At a look
Expert’s Rating
Pros
- Great design
- Excellent show and audio system
- Long battery life
- Capable gaming efficiency
Cons
- Soldered reminiscence
- Default profile leaves efficiency on the desk
Our Verdict
The Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 isn’t the beefiest gaming laptop computer, nevertheless it’s a lean, imply machine with secure efficiency, largely silent cooling, and an general nice bundle.
Price When Reviewed
This worth will present the geolocated pricing textual content for product undefined
Best Pricing Today
Price When Reviewed
$2,149
Best Prices Today: Asus ROG Zephyrus G16
Asus already had an incredible laptop computer on its fingers with 2024’s ROG Zephyrus G16, and the 2025 Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 doesn’t change an excessive amount of. The outward look of the laptop computer is essentially the identical, persevering with to supply a skinny and light-weight gaming laptop computer with a sublime steel construct and nice show.
Asus appears to have taken among the criticism to coronary heart, although, because it proves a largely quiet operating system even when it’s cranked to Turbo settings. And although it has a premium worth and trails beefier machines in efficiency, it stays conveniently moveable and even undercuts different design-focused laptops.
Asus ROG Zephyrus G16: Specs and options
- CPU: Intel Core Ultra 9 285H
- Memory: 16GB LPDDR5X-7467
- Graphics/GPU: Nvidia RTX 5070 8GB 115W
- Display: 16-inch 2560×1600 240Hz OLED, Glossy, G-Sync
- Storage: 1TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD
- Webcam: 1080p IR
- Connectivity: 1x Thunderbolt 4 with Power Delivery and DisplayPort Alternate Mode, 1x USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 with Power Delivery and DisplayPort Alternate Mode, 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x SD card reader, 1x 3.5mm combo audio
- Networking: WiFi 7, Bluetooth 5.4
- Biometrics: Windows Hello facial recognition
- Battery capability: 90 watt-hours
- Dimensions: 13.97 x 9.72 x 0.66 inches
- Weight: 4.01 kilos
- MSRP: $2,149 as-tested ($2,149 base)
This check unit is a particular Best Buy model with decrease base specs than Asus’s own store choices. It has a $2,149 beginning worth. To get the Zephyrus G16 from Asus instantly, you’ll pay $2,799, however you’ll additionally get bumped as much as an RTX 5070 Ti, 32GB of reminiscence, and 2TB of storage. Additionally, Asus provides two even increased configurations. Bumping as much as an RTX 5080 and 64GB of reminiscence raises the worth to $3,599. For an RTX 5090 and in any other case similar specs, that raises additional to $4,599.
The Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 is a powerful machine. It provides a wonderful construct, nice audio system, a stunning show, and matches potent {hardware} all right into a laptop computer that’s surprisingly skinny and light-weight.
Asus ROG Zephyrus G16: Design and construct high quality
Foundry / Mark Knapp
The Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 is splendidly constructed and much sleeker than you’d anticipate from a gaming laptop computer, even with the impressively slim fashions which were popping out in recent times. It boasts a largely aluminum design with the keyboard deck, base, and show lid all manufactured from steel.
The show additionally has an all glass cowl — no plastic bezels. It can be extra spectacular if it weren’t basically the identical {hardware} as final yr’s Zephyrus G16, however there’s no want to repair what isn’t damaged, and the interior elements haven’t modified sufficient to justify a serious redesign.
All the steel right here makes for a agency development that doesn’t flex a lot. And regardless that it is a 16-inch gaming laptop computer, it weighs solely a hair over 4 kilos. The chassis itself can also be simply 0.66 inches thick, although its rubber toes add to its general peak.
The slim design nonetheless has loads of air consumption beneath with a big grille on the underside panel, however there’s little or no exhaust alongside the again edge, which goals all of the exhaust downward. Fortunately, the lengthy rubber foot on the rear of the bottom prevents any of the exhaust from feeding instantly again into the consumption followers.
The show has uneven bezels, together with a barely bigger one on the backside that doesn’t look terribly fashionable however is a minimum of not too ugly. The thicker prime bezel matches within the webcam with Windows Hello tech, which makes it simpler to excuse given how handy that is for fast sign-ins.
Chamfered edges across the body present lip for opening the lid with one hand, and the bottom retains planted whereas doing so. The again of the lid has a trendy slash throughout it that additionally integrates some flashy lighting, although it’s not colourful just like the RGB keyboard lighting.
Asus ROG Zephyrus G16: Keyboard, trackpad
Foundry / Mark Knapp
The Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 packs in an incredible keyboard and trackpad. The keyboard isn’t fairly glorious, because it has solely refined contour to the keycaps that doesn’t assist with finger centering, and edge stability may use just a little enchancment.
The RGB backlighting additionally struggles to evenly illuminate bigger key legends and secondary features. But it’s nonetheless fairly a nice keyboard to sort on. I used to be capable of attain a typing pace of 126 words-per-minute at 99 % accuracy. Given it is a 16-inch laptop computer, it might have been good to see a quantity pad, however a minimum of with out it the keyboard finally ends up properly centered.
Asus has squeezed in a large trackpad that makes use of up virtually all of the vertical house accessible to it with solely a skinny strip bordered its prime and backside edges. It additionally spans an excessive width. Between the plentiful house for swiping round, the pleasantly tender bodily click on, and the sleek glass floor, it’s a pleasure to make use of. The trackpad additionally has confirmed to supply good palm rejection, a difficulty that held again the Razer Blade 16 and its large trackpad.
Asus ROG Zephyrus G16: Display, audio
Foundry / Mark Knapp
The Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 is ready up nicely for media. It combines a wonderful show and speaker setup. The sizable 16-inch show provides a 2560×1600 decision and runs at 240Hz for super-smooth visuals. That’s aided alongside by the panel’s OLED tech, which has quick pixel response occasions for crisp gameplay and G-Sync assist to make sure clear frames and no display tearing.
The show can also be splendidly vivid and colourful. It proved able to hitting 419 nits in SDR and 444 nits in HDR with smaller highlights going brighter nonetheless. A 10 % window in HDR was capable of hit 640 nits, and that comes alongside infinite distinction and 100 % protection of the DCI-P3 and sRGB coloration areas. Color accuracy was additionally excessive with a mean dE1976 measured at 0.85 and a max dE of simply 2.33.
Plenty of high-end gaming laptops have equally spectacular shows, and even some cheaper ones come shut. But many laptops skimp on audio system. Asus didn’t. This laptop computer’s audio system are distinctive.
It combines 4 woofers that stability one another in pairs offering shocking depth for the sound; in the meantime two additional tweeters can ship crisp high-end. Together, the audio system pump out loads of quantity with out distorting or sounding boxed in. Strong sub-bass continues to be out of the playing cards, however the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16’s audio system stay spectacular for a laptop computer audio system.
Asus ROG Zephyrus G16: Webcam, microphone, biometrics
The webcam’s efficiency is combined. On one hand, it handles publicity nicely, avoiding blown out highlights or sunken darkish particulars. Even although it’s a 1080p sensor, the visible constancy is just a little missing with grainy element something aside from vivid lighting after which odd sharpening even in vivid mild. But the visuals look pure a minimum of, and if you happen to’re simply showing as a small window in a gaggle video name, the standard will probably be enough.
The webcam additionally helps Windows Hello facial recognition, offering a fast and simple solution to sign up that has confirmed useful in testing.
The mics even have combined efficiency. They seize my voice fairly totally, however they don’t appear to have any processing occurring to cancel out room noise. This results in a little bit of room echo, and the mics will choose up background noises fairly nicely, so that you’ll need to keep away from typing or clicking round along with your mouse when you’re on calls.
Asus ROG Zephyrus G16: Connectivity
Foundry / Mark Knapp
The Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 provides first rate connectivity. It’s a pleasure to see a laptop computer spreading out ports of the identical sort, and the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 places one USB-A and one USB-C port on both sides. Both USB-A ports are 3.2 Gen 2 ports with 10Gbps speeds. The left USB-C port supplies Thunderbolt 4 whereas the proper one is barely a USB 3.2 Gen 2, and both can assist DisplayPort output, although solely the proper one runs by way of the GPU for G-Sync assist.
Asus rounds out the connections with an HDMI 2.1 port and 3.5mm audio jack on the left edge and a full-size UHS-II SD card slot on the proper edge. Since the laptop computer doesn’t embody any facet vents, all the ports are located towards the again half of the laptop computer as nicely.
The Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 features a devoted 200W energy brick with a proprietary port on the left fringe of the laptop computer. This is essential to getting the total energy of the system, however could also be so much to lug round in every single place you go. Thankfully, the system’s USB-C ports may assist energy enter, letting you juice up on the go along with one thing smaller you probably have a GaN charger or different USB-C energy supply. I used to be capable of trickle cost with a compact 65W PD charger I had useful.
Wireless connectivity can also be robust. The system helps Wi-Fi 7 and has supplied excessive bandwidth and stability connectivity all through testing. It’s disappointing to see Bluetooth 5.4 nonetheless now that 6.0 exists, however the laptop computer’s Bluetooth connection a minimum of offered dependable, rapidly reconnecting to a paired set of headphones each time I turned them on and by no means as soon as dropping that connection.
Asus ROG Zephyrus G16: Performance
The Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 packs in highly effective elements, so it stands to motive that it might have loads of efficiency. And for essentially the most half, that is the case.
We can see within the holistic PCMark 10 benchmark that the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 provides loads of pace for on a regular basis workplace duties and even artistic workloads, dramatically exceeding the 5,000-point threshold that tends to mark a machine that’ll readily deal with most workplace duties. It largely retains tempo with comparable programs operating Intel and AMD {hardware}.
While basic duties will probably be a breeze on the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16, when you begin stepping into extra demanding duties that put critical pressure on the system, it’s possible you’ll start to come across a few of its limitations. The CPU included is solely not as potent as what you will get in a few of its opponents.
The Intel Core Ultra 9 285H’s single-core efficiency is great, nevertheless it’s no match for HX-series CPUs from Intel, which a lot of its opponents embody. Across Cinebench R15, R20, R23, and R24, it falls nicely behind. This decrease efficiency additionally sees it take longer in our Handbrake video encoding check. While warmth may very well be an element for the skinny Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 in Cinebench R24’s and Handbrake’s longer checks, the decrease efficiency in Cinebench R15, R20, and R23, that are a lot faster, suggests it’s only a limitation of this CPU subsequent to the competitors.
Graphical efficiency can also be respectable within the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16, although not essentially what you’d anticipate from a system with an RTX 5070 and a price ticket over $2,000. In the graphically demanding 3DMark Port Royal check, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 lags behind RTX 5070-equipped programs just like the Alienware 16X Aurora and Asus ProArtP16, however maybe extra embarrassingly, it even falls wanting the RTX 5060-powered Lenovo Legion 5i 15IRX10 — a system that prices virtually half as a lot. The identical destiny befalls the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 in Time Spy as nicely.
The curious factor is that the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 isn’t restricted to that efficiency stage, however Asus simply defaults to it. In reality, utilizing the laptop computer’s Turbo profile, its Port Royal rating leaps as much as 8,552 factors. This form of bump from altering energy profiles is pretty frequent, however the reality Asus’s default Performance profile sees the RTX 5070 nerfed to RTX 5060 ranges is an odd selection that its opponents don’t appear to be making.
The shortcoming in graphical efficiency stemming from Asus’s settings mix with the weaker CPU within the system to depart the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 falling behind the pack in precise video games. We see it lag the entire area in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, which tends to lean a bit extra closely on the CPU than another video games, thus giving these programs with extra highly effective processors an edge. Again, enabling Turbo mode brings the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16’s common body charge as much as 159.
Cyberpunk 2077 is an particularly demanding sport, sufficient in order that even the power-limited RTX 5070 may ultimately come out forward of the Legion’s RTX 5060, doubtless aided alongside by the quicker single-core efficiency of the CPU, which tends to enhance body charges. The Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 doesn’t pull forward of its opponents although, until Turbo mode is enabled, then its common body charge jumps to 99.
While the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 tends to fall behind the opposite programs in its default Performance profile, a perk of the system is that it musters that efficiency whereas remaining fairly quiet. Even beneath load in its Performance mode, the followers are hushed and hardly a trouble. For some, that could be a worthwhile trade-off, and every so often, when critical efficiency isn’t important, it may possibly definitely be a profit. The system even stays secure with that mild fan operation, with it offering 99.1 % secure efficiency in 3DMark’s 20-run Steel Nomad Stress Test.
The followers actually solely kick into excessive gear in Asus’s Turbo mode, and even then they’re not shrill, only a noisy breeze. They additionally handle the warmth nicely, with the system once more sustaining secure efficiency within the Steel Nomad Stress Test and the floor of the laptop computer not even getting sizzling over the course of the check. It’s nice to see that Turbo mode can convey the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 largely again into efficiency parity with its rivals, although it’s equally doubtless that these programs would get better chunk of their leads in the event that they, too, flipped over to their highest energy settings.
Asus ROG Zephyrus G16: Battery life
Conservative energy administration tends to have a profit the place battery life is worried, and that proves the case for the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16. In our offline video playback checks, which run a domestically saved 4K video on repeat with the show brightness set between 250 and 260 nits, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 managed a powerful 12 hours and 46 minutes, exhibiting previous Asus’s personal ProArt 16 and dramatically outpacing the opposite programs operating on HX-series Intel processors.
As nice a consequence as that’s for a gaming PC, you continue to shouldn’t anticipate the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 to be an all-day performer for precise use exterior of video playback. It’s good for a gaming PC, however real-world workplace use tends to see the battery drain after 5 to 6 hours. That nonetheless beats the 2 to 3 hours you may anticipate from lots of gaming laptops.
Asus ROG Zephyrus G16: Conclusion
The Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 is a powerful machine. It provides a wonderful construct, nice audio system, a stunning show, and matches potent {hardware} all right into a laptop computer that’s surprisingly skinny and light-weight. All the extra shocking is the truth that the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 doesn’t present a lot of a wrestle managing its warmth. By default, it doesn’t take full benefit of its {hardware}, and it stays quiet because of that call, however full efficiency is only a couple clicks away and helps the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 hold tempo with its competitors higher.
While you’ll nonetheless doubtless need a beefier laptop computer if you’d like full efficiency on a regular basis, there’s one thing to be mentioned for the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16’s means to ship stable efficiency typically and good portability the remainder of the time. The pricing on the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 additionally makes it a real menace to the Razer Blade 16, a system that’s thicker, heavier, and usually costlier for like configurations.