Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 Alan Walker Special Edition
Gaming meets music in Asus’s latest portable PC
GIVE IT UP FOR the new Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 Alan Walker Special Edition. It’s a new version of the second iteration of what was already a great laptop. The original Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 was something of a genre buster when it arrived last year with its compact 14-inch proportions, awesome AMD CPU, and great gaming performance.
This second-generation Special Edition model carries over that basic proposition but adds an unusual twist, namely collaboration with the DJ and musician Alan Walker. As we write, Walker currently has the 19th most popular video on Youtube with no fewer than 3.2 billion views, not to mention over 10 billion channel views. Not bad.
Anyway, Walker has collaborated with Asus to produce a version of the G14 that fuses music with gaming. The basic design of the G14 is carried over, complete with the funky Anime Matrix programmable LED feature on the rear. But various tweaks, including a change to metallic grey, fabric inserts, and new keyboard colors give a distinct look.
What sets this version of the G14 apart from its siblings isn’t the laptop but the extras in the box. Or rather the box itself. It doubles as a sort of synth or mixing pad, connecting to the laptop via USB-C and working with a dedicated app on the laptop to allow music content creation. Touch-sensitive pads on the box include controls for track speed, sample loading, and sound effects. These tie in with visual effects that can be run on the laptop’s screen or output to an external display.
How well it works from a music content creation perspective is debatable, but it’s a fun extra that adds to the sense of this being a special and unusual laptop, rather than a spec-led, box-ticking affair. That’s probably just as well because at least in one area the spec is slightly disappointing. Highlights include the eight-core AMD Ryzen 9 5900HS CPU, which is incredibly powerful. The 14-inch 2,560 by 1,440 pixel IPS display is a 120Hz beauty and a great compromise between detail and performance, though it could be a little brighter.
At least it would strike that balance between pixels and frame rate nicely if it were paired with a more powerful GPU. Asus has gone with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti for this special edition G14, despite the chassis being good for up to the RTX 3060 in other models. That’s a pity because the 3050 Ti isn’t up to the job of driving the display at native resolution at playable frame rates, let alone the panel’s 120Hz refresh.
Admittedly, games still look pretty decent interpolated at 1080p. So, while it is a realistic option to drop the resolution down a notch and release a few frames, an RTX 3060 would round the package out much more effectively and make for a better match for the high refresh display. Moreover, this isn’t the kind of system that’s aimed at price-sensitive buyers. The fact that you can have a ‘regular’ G14 with 32GB of RAM and an RTX 3060 GPU for around the same kind of money probably doesn’t matter to this laptop’s niche target market.
The extra cost of the 3060 would hardly make a major impact on its appeal. That said, this is still a gorgeous laptop with fantastic design and build quality, plus a battery life of over eight hours in PCMark 10, especially given the huge CPU power on offer. The sound from the integrated speakers rivals Apple’s MacBook’s for dynamic range and quality, and there’s some real bass on offer, albeit not so much outright volume. A bit more punch would be appreciated. –JEREMY LAIRD
VERDICT 8 Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 Alan Walker Special Edition
HIT SINGLE Lush build quality; awesome CPU; fun music features.
DUD B-SIDE Mediocre graphics performance; expensive for the overall specifications.
$1,999, www.asus.com