Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 2024 review - The gaming laptop now with G-Sync OLED and Intel Meteor Lake

The device's build and stability are astounding and the keyboard practically can't be pressed in at all—even using lots of pressure. Creaking noises are also foreign to the Zephyrus. The thin display lid is a little more flexible but we noted no issues here, either. However, the new hinge design limits the laptop's maximum opening angle to 135 degrees. The lid can easily be opened with one hand but for our taste, the hinge could do with being set a little more tightly, as it wobbles quite a bit when you adjust the angle. 

The new ROG Zephyrus G16 is one of the most compact models in our comparison field and together with the Vision 16 Pro and the MacBook Pro, its 16.4 mm make it one of the thinnest models, too. However, it should also be noted that our test device is the thinnest version of the range, as the TFT models and Vapor-Chamber models are a little thicker. It is lightweight as well, weighing 1.8 kg; the 200-watt power supply adds an additional 583 grams onto the scales.

The back is completely taken up by the cooling, which is why the ports are spread out between both sides of the laptop. Asus now uses a new rectangular power supply connector which has been placed on the back left of the case. The device features all the important connections, as aside from USB-C, it also has USB-A, a full HDMI output and a card reader. Both USB-C ports support Power Delivery at up to 100 watts and the one on the left supports Thunderbolt 4. It just doesn't have an Ethernet connection—if required, you will have to use a USB adapter.

The G16 has a full-featured card reader on the right side, whereby inserted cards jut out by about 1.2 cm. In combination with our reference card (Angelbird AV Pro V60), it achieved transfer rates of around 80-90 MB/s, meaning the test device came out near the bottom. 

The 1080p webcam installed into the upper display frame takes decent photos in good lighting conditions and it also supports functions like facial tracking and soft focus. It features an additional IR camera for facial recognition via Windows Hello.

The laptop's new touchpad is extremely large, measuring 15 x 9.9 cm (37 % bigger than before) with a 16:10 ratio. It feels great to operate thanks to its smooth surface, and its clicking noise is nice and muffled, giving it a high-quality feel.

Within its Armoury-Crate software, Asus offers a variety of energy profiles as well as a manual mode that lets you individually set the GPU/CPU performance. We put together the energy profiles' values in the following table. It should be noted, however, that these values only count for the configurations featuring the 4070/4060/4050 Laptop which are fitted with conventional heat pipes and three fans. The more powerful models with the RTX 4080/4090 Laptop, on the other hand, have a Vapor-Chamber cooling system with two fans, which is why the processor and GPU consume more power (in all profiles). 

After several tests, we decided to run the following benchmarks and measurements using performance mode. Although you might not get the maximum performance, the fans remain bearable when playing games, as noise emissions from about 48 dB(A) are hard to tolerate. Thanks to its great speakers, you can even get away with playing without headphones with performance mode selected. Even so, if you require the maximum performance possible, then you can easily switch modes with the push of a button (however, turbo is only available when connected to the mains). During simple tasks, you should select quiet mode, as otherwise, the fans can almost always be heard.

We already took a look at the new Meteor-Lake-gen Core Ultra 7 155H in our analysis article. With power limits of 70/50 watts, the processor does well—but there is no real difference to the old Raptor-Lake chips such as the Core i7-13700H and this also doesn't change when you select turbo mode. Its single-core performance is slightly weaker, however, and we are already looking forward to seeing how Meteor Lake fares against the new Ryzen-8000 CPUs. All-in-all, its multi-core performance remains very constant in total. In battery use, the CPU performance remains constant. Further CPU benchmarks can be found here.

Subjectively, the laptop performs well—only during graphics switching (e.g. booting up games) does it hang slightly during the MUX switch, but this is completely normal. The competition achieved more points in the synthetic tests, however, you won't likely notice the difference in everyday use. Its memory benchmark results were excellent, but its RAM can't be expanded and 16 GB on a high-end device is simply not enough. All models should have 32 GB as standard.