Alan Walker Edition Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 Showcase
|First off, I want to make it clear that this video is sponsored by Asus, and thanks to them, what I’ve got in front of me here is something rather special. You’ve probably seen the standard version of Asus’ Zephyrus G14, but you won’t have seen anything like this. It’s a custom special edition designed by Alan Walker, with some rather cool bonus features. In case you don’t know who Alan Walker is, let me give you the rundown. He’s a chart topping EDM artist who you’d be most familiar with his smash hit “Faded”. He’s worked with Asus ROG before, and they actually made a custom laptop just for him, but since he has been streaming more often and breaking into the gaming world with his gameplay animation challenge earlier this year, they decided to collaborate on a custom version of the G14 that you can actually go and buy.
And that’s what I have here. Let me show you what you get – first, and clearly most importantly, is the socks. These nice Alan Walker & ROG branded socks. You also get a hat, and a rather nice carrying case for the laptop, then of course the machine itself. Lets get it out of the box – although I’ll keep the box around as there’s an extra surprise there I’ll show you in a second.
But first, the G14. It’s the same machine as you’d get in the regular model, with a Ryzen 9 5900HS and RTX 3050ti, plus 16GB of RAM and 1TB of NVMe SSD space and a stunning 1440p 120Hz display. What’s different comes first in styling. You get this beautiful Eclipse Gray colour, fully matte of course. The magnesium-aluminium alloy chassis also features an astonishing 6,536 precision-milled holes to let the 1,215 mini-LEDs shine through creating the AniMe Matrix display which comes with custom Alan Walker animations. You even get a custom nameplate on the bottom, and fabric straps built into the lid which really make it stand out.
Taking a peek inside, the changes are pretty obvious. From the logo on the A and W keys, to the really cool colours on the escape, enter and shift keys, plus the light two gray tones on the outer edge keys. I really like this look, makes it look like a proper custom machine. There is even a new design under the touchpad! You also get a new startup logo and sound, have a look.
Now that it’s on, you’ll have a chance to see those mini-LEDs fire up, it’s customisable in the Armoury Crate app which you can launch with the ROG button right here. You’ve got a load of options, like the animation mode where you’ve got 4 different Alan Walker & ROG animations which you can load up in a timeline, loop a given number of times, and speed up or slow down as you like. Or, you can use the system mode to show things like your battery life, time, or even new emails you get. Or you can pick the option probably best suited to this machine, the audio mode. This acts as a visualizer for any audio the machine is playing which will be important later.
Now, all of this is really cool. I love the look of this, the keyboard really stands out, and as a whole the G14 is a fantastic machine already so it’s obvious I’d really enjoy having and using this. But there’s one feature of this kit that I haven’t mentioned and I’m so excited to try… Remember I said I’d keep the box handy? Well, on the left hand side there’s a little hole… Inside that is a USB C port. Yes, the box has a Type C port. When you plug it in, the lights in the box turn on and a program opens on the G14 and when you touch any one of the 6 big gold squares… It plays samples from Alan Walker himself. It’s even got his song, Sorry.
In total you have 18 different samples, split between three layers. Tap the “Samplers” triangle to change between them – here’s layer one, and layer two, and layer three. You can speed up or slow down the song, increase or decrease the lowpass filter, and play and pause. Oh and you get some seriously awesome visuals for each sample playing on screen, plus the AniMe Matrix on the back too. Ok, now I finally get to try this. Let’s go!
Now, the samples are all fixed, but the song that you play over isn’t, you can click on the disc icon at the top right and load any song you like in, whether that’s your favourite Alan Walker song, or something different entirely that’s up to you.
It’s pretty obvious I’m not a pro DJ, but if you want to watch Alan Walker himself unveil and play with this, go check out the video on his channel that just came out, I’ll leave that link in the description below, along with a link to this laptop if you want to find out more or pick one up yourself.