SCORE
Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 GU605 (2024)
Cons
- Battery life is just okay
- Big power brick
- Bottom and hinge area can get hot
- Settings in Armoury Crate software can get confusing
Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 Review: A Top Gaming Laptop for Creators Too
Another laptop of the creative-slash-gaming genre based on Intel’s Core Ultra processors, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 does stand out in some ways, including its well-designed chassis, huge touchpad, comfortable keyboard and good performance given its trade-offs. (The Core Ultra can’t match the performance of the HX processors, but it’s thinner and has better battery life than you’ll get with those.)
The illuminated slash on the top cover of the laptop.
The Ceraluminum shell — Asus’ branded aluminum and ceramic surface — seems pretty hardy and smudge resistant, at least the grey version. It even allowed for easy cleaning when I dripped some coffee on the wrist rest area. Oops.
The secondary functions aren’t brightly backlit — you can tell the LED is in the center beneath the key — but they are lit well enough to make them out, which is important if you work in the dark. They also stay cool when the laptop heats up. As you’d expect, there’s per-key RGB lighting.
Because it’s larger than the G14 and is Intel-based, it has a different set of ports and more of them, including a Thunderbolt 4/USB-C as well as a slower USB-C port, a couple of USB-A ports, HDMI and combo audio. There’s also a full-size SD card slot.
It’s relatively thin for a 16-inch model with a discrete GPU, about the same as a MacBook Pro 16 and Razer Blade 16. Overall, if you turn off the slash lighting on the cover it gives off a more serious vibe than you get from a gaming laptop but a little less stuffy than a business slab. That includes the decent business-quality 1080p webcam.
The G16’s got a big touchpad, but it doesn’t compromise the keyboard feel or speakers.
The mic has decent pickup, and Armoury Crate has a bunch of different software noise-canceling choices, but many of them sound really processed (as opposed to natural) when compensating for ambient noise. If your only concern is clarity, then it shouldn’t be an issue. The laptop’s sound is better than usual, with a little more bass and broad soundstage, and it serves well for video and music. As long as your game doesn’t require locational cues, it’s fine for gaming vocals and ambient sound as well.
Fast OLED, moderate CPU
Asus brands its flagship ROG laptop screens as Nebula and Nebula HDR. Our review unit came with the new Nebula HDR OLED display. It supports the mid tier of VESA’s OLED DisplayHDR certification, DisplayHDR True Black 500 and gets relatively bright for an OLED laptop display at just under 400 nits in everyday use and just over 600 nits in a 10% window in HDR. As you’d expect from a display with its specs and Dolby Vision support, video looks really good.
It didn’t clip blacks too much in gaming, but you’ll want to use in-game adjustments for more visible dark areas if important things lurk there. it’s got the same gaming modes as the G14 if you want a real boost in the deep shadows and don’t mind seriously low contrast, like 300:1. In fact, the Game Visual presets in Armoury Crate don’t seem optimized for OLED at all; it feels like Asus never goes back to optimize them for new display technologies — or remove them so you shouldn’t use them.
Color measurements
