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  • - PS5 or Xbox Series X.

  • Well, if your answer is neither

  • and you wanna go on the PC Master Race side of things,

  • then this is absolutely something to consider.

  • And by something to consider I mean,

  • it's my new favorite thing.

  • (upbeat music)

  • Inside the ROG Zephyrus G14,

  • is nearly the exact same processor

  • as you'll find in the next generation of consoles

  • including the Xbox Series X as well as the PS5.

  • Now last month, before all the world ending stuff,

  • I took a trip out to AMD's headquarters in Austin, Texas

  • where I got a deep dive

  • on the brand new Ryzen Mobile 4000 series.

  • There is a lot of cool stuff here

  • and I'll probably cover more in future videos

  • on all these new laptops that are coming out with Ryzen

  • but the gist of it is this.

  • You're getting the same Zen 2 core from the desktop,

  • on mobile as well as

  • of course, in that next generation console.

  • And the cool thing is,

  • you're getting the same level of performance too

  • as we have that full eight-core design in a Ryzen laptop

  • for the first time.

  • Now yes, we hear desktop processor

  • and tiny, thin and light laptop

  • that might not gel.

  • This is a 35 watt chip with a serious

  • amount of power behind it.

  • Now let me be clear,

  • we're not looking at some cut-down version

  • of Ryzen for mobile.

  • Yes, there's certainly some small differences.

  • When it comes to the actual CPU,

  • this is the full eight-core, 16-thread design

  • and inside the G14,

  • it's able to boost it 3.7 gigahertz

  • under sustained 100% load

  • aka, slightly faster than the processors

  • that you'll get inside the Xbox Series X and the PS5.

  • I mentioned how thin this laptop is?

  • Can we all take a second here and just recognize

  • the fact that for years and years,

  • Intel has dominated laptops right?

  • And especially when you're getting gaming laptops,

  • there were pretty much were no AMD options up until last year

  • and yet, here we are at the beginning of 2020

  • and we have a thin and light laptop, 14-inch laptop

  • with more power than pretty much any Intel processor

  • in a laptop that you can get

  • and at lower power.

  • This is a 35 watt chip as opposed to the 45 watt chips

  • that Intel usually use.

  • Now while, yes 10th Gen Intel stuff

  • is probably right around the corner

  • and we'll see how close it gets

  • but it is incredibly impressive to see AMD

  • not only taking over on the desktop side,

  • not only obviously dominating the consoles

  • but now, significantly moving into laptops

  • and considering there's a lower wattage version

  • of this chip with the full eight-core design available

  • in Ultrabooks soon,

  • I mean, it's a good time to be Team Red.

  • You know I could load you up with benchmarks,

  • showing just how fast this is but Anandtech exists.

  • So instead, let's actually take a look to see

  • what it really is capable of.

  • So this is powered by that Ryzen 9 4900HS

  • and is backed up with an RTX 2060 Max-Q,

  • 16 gigs of RAM, one terabyte SSD.

  • There's a lot to like here

  • and especially when you consider that,

  • this is all in a 14-inch thin and light package.

  • Well okay, let me be specific.

  • A 17.9 millimeter thin package

  • but still quite small for a full gaming laptop.

  • There's a lot to like here.

  • What I like about this is that,

  • as a 14-inch laptop,

  • it is much closer to the size

  • of something I would actually want to daily.

  • It's not too far off of something

  • like a Razer Blade Stealth

  • but with much much more power.

  • Now speaking of power,

  • not only do we have the ASUS ErgoLift hinge

  • which means that, you get a little bit

  • of a better typing angle as well as more airflow.

  • This guy is rocking a 14-inch 1080p 120 Hertz display.

  • It is, spoiler alert, excellent.

  • Like seriously.

  • Color is great, brightness is great

  • and of course having that super high 120 Hertz refresh rate

  • is much appreciated on a laptop

  • which again is fairly thin, fairly light,

  • fairly, I was gonna say gamery

  • but actually, this is one

  • of the most subdued ROG designs I've ever seen.

  • So inside the G14,

  • we have woah, a lot of stuff.

  • So first of all, we have access to our DDR4 memory

  • although it looks like only one DIMM

  • is actually available.

  • So you can upgrade this theoretically to 24 gigs I think.

  • We also have our M.2 slot which is available

  • if I wanted to unscrew it.

  • So this has the one terabyte drive

  • so not really gonna touch that.

  • What we see here, is a very interesting heat pipe situation.

  • So we have two fans and we have,

  • one, two, three,

  • seven individual heat pipes.

  • And it does have a decent-sized 76 watt hour battery.

  • So something that I haven't spent a ton of time with

  • is actually doing battery life testing during gaming.

  • But for light use, I've easily been able to get

  • eight to nine hours to this guy, no problem.

  • Okay so this is really stupid,

  • no one should ever care about this.

  • I really dig the way this looks on the inside.

  • The red PCB with all the black components.

  • This thing looks great.

  • I mean seriously, look at that.

  • That's like a work of art

  • especially when you consider that the outside

  • is so nice and clean.

  • This is gonna be one of those rare situations

  • where I have no criticisms, not really.

  • And honestly, in my testing,

  • this thermal solution has been more than adequate right?

  • CPU is able to boost,

  • GPU is able to keep a good frequency.

  • I'm very impressed.

  • So let's put this to the test

  • with a game of Gears 5

  • which coincidentally is one of the only games

  • I've actually played on the real Xbox Series X.

  • Now a couple of caveats.

  • First of all, while the processor is very similar

  • to what we get in the next gen consoles,

  • we are taking advantage of only RTX 2060 graphics

  • which just aren't as powerful

  • but one of the things we do know is that,

  • they're working on a 120 FPS mode

  • for Gears 5 on the console

  • so why don't we see what it takes to get

  • that running on laptop,

  • considering it's got a 120 Hertz display?

  • So right now, we are playing on medium settings

  • pretty much across the board at 1080P,

  • and why don't we see what we can do?

  • We're 91, 90 frames per second or so.

  • That's actually really not bad.

  • And you can see that our CPU is significantly faster.

  • It is definitely being bottleneck by the RTX 2060.

  • And honestly, if we wanted to really cap it at 120 FPS

  • we could easily crank it down to say, 1080P low.

  • So we end up getting 90 FPS but the CPU frame rate was 202

  • so if we had more powerful graphics,

  • we could very easily have hit a super capped 120 FPS.

  • That's actually really impressive.

  • Look, this is so much power for a laptop right.

  • This is so much power not just for a thin and light laptop,

  • this is so much power for a laptop full stop.

  • As I wait to join the game,

  • I am encouraged with 215 frames per second

  • with maxed settings at 1080P.

  • So obviously for the video,

  • you can't really see the difference

  • but I can say right now,

  • I'm seeing somewhere between 150 and 200 frames per second

  • and it is incredibly smooth.

  • I feel like if I had this,

  • I would never lose in Broke versus Pro ever again.

  • I feel like we're actually gonna win this.

  • Look at that.

  • Look how great the Zephyrus is at not dying.

  • I wanna play another game.

  • That's not so easy to play.

  • All right so for our next game, we have F1 2019.

  • Now this is the game I've been playing a lot lately

  • although certainly not with a controller

  • and dude, this is absolutely no problem.

  • 1080P high settings,

  • we're over a 140-150 frames per second on this thing.

  • If I have my wheel, I'd feel much better.

  • Oh no, oh no no no no no!

  • (laughing)

  • I'm legitimately impressed

  • with what kind of performance you're getting.

  • Yeah sure, we could certainly use like a 2070 or something

  • but a 1080P, 120 FPS,

  • it's not that hard to get

  • a really nice locked experience here.

  • The ROG Zephyrus G14 has plenty

  • of power for gaming but you know what it doesn't have?

  • I don't know.

  • That's pretty much everything as far as I'm concerned.

  • So obviously the G14 has the performance

  • but there's a lot more to this laptop that I really do like.

  • Now first of all, there's the design.

  • Yes, it's thin.

  • Yes, it's a smaller laptop.

  • But the fact is this,

  • when you look at it in the white color, is so clean.

  • Now this is the non AniMe Matrix design.

  • I said it right, I almost said something else.

  • But you can see that, it has these little tiny dimples.

  • However, we took a look at the one

  • with the full LED panel at CES and it is really cool.

  • You can put up GIFs and whatnot there

  • but we all know the real reason why that laptop exists,

  • because DJs and people like Ken who pretend to be DJs

  • wanna have a cool flashy laptop for their sweet DJ sessions.

  • If you're not Ken,

  • the standard model really is the one to get.

  • As if you wanna get the AniMe Matrix display,

  • you have to go for the QHD panel which is 60 Hertz.

  • I much prefer the 1080P, 120 Hertz option.

  • Now beyond just the screen and the specs,

  • I really have to give them props.

  • This might be my favorite ROG design yet.

  • Now look, nothing against black and red gaming laptops,

  • like all of these

  • but the white, the silver,

  • the very clean lines, this honestly is something

  • that I would have no problem dailying on a regular basis.

  • - [Myke] I'm Myke.

  • - I'm Austin.

  • We are The Test Drivers.

  • Wow, what great speakers

  • and what a great sounding podcast available

  • at relay.fm/testdrivers.

  • Link in the description.

  • (clears throat)

  • So the speaker setup

  • is actually really impressive on the G14

  • as we have four speakers.

  • So you have two tweeters that are upward firing

  • and then on the bottom,

  • you have two much beefier speakers on the bottom

  • and because we have that ErgoLift design,

  • it actually has a little bit of echo underneath.

  • Honestly, while it's not as good as something

  • like the 16-inch MacBook,

  • for a smaller gaming laptop, two huge thumbs up

  • and the praise keeps going.

  • This keyboard is rock-solid.

  • We've got nearly two millimeters of travel.

  • It feels great.

  • It's a good layout.

  • They actually have some really thoughtful keys

  • so we actually have dedicated buttons

  • for volume up and down,

  • the arrow keys are nice and separated.

  • ASUS has made a lot of really smart decisions

  • with this guy and I really like it man.

  • I didn't expect to like this laptop as much as I do.

  • And while yes, it's got the power

  • and yes, it's got the great screen

  • but there's so many little hardware tweaks

  • that make such a huge difference

  • then I found myself dailying a gaming laptop

  • for the first time in a while.

  • There's also solid port selection

  • so we have a pair of USB-A, HDMI

  • as well as two USB-C,

  • one of which actually supports not only a video out

  • but also USB-C power delivery.

  • Now as this is a gaming laptop,

  • it does have the standard barrel plug

  • and you're gonna need the normal power adapter for gaming.

  • If you're out and about

  • if you're doing lighter tasks,

  • then you can use pretty much any USB-C power brick

  • and it will give you enough power

  • to keep the laptop up and running.

  • Did I actually point to the right port this time?

  • Here?

  • - [Ken] After four takes of this, yes.

  • - I can't see anything from this angle Ken.

  • Now it's not all perfect.

  • So we do have a fingerprint sensor

  • supported by Windows Hello built into the power button.

  • Something you don't see on a lot of gaming laptops

  • and it is a newer style of fingerprint sensor

  • where even if the laptop is off,

  • you can just put your finger on it

  • and it will record your fingerprint

  • and then as soon as Windows fires up,

  • it will then send it over to Windows Hello versus most

  • which will actually have to press the button,

  • wait for it to turn on

  • then put your finger down which is kind of annoying.

  • But the problem is that, it's not crazy accurate.

  • Now I'll give some props to ASUS

  • because I have many fingerprint issues

  • on most Windows laptops.

  • It takes me several times of training

  • before it kind of gets fairly accurate.

  • But still a nice feature and if I'm nitpicking,

  • I will say that, while I love the feel of the keyboard,

  • the backlighting isn't super uniform.

  • This is an early unit so they may get that fixed

  • in the next couple months before it ships.

  • But besides that, there's really not a lot

  • that I can complain about.

  • It's a really solid piece of hardware,

  • it's a really solid piece of engineering

  • and I don't have a good way to end this point.

  • Bringing it all together,

  • this Zephyrus is actually reasonably priced.

  • So this is an upper mid spec model

  • which is a Ryzen 9, RTX 2060.

  • It's one terabyte SSD, as well as 16 gigs of RAM

  • for only $1449.

  • There also is a base model available

  • for just over a $1,000

  • that lacks the high refresh rate display

  • but still has pretty decent specs like the Ryzen 7

  • as well as a 1650.

  • But realistically, this is the sweet spot.

  • I'm really impressed with the Zephyrus G14

  • and the fact that it's powered

  • by this new AMD Ryzen processors is a huge win.

  • We're getting almost desktop level performance

  • and a 14-inch thin and light laptop

  • and especially when you consider that,

  • that same processor is living inside

  • both of the Xbox Series X as well as the PS5,

  • it is a very good time to rise up

  • with your console brethren and play games together?

  • If that sounds like a good idea.

  • Make sure to subscribe to the channel.

  • If you think that was a really dumb way

  • to end in the video,

  • well then you should click on a different video now.

  • (upbeat music)

  • - [Ken] They're not gonna live together.

  • They hate each other a lot.

  • We can all use the same processors though Ken.

  • (upbeat music)

- PS5 or Xbox Series X.

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