ROG Zephyrus G16 (2024) Review – Sleek, Premium, and Packed with Power for Gamers and Creators

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16 is back with a 2024 refresh and is looking to bridge the gap between gaming and productivity once again. There is without a doubt that the ROG Zephyrus line of laptops is ASUS’s top-of-the-line product, offering competitive performance packed in a thin laptop with a sleek design that strikes a balance between being lowkey while also screaming “gamers”. 

Design 

Immediately upon unboxing the laptop, you will be taken away on how premium the ROG Zephyrus G16 2024 model is built. The 2024 variants come with 2 different color options, Eclipse Gray and the new Platinum White. Our review unit is the Eclipse Gray version and is truly a looker.

This 2024 refresh is the second iteration of the Zephyrus G16 and the design has been overhauled, with now spotting a slash on the lid fancily named “Slash Lighting” that illuminates up in dozens of LED bars, much like the AniMe Matrix display of the previous Zephyrus models. The Slash Lighting made the laptop a standout, differing itself from all other laptops in the market. It would even respond to whatever you are doing on the laptop, such as jamming to your favorite music, gunning down enemies in a competitive shooter game, or simply as a simple notification blinker. 

While it does look cool, the blinking lights can be distracting especially to whoever sitting opposite the desk. It would even stay on when you leave the laptop in sleep mode, not exactly great to be left on the desk in the same dark bedroom you snooze in. Thankfully, you can disable the lights for a more subtle and sleek look without drawing too much attention in a public space like a café. 

As I noted previously, the G16 is premium and well-built, put together with a CNC aluminum chassis with a material that is smooth to the touch, making handling the laptop an overall luxurious experience. However, you might need to wipe the lid regularly as the laptop casing is quite a fingerprint magnet, catching smudges with rather ease. 

Unlike other traditional gaming laptops that go with a big, bulky body to pack in all the power, the Zephyrus series aims towards a direction that caters to users beyond gamers, someone who wants a luxurious laptop that is portable, lowkey, yet comes with respectable gaming performances. The G16 is a thin and lightweight laptop with a footprint of 354 x 246 mm in dimension, and a thickness of 16.4 to 17.4 mm, resulting in a weight of only 1.85 to 1.95 kg, depending on the spec – an extremely portable device indeed. 

Keyboard and Touchpad

Speaking of which, the lid is quite sturdy with no noticeable flex when lifting up, despite its light weight and being liftable with one hand. After lifting up the lid, you will be greeted with a rather unique keyboard, palm rest, and touchpad placement.

The touchpad is genuinely massive, taking up 150.30 mm x 98.8 mm of space, and is much larger than its predecessor as well as most laptops in the market. The large size does make for a comfortable touchpad to use with its smooth material, allowing fingers to glide with ease. It is also positioned in a way that your palm does not naturally rest up, reducing mouse errors. 

Meanwhile, the keyboard is a compact tenkeyless (TKL) keyboard squashed between two massive speakers. Due to its positioning, it does take some time for me to get used to, as it does not feel like a natural keyboard placement for a laptop. Its flat and large keycaps also made the typing experience rather conflicting. For one, when it clicks, it can be quite comfortable and responsive, but typing with relative speed tends to end up with mistypes, as mentioned before, likely due to how unnatural the keyboard placement is. 

Since it is in between the two large speakers, which also in ways act like air vents, playing games with the keyboard is also not the most comfortable experience as the sides heat up to extreme temperatures, especially when resting your hands to the side is a natural placement for most people. 

Display, Sound, and Battery

Dare I say, the ROG Zephyrus G16 has one of, if not the most beautiful display I have seen on a laptop. Comes in a 16-inch size and 2560 x 1600 (2.5K) resolution on an OLED panel, the G16’s Nebula display is a visual feast with its stunning clarity and well-tuned contrast. With a 100% DCI-P3 color gamut, this laptop is a looker suitable for creatives who seek accurate color reproduction for their projects, from production to art. 

Coupled with a max refresh rate of 240 Hz, expect some impressively smooth gaming experience, though you would need the higher-end models to hit higher than 120 Hz for more demanding AAA titles. Not to mention, the Nebula display also comes with HDR, setting its contrast with extremely dark blacks, making it a crazy good-looking screen to experience horror games or have a movie marathon. It is also a bright screen with a maximum brightness of 500 nits. 

The display is further complemented by an impressive set of speakers, producing clear booming audio that makes games such as Resident Evil 4 Remake highly immersive without the need for a pair of headsets. There are honestly no complaints when a laptop can produce high-quality sounds that don’t feel distorted or overly sharp and play music that sounds natural, albeit the G16’s speaker does sound a little bassy for my taste. 

The battery side for the laptop ain’t too shabby either, with a large 90Whr battery that lasts about 5 to 6 hours of casual browsing and video binge-watching. The box also comes with two different adapters with a 240W adapter using a conventional DC plug and a small, more portable 100W PD charge-enabled Type-C charger. In other words, charging the laptop up is relatively fast. 

Performances 

Let’s talk about performance, which will differ greatly depending on your model of choice. Our review unit is the GU605M-VQR109WO model, which comes with an Intel® Core™ Ultra 9 Processor CPU, a NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 4060 Laptop GPU, and 32 GB of DDR5 RAM. 

Cyberpunk 2077

One of the best games to truly test a PC’s performance would be Cyberpunk 2077, which comes with a bevy of settings for optimization. The game is known for its extremely demanding graphics and has multiple ray tracing options to further beautify the world. The laptop unfortunately struggles to keep a steady 60 FPS even at High settings and turning on Ray Tracing made the performance worse with it dropping below 30 FPS average. 

Once DLSS Ultra Performance is turned on, the game shoots up to 100+ FPS on average at High settings. Meanwhile, turning on Ray Tracing with its lighting set to medium, the game runs at 80 FPS on average, keeping performance stable while having a beautiful game to immerse into. But no, this laptop, or at least this particular model, cannot handle Path Tracing unless you want it to be burnt down. 

Cyberpunk 2077 (2650 x 1600 / Ultra / Ray Tracing On / Ray Tracing Lighting Medium / Path Tracing Off / DLSS Off)

• Average FPS – 27
• Min FPS – 24
• Max FPS – 28

Cyberpunk 2077 (2650 x 1600 / High / Ray Tracing Off / DLSS Off)

• Average FPS – 52
• Min FPS – 48
• Max FPS – 58

Cyberpunk 2077 (2650 x 1600 / High / Ray Tracing Off / DLSS Ultra Performance)

• Average FPS – 108
• Min FPS – 102
• Max FPS – 115

Cyberpunk 2077 (2650 x 1600 / High / Ray Tracing On / Ray Tracing Lighting Medium / Path Tracing Off / DLSS Ultra Performance)

• Average FPS – 79
• Min FPS – 79
• Max FPS – 83

Resident Evil 4 Remake

The RE Engine is worth the praise for its optimization and Resident Evil 4 Remake does run relatively well in a variety of PC specs, provided you know what to tweak in the settings. However, the game is also known for taking up a lot of VRAM for its textures, causing instability on GPUs with low VRAM. Since ROG Zephyrus G16 rocks an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU with only 8 GB of VRAM, we put the game to the test to see how well it runs. 

Putting the game at the Max Presets immediately places the VRAM usage way above 8 GB, and into the 13 GB range. This causes even the menu itself to start showing signs of lags and entering the game with overload VRAM will cause crashes. When set to Prioritize Graphics presets with both Ray Tracing and Volumetric Lighting tweaked to High, the game runs at a constant 50 FPS but will exhibit extreme dips when the frame rate drops. In all honesty, Resident Evil 4 Remake already looks absolutely gorgeous at lower settings, and the Prioritize Performance preset is a sweet spot, providing smooth performance with even occasional highs. 

Resident Evil 4 (2560 x 1600 / Presets: Prioritize Graphics / Ray Tracing High / Volumetric Lighting High) 

• Average FPS – 48
• Min FPS – 27
• Max FPS – 52

Resident Evil 4 (2560 x 1600 / Presets: Balanced) 

• Average FPS – 53
• Min FPS – 50
• Max FPS – 58

Resident Evil 4 (2560 x 1600 / Presets: Prioritize Performance) 

• Average FPS – 83
• Min FPS – 76
• Max FPS – 109

Unreal Engine 5

To truly test the performance of this laptop, we also tried out games developed using Unreal Engine 5, namely Lords of the Fallen and Remnant 2. The Unreal Engine has always been a popular game engine among developers and no doubt there will be more games developed using the newly released Unreal Engine 5 in the future. 

This latest iteration of the Unreal Engine introduces many advanced rendering technologies, including Nanite, which allows for high-detailed photographic material, and Lumen, a dynamic global illumination solution that allows for real-time behavior of light sources. These rather new technologies unfortunately also made Unreal Engine 5 games notoriously difficult to optimize for the current hardware with both Lords of the Fallen and Remnant 2 requiring some hefty PC specs to run well. 

Lords of the Fallen 

Lords of the Fallen is no doubt a pretty game, especially on the stunning OLED screen, but it is also known for its instability. Frame rates rarely stay consistent, making it a difficult game to gauge performance. Surprisingly, the ROG Zephyrus G16 manages to run the game at its native resolution without DLSS turned on with playable framerates, staying above 60 FPS in most areas but with some extreme dips here and there.  

In brightly lit areas such as the outdoors of Skyrest Bridge, the game suffers unstable frame rates greatly, constantly shifting between 50+ FPS to 60+ FPS, and rarely hitting above 70 FPS. While in darker zones such as interiors or caves, the game ran relatively smoothly and went above 70 FPS or 80 FPS rather frequently. Lords of the Fallen ran a lot smoother once DLSS is turned on, and even on Quality, the game is running above 60 FPS. 

Lords of the Fallen (2560 x 1600 / Ultra / DLSS Off) 

• Average FPS – 60
• Min FPS – 34
• Max FPS – 98

Lords of the Fallen (1920 x 1200 / High / DLSS Ultra Performance) 

• Average FPS – 77
• Min FPS – 58
• Max FPS – 100

Note that as of writing, the version tested is Update v.1.1.598+HF605, which did introduce performance optimization improvements.

Remnant 2

Remnant 2 is another notable Unreal Engine 5 title with high specification demand and may take some tweaking for optimal performance. At native resolution on Ultra settings without DLSS turned on, Remnant 2 suffers from reaching 60 FPS and has unstable frame rates that drop at a frequent rate, especially during combat encounters. Once DLSS is turned on, the game runs smoothly even at native resolutions without noticeable dips, making it a good shooter experience on the go.

Remnant 2 (2560 x 1600 / Ultra / DLSS Off)

• Average FPS – 42
• Min FPS – 36
• Max FPS – 43 

Remnant 2 (2560 x 1600 / High / DLSS Ultra Performance)

• Average FPS – 83
• Min FPS – 73
• Max FPS – 90

Remnant 2 (1920 x 1200 / High / DLSS Ultra Performance)

• Average FPS – 107
• Min FPS – 96
• Max FPS – 178

Other Benchmarks 

3DMark (Time Spy)

• Time Spy Score – 8 802
• Average – 9 963
• Best – 10 962
• Graphics Score – 8 992
• CPU Score – 7 862

PCMark 10 

• Score – 6 107
• Essentials – 9 093
• Productivity – 6 370
• Digital Content Creation – 10 671

Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon (2560 x 1600 / High) 

• Average FPS – 71
• Min FPS – 60
• Max FPS – 90

Elden Ring (2560 x 1600 / Maximum / Ray Tracing Off) 

• Average FPS – 60
• Min FPS – 49
• Max FPS – 60

HELLDIVERS 2 (2560 x 1600 / High) 

• Average FPS – 60
• Min FPS – 32
• Max FPS – 64

Ready or Not (DirectX 12 / 2560 x 1600 / High) 

• Average FPS – 81
• Min FPS – 33
• Max FPS – 90

The Last of Us Part 1 (2560 x 1600 / High / DLSS Quality)

• Average FPS – 72
• Min FPS – 58
• Max FPS – 76

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty (2560 x 1440 / Best Quality / DLSS Ultra Performance)

• Average FPS – 77
• Min FPS – 58
• Max FPS – 90

Pre-Installed Software

To further personalize your experiences, the ROG Zephyrus G16 (2024) does come pre-installed with ASUS’s own software, namely the Armoury Crate and MyASUS. 

As someone who loves to optimize performance, Armoury Crate is such a wonderful tool for it. Not only is the user interface intuitive, but you can immediately change to different performance presets with a click of a button. What makes this a standout tool is that it neatly displays the statistics of all your hardware’s performances without the need to download separate software. 

Wonder if your CPU and GPU are performing at an optimal level while ensuring their temperature not overheating? Have a look at Armoury Crate. You can also check your RAM performance, fan speeds, and storage at just a glance. Not only that, the Armoury Crate is also your hub to customize your laptop’s features. You can set hotkeys and shortcuts on your keyboard or how your display looks. Looking to have a rave party? There are also functions to customize the RGB and the Slash Lighting at the chassis to your own liking, and the options are quite robust too. 

Similarly, MyASUS is also handy software for all your computer’s nerdy statistics, especially when it comes to managing your laptop’s warranty and other ASUS-related services. It is also useful software to diagnose any errors you may have encountered.

Verdict 

Coming in with a premium price warrants a premium product and the ROG Zephyrus G16 (2024) delivers. The 2024 model of ROG Zephyrus G16 is made to fit as both a gaming laptop and a high-performance machine for creators, with a design that is sleek, premium, and stylish. It is equipped with excellent performance, an absolutely top-notch display, and speakers that somehow sound amazing for a laptop. 

Admittedly, the keyboard placement feels odd and at times uncomfortable to me, while the sides heat up to temperatures that are burning to the touch. Even so, almost all other aspects of the laptop are well-designed and cleverly considered. 

This is a powerhouse laptop. ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16 (2024) blends in style, performance, and portability, with one of the best displays in the market as well as good battery life and great-sounding speakers. 

ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16 (2024) – GU605M-VQR109WO is now available in Malaysia at the price of RM 10,999. Review model provided by ASUS Malaysia. 

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