ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 2022 (GA402) gaming laptop review

Powerful gaming laptops can also be compact — ASUS demonstrates with the example of its new model ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14. This year’s update is based on the AMD platform, has an excellent performance in games, and at the same time, in terms of size and weight, it almost does not differ from much weaker “working machines”.

ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 2022 Features

Configuration

Unlike many other laptops, the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 turns out to be very well equipped. In the box you can also find a protective rubberized carrying case with thick and soft sides, a USB-Ethernet adapter, a ROG Strix Impact wired mouse (there are options with ROG Chakram Core) and… two power supplies – the main one, with a capacity of 240 W, and a “derivative”, much smaller in terms of size and with a USB-C connector — for 100 W.

Design and Layout

ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 has a very compact appearance for a gaming laptop – it is less than 2 cm thick and weighs only 1.72 kg. This makes it a kind of hybrid model – the owner can use it both as a stationary system and take it with them on the road if they are going to work somewhere on their way (in fact, this is exactly why the kit includes an additional power supply, much smaller and lighter than the main one).

This year’s model is presented in two color solutions – white (Moonlight White) and dark gray (Eclipse Grey), we received the second version for review. The body is made of magnesium alloy, the matte surface resists fingerprints quite effectively – of course, they still appear on it, but not as quickly as on a glossy one, and they are not so noticeable.

An unusual feature for a gaming model is the lack of RGB lighting in the case (only the keyboard has it). It is explained simply – instead of the usual multi-colored LEDs in the most unusual places, the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 is equipped with… a matrix “display” on the lid – most of its surface is covered with small holes that, when turned on, can glow with white light and form various dynamic patterns. In the proprietary software, you can choose various animations or display system information on this screen — battery charge level, availability of new letters, current time/date, etc. The user is also offered a special utility Pixel Editor, with which you can create and display your own image on the cover. The manufacturer notes that the 2022 model has 19% more diodes (1,449) and twice as many holes (14,969).

The frames around the screen are quite small – 5 mm on the sides and 9 mm on top; in general, the screen occupies 91% of the cover area, which is a very good indicator. The case feels solid, it doesn’t bend or creak. The lid can be opened easily with one hand, you don’t need to hold the base for this.

The maximum opening angle is slightly more than 180°, that is, if desired, the screen can be placed on the table – it is not entirely clear why the game model has such an option, but so be it. The base rises slightly when opened, which adds ergonomics to the keyboard. The hinge loops are quite tight, they fix the screen well in any position.

On the left, you can find the power connector, HDMI video output, wired headset combo jack, and USB-C with DisplayPort and Power Delivery support. On the right is another USB-C, but with only DisplayPort support, a microSD card reader, and two USB 3.2 ports. Yes, unfortunately, there are no such ports on the left side at all, so the wired mouse will have to be connected on the right side, which can create inconvenience in its use.

Keyboard, touchpad

ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 is equipped with an island-type keyboard with a slightly larger than usual key travel of 1.7 mm. Thanks to the support of the NKRO (N-key rollover) function, the keyboard can register the pressing of any number of keys at the same time. The keyboard has no additional number block, the width is the same as a traditional desktop model (with an accuracy of 1 mm), so you won’t have to get used to the reduced size of the keys or the distance between them for blind typing.

The layout is almost standard ANSI, with long left Shift and single-line Enter. The arrow control block is embedded in the main block, under the right Shift. For this they had to reduce the space and shift the right Alt and Ctrl to the left. To the left above the function keys there is a block of four additional keys — by default, they control the volume of the built-in speakers and the microphone, as well as launch the proprietary Armory Crate utility, but the user can assign other functions to them if desired. The power button is located separately from the keyboard block, moved to the side from the upper right corner, and is recessed into the body, so it will definitely not be accidentally pressed during operation.

The keys have RGB backlighting with Aura Sync support, which allows you to control its behavior and synchronize it with other ASUS devices. The backlighting is quite moderate, and if you look at the keyboard from the side, the leakage of light from under the caps is brighter than the markings on the keys.

The touchpad in the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 is quite large – 128×76 mm (the manufacturer notes that it has increased by 50% compared to the previous model). The touchpad is easy to use, and the buttons in the lower part are pressed softly and tangibly.

Screen

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 (GA402) uses a 14-inch IPS panel produced by BOE Technology (BOEhydis NE140QDM-NX1) with a slightly strange 16:10 aspect ratio for a gaming model. Depending on the configuration, the specifications of the panel can be as follows: 2560×1600 points and 120 Hz (as in our case) or 1920×1200 points and 144 Hz. The color coverage of the screen is expanded – the manufacturer claims full coverage of the DCI-P3 space. Regarding gaming specifications, both types of screens support AMD FreeSync Premium adaptive frequency technology and have a panel response time of 3 ms.

In the settings of the Armory Crate utility, there is a GameVisual section with several video modes optimized for different uses of the laptop. By default, the Default mode is set, which is described as optimal for viewing photos and websites. It has a wide color range (90% Adobe RGB, 98% DCI-P3), and the gamma value is slightly reduced, up to 2.1 (against the standard 2.2). The brightness is adjustable in the range from 14 to 470 cd/m², which will be more than enough to work both in complete darkness and in strong light.

The maximum static contrast ratio is 1080:1, which is a very good indicator for a laptop IPS panel. By default, the color temperature is slightly overestimated (up to ~7600K against the standard 6500K), which makes the image a bit “cooler” than it should be. This can be fixed very easily – there is a temperature slider in the video settings, which adjusts this parameter between 6300-9200K.

Color temperature uniformity across the entire screen area is generally not bad, with a maximum difference of less than 5%. Brightness uniformity is also very good — the difference between the lower part of the screen (“the darkest” zone) and the upper corners (“the brightest”) is 10-11% – usually this parameter is noticeably higher in thin laptop displays. The accuracy of color reproduction is also very high, the average value of ΔE does not exceed one; this means that the display in the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 undergoes factory calibration – another unusual phenomenon for a gaming model.

Black uniformity is near-perfect — if you set a black wallpaper, turn up the brightness to maximum, and turn off the room lights, the screen will appear almost uniformly dark gray with a purple tint and barely noticeable slightly brighter areas in some places along the edges.

In addition to the Default mode, GameVisual also has options for different game genres (Racing, FPS, RTS/RPG) and specific use cases — Cinema, Scenery, Vivid, and Eyecare. They differ in the setting of brightness, contrast, color saturation, gamma, color temperature, etc.

Hardware platform

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 (GA402) series uses the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS processor, a powerful mobile processor for gaming laptops built on the Zen 3+ architecture, which belongs to the Rembrandt generation. It was announced in April this year, so the model is still quite new. Ryzen 9 6900HS has 8 cores and can process up to 16 threads at the same time, the base frequency is 3.3 GHz, in Turbo mode it can increase to 4.8 GHz. The chips are manufactured by TSMC using a 6nm process, with a typical TDP of 35W.

Despite the fact that AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS has built-in and quite powerful graphics (Radeon 680M GPU on the RDNA2 architecture), discrete video is also installed in the laptop – AMD Radeon RX 6700S 8 GB (TDP up to 100 W) or Radeon RX 6800S 8 GB (up to 105 W); our model had the second option. The laptop cooling system uses an evaporation chamber, and instead of traditional thermal paste — liquid metal from Thermal Grizzly, and not only on the processor, but also on the GPU.

The RAM is partially soldered on the board (16 GB), there is also one SODIMM slot, in which a DDR5-4800 module is installed for another 16 GB – this gives the maximum possible capacity for this configuration of 32 GB. The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 2022 lineup also has 8+8GB configurations (up to 24GB maximum). All models have the same drive configuration: PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD 1 TB, in our model it was a Micron 2450 MTFDKBA1T0TFK SSD.

The MediaTek MT7922 module is responsible for wireless communication: Wi-Fi 6E 802.11ax 2×2 + Bluetooth 5.2.

ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 performance

AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS shows very high performance in synthetic benchmarks, so the laptop can be used not only for games, but also for tasks that require a powerful CPU. The Micron 2450 storage device shows very good performance, but we expected even more from a PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD — read/write speeds of ~3500 MB/s can be achieved even by “top” PCIe 3.0 SSDs.

At the request of readers, we compared the performance of the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 when working from the network and from the battery. Comprehensive performance in PCMark10 decreased, but not by much, but in the purely processor benchmarks Cinebench R23 and 3DMark CPU Profile in offline mode a small but noticeable increase in performance was generally observed. And only the 3DMark TimeSpy game test recorded a noticeable decrease in performance when running on battery power – which is not surprising, because in this mode the laptop stops using the Radeon RX 6800S discrete graphics in favor of the integrated Radeon 680M GPU.

The Armory Crate utility allows you to choose different cooling modes that directly affect the performance of the system. Silent mode makes the laptop quiet, Performance offers an optimal ratio of speed and fan noise level, Turbo gives maximum CPU and GPU performance, and Manual mode allows you to create custom profiles with your own settings for different tasks. We compared the performance of the system in the first three using the Cinebench R23 utility during the load on all cores. From the results, it can be concluded that performance during single-threaded tasks almost did not increase, while in multi-threaded mode the increase was already quite significant.

The HWiNFO64 utility recorded a rather strange behavior of the system in Silent mode: the dedicated thermal package of the processor was 50 W (with a typical for it of 35 W), its temperature rose to 88 degrees, the cores worked on average at frequencies of 3.6-3.7 GHz, the level noise was quite low (~42 dB at a distance of 1 m from the laptop). In Normal, the main parameters, according to HWiNFO64, were almost the same: the thermal package was the same 50 W, the frequencies of all cores barely exceeded 3.7 GHz, but the noise level increased to 45 dB, and the CPU temperature decreased to 87 degrees. And finally, the third mode, Turbo: it has a noise level of 50 dB, frequencies rose to 3.9-4 GHz, TDP – up to 65 W, and processor temperature – up to 96 degrees.

A similar performance situation in single-threaded and multi-threaded tasks was observed in 3DMark CPU Profile (Silent/Performance/Turbo):

Let’s move on to the games. The native screen resolution is non-standard 2560×1600 pixels (due to the 16:10 aspect ratio). We tested the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 at this resolution in some games at high graphics settings. As you can see, the speed of the system is quite enough for the average number of frames/s to be at the level of 60+ fps in the vast majority of projects.

Given that the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 (GA402) lineup also includes configurations with Full HD screens, we tested the laptop with this resolution at the same high settings. This made it possible to raise the average FPS to the mark of 80+.

The discrete video supports ray tracing, and we tested the system’s performance in several Ray Tracing enabled games. From the results, we can conclude that the AMD Radeon RX 6800S is not enough for native resolution with average tracing quality — it was possible to get a decent FPS only in Full HD.

Battery life

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 has a 76Wh battery — not a lot for a powerful gaming system, but battery life has never been a priority for gaming laptops. In the battery test of the PCMark10 benchmark, with a screen brightness of 100 cd/m², the laptop lasted a little more than 5 hours in a state of inactivity, ~4.5 hours when watching videos, and one hour in gaming applications. Note that the main battery with a capacity of 240 W can charge a laptop from zero to 50% in half an hour.