Asus Zephyrus G14 Ryzen 9 GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q Laptop Review: Kicking Core i9 to the Curb

[really]

This is a very unprofessional review. I usually trust your reviews, but what you did with battery tests is just terrible. From now on I'll keep in mind to always look at other tech websites for notebooks reviews before buying one.

[agsn]

The numbers do not add up even in this very article.  With 30Watt Idle the notebook should only last 2 hr 20mins on idle. But you show it as almost 6 hr. With that extension, the idle power cannot be more than 12watt by your own numbers, given that the battery is a 72WH.
  I was posting my disappointment at other sites regarding idle watt, but was unable to complete the sentence as what I was writing was not making sense. This review needs a revision.  >:(

[Caribou]

*yawn*
almost all ryzen 4000 seem to come with 8gb. I dont see the point of that.

Asus Zephyrus G14 GA401IV seems to be aimed at gamers. And any person buying a laptop to game on is insane. Your gaiming can't be that important.

20NE000BGE still the best option it seems. Half the price, but no discrete GPU.
Lenovo ThinkPad E495, Ryzen 7 3700U, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD
or 20NF001HGE if 15" is needed.

[Caribou]

*yawn*
almost all ryzen 4000 seem to come with 8gb. I dont see the point of that.

Asus Zephyrus G14 GA401IV seems to be aimed at gamers. And any person buying a laptop to game on is insane. Your gaiming can't be that important.

20NE000BGE still the best option it seems, except no discrete GPU, but half the price.
Lenovo ThinkPad E495, Ryzen 7 3700U, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD
or 20NF001HGE if 15" is needed.

[Valantar]

*yawn*
almost all ryzen 4000 seem to come with 8gb. I dont see the point of that.

Asus Zephyrus G14 GA401IV seems to be aimed at gamers. And any person buying a laptop to game on is insane. Your gaiming can't be that important.

20NE000BGE still the best option it seems. Half the price, but no discrete GPU.
Lenovo ThinkPad E495, Ryzen 7 3700U, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD
or 20NF001HGE if 15" is needed.

Far, far too early to say that. Ryzen 4000 models have barely started trickling into the market. There will be plenty of 15GB models. And while the laptops you mention are great for most average users, anyone caring about my kind of performance or battery life will do much better waiting for 16GB Ryzen 4000 laptops. Better battery life, much better CPU performance, better responsiveness, better GPU performance - what's not to like?

Also, "your gaming can't be that important"? What are you talking about? The vast majority of gaming laptop buyers have that as their only PC. Do you imagine people just buy gaming laptops to game on the go, while using a desktop at home? Don't be daft. Most people aren't that rich. Gaming on a laptop these days is perfectly sensible (even if desktops are still better in most respects), and while the G14 does indeed have some compromises, it's also an outstanding package for someone who wants a small, portable laptop that can also play AAA games. Saying this just makes you sound woefully out of touch with reality.

[Caribou]

I can't share that sentiment. gaming laptops are a waste of money. not my money though.

all I know is that following products are a waste of resources. It's not like these idiots didn't know by now AMD can deliver. I guess intel pays better.

>The vast majority of gaming laptop buyers have that as their only PC. Do you imagine people just buy gaming laptops to game on the go, while using a desktop at home?
the only demographic I see this catering towards, are students. but they dont have that amount of cash.
I can't imagine there are that many people working on oil rigs that it would pay off catering towards those. Also they don't seem to me as the gaming type.

but yes, 4800hs and 2060 is a good combo. I just don't understand how these idiots can release such processors with 8 gigs of ram.

[Joschn]

You *really* should do un update regarding battery life.
Seems like you ran into the same issue Anandtech has:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/15708/amds-mobile-revival-redefining-the-notebook-business-with-the-ryzen-9-4900hs-a-review/4

[Valantar]

I can't share that sentiment. gaming laptops are a waste of money. not my money though.

You are of course welcome to that opinion, and while I don't disagree that gaming laptops are poor value compared to desktops, your phrasing and insistence on this point in exclusion just points to you speaking from a very privileged point of view and/or having a very narrow view of how people game on PCs.

Not everyone has the room for a desk where they live, let alone one big enough to house a desktop PC with room to spare or one exclusively for using said desktop. Not everyone prefers sitting in a desk chair when gaming - some people prefer sitting in their sofa or a lounge chair for comfort. Not everyone wants to juggle two PCs with the (IMO minor, but nonetheless) hassle that entails. And lastly, not everyone can afford to have both a gaming desktop and a laptop for use on the go. Sure, there are absolutely budgets where desktop+laptop will give you better value than just a do-it-all laptop, but €1500 isn't it when the laptop performs like this. You'll struggle significantly hitting this performance level in a PC below €1000, and you won't find a laptop for €500 or less that's even remotely as good for on-the-go usage as the G14 is according to reviews. And while this laptop does seem to be a rather unique proposition, remember that for people less concerned with portability, there are laptops around €1000 with near identical performance.

all I know is that following products are a waste of resources. It's not like these idiots didn't know by now AMD can deliver. I guess intel pays better.

Laptop development cycles aren't that short. They are generally in the realm of 1 1/2-2 years, meaning that laptop OEMs had no way of knowing the 4000-series APUs would be this good back then. Remember, Zen 2 launched around 8 months ago, and while OEMs obviously have access to early silicon, they definitely didn't have ES Ryzen 4000 APUs 1 1/2 years ago. And while previous generation APUs weren't bad, they weren't even close to this good.

Also, AMD has said there are 100+ designs with 4000-series APUs coming in 2020. This also underscores that these chips are too "fresh" for many designs to be ready (the ones that are ready are pretty much all made with a lot of engineering assistance from AMD, which it would be impossible to give to every model). In other words: as OEMs have time to finalize their designs for these chips, more choice will arrive. On the other hand, Intel's option is (near) identical to previous chips, so in that case OEMs are already deeply familiar with the architecture, motherboard design requirements, etc., and could re-use or tweak existing designs to bring updated models to market quickly. This isn't due to Intel paying them, but due to the realities of engineering a modern PC.

>The vast majority of gaming laptop buyers have that as their only PC. Do you imagine people just buy gaming laptops to game on the go, while using a desktop at home?
the only demographic I see this catering towards, are students. but they dont have that amount of cash.
I can't imagine there are that many people working on oil rigs that it would pay off catering towards those. Also they don't seem to me as the gaming type.

First off, it would be really nice if you actually used the quote functionality of the forum, as that would make your posts much easier to read.

Beyond that, as above, your perspective narrow to the point of being outright wrong. First off, while a €1500 laptop is indeed a lot for most students, that doesn't mean that many can't afford a laptop like this or won't save up for one. As for other demographics: this should appeal to anyone who fits any of what I described above, which could be anyone from infrequent gamers to people living in small apartments to anyone else with any reason that to them makes a laptop more practical than a desktop, and who can afford one (which is far easier today than even five years ago thanks to monumental increases in mobile GPU performance).

but yes, 4800hs and 2060 is a good combo. I just don't understand how these idiots can release such processors with 8 gigs of ram.

There we can agree, though for some of these laptops (thin-and-lights) 8GB is frankly sufficient for simple home and office use still, and likely will be for years to come - but there ought to be 16GB options available for those who want more. Of course for any gaming with integrated graphics 8GB is too little. The same goes for dGPU gaming - while 8GB is technically sufficient today, it's definitely on the low end of what's acceptable and will become a bottleneck well before the laptop is otherwise obsolete. At least all the gaming laptops seem to be upgradable, and adding a SODIMM isn't the most difficult undertaking (though most of these seem to use DDR4-3200 and likely need JEDEC DDR4-3200 DIMMs to run at full speed with any added RAM - and there isn't any of that currently on the market). IMO base SKUs with 8GB are fine, but anything even remotely premium (say, once you reach the 512GB SSD range) should also include 16GB of RAM for longevity's sake.

You *really* should do un update regarding battery life.
Seems like you ran into the same issue Anandtech has:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/15708/amds-mobile-revival-redefining-the-notebook-business-with-the-ryzen-9-4900hs-a-review/4

Completely agree with this. Getting results that differ so dramatically from every other review and then not investigating this further is a very poor journalistic practice.

[Andrej Kalousek]

You *really* should do un update regarding battery life.
Seems like you ran into the same issue Anandtech has:

Completely agree with this. Getting results that differ so dramatically from every other review and then not investigating this further is a very poor journalistic practice.

As much as I appreciate the thoroughness and information value of Notebookcheck's reviews, I have to agree on this one. Although on one side I get it –⁠ they most likely have to make good on the bribes they seem to be receiving from Intel, so they gimp products with AMD chips in their reviews in one way or another. This is by far not the first time (and most certainly not the last time) this happened. :( 

[nr4334387]

Ah yes, heat. AMD's old enemy. That's why I switched to Intel about 15 years ago and never looked back.

Well, until now. The performance promised by these new Ryzen CPUs made me think that I could get the same performance as out of a similar Intel CPU but at less noise and power consumption. But looking at this review (as well as others elsewhere), it seems like they gain that performance advantage not through more efficient architecture, the 7nm process or something but by outputting more heat.

[nr4334387]

... and when I say "heat", I mean "fan noise" in this case. One obviously tends to lead to the other...

[Bini]

I purchased this laptop and it is very disappointing. At idle it makes too much noise and it is a high pitch annoying noise. Armoury Crate software from Asus has a Manual mode that allows you to reduce the fans speeds which is great. However, this mode is available only when you are connected to AC, which is dumb. I want the laptop to be quiet when I watch a movie on my couch or I read something, not when I am at my desk. I played GTA V for 30 minutes with ultra settings on 1080p. The performance is great but the laptop gets too hot, especially the top part of the keyboard. I verified the temperatures in Hwinfo64 and the CPU got to 103C degrees. Heat and especially the fan noise during idle made me decide to return it. The metallic case is also very easy to scratch. I scratched the palm rest area with my watch while I was very attentive. This is a nice looking device, but the phrase "too good, to be true" applies here.

[luluk]

Will you guys ever update battery life tests?

[anon]

Let me say that without Notebookcheck's battery test I would not have known that there is a problem with this laptop's discrete GPU turning on whenever the display is refreshing at 120Hz. No, notebookcheck did not themselves research and diagnose the issue like anandtech's reviewer did (thank you Joschn for the link). But they did test the laptop according to their real-world test, and dutifully published the results even when other reviewers disagree.

To turn down the 120Hz screen to 60Hz is a *workaround* and to me is *unacceptable*.

To do this for the PURPOSE OF BENCHMARKING is absolutely misleading, and I am ashamed that anandtech simply copied Asus' internal practice of nerfing their hardware to get better numbers, but I do respect them for at least explaining this in text.

The next laptop I buy will have a 120Hz screen at a minimum, and I fully expect to be able to use it, with no shenanigans like brightness-dependent refresh rate like on the Pixel 4, and without it being automatically disabled when on battery, none of that "gotta make the benchmarks look better" crap.

If a laptop's GPU switching is broken, it's broken. It can probably be fixed in software, but until that time I don't expect the battery life numbers to be any different.

[zol]

Thanks to the below useful links, I am able to run my GA401II-HE003T (Ryzen7/GTX1050Ti) silent and cool (in daily use, browsing etc):

www.reddit.com/r/ZephyrusG14/comments/gpx549/summary_about_controlling_fansboosttdp_all_is/
You can set fan control to Fanless (no noise, mostly) or Low-speed (approx. half as of how "Silent" profile runs).

www.autohotkey.com/
To get over the annoying PgUp/Down Home/End affair (with Alt+)

As well as getting rid of Armoury Crate and using Power saver mode (on very conservative settings) helps with battery runtimes.

Might be useful to check for yourselves.