At the start of 2024, Asus arrived at CES with a quiet but meaningful proposition: that a gaming laptop need not announce itself as such. The new ROG Zephyrus G14 and G16 are thinner, lighter, and more considered in their design than their predecessors — machines that carry serious power without the usual visual aggression. It is a small but telling shift in how the industry imagines the person on the other side of the screen.
Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 and G16 get OLED screens, sleeker design for 2024
A gaming laptop that doesn't announce itself
Mark
Why redesign the Zephyrus now? The old models were already well-regarded.
Mimi
Because there's a difference between good and inevitable. The old design had character, but it looked like a gaming laptop. This one just looks like a laptop that happens to be very good at games.
Mark
The GPU situation seems like a miss—last year's cards in a 2024 machine.
Mimi
On paper, maybe. But new Nvidia GPUs in laptops take forever to arrive, and the quality-of-life stuff here—the OLED screen, the weight, the hinge—those matter more to how you actually use the machine day to day.
Mark
The fans get loud, though. That's a real compromise.
Mimi
It is. But that's always been the deal with thin gaming laptops. You can't have all three: thin, cool, and quiet. Asus chose thin and powerful, and the fans are the price.
Mark
What about the proprietary charging port? That seems like a step backward.
Mimi
It's reversible and slim, which is actually better than a barrel plug. And you can charge via USB-C anyway. The proprietary port is just there if you need the full power.
Mark
Who is this laptop actually for?
Mimi
Someone who wants a gaming machine that doesn't announce itself. Someone who needs to work during the day and play at night. Someone who's tired of lugging around a heavy laptop.
Mark
And the price? Asus hasn't released it yet.
Mimi
That's the real question. If it's reasonable, this could be the machine everyone wants. If it's premium pricing, it's a beautiful thing that only some people can afford.
Der Puls
- Gaming laptops have long forced a choice between raw power and everyday dignity — Asus is now arguing that choice is no longer necessary.
- The new Zephyrus G14 and G16 arrive with OLED displays, sub-4.5-pound aluminum builds, and a redesigned hinge that removes the last awkward seam between gaming machine and professional tool.
- Retaining last-generation RTX 40-series GPUs rather than waiting for new silicon is a calculated bet — DLSS 3.5 and Frame Generation keep the performance argument alive without delaying the redesign.
- Six speakers in a chassis this thin, a reversible proprietary charger alongside USB-C, and customizable lid lighting that defaults off on battery all suggest a product team thinking about real-world use, not just spec sheets.
- With February pricing still unannounced and full benchmarks pending, the Zephyrus line is landing as a strong contender — one that looks as good in a coffee shop as it performs in a late-night gaming session.
At the start of 2024, Asus arrived at CES with a quiet but meaningful proposition: that a gaming laptop need not announce itself as such. The new ROG Zephyrus G14 and G16 are thinner, lighter, and more considered in their design than their predecessors — machines that carry serious power without the usual visual aggression. It is a small but telling shift in how the industry imagines the person on the other side of the screen.
Asus came to CES 2024 with a redesign that makes itself known the moment you open the lid. The new ROG Zephyrus G14 and G16 are thinner and lighter than their predecessors — 3.31 and 4.3 pounds respectively — built from new aluminum chassis that feel more refined than the gaming machines they replace. A smaller hinge no longer lifts the keyboard deck, and the effect is subtle but real: these feel like laptops someone actually wanted to carry around.
The screens are 16:10 OLED panels — 2880 by 1800 at 120Hz on the G14, 2560 by 1600 at 240Hz on the G16 — vivid enough to make the laptop form factor feel less like a compromise. Inside, the G14 runs AMD's Ryzen 8000 series and the G16 uses Intel's Meteor Lake chips, both paired with up to 32GB of DDR5 RAM. The GPUs are last year's RTX 40-series, topping out at a 4070 on the G14 and a 4090 on the G16 — a deliberate choice, given that DLSS 3.5 and Frame Generation keep the gaming performance firmly competitive.
Early time with the machines confirmed that the redesign holds up in practice. The keyboard is excellent, the large trackpad responsive if slightly stiff at the top, and six speakers somehow fit inside the G14 with genuinely good results. A new slim reversible proprietary charger sits alongside USB-C, letting users travel light and save the heavy power brick for serious sessions. Port selection is generous on both models, and a strip of customizable white lid lighting — tunable through Armoury Crate, off by default on battery — lands closer to sharp than gimmicky.
Under load, the fans make themselves heard, but the performance follows. These are still gaming machines; they just no longer look like they're trying to prove it. Asus also quietly refreshed the ROG Strix and Strix Scar lines with 14th-gen Intel chips and the same QHD 240Hz screens. The new Zephyrus models are set for a February launch, with pricing still to come — but the formula appears to be working.
Asus walked into CES 2024 with a redesign that feels like the kind of thing you notice the moment you open the lid. The new ROG Zephyrus G14 and G16 are thinner, faster, and dressed up in a way that suggests someone at the company spent real time thinking about what people actually want from a gaming laptop that also needs to work in a coffee shop.
The numbers tell part of the story. The G14 now weighs just 3.31 pounds, while the G16 comes in at 4.3 pounds—both of which feel almost impossibly light for machines this powerful. The aluminum chassis is new. The hinge is smaller and no longer lifts the keyboard deck, which sounds like a small thing until you realize it makes the whole machine feel more refined, less like a gaming contraption and more like something you'd actually want to carry around. The screens are 16:10 OLED panels: the G14 runs 2880 by 1800 at 120 hertz, and the G16 pushes 2560 by 1600 at 240 hertz. Both are vivid enough to make you forget you're looking at a laptop screen.
Inside, Asus went with AMD's Ryzen 8000 series for the G14 and Intel's newer Meteor Lake chips for the G16, paired with up to 32 gigabytes of DDR5 RAM. The graphics cards are last year's Nvidia RTX 40-series—the G14 maxes out at an RTX 4070, the G16 at a 4090—which might sound like a step backward until you remember that waiting for new GPUs in laptops is a game that never ends. The 40-series cards support DLSS 3.5 and Frame Generation, which means the gaming performance is still very much there.
What struck a reviewer who spent a couple of weeks with early models was how the redesign actually works. The new hinge design contributes to a premium feel that previous Zephyrus machines didn't quite achieve. The keyboard is among the best you'll find on any laptop. The trackpad is large and responsive, though it gets a bit stiff toward the top. Six speakers now fit inside the G14—a surprise, given how thin it is—and they sound genuinely good. There's a new proprietary charging port that's reversible and slim, separate from the USB-C charging option, which means you can top up with USB-C for everyday work and save the chunky 180-watt or 240-watt power brick for when you're about to play something demanding.
The port selection is generous for machines this thin. The G14 offers USB 4, USB-C 3.2, two USB-A ports, HDMI 2.1, a 3.5mm jack, and a microSD slot. The G16 swaps the USB 4 for Thunderbolt 4 and adds Power Delivery to its USB-C, plus a full-size SD card slot. There's also a strip of customizable white lighting that runs across the lid—the kind of thing that sounds gimmicky until you see it in person, at which point it just looks sharp. You can tune it through Asus's Armoury Crate software, and by default it turns off when you're on battery, which means you might actually be able to use this in a meeting without everyone knowing you're on a gaming machine.
When you actually fire up a game, both laptops wake up. The fans get loud—that's the tradeoff for fitting this much power into something so thin—but the performance is there. The graphics look clean, the frame rates hold up, and the whole machine transforms from something that looks almost like a productivity laptop into something that clearly means business. It's a trick the Zephyrus line has always pulled off well, and the new design doesn't lose that.
Aus also refreshed its ROG Strix and Strix Scar lines, though with much less fanfare. Both now have 14th generation Intel processors up to the 14900HX and the same 16:10 QHD 240-hertz screens as before, with Nvidia GPUs up to the RTX 4080 or 4090. The Strix Scar, the beefier of the two, starts at $2,899.99 for a 16-inch model and $2,999.99 for 18 inches, though you can spec them much higher. The new Zephyrus models are set to launch in February, and Asus hasn't yet released final pricing. What matters now is that the company seems to have nailed the formula: a gaming laptop that actually looks like something you'd want to own, that doesn't sacrifice performance or thermals for thinness, and that works just as well for work as it does for play.
Bemerkenswerte Zitate
The new hinge design goes a long way in making these laptops feel and look more premium than prior models.— The Verge reviewer
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