I traveled 5,000 miles with the 2025 Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 — here’s why it’s the gaming laptop I'd buy

So there I am at the airport — a flight delayed by three hours from Lisbon to come home. Normally in this situation, I would be seething. But with the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 in hand, the hours flew by. If anything, I was actually sad that I had to board!

That’s the magic of this 14-inch powerhouse. The upmarket utilitarian stylings give Apple a run for its money, and subtly disguise what this monster is truly capable of: drop dead gorgeous OLED gaming at silky smooth frame rates.

Seriously, the amount of raw horsepower contained in this chassis feels slightly mind-bending. Don’t get me wrong, you certainly hear it when the fans kick up.

But with upgraded heatpipes and new fans that give you better airflow, there’s zero chance of thermal throttling here — especially when you turn it up to 11 and run the likes of Cyberpunk 2077 at over 130 FPS in Ray Tracing: Ultra mode.

And all that power applies to its other superpower too. The Zephyrus G14 is as much of a creator and prosumer machine as it is a gaming laptop. That AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 chipset is blisteringly quick paired with RTX 5080 to deliver fast on any demanding workloads.

Does it completely fix all of its past transgressions? Not necessarily — the battery life is still something you’ll have to keep an eye on. Alongside that, much like what we noticed with the Asus ROG Strix Scar 18, there’s definitely a premium being put on the price.

However, none of that really gets in the way of what this is. The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 reclaims the throne as the best gaming laptop you can buy right now.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025): Cheat Sheet

• What is it? This is a premium 14-inch gaming laptop — packing impressive power into a CNC-machined aluminum shell.
• Who is it for? This is for the gaming enthusiasts who are always on-the-go.
• What does it cost? Starting price is $1,799 for the RTX 5060 version, but if you want to spec this all the way up to the RTX 5080 monster we got, it’ll set you back $3,169.
• What do we like? This is still the best-looking gaming laptop you can get — that aluminum chassis is beautiful. On top of that, the OLED screen guarantees vivid, immersive gaming that is pumped to the max by that RTX 50-series GPU.
• What don’t we like? As expected from a 14-inch laptop packing beasty specs like these, the ROG Zephyrus G14’s battery life is underwhelming. Make sure you keep yourself next to an outlet when gaming! And if you want to upgrade beyond the RTX 5060 model, the price goes up.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025): Specs

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025): The ups

The new Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 has a lot going for it — building on the strong foundations of its fundamental redesign last year and fitting an RTX 50-series turbocharger under the hood.

Understated beauty

Asus has been out in front for a whole year in terms of design, and nobody has been able to catch up. So for 2025, the big A is sticking with the formula — the ROG Zephyrus G14 is still the best-looking gaming laptop you can get your hands on.

With a serious MacBook Pro-esque utilitarian flair, this utilitarian aesthetic with a diagonal slash of subtle lighting on the back is as gorgeous as gorgeous can get. Plus, that CNC-milled aluminum chassis gives it a nice durability with a great hand feel.

Speaking of hand feel (such a weird phrase, but you get what I mean), the glass-topped trackpad and chiclet keyboard with a nice tactile depth continue to be the best in the business for gaming systems.

Whether I was in a business meeting, down the local pub, or out in the middle of a chaotic airport, nobody batted an eyelid at me whipping out this understated system and getting straight into what I was doing. And coming from reviewing the monstrous Strix Scar 18, that’s a good thing.

A mesmerizing display

If you go OLED, you’re always onto a winner, and Asus is sticking to its guns with the ROG Nebula display packing a 3K resolution on a 16:10 aspect ratio (slightly taller is great for productivity and strategy games).

At 120Hz, this isn’t going to give you those pro gamer high refresh rates, but neither does it really need to. Games running at full frame rate — like the dark, moody Alan Wake 2 or the vibrant, colorful Forza Horizon 5 — are a real treat for the eyes.

And with that Pantone validation, I had confidence in the color reproduction of any creative work I threw at it. From video editing in DaVinci Resolve to tweaking the shades in a RAW picture on Photoshop, the results were true to life.

Oh, and shoutout to the speakers too! I don’t know exactly what Asus has done differently here, but the dual side woofers offer a lot more bass than before and the overall sound profile is loud enough to overwhelm the fans.

Crazy powerful

Finally, the big one. I can’t go one step further without talking about the power pairing here. Previously, the 2024 Zephyrus G14 had to turn down the total watts going to its GPU because of the limited room for cooling.

This year, Asus has vastly improved the cooling pipes and fans for better thermal management, which in turn has led to this total wattage going up to 120 watts in manual mode. That’s still lower than the max power that could be pumped through the 5080, but you’ll be hard pressed to really notice the difference.

For those keeping up, that is an effective 50% improvement in GPU performance over last year, and the hits just keep coming when you’re hours deep into AAA gaming.

But that’s only half the story, as on a system this small, DLSS 4 is a real AI magic trick. Flick on multi-frame gen and you can see Cyberpunk 2077 go up to a whopping 147 FPS at max settings — all without an overt impact to the latency that would make your gaming performance bad in single-player action.

And of course, that AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 partners with the RTX 5080 to make this a mightily impressive portable workstation too.

The zippy single-core performance makes moving around Windows 11 and opening apps impressively snappy, while the multicore gains provided plenty of headroom for in excess of 50 Chrome Tabs, Photoshop, several 4K streams and music playing in the background with Cyberpunk 2077 open and no real slowdown.

No matter how intense your workload is, this can take it.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025): The downs

However, I do have one small qualm with the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14. It’s something that is seemingly unavoidable given how power hungry gaming laptops are.

The stamina is still lacking

We saw this in last year’s G14 too, and it’s very much the same case here too. Asus has managed to lengthen the battery life while gaming by 45 minutes here. But it’s still something you’ll have to watch out for.

In day-to-day general usage, you can squeeze around 5-6 hours out of this on one charge, so if you are on any long haul flights, make sure you take a beasty battery pack with you. And if you’re out and about, use this near an outlet.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025): Verdict

Once I touched down after my 5,000 miles of traveling, I was left with one very clear opinion — the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is my new favorite gaming laptop.

Building on the strengths of its predecessor, the RTX 50-series really unlocks some big performance gains that truly shine on that crispy OLED display. And provided you’re always somewhere that has a plug or two (pricing in that battery life) you’re guaranteed a great time with this.

If you’re in the market for a gaming laptop that finds just the right balance between power and portability (and you don’t already own an RTX 40-series system), there’s no better choice.