Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 Review: A Top Gaming Laptop for Creators Too

8.3/ 10
SCORE

Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 GU605 (2024)

Pros

• Excellent fast, calibrated OLED screen
• Well designed
• Performance vs
• size reasonably balanced
• Good port selection

Cons

• Battery life is just okay
• Big power brick
• Bottom and hinge area can get hot
• Settings in Armoury Crate software can get confusing

Another laptop of the creative-slash-gaming genre based on Intel’s Core Ultra processors, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 does stand out in some ways, including its well-designed chassis, huge touchpad, comfortable keyboard and good performance given its trade-offs. (The Core Ultra can’t match the performance of the HX processors, but it’s thinner and has better battery life than you’ll get with those.)

Like its smaller sibling, the Zephyrus ROG G14, it’s technically considered an Nvidia Studio model and ships with Nvidia’s Studio driver rather than the more common Game Ready version. (You can switch to the latter if you want the more frequent and game-optimized updates.) 

Unlike the G14, there are a ton of configurations of the G16, even if you don’t count the imminent model, which will incorporate AMD’s forthcoming Ryzen AI 300 series chips, slated to ship in mid-July. You can get the Intel models with 16GB or 32GB RAM; a GeForce RTX 4050, 4060, 4070, 4080 or 4090; an HDR OLED or 500-nit IPS display, both with a maximum refresh rate of 240Hz and 100% P3 gamut coverage; up to 2TB RAM and in dark gray or white. White adds $200 to the price of an identical configuration (the process is more complicated).

You can’t get every combination, though. For instance, I wish the $2,000 model with the RTX 4070 came with 32GB RAM instead of just 16GB; for 32GB, you have to bump up to our $2,700 RTX 4080-equipped test configuration, which is larger, heavier (by about 3.5 ounces/100g) and comes with a bigger AC adapter. It’s likely less powerful but would still have good everyday performance and a lower price.

Design and features

In fact, the design and display have a ton in common with the G14; it’s just bigger and beefier, for the most part. Similarly well designed, but it has more ports because it’s bigger. The membrane-switch keyboard feels great for typing — it feels like there’s more travel than there is, with a nice bounce, a pleasant soft-touch surface and big, hard-to-miss keycaps. (For gaming, you might want to attach an external keyboard, though.)   

Like the G14, it has a diagonal set of white LEDs on the top that flashes in patterns, for example, to sync with audio or for notifications. You can turn it off and adjust the brightness, and when it’s off, it just looks reflective. I hate to say it, but I keep it off, because the flashing gets really annoying in a way I can’t ignore. 

The Ceraluminum shell — Asus’ branded aluminum and ceramic surface — seems pretty hardy and smudge resistant, at least the grey version. It even allowed for easy cleaning when I dripped some coffee on the wrist rest area. Oops. 

The secondary functions aren’t brightly backlit — you can tell the LED is in the center beneath the key — but they are lit well enough to make them out, which is important if you work in the dark. They also stay cool when the laptop heats up. As you’d expect, there’s per-key RGB lighting.

Because it’s larger than the G14 and is Intel-based, it has a different set of ports and more of them, including a Thunderbolt 4/USB-C as well as a slower USB-C port, a couple of USB-A ports, HDMI and combo audio. There’s also a full-size SD card slot.

It’s relatively thin for a 16-inch model with a discrete GPU, about the same as a MacBook Pro 16 and Razer Blade 16. Overall, if you turn off the slash lighting on the cover it gives off a more serious vibe than you get from a gaming laptop but a little less stuffy than a business slab. That includes the decent business-quality 1080p webcam.

It supports Nvidia’s Advanced Optimus, which means you can force it to exclusively use the discrete GPU without rebooting via the Nvidia driver. And there are definitely times when you want to force it; there’s the occasional app or game that confuses Optimus and you end up in a bad cycle of switching between the dGPU and the iGPU. It can get annoying, though, because Asus’ software also lets you force discrete-GPU-only, but that uses the traditional must-reboot MUX switch. Like a lot of the options in Armoury Crate, which have seemingly been replaced elsewhere within the app or don’t apply to a particular system, you shouldn’t use it.  

The 1080p webcam is sufficient and supports Windows Hello but isn’t great. It has meh low-light quality, the white balance is off in controlled light, it’s too high contrast and the Studio Effects are alright if the horrible masking — blurred hair and the background constantly peeking through — don’t bother you. You can probably improve it a bit with some tweaking or using another virtual camera (like Nvidia Broadcast), but most webcams are still pretty limited and the automatic/default settings are already optimal.

The mic has decent pickup, and Armoury Crate has a bunch of different software noise-canceling choices, but many of them sound really processed (as opposed to natural) when compensating for ambient noise. If your only concern is clarity, then it shouldn’t be an issue. The laptop’s sound is better than usual, with a little more bass and broad soundstage, and it serves well for video and music. As long as your game doesn’t require locational cues, it’s fine for gaming vocals and ambient sound as well.

Fast OLED, moderate CPU

Asus brands its flagship ROG laptop screens as Nebula and Nebula HDR. Our review unit came with the new Nebula HDR OLED display. It supports the mid tier of VESA’s OLED DisplayHDR certification, DisplayHDR True Black 500 and gets relatively bright for an OLED laptop display at just under 400 nits in everyday use and just over 600 nits in a 10% window in HDR. As you’d expect from a display with its specs and Dolby Vision support, video looks really good. 

It didn’t clip blacks too much in gaming, but you’ll want to use in-game adjustments for more visible dark areas if important things lurk there. it’s got the same gaming modes as the G14 if you want a real boost in the deep shadows and don’t mind seriously low contrast, like 300:1. In fact, the Game Visual presets in Armoury Crate don’t seem optimized for OLED at all; it feels like Asus never goes back to optimize them for new display technologies — or remove them so you shouldn’t use them.

The laptop comes calibrated for sRGB, D65 P3 and DCI P3. While it’s quite accurate for all of them, the gray scale is inconsistent and gets worse as you lower brightness. Nor are the profiles constrained to any particular brightness level, so you may need some trial and error if you need color-critical accuracy.

It comes with a setting in Armoury Crate, OLED Flicker-Free Dimming, which ostensibly helps prevent flicker at low brightness levels. But you can’t pin it anywhere, so if you want to use it you have to fire up Armoury Crate. And you can still use the system brightness slider. It’s kind of odd, though; all it seemed to do was does is lower the brightness gradually compared with the system control, which I find really annoying.

One of the display’s more notable capabilities is G-Sync support for adaptive refresh up to 240Hz; Asus says it collaborated with Samsung and Nvidia to make it happen. Because OLED is self-emitting illumination rather than backlight, each pixel needs to refresh constantly for you to perceive a specific brightness level (a backlight just has to stay on) — in the case of a 240Hz screen, up to 960 times per second. It works fine when it’s not forced to use the discrete GPU, but seems a bit less stable on the dGPU: On the dGPU it’s reported (by multiple sites, including Blur Busters) at rates that vary from roughly 172Hz to 181Hz, but it’s a rock solid 240Hz otherwise.

Did I notice any issues while gaming? No, even with Windows VRR, much less DLSS. But that doesn’t preclude any cropping up. Aside from 60Hz, there are no other refresh options, though. (On an unrelated note, the system periodically lost the ability to bring up the context menu — either by right clicking on the touchpad or mouse or using the two finger gesture — but I suspect that’s one of the myriad tantrums Windows Update throws when you don’t let it have its own way.)

The G16 is fast — for a Core Ultra system. Core Ultra is a processor you settle for when you want longer (but not really long) battery life and a slimmer design with a discrete GPU and are willing to sacrifice some processor speed. Battery life is pretty good for its class at almost 9 hours and lasted longer than my attention span (about 5 hours) in everyday use and about 2.5 hours if you forget to let it turn off the discrete GPU.

The RTX 4080 in our evaluation unit supported boosting to about 115 watts (though the driver said 125 watts), with a typical power draw of 95 watts, and you get a substantial boost switching from the default (performance) to turbo mode — around 10% to 20%, depending upon what you’re doing. Turbo doesn’t boost processor performance, though.

The bottom can get really hot when it’s plugged in, even in the default performance mode, a problem I find with all of the air-intake-on-the-bottom designs typical of these thin-but-relatively-powerful Core Ultra systems. It gets a little to hot to use on my lap while wearing shorts, and it seems to get really hot on the bottom when sitting on a big gaming mousepad; I suspect it doesn’t sit up high enough for the airflow.

The ROG G16 configuration we reviewed is pricey but a good all-around system for both gaming and creative work. If you want to save money and don’t have heavy power requirements, opt for a less expensive configuration, though.