ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 2023 Review: Lightning Strikes Thrice

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 lineup has been making its rounds for a good few years now and in spite of the slight detour that the brand took last year with the AMD Advantage Edition version of it, the brand is undoubtedly back on track with this year’s iteration of the 14-incher.

Armed with the latest Ryzen 7000 Series mobile CPU and a modest NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 Series discrete GPU, we’re going to find out if ASUS has maintained the status quo or dropped the ball on this year’s G14 entirely.

Specification

Design And Functionality

As far as aesthetics and the exterior of the G14 2023 go, I can tell you that ASUS hasn’t veered off-tangent in the design department in the slightest. Like last year’s model, the unit I have in my possession right now looks identical to its predecessor but of course, there are some changes done to the internals and other components. For starters, the display on this model can boast ASUS’ ROG Nebula panel, which is the brand’s own way of saying “This is a Mini LED display panel and it also supports HDR”.

AniMeMatrix or Mini LED. Pick one.

The AniMeMatrix panel at the rear of the laptop is still there but the bad news is that you can’t have both the pretty dazzling array of lights on the back and the gorgeous Mini LED display on the front. ASUS’ explanation to us was fairly straightforward: because of the limitations of technology right now, having both panels installed onto the G14 2023 would not increase its overall weight, it would physically balloon the overall size of the panel. So, in the interest of space and weight-saving, the brand had no choice but to do what it has currently done with the lineup. Personally, I can forego the LED panel in the rear, especially in favour of a brighter, more premium Mini LED panel.

On a small note, the Mini LED display has also been given a slight update in its refresh rate over its predecessor, up from 120Hz to 165Hz.

There is some sliver of good news to this story, though. ASUS says that it will solve this dual panel issue by next year and that next year’s model of the Zephyrus G14 will showcase a laptop featuring both the AniMeMatrix LED panel and ROG Nebula display, without any compromise to the integrity of the display.

Moving on, being a 14-incher means that space is always going to be a key criterion with the design of G14 2023 and again, that is a factor that hasn’t changed either. Compared to its bigger 15-inch and 16-inch Zephyrus brethren, you only get a limited number of USB-A and USB-C ports on both sides of the laptop. Likewise, beneath the hood, the RAM that is underneath the hood is soldered, while you’re only going to find one PCIe Gen4 SSD slot, which you’ll find is already populated by the main SSD drive.

Hinge designs like the Ergolift are timeless.

Like all ROG Zephyrus laptops, the G14 2023 makes full use of the Ergolift hinge that elevates the laptop’s base at an angle, allowing it air to be sucked in from the bottom and exhausted through the sides. Throughout my use of it, the rubber feet at the base of the hinges aren’t as flimsy as the ones on my own older G15; they haven’t torn off from wear and tear, and I haven’t been forced to take super glue to them, yet.

The trackpad on the G14 2023 remains nice and wide, and feels solid enough that consecutive clicks do not feel hollow. For that matter, the keyboard also remains a cross between linear with just a little bit of tactility, so your fingers won’t feel so fatigued over prolonged periods of typing.

Performance And Battery Life

One of the finer selling points of the G14 lineup was that no matter how hard you push it, the ferocity of the cooling system was loud but never overly aggressive. In that spirit, the G14 2023 sounds very composed, even when I’m running the most intensive AAA titles on my list.

Honestly speaking, the RTX 4060 and Ryzen 9 7940HS inside this is more than plenty; titles like Cyberpunk 2077 are able to sustain an average framerate of 45 fps on the laptop’s default resolution, and that is with the path tracing and Rat Reconstruction enabled. Other titles, such as Starfield running at its highest graphics preset and with FSR2 enabled, can maintain an average of 35 fps which, again, isn’t too shabby, but drop said graphics down a notch, and the average frame rate bumps up by 20 fps, and that’s in environments with lots of textures and material.

Because of the Mini LED display, battery life takes a very slight hit. I still manage to eke out close to 10 hours of usage on a day-to-day use case, but there are days when I see the laptop battery actually drain quickly, lasting only around four hours, tops. And this is due to the fact that I was unable to reduce the screen’s brightness and in correspondence, its refresh rate too.

As for why this is, I narrowed the issue down nearing the end of the review period, to a very peculiar problem with the G14 2023, where a bug – presumably caused by Armoury Crate – completely disables the laptop’s ability to edit the display’s brightness levels. This means that, no matter how I tried, the default brightness of the LED display was always stuck at the maximum level. Ultimately, I took the most drastic of actions to get out of this miserable situation, which is to reset the laptop.

In regards to the acoustics of the G14 2023, you’ll be happy to know that the laptop barely makes a whisper when idling and handling menial jobs. When it comes to the more arduous tasks of video editing or gaming, that’s of course when the fans inside it spin up with enough ferocity, in order to expunge all that heat out the side. Having said that and while it does get loud, the decibels do not hit the levels of a jet engine getting warmed up and prepped for takeoff.

Competition

Razer Blade 14 2023

Like ASUS, Razer has been fighting back against the G14 2023 with its own 14-inch powerhouse, the Blade 14. The laptop is practically identical in specification to ASUS’ own pint-sized gaming machine: it’s got the same CPU, can be fitted with virtually the same amount of memory, same storage capacity. But it does have a slightly better discrete graphics option with the 140W RTX 4070.

The Blade 14 2023’s display is also 16:10 and QHD+ but isn’t a Mini LED. On the upside, it’s got a 240Hz refresh rate although, given that it’s an RTX 4070 that powers it, at most, I find it unlikely that you’ll even be reaching such high framerates, not unless you’re willing to dial the resolution down a notch to FHD+. Another drawback to this laptop? It costs upwards of RM11,000, while the G14 2023 still starts below RM10,000.

MSI Stealth 14 Studio

First shown off at CES 2023, the MSI Stealth 14 Studio is the Taiwanese brand’s first foray into the gaming laptop market and one of the first 14-inchers to ship out with a 13th Gen Intel Core i7-13700H and not the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS as its rivals’ own laptops.

Like the Blade 14 2023 and G14 2023, the Stealth 14 Studio sports a 16:10 QHD+ display with 240Hz refresh rate, but isn’t an OLED or Mini LED panel. Other internal specs include 16GB DDR5-5200MHz RAM, 1TB PCIe Gen4 storage, but a lower-tier RTX 4050 90W discrete GPU. Further, while it also had a 72WHr battery, we found its endurance to be less than stellar.

Price-wise, the Stealth 14 Studio we reviewed retails at RM7,999.

Conclusion

I think at this point in time, it is safe to say that when ASUS first set out to make the ROG Zephyrus G14 lineup a reality, it didn’t have to look too far for inspiration to build what is essentially a wonder of modern technology. Four generations into it, the G14 2023 continues to serve as a template basically what all 14-inch gaming laptops should aspire to.

Having said that and to be fair, the G14 2023 unit I have didn’t necessarily perform at its peak all the time, given the weird bug that prevented me from adjusting my display brightness. But, in spite of having to take some hardline measures (read: resetting the laptop) to bring it back to working order, I believe it is a one-off issue and it is unlikely that you will have to go through this hurdle as I did.

At a starting price of RM7,499, you could say that the G14 2023 is certainly more affordable than its predecessor but having said that, the actual SRP of the SKU with the RTX 4060 is still something of a mystery, and that is a point that is reflected on ASUS Malaysia’s product. That being said, you should definitely consider getting this year’s laptop, or hold out until next year’s model comes out, if you’re into having the AniMe Matrix LED and Mini LED display all in one frame.

Photography by John Law.

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