2022 Asus Zephyrus G14 Review – All AMD Gaming Laptop!

This is so, so close to being the perfect one-size-fits-all gaming laptop. The 2022 Asus Zephyrus G14 is an absolute work of art, a performant beast, and a stunning all-rounder… And yet I’m not sure I’d splash my own cash on one. Want to know why? Well you best keep watching!

Let me start with a rundown of the specs. This new 2022 model is an All AMD machine, rocking a new Ryzen 6900HS 8 core, 16 thread chip, 32GB of DDR5-4800 RAM – yes DDR5! I was surprised to see that here too, but it’s there. It’s 16GB of soldered RAM and a single 16GB DDR5 SODIMM you can upgrade (in theory anyway). You also get a 1TB Gen 4×4 SSD that looks awfully bare – so bare that it’s missing a DRAM cache meaning it’s max performance is 3.6GB/s, down from over 7GB/s of most DRAM equipped Gen 4×4 SSDs… Still plenty fast enough, but a bit of a shame. Anyway the final piece of the spec puzzle here is the GPU, a Radeon RX 6800S, not to be confused with the 6800HS CPU you can also equip this machine with. God AMD please sort your naming scheme out. Interestingly this does have a MUX switch to switch which GPU, either the iGPU or the dGPU, is connected to the display.

Anyway, that’s an awful lot of power in a tiny 14” machine like this, but surprisingly it holds its own well. Cinebench R23 single threaded shows a decent improvement over the previous generation Ryzen 5000 series chips, although definitely a step behind the new Intel 12th gen options, including the 12900H in the equally skinny Flow Z13.

Multi-threaded is much the same story, a healthy lead over last gen Ryzen especially comparing apples to apples in the same Zephyrus chassis – albeit to the slightly larger G15 from last gen. Equally the 12th gen chips – especially considering the higher overall core count – hold a decent advantage over the 6900HS here.

That trend holds true in Blender and the BMW scene, still excellent performance although not quite as fast as the 12700H especially in the better cooled machines. In Gooseberry though Ryzen shines, with near chart-topping performance. That’s in part thanks to impressive power consumption over the longer render.

As for Premiere Pro, using Puget Bench, the G14 scored rather low here. This is the same trend I’ve seen with the other recent laptops I’ve had in, with the G14 pretty close to the 12900H in the Flow Z13. The trend continues in After Effects where again while the score is relatively low, it’s on par with the 12th gen based machines I’ve checked out recently. Only in Photoshop do we get a literally top-scoring result. It’s the highest score I’ve seen from a laptop, and by a convincing margin. Not bad!

Lastly, I want to touch on power consumption. The 6900HS did an excellent job here, running at just 42W during the Gooseberry render with only a mildly higher peak of 50W. In Turbo mode it does push out more like 55W, with a peak of 69W (nice). In performance mode, that is the second lowest result I’ve had, only behind the 12900H in the Flow x13, although that chip had considerably higher peak power consumption at 88W.

Of course being a gaming laptop, you’ll want to know how it games too. In short, fairly well, if not perfect. At the native 2560×1600 resolution on generally medium settings you can expect around 60FPS in most games. That’s not amazing considering this is a 120Hz display, although it’s not too bad either.

For the sake of comparison, at 1080p you can expect a better overall spread. In CSGO the G14 offers fairly mid-field performance – of course we are talking about over 200FPS so it’s fine, but it isn’t the absolute fastest I’ve had in.

In Microsoft Flight Simulator this ran at 71 FPS average, making it the second fastest machine I’ve had in. It lags behind the Aorus 17 XE4 with its 12700H and RTX 3070 Ti, but that’s a laptop that is nearly twice as thick as the G14, and considerably larger in the other dimensions too so I’m not too concerned.

In Cyberpunk the G14 runs second fastest again, and this time is even remarkably close to that powerhouse THICC laptop too. The same for Watchdogs Legion where again it offers just shy of 100FPS average, and only 7 FPS behind the Aorus 17. And finally in Fortnite it’s back to mid-field performance. It still ran at over 130 FPS average so more than enough for this display, but the thicker Aorus was pushing more like 170 FPS which would be nice to get a little closer to. Still, plenty of power on tap for games, at least at 1080 – or 1200p.

I’ve mentioned the display enough to cover it in detail – this is a 14” 2560×1600 panel, meaning it runs a 16:10 aspect ratio. This seems to be the new trend, and one I think I’ve made clear that I’m not onboard with. It’s definitely not my preference, although it is a rather good looking panel. It’s a 120Hz IPS panel that in my testing covers 100% of the DCI-P3 spectrum with a DeltaE of under 2, and around 500 nits of peak brightness in SDR which is pretty good.

The downside comes in the response time department. Asus claims this will run a “3ms response time”, and technically, if you squint real hard, it might be… No who’s kidding anyone – this ran around a 10ms average, with peak results as high as 17ms. It also runs an impressive amount of overshoot, especially on falling transitions. A look at the raw data shows what I mean, when you factor in the overshoot time and trim off 5 RGB values on either end you are left with a remarkably long transition.

It’s worth noting though, just how important it is to see reviewers test this though, because I’ll let you in on a little secret… Asus didn’t actually lie. Well, it’s not a bare-faced lie anyway, it’s the more standard, subtle misdirection everyone does. Here’s that graph again showing the perceived response time, the time the panel takes to transition including overshoot, at something like 15ms. Now here’s what I call the Initial Response Time, using the terrible 10% of the light level tolerance, and oh look, 3ms! But saying the response time is done here is like saying you won a marathon because you timed a 100m sprint half way round the course – then walked the rest.

Those response times are confirmed with the UFO test too – you can see there are 2 frames ghosted on screen, which at 120Hz is 16.7ms (AKA 60Hz). You can also see the new frame never gets fully rendered – the black pixel for the eyes isn’t exactly present here. In short, this feels a lot like a 60Hz panel that’s being overdriven to 120Hz, and just.. Not.

Actually gaming on it is a reasonable experience. This for sure isn’t your next esports machine, but for casually clicking heads in a battle royale or anything else you fancy really, you should have a pretty good time. Surprisingly, thanks to the vapour chamber design the G14 is remarkably quiet even while gaming. It’s not silent or anything, but I was definitely impressed.

There is actually a second display on this machine though, on the back. Asus calls it the “AniMe Matrix display”, it’s a white LED sort-of dot matrix display we’ve seen on G14 and G15 models before. It’s definitely cool to look at, but much like any rear-facing lighting it’ll likely spend most of its time disabled in real life. You can’t buy a G14 without it though, at least as far as I can tell.

I/O wise you get 2 USB C ports (with displayport ALT mode), 2 USB A ports, HDMI, a headphone jack, DC in and a MicroSD card reader. That’s actually really good for a laptop of this size, and save for ethernet I’m not sure you’d need a dongle for anything. The keyboard is excellent too, it’s the right balance of tactile and firm without getting in the way, I had an incredibly easy time getting up to speed on it. I also really enjoyed using the massive trackpad. It has a great feel, well sized and has the right sort of tactile click feel.

Really, everything besides the display makes me think this is the perfect machine for me. It’s small, thin and light making a great travel companion, it’s plenty powerful enough for on-the-go gaming or editing, and the actual usage experience is fantastic. But that display, specifically the slow response times and the aspect ratio, just don’t do it for me. That might actually be a deal breaker, although if you aren’t so fussed I think you’ll love this.