Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 AW SE
A gaming laptop that’s packed with character and power throughout its compact 14in chassis
SCORE PRICE £1,500 (£1,800 inc VAT) from rog.asus.com
T
his laptop isn’t for the shy. Created in partnership with DJ, music producer and YouTube phenomenon Alan Walker, it not only features Asus’ AniMe Matrix technology – more on that in a moment – but literally loops fabric through the lid (see the image at the top right of the opposite page).
This stretches across the diagonal, emblazoned with phrases such as “” and “X ALAN WALKER”.
I’m unconvinced by the syntax but can’t argue with the overall effect: this is a much more interesting laptop to gaze at than most. It also speaks to a future where football clubs, say, have their own special edition laptops, or perhaps we can all customise fabric strips and other materials to create our own unique laptops.
Even as supplied, you can personalise the ROG Zephyrus G14 AW SE by uploading your own images and words to scroll across the Anime Matrix display at the rear. This is a grid of white LEDs that stretches across half of the lid, and using Asus’ Armoury Crate software you can type in a message to scroll across (“Stop looking at my lid” springs to mind). You can also add photos and logos.
In deep
Asus could have stopped there with the Alan Walker customisation and no-one would have complained, but it extends into every viewable area of the laptop. For example, “ X ALAN WALKER” is emblazoned across the bottom of the chassis, “////ALAN_ WALKER” on the spacebar. If you happen to be called Alan Walker, W lk this thi laptop will do wonders for your ego.
The base machine is, as its name suggests, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14. ROG Zephyrus is one of Asus’ top-end gaming brands, but the G14 is one of its more affordable offerings. For instance, I found a Ryzen 7 model on sale at cyberpowersystem. co.uk for £1,099, but thi this had lesser specs and a 1080p screen to the
1440p of the AW SE.
I was hunting around to try to find out how much of a premium you’re paying for the Alan Walker branding, but considering the specification on offer here, the answer is not much. The closest G14 variant I could find cost £1,399, but even that had a 1080p screen.
Hard cores
In fact, putting aside the Alan Walker branding for one moment, it’s a tempting specification for the money. I’ll start with the 1TB SSD, because that capacity is crucial in a gaming laptop, but is often sacrificed in the name of economy. Then there’s the GeForce RTX 3050 Ti graphics card. This comes with only 4GB of memory, which will be a problem if you want to play high-detail games at 4K on an external t l display, di lay, but it’s a fine choice for a mid-range gaming laptop such as this. For instance, in Shadow of the Tomb Raider with DLSS in quality mode, the Zephyrus ephyrus averaged 65fps. fps. Dropping to
1080p, 80p, with DLSS set to performance erformance settings, it averaged veraged 89fps.
If you want to take advantage dvantage of the panel’s 120Hz 20Hz rating, then you’ll need eed to switch to less demanding emanding games. For instance, stance, it hit 132fps in Metro: etro: Last Light at
“In the future, perhaps we can all customise fabric strips and other materials to create our own unique laptops”
1440p Low settings, and even Metro:
Exodus averaged 99fps at 1440p with settings set to Low. In summary, you may need to sacrifice some quality and resolution to go above 120fps.
If anything, this system is even better suited to creative workflows than games thanks to the power of AMD’s Ryzen 9 5900HS processor. This is an eight-core chip with 16 threads, so a score of 11,183 in Cinebench R23’s multicore test wasn’t exactly a shock. Nor was the fact it thundered through the PC Pro benchmarks, which are centred around photo editing and video encoding, with a score of 303.
Noise and visuals
The fans kick in during intensive tasks, but this isn’t an obnoxiously loud laptop. Most of the time it sits silent as it earnestly ploughs through tasks. If the fans ever become annoying then you can always take finer control over cooling settings by heading into the Asus Armoury Crate software. Selecting Silent, for example, will force fans down to a barely audible hum until the CPU reaches a suitably low temperature, at which point they switch off entirely.
A number of other touches make this laptop a pleasure to use on a daily basis. The screen sits at the top of the list, as it’s difficult to find fault with this 14in IPS panel. It’s tuned to the punchy DCI-P3 colour space, which makes sense for a gaming system, and it covered 96% of that gamut. Couple this with an average Delta E of 0.49, and a maximum of 1.93, and you can trust in the accuracy of the colours you see. A peak brightness of 355cd/m2 is more than good enough, unless you intend to game in sunlight.
Asus also packs in one of the best speaker systems I’ve heard in a compact laptop, with enough bass to give music impact, and superb, balanced delivery even in complex tracks from Björk. It’s not far off an Amazon Echo in terms of quality, and that doesn’t happen often. As an extra bonus for gamers who like to hear every blast, you can whack up the volume without fear of distortion.
Then there’s the keyboard, which I would be quite happy to use as my daily unit. The keys have a solid thud that’s reminiscent of mechanical keyboards – although this is a membrane keyboard – and there’s enough cushioning that tha your fingers won’t feel exhausted exhaus after an intense gaming session. Talking of which, Asus’ attention to detail again shows in the stylised W and A keys, along with coordinated colours for, say, the Ctrl, Alt and Delete key.
I only have one criticism of the keyboard, which is that it flexes a fraction when you hi hit firmly on the keys. But that’s nitpicking; overall, it’s a brillia brilliant piece of design.
There’s less to say about the trackpad, which has the benefit of being glass-coated for extra smoothness but is also relatively small at 105 x 62mm. If I was doing serious work on the Zephyrus then I would connect a mouse. Left-handed gamers who rely on wired mice should note that both USB-A ports are on the right-hand side, so there will be potentially annoying wires to deal with, along with one USB-C port. The left side is home to a second USB-C port, the DC connector, a 3.5mm audio jack and an HDMI output. Note that no ports sit at the rear, as Asus uses its familiar “ErgoHinge” design to lift the keyboard up a few millimetres for more convenient typing.
Portable power
One other consideration con when choosing a 14in 14i gaming laptop is its portabili portability.
Considering all a the power inside the ROG Zephyrus G14 AW SE, and the build quality of the aluminium alloy chassis, it’s su surprising that it weighs only a shade over 1.7kg. 1.7 Perhaps even more importantly, it’s compact enough to fit inside almost any rucksack: a footprint of 324mm wide and 222mm deep is tiny compared to most gaming laptops. Asus squeezes it in under the 20mm height barrier, too. Unless ess your gaming session is due to last for less than three hours, ours, you would be well advised to bring the chunky 577g AC adapter with you. I left Hitman 2 looping and it went from 100% to 37% in the space of an hour, which is a far better indication of what the 76Wh battery attery will give you in real gaming ming life than our usual battery ry tests. Although, for the sake of completeness, I should add that a time of 9hrs 36mins in the office tests is better than most.
It all adds up to a well-rounded laptop, which is not what I expected to write when I first lifted the ROG Zephyrus G14 AW SE from its over-designed box. At that point it seemed more flair than substance, with much fuss being made of the bundled Alan Walker socks and baseball cap. Clearly, the heavy branding ensures this laptop fills a niche rather than attacking the mass market, but it’s also a great advert for the Asus Zephyrus G14 family as a whole.
Now to persuade Asus to make a
PC Pro edition...
SPECIFICATIONS
8-core 3GHz (4.6GHz burst) AMD Ryzen 9 5900HS S processor or 16GB DDR4-3200 RAM 4GB Nvidia a GeForce RTX 3050 Ti graphics hi 14in in 120Hz IPS non-touch panel, nel, 2,560 x 1,440 resolution eso ut o 1TB M.2 PCI-E 3 SSD Wi-Fi 6 Bluetooth luetooth 5.1 HDMI 2 x USB-C S C 3.2 2 x USB-A 3.1 3.5mm m jack 76Wh battery Windows ows 10 Pro 324 x 222 x 19.9mm (WDH) 1 1.7kg 7kg Asus ROG X Alan lan Walker sleeve, cap ap and socks 1yr limited ited warranty
“Asus packs in one of the best speaker systems I’ve heard in a compact laptop, with enough bass to give music impact”