In the vast ocean of Intel Raptor Lake-powered gaming laptops, it's a rare sight to see one sporting the latest Meteor Lake processors. This 2024 edition Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 boasts a Core Ultra 9 185H chip, with six P-cores, eight E-cores, and 22 threads in total. With a max power consumption of 115 W, it's easier to keep cool than the Raptor Lake laptop processors, too.
It would be nicer to have more P-cores, but they use lots of power, and six is enough for most games. There's even a little NPU (neural processing unit) inside the CPU, to help with basic AI tasks like Microsoft's Copilot, but it's not powerful enough to meet the Copilot+ PC requirements.
Besides, most of the performance will be controlled by the RTX 4070 graphics chip and even though it's limited to a maximum of 105 W, that's fine for 1080p gaming.
Yes, the display has a resolution of 2560 x 1600, so you're more likely to be playing at 1440p+ resolutions but don't worry—the latest games support the use of upscaling and many have a frame generation option, as well. That RTX 4070 is DLSS 3.5 compatible, so you get the full gamut of Nvidia's AI performance-boosting tech.
We tested an RTX 4090 version of this laptop and the GPU in that was massively underused, as the cooling system just couldn't cope with that chip. Here, the compact RTX 4070 will be far easier to manage, so you should be able to squeeze the last drop of rendering power out of that chip.
The real star of the show is the 240 Hz OLED panel—"a beautifully deep and vibrant viewing experience," we said in our review. Like all such displays, it's not super bright, so you'll need to avoid using the laptop in a very well-lit room, but in a darkened gaming den, it's an absolute joy to behold.
There's only 16GB of RAM, unfortunately, but at least it's LPDDR5X-6400, so performance won't be an issue. There's a decent-sized 1TB NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD inside, so you're unlikely to run out of storage space for a while, though it's not clear if there's a second M.2 to add another drive.
Overall, this is a fine gaming notebook—a little bit on the pricey side compared with some other RTX 4070 laptop deals and it doesn't sport the most powerful CPU and GPU combination you can have—but the balance of components is spot on. You'll certainly love staring for many a long hour at the OLED display, that's for sure.
The only blot in the ROG Zephyrus G16 exercise book is the fact that it's an Asus laptop and the company's management of warranty claims and RMAs has triggered an investigation by Gamers Nexus. Hopefully, the outcome of that will ensure that if you do pick up this great deal, you'll have a solid warranty behind it.
