaming experience was once again consistently good in “Halo Infinite,” “Naraka Bladepoint,” and “Ghostwire: Tokyo.”

A rather annoying issue is that enabling or disabling the MUX Switch — or in this case, turning the GPU Mode to Ultimate profile — requires a system restart. Plus, once you enable the MUX switch, you need to disable it manually. If you miss that chore in the Armory Crate, be prepared for some battery drain woes. To give you an idea of how quickly that happens, while starting a gaming session at 50% battery level with the MUX switch enabled, the battery crashed to 6% in roughly about 35 minutes. To put it simply, you have to carry around the massive in-box charging brick or spend extra on a smaller 100W brick for USB Type-C charging.

Overall, the ROG Strix Scar 17 delivers a thumping performance at AAA games. But this is a gaming laptop at the end of the day, and that comes with three core compromises. You can’t reliably use it as your workstation on the go, especially not for demanding tasks like editing or graphics rendering without a power outlet nearby. Fan noise is still very much an issue, and tipping the scales at 6.6 pounds (without considering the massive power brick), this beefy battlestation is not exactly a treat for your shoulders (if you’re carrying it around in a backpack).

Fast charging, lots of ports, and one hassle

Asus armed the ROG Strix Scar 17 with a 4-cell 90-watt-hours battery, which comes bundled with a 330W power brick. Asus claims a charging pace of 0-50% in just 30 minutes, but that is assuming the laptop isn’t engaged in any system activity. With the machine powered on, a few apps running in the background, and the Silent profile enabled from Armory Crate, the tank filled halfway through in 42 minutes. But if you don’t want to lug that huge brick around, the Asus machine also offers the convenience of 100W charging via one of the Type-C ports.

This machine has extremely powerful innards, which doesn’t come as a surprise that it runs through battery at high speed. With the screen refresh rate set to 240Hz at QHD resolution and working with the Performance mode enabled, the battery only lasted around 4.5 hours at browser-intensive tasks interspersed with some image editing on GIMP. Top-shelf gaming without the barrel-shaped charging pin plugged in won’t last you more than 2 hours, but the mileage might vary depending on the game you are playing.

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The I/O situation, on the other hand, is expectedly satisfactory. There’s an HDMI 2.1 port (48 Gbps output), a 2.5G RJ45 ethernet port, two USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 2 ports with Display Port 1.4 and G-Sync support, a pair of USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports, and a headphone jack. Most of the I/O outlets are positioned behind the lid, while the right edge is questionably devoid of any ports.

Don’t choose wrong, or overpay

Asus is asking approximately 2,900 for the ROG Strix Scar 17 variant with Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 graphics. If you seek a cheaper alternative, the Gigabyte Aorus 17H is a good option at 2,600, but you will have to live with a less pixel-dense FHD screen. The only other competitive laptop from a mainstream brand that undercuts the Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 is the Dell Alienware M16, which offers a combination of 13th Gen Intel Core i9-13900HX CPU and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPU at 2,700.

Asus also offers the machine in a higher-end configuration with the faster Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPU, however, it is currently listed at a steep 3,499. But that’s still a bargain compared to other laptops with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPU. The Razer Blade 18, for comparison, costs a whopping 4,499, while the MSI Stealth 17 Studio will have you spending at least 3,800 at the moment.

However, if you want this exact GPU in a laptop, you can buy the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16, which swaps the AMD processor in favor of the 13th gen Intel Core i9 processor. But if the Asus ROG Strix Scar is the one that has caught your fancy and gaming is your primary objective, the jump from an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 to the RTX 4090 variant won’t create much of a difference in your raw experience for the current generation of games. Plus, it will save you a few hundred dollars, so there’s that.

Verdict: Leaving proud gaming scars

The ROG Strix Scar 17 is a value-first machine that delivers top-tier performance. It’s AMD at its best on the mobile platform, thanks to the 16-core Ryzen 9 7945HX processor, which delivers blistering performance. Paired with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 inside the machine, the 2023 iteration of Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 is good enough for any game you throw at it, with ease. Plus, the performance status quo will remain intact for at least the next few years.

The design is not exactly new, but it’s nothing to scoff at. Asus is apparently too fond of its tried-and-tested aesthetics and wants to serve it for another generation. I’m glad that Asus didn’t try to cut on the thickness because the slim ROG Zephyrus series gaming laptops from Asus tend to struggle with heat dissipation. The slim Asus ROG Zephyrus G (GA502), for comparison, got extremely mercurial even at non-gaming tasks.

On the bright side, the keyboard is fantastic on the ROG Strix Scar 17, and the port selection is also good. Thermals on the machine are handled fairly well, but just like a majority of gaming laptops out there, the fans are loud. The 240Hz QHD screen leaves a good impression and made even web-based tasks feel smoother than usual. At 2,900 (from Asus through Amazon), the Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 is a great value, and should definitely be on your shopping list if you plan to splurge luxuriously on a beefy gaming kit.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2022) Laptop Review

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2022) is a 14-inch gaming laptop. It has an AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS CPU, and you can choose between an AMD Radeon 6700S or 6800S discrete GPU. Memory and storage max out at 32GB and 1TB, respectively. There’s a single display option: a 16:10 QHD (2560 x 1600) IPS panel with a 120Hz refresh rate and FreeSync variable refresh rate support. It has a 720p webcam, Wi-Fi 6E wireless connectivity, and a 76Wh battery. Ports include two USB-As, two USB-Cs, an HDMI, a MicroSD card reader, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The USB-C supports charging and video output, but not Thunderbolt 4 or USB4. A firmware update is expected to add USB4 support, though it’s still in development at the time of writing. You can see our unit’s specifications and the available configuration options in the Differences Between Variants section below.

Our Verdict

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is good for school use. It’s a compact laptop that’s easy to carry around, and it has more than enough processing power to handle demanding workloads, which is great for students in fields like graphic design or 3D animation. The display is sharp and bright, the keyboard feels comfortable to type on for an extended period, and the touchpad is large and responsive. The battery lasts a little over 10 hours of light productivity, but you might still need to plug it in if you perform any CPU or GPU-intensive tasks, and the power adapter is pretty bulky.

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is great for gaming. It has a QHD 120Hz display with a fast response time to deliver a clear image in fast-moving scenes, and it supports VRR to reduce screen tearing. Its AMD CPU and GPU provide a smooth gaming experience in 1080p and 1440p, though you’ll have to turn the settings down a bit at 1440p to reach 60fps in some games. Unfortunately, it gets hot and loud under load, and the GPU throttles slightly.

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is decent for media consumption. It’s a thin and light laptop that’s easy to carry around, and while its power adapter is bulky, you likely won’t need it as the battery lasts about eight hours of video playback. The display is sharp, bright, and colorful, though it isn’t the best option for dark room viewing as its low contrast makes blacks look gray in dim settings. Likewise, the speakers get reasonably loud, but they have no bass and sound muffled.

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is excellent as a workstation. Its AMD CPU and GPU have enough processing power to handle demanding tasks like video editing and 3D animation, and it has a sharp QHD display with a wide color gamut, which is great for content creation. The keyboard feels comfortable to type on for hours, and its wide port selection includes an HDMI port and two USB-Cs that can also output a video signal to an external monitor. Unfortunately, it gets hot and loud under load, and there’s some thermal throttling on the GPU.

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is great for business use. It’s a well-built thin and light laptop that’s easy to carry around, and although its power adapter is bulky, you might not need it as the battery lasts over 10 hours of light productivity. The display is sharp and bright, the keyboard feels great to type on, and the touchpad is large and responsive. The webcam’s video quality is good even though it’s only 720p, and the microphone sounds loud and clear with only a bit of static in the background. Its AMD CPU is powerful enough to handle all types of workloads, whether simple tasks like text formatting and video calls or more intensive large number-crunching in Excel.

• 7.9 School
• 8.3 Gaming
• 7.1 Multimedia
• 8.7 Workstation
• 8.0 Business
• Updated Apr 28, 2023: We’ve updated the review to improve clarity and readability.
• Updated Feb 23, 2023: We’ve corrected an error in the Ports section. The USB ports’ maximum data transfer speed is up to 10Gbps, not 5Gbps.
• Updated Feb 16, 2023: Added mention of the MSI Raider GE67 HX as an alternative with better serviceability in the Serviceability section.
• Updated Aug 08, 2022: Added text in the Brightness and Out-of-the-Box Color Accuracy sections regarding the Vari-Bright feature. This feature doesn’t affect screen brightness when plugged in but affects color accuracy slightly.
• Updated Jul 26, 2022: We mistakenly indicated that the chassis is plastic instead of aluminum and magnesium alloy. We’ve updated the text, though the score remains unchanged.
• Updated May 06, 2022: We’ve reran the game benchmarks at 1440p in the Performance and Turbo mode. The scores remain unchanged.
• Updated May 06, 2022: Review published.
• Updated May 02, 2022: Early access published.

Differences Between Sizes And Variants

We tested the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 2022 (model GA402R) with an AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS CPU, an AMD Radeon RX 6700S dedicated GPU, 16GB of memory, and 1TB of storage. The GPU, memory, and storage are configurable; you can see the available options in the table below. Our review applies only to the GA402RJ and GA402RK models.

You can see our unit’s label here.

Compared To Other Laptops

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is among the best gaming laptops in its size and class. It stands out for its thin and light design, high-quality display, great performance, and long battery life. However, it isn’t as serviceable as other gaming laptops since half of the memory is soldered on, and its USB-C ports don’t support USB4 standards.

For more options, check out our recommendations for the best gaming laptops, the best laptops, and the best laptops for college.

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2022) is a bit better than the Lenovo Legion 5 Gen 6 15 (2021). The Asus is more portable as it’s a smaller device with a thin and light design, and it also has a brighter display, a larger and more responsive touchpad, and much longer battery life. However, the Lenovo has a wider port selection with two additional USB-As and an HDMI 2.1 port, and it doesn’t get as hot under load, resulting in less throttling on the GPU. The Asus still performs better, though, as its AMD Ryzen 6000 CPU is faster than the Lenovo’s Ryzen 5000 CPUs.

The Razer Blade 14 (2022) and the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2022) are both thin and light 14-inch high-end gaming laptops. The Razer is a more premium-feeling device overall, and it delivers a smoother gaming experience with a faster 165Hz display and better-performing GPUs. However, the Asus might be a better choice for productivity tasks as it has longer battery life and a brighter display to combat glare in well-lit settings. You can also configure the Asus with more memory, which is important for demanding workloads with large datasets.

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2022) is much better than the Acer Nitro 5 15 (2020). The Asus is a newer and higher-end laptop with more powerful CPU and GPU options, which means it can reach higher frame rates for a smoother gaming experience. It also has a sharper and brighter display, a more comfortable keyboard, a larger and more responsive touchpad, and a significantly better webcam. The Asus is more portable because it’s a smaller and more compact device; however, it gets hotter and louder under load.

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2022) is better than the Dell G15 (2022). The Asus is a more premium device with a sturdier build, and its thin and light design makes it much more portable than the Dell. The Asus also has a more comfortable keyboard, a larger and more responsive touchpad, and significantly longer battery life. On the other hand, the Dell doesn’t get as hot or loud under load, and its GPU doesn’t throttle.

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2022) is better than the HP Victus 16 (2021). The Asus is a more premium device with a sturdier build, a brighter and more colorful display, a MUX switch, and a more powerful CPU and GPUs. The Asus is also more compact, making it easier to carry around, and its battery lasts much longer. On the other hand, the HP doesn’t get as hot under load, and its GPU doesn’t throttle.

Although the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2022) and the Dell Alienware m15 R3 (2020) are both premium gaming laptops, they aren’t in the same class. The Asus’ design focuses a lot on portability, so it’s more compact and easier to carry around, whereas the Dell is a bulky and heavy device. However, the Dell has a sturdier build, and its bigger chassis allows for better cooling, resulting in less throttling on the GPU. The Dell also has a better keyboard and a wider port selection, including a USB-C with Thunderbolt 3 support. The Asus has a larger touchpad even though it’s a smaller device, its battery lasts significantly longer, and its AMD Ryzen 6000 CPU performs better than the Dell’s Intel 10th Gen processors.

Although the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2022) and the Apple MacBook Pro 14 (2021) are very different devices, there’s some overlap as the G14 has the processing power to be an excellent Windows workstation alternative to the MacBook Pro 14. The MacBook Pro 14 is a more premium device that offers a better user experience, as it has better-sounding speakers, a Mini LED display that produces deeper blacks, and a much better webcam. The MacBook Pro 14 also has longer battery life and doesn’t get as hot or loud under load. For gaming, though, it’s best to go with the G14 because there aren’t many games optimized for macOS running on Apple silicon, and the MacBook Pro 14’s display has a slow response time.

Although the MSI Raider GE67 HX (2022) and the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2022) are both gaming laptops, they’re quite different. The MSI is a larger and bulkier laptop that prioritizes performance over portability, so if you don’t intend on using the laptop on the go, the MSI is a better choice, as you’ll get a better gaming experience overall. You also have to consider the type of games you play when making your purchasing decision. If you play NVIDIA-sponsored games more often, it’s better to go with the MSI, and if you play AMD-sponsored titles more often, the Asus is a better choice. The MSI has a better 240Hz OLED display, and its wider port selection includes an Ethernet port and Thunderbolt 4 support, which the Asus lacks.

The HP OMEN 16 (2022) and the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2022) are very different gaming laptops. The HP is a 16-inch device with Intel 12th Gen and NVIDIA GPUs, while the Asus is a 14-inch device with AMD CPUs and GPUs. The Asus is more portable, but its smaller chassis comes at a cost as it gets hotter and louder under load. The HP has more display options, including a 1440p panel with a higher refresh rate than the Asus; however, the Asus laptop’s display gets brighter and supports a wide color gamut with full DCI P3 coverage, making it more suitable for content creators.

Test Results

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 looks fairly stylish. It has some gamer aesthetics, like the shape of the power button and speaker grills, but it doesn’t go overboard with it, so you can still use it in a professional working environment without sticking out too much. It has a perforated lid that allows LED lights to shine through, which you can customize to show anything you want. This AniME Matrix feature is optional; you can get the laptop without it. There are vents on both sides of the laptop, the back, and the bottom. The screen lifts the back of the laptop when opened, giving you a slight keyboard incline and allowing for better airflow on the bottom. It’s available in two colors: Moonlight White and Eclipse Gray.

The build quality is great. Although it feels more like plastic, Asus specifies that the chassis is a mix of aluminum and magnesium alloy. The laptop feels high-quality and sturdy, exhibiting only a little bit of flex in the display and almost none in the keyboard deck. The finish feels smooth and doesn’t pick up fingerprints or scratch easily.

The Asus ROG G14 has outstanding hinges. They feel smooth when opening and closing the laptop, and they’re very stable, with almost no wobbling whatsoever. You can open the lid with one hand, which isn’t the most necessary feature, but it does give the laptop a more premium feel.

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is decently portable. It isn’t as thin and light as an ultraportable like a Dell XPS 13 (2021), but it isn’t bulky or heavy either. The power adapter is fairly large and even thicker than the laptop itself.

The serviceability is good. Accessing the internals is very easy as you only need to remove some Philips screws and undo the clips holding the bottom panel. You don’t need a pick to pry open the panel, but you need one to remove the rubber covering three of the screws. The laptop has half of its memory in the form of a SO-DIMM module, with the other half soldered onto the motherboard, so you can only upgrade to a maximum of 24GB on a 16GB model. You can see the upgrade guide here. If you want a gaming laptop with better serviceability, check out the MSI Raider GE67 HX (2022).

The Asus Zephyrus G14 is only available with a QHD display. It has a very high pixel density to produce sharp images and text, making it suitable for gaming, media consumption, and productivity. Its 16:10 aspect ratio gives you slightly more vertical space than a standard 16:9 screen so that you don’t have to scroll as much when reading a document or website. It supports Dolby Vision HDR and is Pantone validated. If you want a gaming laptop with a larger screen, check out the HP OMEN 16 (2022).

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14’s panel has a high refresh rate and a quick response time, resulting in better responsiveness and a clearer image in fast-moving scenes. There’s some image duplication, but it isn’t too bad. Its FreeSync variable refresh rate also works with the built-in screen and external displays connected via the HDMI port. If you want a gaming laptop with a higher refresh display, check out the Razer Blade 14 (2022).

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14’s contrast ratio is just okay. It’s within the typical range for an IPS panel, though still a relatively low number compared to other panel technologies like VA and OLED. Blacks look grayish in dim settings, so it isn’t the best option for dark room viewing.

The Asus G14 gets bright enough to combat glare, even in very well-lit settings or outdoors in broad daylight. It also gets very dim to help reduce eye strain when viewing content in the dark. There’s an auto-brightness feature called Vari-Bright, which automatically adjusts the screen brightness to extend battery life. It’s on by default, but it only takes effect when running on battery and doesn’t impact the screen brightness when plugged in.

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14’s reflection handling is decent. Reflections aren’t a problem when viewing light-color content because the display gets bright enough to compensate, but they’re visible and distracting when viewing dark content, especially direct reflections like a lamp or open window during the day.

The Asus Zephyrus G14’s black uniformity is decent. It looks a little patchy, and there’s some backlight bleed along the edges of the screen. These uniformity issues are fairly minor, and they’re only visible when viewing dark content in a dim setting.

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The horizontal viewing angle is okay. The image dims and washes out fairly quickly as you move off-center, which isn’t an issue when sharing a text document or casual content, but it isn’t ideal for sharing color-critical work. If you need perfect accuracy, it’s best to be close to or directly in front of the screen.

The vertical viewing angle is passable. The image dims and washes out fairly quickly from above or below, so you have to look at the screen almost directly if accuracy is important, which might be hard when you don’t have much space to tilt the screen like on a bus or airplane.

The Asus Zephyrus G14’s out-of-the-box color accuracy is good. Most colors look oversaturated because it targets a wide gamut, even in sRGB content, and the white balance is also off, especially at higher brightness levels. The color temperature is a bit cooler than the standard 6500k target, giving the image a slight, almost imperceptible blueish tint. The gamma follows the sRGB curve almost perfectly; there’s only some over-darkening in dark scenes. Note that these are results obtained with Vari-Bright disabled, a feature that automatically adjusts the screen brightness to extend battery life. This feature is on by default and only comes into effect when the laptop runs on battery; however, it seems to affect color accuracy, even when plugged in. With Vari-Bright enabled, the color and white balance dEs are slightly worse, the color temperature is warmer at 6305 K, and the gamma sticks almost to a flat 2.2.

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 2022 has an outstanding color gamut. It has full coverage of the sRGB and DCI P3 color spaces, making it suitable for viewing or producing SDR and HDR content. For print photography, its Adobe RGB coverage is excellent but still missing the saturated greens that define Adobe RGB.

The backlight is entirely flicker-free, which helps reduce eye strain.

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 has a great keyboard. The layout feels spacious and is fairly standard, so it doesn’t take long to get used to. The keys have a lot of travel, don’t require much force to actuate, and provide satisfying tactile feedback. The overall typing experience is great, and it doesn’t feel tiring over an extended period. You can customize the RGB backlight through the Asus Aura Creator application. There’s only one lighting zone, though, so you can only change the color and the lighting effect. You can adjust between three brightness levels or turn off the backlight directly on the keyboard using FN F2 or F3.

The touchpad is excellent. It’s large even though it’s a relatively compact laptop, and it feels smooth, allowing the fingers to glide easily. It tracks all movements and gestures well, and there aren’t any issues with palm rejection or actions like dragging and dropping. The click mechanism feels satisfying, but you can only click on the bottom half of the touchpad.

The speakers are just okay. It has a quad-speaker system with two up-firing and two down-firing drivers. They have good instrument separation and relatively clear vocals; however, they have almost no bass whatsoever, and they sound muffled and slightly unnatural. They get reasonably loud with very little dynamic compression, but they cause the keyboard deck to vibrate a lot at higher volume levels, which might bother some people. There’s Dolby Atmos support, meaning the system can decode Dolby Atmos content in supported apps.

The Asus G14’s webcam video quality is good. The image looks a bit soft and noisy, but the exposure is good, and the colors look true to life. The microphone sounds loud and clear; however, voices come across as slightly hollow and nasal with noise canceling on, and there’s a small amount of static in the background.

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 has a great port selection. The USB-A and USB-C ports support USB 3.2 Gen. 2 data transfer speed (up to 10Gbps). Asus has announced that the USB-C ports will get USB4 support through a firmware update, which will increase the data transfer speed to 40Gbps. The firmware update is in Beta testing at the time of writing. You can download it, but know that it might be unstable and may cause other issues. Both USB-C ports can output a video signal to an external display; however, they don’t deliver the same performance as the left USB-C port connects to the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS’ integrated GPU, while the right one connects to the dedicated GPU, same as the HDMI port. The left USB-C port supports Power Delivery, allowing you to fast-charge the laptop and other PD-supported mobile devices connected to the port.

The wireless adapter is a MediaTek Wi-Fi 6E MT7922 160Hz. Wi-Fi 6E adds access to the 6GHz airwaves, providing greater speeds, lower latency, and less signal interference than previous Wi-Fi standards. However, you need a router that supports Wi-Fi 6E to benefit from these features.

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 has a single CPU option, the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS. It’s a high-performance mobile CPU designed for gaming laptops and mobile workstations with a relatively thin chassis, running at a default 35W TDP instead of the usual 45W of other H-series chips. Ryzen 6000 CPUs have better efficiency than the previous generation, leading to longer battery life and a slight performance increase. They also sport a more powerful integrated GPU, resulting in a smoother overall experience in lighter workloads. The 6900HS is behind the high-end Intel 12th Gen. processors in performance, especially at higher power levels; however, it’s still powerful enough to handle demanding tasks like gaming, video editing, and 3D rendering.

You can configure the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 with the following AMD dedicated GPUs:

• AMD Radeon RX 6700S with 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM (100W TGP with SmartShift)
• AMD Radeon RX 6800S with 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM (105W TGP with SmartShift)

The AMD Radeon RX 6700S is a mid-range dedicated GPU with performance equivalent to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 or an RTX 3070, depending on the game or application. It can handle gaming at the laptop’s native resolution of 2560 x 1600, but you’ll have to lower some settings to get around or over 60 fps in graphically demanding games. You can also get higher frame rates by turning on FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution), though only a limited number of games support it at this time. FSR is a feature that boosts performance by rendering the game at a lower resolution and upscaling the image afterward to minimize any loss in visual quality, similar to NVIDIA’s DLSS. If you want to take full advantage of the display’s 120Hz refresh rate, it’s best to play at 1080p. The lower resolution is easier to drive and doesn’t look significantly worse due to the size of the display. There’s ray-tracing support, but it has a high performance cost, so it’s only worth turning on if you also enable FSR to make up for the performance loss. The AMD Radeon RX 6800S is faster than the RX 6700S, giving you a 5 to 15% performance increase on average. Both GPUs are suitable for production workloads like video editing and 3D rendering.

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 has a MUX (multiplexer) switch to allow the dedicated GPU to send information directly to the display without going through the integrated GPU, resulting in better performance than a laptop that lacks this feature. The laptop is in Hybrid Mode by default, allowing the system to switch between the integrated graphics and the dedicated GPU to extend battery life.

Flow vs. Strix vs. Zephyrus vs. TUF: What’s the difference between Asus gaming laptops?

At Asus, we know that no two gamers are exactly alike. That’s why ROG and TUF Gaming laptops come in distinct lineups to better reflect the varied tastes and priorities of all gamers. We have displays with industry-leading refresh rates for competitive gamers—and high-resolution HDR screens that immerse you like never before. Across our four families of gaming laptops, you’ll find ultraportable gaming machines that use innovative cooling technologies to give you outsized gaming performance, muscular high-performance models that harness the most powerful components on the market, and value-oriented laptops that set you up with the essentials without breaking the bank. You’ll find displays with industry-leading refresh rates for competitive gamers alongside high-resolution HDR screens that immerse you in single-player experiences like never before. And all of our 2022 gaming laptops include a MUX switch that guarantees you’ll see the peak performance of your GPU. No matter where or what you play, Asus has a machine for you.

ROG Flow: Gaming versatility on the go

The ROG Flow Z13 gaming tablet and ROG Flow X13 2-in-1 fit comfortably into even the smallest bags, without the heft of traditional gaming laptops.

These incredibly thin and lightweight machines are ideal for any kind of content consumption. Whether you’re looking for a transformer laptop with a 360° hinge, or a true tablet with a fully detachable keyboard, both Flow devices are excellent for watching movies, streaming your favorite TV shows or gameplay, brushing up on some art, or quickly catching up on the latest comics. Vibrant screens, robust touch support, and a small footprint make the Flow devices perfect for anyone who needs to carry their content with them throughout the house.

As gaming systems, the Flow family comes packed with some serious hardware. With up to a Ryzen 9 or Intel Core i9 CPU and NVIDIA RTX 3050 Ti dedicated GPU, these machines can easily power a AAA gaming experience all on their own. A custom vapor chamber in the Flow Z13 keeps these high-performance components operating comfortably in its ultraportable tablet form factor. For flagship-level GPU performance whenever you want it, you can even connect the Flow X13 or Flow Z13 to one of our XG Mobile external GPUs. Using a direct PCIe interface, the XG Mobile houses a Radeon RX 6850M XT or GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU in an enclosure the size of a hardcover novel. The XG Mobile also leverages the bandwidth of PCIe by providing a dedicated LAN port, additional display outputs, an SD card reader, and four high speed USB Type-A ports.

In other words: if you want a compact laptop on-the-go and a desktop-caliber experience at home, the Flow series is for you.

ROG Strix: Esports domination for competitive players

When every extra frame and millisecond matters, the ROG Intelligent Cooling allows extra thermal headroom for these machines to reach higher boost clocks for excellent sustained performance, and the displays feature the fastest refresh rates available on a laptop today so you see every possible frame.

For esports titles that demand the absolute highest frame rates and lowest panel response times, the 2022 ROG Strix SCAR and Strix G are the clear choice. The Strix SCAR is our top-of-the-line esports machine for professional gamers who demand the ultimate in performance. This machine can deliver the full sustained performance of a 150W TGP GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU, while keeping the fans spinning unobtrusively and the chassis cool under your fingers. The Strix G offers similarly high-end performance at a more affordable price for esports enthusiasts of all stripes.

No matter which Strix machine you choose, you can select a 360Hz display with a resolution of 1920×1080 for supremely fluid and responsive animation, or a 240Hz display that balances smoothness with fine detail with its 2560×1440 resolution. Both options have 3ms response times and Adaptive-Sync, so they provide crystal clear motion and enable you to rapidly respond as soon as you engage the enemy. It’s an unmistakable advantage when you can literally see the enemy before they see you.

Adorned with distinct cyberpunk styling and RGB accents, the Strix family boldy announces your allegiance to the Republic of Gamers. While designed primarily as high-powered gaming machines, these laptops can also render video projects or allow you to stream with ease thanks to their powerful components. They also feature a wide array of I/O ports, including 2.5G ethernet on all 2022 Strix models, for rock-solid connections during online play. Gamers who crave unbounded performance above all need look no further.

ROG Zephyrus: The zenith of form and function

With svelte and refined exteriors, premium materials, and gaming baked deep into their DNA,

Components range from mid- to high-end graphics, with ROG Intelligent Cooling ensuring we get the maximum performance possible for each laptop’s thin and light form factor. When compared with affordable alternatives like Asus TUF Gaming, though, the Zephyrus series offers a more premium all-around experience. Select models, for example, feature all-new Nebula Displays that draw you into the game with 100% DCI-P3 coverage, 500 nit peak brightness, and less than 3ms response times for clear motion in battle. For truly spectacular images, the Zephyrus G14 and Zephyrus Duo 16 also come with a Nebula HDR Display option, bumping the peak brightness up to an incredible 1100 nits peak brightness with a 100,000:1 contrast ratio for incredibly vivid HDR content.

Not only do these displays provide a superior gaming experience, but these high-quality 16:10 panels are also great for content creation when you aren’t fragging enemies. Subtle designs like the ROG Zephyrus M16 fit in professional scenarios as well as they do at a LAN party, while the iconic ROG Zephyrus G14 offers extras like our AniMe Matrix LED display on the back of the lid with custom animations that stand out from the crowd. The ROG Zephyrus G15 offers a balance of power and portability you won’t find in other 15-inch machines.

At the head of the table is the mighty Zephyrus Duo 16 and its unique dual-screen design. With up to 4K resolution, the secondary touchscreen serves as the perfect stream or chat display without losing one pixel of space for your main screen when gaming. For content creators who need portable multitasking power, for streamers who need the ultimate command center, and for gamers who like to keep the dungeon map open without tabbing in and out of game, the flagship Zephyrus Duo 16 is the perfect companion.

For a powerful, portable laptop that can do it all with premium flair, look no further than the Zephyrus series.

TUF Gaming: No frills, just kills

For folks just entering the world of PC gaming, or for anyone who needs an affordable device that doesn’t skimp on power, the TUF Gaming family offers an incredible value proposition. TUF Gaming laptops give you the essentials you need to dive into gaming at a price that won’t break the bank. Featuring high-end components, capable cooling, and durable construction built to Military Grade MIL-STD-810H standards, these laptops hit the ground running in all of the latest games, and easily shrug off the normal wear and tear of being lugged around in a backpack. Subtle anime-inspired styling gives the lineup a unique look without making them feel out of place in a coffee shop or classroom.

With the TUF Gaming A15 and A17 powered by AMD, and the TUF Gaming F15 and F17 sporting Intel Core processors, you’re sure to find a laptop with the form factor and specifications that best suit you. Featuring up to an RTX 3070 Ti Laptop GPU and a 1440p 165Hz display, these machines are ready to get their game on. If you want something a bit more portable and stealthy, the TUF Dash F15 weighs in at just two kilograms (4.41lbs) and sports an even thinner chassis. With up to an RTX 3070 Laptop GPU, it’s no slouch on the battlefield, while a Thunderbolt 4 port makes mobile productivity a one-cable affair. If you’re looking for a no-frills gaming experience, a member of the TUF family might just be the next laptop for you.

Gaming laptops for every kind of gamer

At Asus, we are all about delivering out-of-this-world gaming experiences. For every lifestyle and budget, ROG and TUF Gaming laptops deliver the performance you demand and the features you crave. If you have any additional questions about our product family, please contact your local Asus representative.