ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 2024 Gaming Laptop Review

The 2024 ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 received the most “makeover” in this year’s generation of ROG Gaming Laptops with a thinner form factor and a chassis redesign. Gone are the days of the blissful AniMe Matrix lighting as it’s replaced by the new Slash Lighting found on the ROG G14 and G16 2024 gaming laptops. Let’s take a closer look at the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 GU604 2024 to see if this change in direction is for the better.

ROG Zephyrus M vs Zephyrus G Series

Last year, the ROG Zephyrus M series received the Anime Matrix design which was previously exclusive to the Zephyrus G line. With this year’s iteration of the Zephyrus G series receiving the new Slash lighting design, there’s now an additional distinction between the two product lines. So, to round it up, the ASUS Zephyrus M series uses the AniMe Matrix while the 2024 Zephyrus G series has the new Slash lighting. Both of which are ASUS’ “thin and light” gaming laptops.

Unboxing and First Impressions

This year’s Zephyrus G14 2024 comes in a much more compact packaging that’s almost the size of a 15-inch gaming laptop. Unlike last generation’s packaging, you no longer have the two-tone black and white design but instead, you have a muted matte black with a glossy ROG logo print on the front.

ASUS includes two charging bricks for the ROG Zephyrus G14 2024. There’s a regular-sized rectangle brick rated at 180W for maximum power. Should you want to travel light, you can bring the 100w Type-C adapter especially if you don’t need to utilize the laptop’s GPU.

ASUS went for a new Platinum White colorway instead of maintaining last year’s moonlight white colorway. I personally like the silver-gray metal color on the 2024 Zephyrus G14 as it’s not only durable and resistant to fingerprints but also makes the laptop look more professional which is its target market.

Ports selection hasn’t changed over last year’s model as you still have one USB 4 Type-C port, one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port, and one microSD card reader on the right. The left has your DC-in, HDMI 2.1 port, one USB 3.2 Gen 2 with support for DisplayPort over Type-C, one more USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port, and one audio jack.

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 GA403 14-inch form factor limits the brand from placing a full-sized keyboard. That said, the key sizes are large enough and well spaced out for an ergonomic typing experience.

You have the iconic ASUS ROG buttons on the top left corner while the power button is positioned on the opposite side. While the speaker grills look thinner versus last-gen, they’re a lot better, probably one of the best I’ve seen in 14-inch gaming laptops – though it’s worth noting there aren’t as many 14-inch gaming laptops in the market.

Hat’s off to ASUS for being able to maximize the trackpad space on the ROG Zephyrus G14 2024, at least vertically. While it’s still smaller than the trackpad of the ROG Flow X13, the trackpad of the G14 2024 is still larger than some 15.6-inch gaming laptops in the market.

ROG Slash Lighting

The removal of the Anime Matrix in place of the ROG Slash Lighting is a bittersweet moment for me. While I do love the elevated professionalism of the Slash Lighting paired with the Platinum White colorway, there are fewer customization options compared to the Anime Matrix.

Making up the 7-section LED lighting are 68 capsule cells and 28 mini LEDs which you can customize on the ASUS Armoury Crate software. There are five themes to choose from with three presets available in each theme.

Display

Apart from the new Slash Lighting design, one of the major overhauls of the ROG Zephyrus G14 is its display. The 2024 model now sports the very first ROG Nebula OLED panel coming from the 2023 variants mini-LED display. The G14 2024’s display is a 14″ 2880x1800p 16:10 120Hz 0.2ms panel with support for Nvidia G-Sync.

ASUS claims a 500nit brightness and a DeltaE of <1 rating for the ROG Zephyrus G14 GA403 2024. Our SpyderX Pro Display Analysis tool measures 100% sRGB, 95% AdobeRGB, and 100% DCI-P3. Black levels are excellent on the G14 as we only measured a 0.03 delta over the 2.2 standard. Moreover, the peak brightness was measured at 426 nits, lower than the rated 500 nits but still higher than the 300 nits standard for a laptop to be good enough outdoors.

It’s without question that the Zephyrus G14 GA403 2024 has one of the best displays available for a gaming laptop, heck even beating out most productivity laptops. That said, the G14 is ideal for professional-level photo and video editing.

Armoury Crate

Armoury Crate holds everything you need to customize the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 GU403 2024. Apart from the power profiles which we’ll use to benchmark the gaming laptop, you’ll likely spend most of your time customizing the ROG Slash Lighting inside the app. That said, there isn’t much to do with the lighting apart from choosing a preset and setting the brightness – a considerable downgrade compared to the Anime Matrix design. That said, it would’ve been much better if it was RGB lighting as you can customized the colors to represent an app or the laptop’s state. That said, we look forward to more customization options in the next iteration.

Benchmark Setup and Test Methodology

Gadget Pilipinas’ testing philosophy is to provide detail-oriented results as accurately as possible so that our readers can replicate our tests given that these conditions are met. Different benchmarking apps and sequences are used depending on the tested component or device.

We use CapFrameX 1.7.2 Beta as our primary FPS capture and analysis tool for all our gaming benchmarks. The latest build version of Windows 11 Pro and WHQL-certified drivers are used for our benchmarks. Readings such as temperatures and power draws are recorded using HWINFO64, and OCCT Enterprise.

We benchmarked the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 GA403UI together with its different power settings found in the ASUS Armoury Crate Software – Silent, Performance, and Turbo. The main purpose of benchmarking power profiles is to show how aggressive or conservative the manufacturer is in terms of thermal management. These profiles will affect the CPU and GPUs’ boosting behavior in terms of duration and max clock speed which will translate to higher scores and stable framerates.

As part of our 2024 laptop benchmark methodology revamp, we’ve changed how these profiles are tested. Synthetic and Productivity benchmarks include all of the power profiles. We decided to drop the silent or power-saving profile for gaming benchmarks as these lowest profiles generally produce unplayable framerates, especially at 1440p and above resolutions. Moreover, games are tested at the laptop’s native resolution(in the G14’s case, 1800p) as we expect most, if not al gamers to game on the laptop’s native resolution.

For more information read our Benchmark Methodology article.

ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 2024 Synthetic and Productivity Benchmarks

OCCT Benchmark

OCCT is a popular benchmark and stability testing tool among overclockers, enthusiasts and system integrators

CINEBENCH 2024

Maxon’s Cinebench benchmark is one of the most iconic benchmark applications used by reviewers and enthusiasts. The latest Cinebench 2024 uses the latest rendering architectures, including Intel’s Embree ray tracing technology and other advanced features from AMD and Intel that allow users to render the same scene on the same hard. 

PROCYON

Procyon benchmark suite is developed by the UL, the same team behind 3DMark and PCMark benchmarks. The UL Procycon video editing benchmark uses Adobe Premiere in a typical video editing workflow. The benchmark starts by importing two video project files with various edits, adjustments, and effects – the second project uses several GPU-accelerated effects. Each project is exported in 1080p with H.264 encoding and again in 4K with HEVC H.265. The reported score is based on the time taken to export all four videos. 

PCMark10

From the same developers of the popular game benchmarking tool 3DMark, PCMark 10 is a benchmarking app for measuring a whole PC’s performance. It covers a wide variety of tests to reflect common tasks performed in a modern workplace. We selected PCMark 10’s extended benchmark and reported both the overall score and Digital Content Creation Score. 

V-RAY 5

V-Ray Benchmark is a stand-alone version of V-Ray developed by Chaos Group. It is designed to test the CPU and GPU by rendering sample scenes at a fixed amount of time. V-Ray is a plug-in mostly utilized by 3D computer graphics software applications mainly for industrial design, product design, architecture, film, and video game production. V-Ray is not limited to 64-threads as it supports multi and mega-threading. 

BLENDER

Blender is a widely used, free, open-source 3D creation suite. It supports the whole 3D pipeline process from modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, and even motion tracking. Blender has become a standard for CPU benchmarks with the BMW27 and Classroom Scene most used. This prompted the company to release Blender Open Data Benchmark in 2018, a benchmark-specific version allowing users to run a preset benchmark and share the results online like 3DMark.

SuperPI 32M 

SuperPI is a single-threaded benchmark application that lets the CPU calculate Pi(π) to the nth digit. In this benchmark, we selected the Pi calculation to 32M, the highest available for the app. 

wPrime 1024M

wPrime is a benchmark tool similar to SuperPI, but the former takes on finding prime numbers using Newton’s Method. The benchmark is set to calculate 1024 million prime numbers, and the performance is measured according to calculation time. 

GeekBench 6.2.2

Geekbench is a multi-platform benchmark used to gauge CPU performance and compare them across Windows, Mac, and Mobile. Geekbench 6 is the latest version and doesn’t rely on memory more than the previous Geekbench 4, making it a great tool to measure both single-core and multi-core CPU performance.

3DMark Firestrike and TimeSpy

3DMark is the go-to benchmark for gamers because of the ability to share and compare results online. We test GPUs both in DX11 Firestike and DX12 Timespy to get a gauge of the performance.

CORONA RENDERER

Corona Renderer is an unbiased photorealistic render available for Autodesk 3Ds Max, Maxon Cinema 4D, and as a stand-alone application. Its popularity, similar to Blender, led Chaos Group to develop a benchmark version of the app which runs using Corona Renderer 1.3. Workstation systems, especially CPUs, can utilize Corona Benchmark as up to 72 threads can be used in the benchmark, making it very suitable for CPUs with various price segments. 

BapCo CROSSMARK

Crossmark is one of the few native cross-platform benchmark tools available for Windows, Android, Linux ChromeOS, iOS, and macOS. It measures overall system performance and system responsiveness using models of real-world applications making it a great comparison point across multiple platforms.

ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 2024 SSD Benchmark

ASUS used a WD SN560 SSD for the G14 2024 rated at 5,000MB/s read and 3,500MB/s write. Our quick Crystal Disk Mark benchmark confirms the drive’s rated speed.

ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 2024 Gaming Benchmarks

RETURNAL

Returnal is one of the most technologically advanced game since the launch of Cyberpunk 2077. Released last April 2021 on PS5 and February 2023 on PC, it uses Unreal Engine 4 and supports multiple technologies such as Ray Tracing, DLSS, VSR, and FSR.

COUNTERSTRIKE 2

CounterStrike 2 or CS2 is the successor to the now-retired CSGO and now uses the Source 2 Engine – the same engine used on DOTA 2. CS2 is a great FPS game to test out CPU performance. Our benchmark process uses the replay function of the game.

DOTA 2

Dota 2 is a good repesentation among F2P titles especially MOBAs and RTS as it lands on the demanding side of the spectrum. Its gameplay and quality of life updates are far more frequent than most F2P titles thanks to its vast popularity. Our benchmark sequence is based on a replay of OG vs. Gaimin Gladiators in the ESL ONE Berlin Major Finals Game 4 from the team fight that happened from 23:00 to 24:00. 

SPIDER-MAN: MILES MORALES

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales is developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony is one of the most popular PC port titles last 2022. It’s one of the few modern game titles that support upscaling technologies FSR, DLSS, and XeSS making it a great title to use for benchmarks.

F1 23

F1 23 is the official video game of the 2023 Formula One and Formula 2 championships developed by Codemasters. F1 2023 is the sixteenth installment in the franchise and uses the Ego Engine 4.0. F1 233 is a good representation of racing games thanks to its realistic graphics and fairly demanding spec requirements as well as support for Ray Tracing and the latest upscaling technologies such as DLSS, XeSS, and FSR.

ASSASSIN’S CREED: MIRAGE

Assassin’s Creed Mirage is the latest Assassin’s Creed game from Ubisoft making it the thirteenth major installment in the franchise. It uses the AnvilNext 2.0 game engine and is the very first AC game to support the latest upscaling technology such as XeSS, FSR, and DLSS.

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 is arguably the most hyped game of 2020. Developed by CD Projekt Red, the dystopian open-world, action-adventure RPG sports is one of the most demanding titles to date. Cyberpunk 2077 also supports three Ray Tracing settings as well as DLSS which makes the game a great tool to measure Ray tracing performance for both AMD and Nvidia graphics cards.

Far Cry 6

FarCry 6 is an FPS game published by Ubisoft and uses the Dunia engine. It heavily relies on and takes advantage of DirectX 12 to render a realistic environment that makes it taxing to both the CPU and GPU. It’s also the first game of the franchise to support Ray Tracing.

Shadow of The Tomb Raider

Shadow of The Tomb Raider or SOTR is the latest installment of the Lara Croft Tomb Raider franchise. Developed by Square Enix, SOTR uses the Foundation engine and is further enhanced by Eidos Montreal. SOTR is also one of the first games to come out with Ray Tracing and DLSS support.

HORIZON ZERO DAWN

Horizon Zero Dawn is one of the most popular console-port RPG developed by Guerilla Games and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Horizon Zero Dawn is a multi-award-winning action RPG, and its popularity resulted in an exclusive Complete Edition game bundle on Steam.

ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 2024 Battery Life

Like last year’s model, battery life isn’t a strong aspect of the ROG Zephyrus G14 2024. Using the laptop’s most conservative mode as well as turning off slash lighting only yielded 4 hours and 27 minutes. Turning on the slash lighting at 50% brightness reduced the battery life to only 3 hours and 32 minutes. While you have improved efficiency with the new CPU and GPU, the OLED battery drain cancels out these supposed benefits. That said, it’s good that ASUS included a small 100W Type-C charger to somehow compensate for the G14’s disappointing battery life.

ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 2024 Temperatures

The smaller form factor of the ROG Zephyrus G14 is a double-edged sword. While you do get closer to ROG Flow X13 levels of portability, you’re also getting a much smaller surface area to cool the AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS and RTX 4070 GPU.

Both performance profiles place the Ryzen 9 8945HS above 93°C temperature while the RTX 4070 sits at 87°C regardless of power profile. This shows that GPU is prioritized when it comes to cooling. Considering the RTX 4070’s 90W TDP, prioritizing CPU cooling should yield better performance as apps and games are run at 1800p resolution.

Conclusion – A Love Hate Relationship

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 2024 is a love-hate relationship, not limited to the Slash lighting but the overall overhaul of the device. The shift from Anime Matrix to Slash Lighting boils ultimately down to preference but it’s without a doubt that the new Slash Lighting design makes the laptop feel and look more professional, especially in the Platinum White colorway. You have a much thinner form factor but at the cost of weaker components. No matter which GPU is in the G14 2024 you’re only limited to 90W TGP compared to the higher 120-125W TDP on the RTX 40 GPUs found on the 2023 model.

Adding fire to the fuel is its display. I have nothing negative to say about the 14″ 16:10 1800p 120Hz Nebula display as it’s simply one of the best available in the market. But its higher resolution from 2023’s 1600p to 1800p paired with the weaker 90W RTX 4070 TGP cripples the supposed improvements of the newer gen components inside the laptop, especially in battery life. Not to mention you have a smaller surface area for cooling despite having an aluminum frame.

Overall, the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 is revamped to take in a wider customer base that’s leaning towards the professional side of professional/working gamers. The Slash Lighting stands out but not much to label the owner a “degenerate” gamer. The improved ROG Nebula display makes the G14 ideal for those requiring color-accurate work. The slimmer form factor makes it a great everyday carry device, especially for travel with its 100W PD charger. That said, you’re getting less performance compared to last generation’s G14 with its smaller cooler, lower TDP, and higher resolution.

All in all, it’s not to say that the ROG Zephyrus G14 2024 is not a good laptop. It’s still one of the best 14-inch gaming laptops available in the market, just not if you’re purpose is purely on the gaming side. As mentioned earlier, the G14 2024 is now a laptop that’s skewed more towards professional gamers rather than just gamers on the go. So, if you fit the description of requiring a portable and powerful 14-inch device that has an excellent display, design, form factor, and arguably the performance to pull from when needed, then there’s no beating the ASUS Zephyrus G14 GU403 2024.

Where to buy ASUS ROG G14 2024 Philippines

The ASUS ROG G14 GA403 2024 Ryzen 9 8945HS + RTX 4070 and other variants are now available at ASUS authorized retailers. For a list of the SKUs available in the Philippines, refer to the ASUS ROG G14 product page.