The first time I left Vox Media, back in 2020, I decided to treat myself to a gaming laptop — something compact I could bring on travels but with enough power to play games as demanding as Cyberpunk 2077, which remains a great performance benchmark. I settled on the 2020 Asus Zephyrus G14, and honestly, it quickly became my favorite of all time. Now, on my new last day at Vox Media (editor’s note: what the hell, Ross?), I’m buying yet another gaming laptop, and this time… yep, I’m going with the 2024 edition of the Zephyrus G14. It’s not because I refuse to explore the competition, it’s just that the competition needs to try harder for my money.
You can grab it on sale for $1,199.99 (was $1,599.99) from Best Buy for Black Friday. I’m not saying this is the right laptop for you — not necessarily, at least — but I’ll tell you why it’s exactly the laptop I’ve been looking for.
Every person has a spec that matters above all else, and for me it’s size. I like to be on the road as much as I can be, and to be blunt, I want the smallest form factor I can find for traveling. At this point, a 14-inch laptop strikes the sweet spot between “fits in most backpacks comfortably” and “probably has a decent graphics card.” This version of the Zephyrus G14 should have more than enough performance to handle PC games that are also designed for the PlayStation 5 / Xbox Series X generation — it touts an AMD Ryzen 9 CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 GPU, 16GB of fast DDR5 RAM, and 1 TB storage. If there was a 12-inch laptop with an RTX card, I might be writing about a different machine, but value-wise, the G14 strikes the right balance.
Screen-wise, the Zephyrus G14 has 2880 x 1800 resolution, which is plenty sharp given the actual screen real estate, and more importantly, it’s OLED, and anyone who’s upgraded to an OLED Switch, Steam Deck OLED, or to an OLED TV or monitor can tell you, it’s pretty dang good.
Obviously I can’t definitively vouch for something that’s yet to come in — I only just ordered it this morning — so my enthusiasm is a combination of past experience and trusting other reviewers. To wit: PC Mag, PC Gamer, and Wired all gave it very positive reviews, with the big throughline concern being battery life — basically, it’s fine when not gaming and quick to drain when doing anything demanding. It can charge via USB-C, but you’ll need to use the proprietary charger for substantial tasks. The Verge notes that this year’s G14 suffers from excess heat, which was the case for the 2020 model as well, but I’ll take it.
All that is to say, no, I won’t be playing Shadow of the Erdtree from a laptop during any flights — at least not for more than an hour or so. But I can use it for YouTube, browsing, and work while I’m in transit, and when I get to where I’m going, I know that I’ll have more than enough power to play whatever I’d like. All these tradeoffs are valid concerns, and for many, they might be a dealbreaker. But for what I need, and for $1,200, the G14 looks like the winner.
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