The 2024 ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 received the most “makeover” in this year’s generation of ROG Gaming Laptops with a thinner form factor and a chassis redesign. Gone are the days of the blissful AniMe Matrix lighting as it’s replaced by the new Slash Lighting found on the ROG G14 and G16 2024 gaming laptops. Let’s take a closer look at the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 GU604 2024 to see if this change in direction is for the better.
Related Articles
ROG Zephyrus M vs Zephyrus G Series
Last year, the ROG Zephyrus M series received the Anime Matrix design which was previously exclusive to the Zephyrus G line. With this year’s iteration of the Zephyrus G series receiving the new Slash lighting design, there’s now an additional distinction between the two product lines. So, to round it up, the ASUS Zephyrus M series uses the AniMe Matrix while the 2024 Zephyrus G series has the new Slash lighting. Both of which are ASUS’ “thin and light” gaming laptops.
Unboxing and First Impressions
This year’s Zephyrus G14 2024 comes in a much more compact packaging that’s almost the size of a 15-inch gaming laptop. Unlike last generation’s packaging, you no longer have the two-tone black and white design but instead, you have a muted matte black with a glossy ROG logo print on the front.
ASUS includes two charging bricks for the ROG Zephyrus G14 2024. There’s a regular-sized rectangle brick rated at 180W for maximum power. Should you want to travel light, you can bring the 100w Type-C adapter especially if you don’t need to utilize the laptop’s GPU.
ASUS went for a new Platinum White colorway instead of maintaining last year’s moonlight white colorway. I personally like the silver-gray metal color on the 2024 Zephyrus G14 as it’s not only durable and resistant to fingerprints but also makes the laptop look more professional which is its target market.
Ports selection hasn’t changed over last year’s model as you still have one USB 4 Type-C port, one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port, and one microSD card reader on the right. The left has your DC-in, HDMI 2.1 port, one USB 3.2 Gen 2 with support for DisplayPort over Type-C, one more USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port, and one audio jack.
The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 GA403 14-inch form factor limits the brand from placing a full-sized keyboard. That said, the key sizes are large enough and well spaced out for an ergonomic typing experience.
You have the iconic ASUS ROG buttons on the top left corner while the power button is positioned on the opposite side. While the speaker grills look thinner versus last-gen, they’re a lot better, probably one of the best I’ve seen in 14-inch gaming laptops – though it’s worth noting there aren’t as many 14-inch gaming laptops in the market.
Hat’s off to ASUS for being able to maximize the trackpad space on the ROG Zephyrus G14 2024, at least vertically. While it’s still smaller than the trackpad of the ROG Flow X13, the trackpad of the G14 2024 is still larger than some 15.6-inch gaming laptops in the market.
ROG Slash Lighting
The removal of the Anime Matrix in place of the ROG Slash Lighting is a bittersweet moment for me. While I do love the elevated professionalism of the Slash Lighting paired with the Platinum White colorway, there are fewer customization options compared to the Anime Matrix.
Making up the 7-section LED lighting are 68 capsule cells and 28 mini LEDs which you can customize on the ASUS Armoury Crate software. There are five themes to choose from with three presets available in each theme.
Display
Apart from the new Slash Lighting design, one of the major overhauls of the ROG Zephyrus G14 is its display. The 2024 model now sports the very first ROG Nebula OLED panel coming from the 2023 variants mini-LED display. The G14 2024’s display is a 14″ 2880x1800p 16:10 120Hz 0.2ms panel with support for Nvidia G-Sync.
ASUS claims a 500nit brightness and a DeltaE of
It’s without question that the Zephyrus G14 GA403 2024 has one of the best displays available for a gaming laptop, heck even beating out most productivity laptops. That said, the G14 is ideal for professional-level photo and video editing.
Armoury Crate
Armoury Crate holds everything you need to customize the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 GU403 2024. Apart from the power profiles which we’ll use to benchmark the gaming laptop, you’ll likely spend most of your time customizing the ROG Slash Lighting inside the app. That said, there isn’t much to do with the lighting apart from choosing a preset and setting the brightness – a considerable downgrade compared to the Anime Matrix design. That said, it would’ve been much better if it was RGB lighting as you can customized the colors to represent an app or the laptop’s state. That said, we look forward to more customization options in the next iteration.
Benchmark Setup and Test Methodology
Gadget Pilipinas’ testing philosophy is to provide detail-oriented results as accurately as possible so that our readers can replicate our tests given that these conditions are met. Different benchmarking apps and sequences are used depending on the tested component or device.
We use CapFrameX 1.7.2 Beta as our primary FPS capture and analysis tool for all our gaming benchmarks. The latest build version of Windows 11 Pro and WHQL-certified drivers are used for our benchmarks. Readings such as temperatures and power draws are recorded using HWINFO64, and OCCT Enterprise.
We benchmarked the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 GA403UI together with its different power settings found in the ASUS Armoury Crate Software – Silent, Performance, and Turbo. The main purpose of benchmarking power profiles is to show how aggressive or conservative the manufacturer is in terms of thermal management. These profiles will affect the CPU and GPUs’ boosting behavior in terms of duration and max clock speed which will translate to higher scores and stable framerates.
As part of our 2024 laptop benchmark methodology revamp, we’ve changed how these profiles are tested. Synthetic and Productivity benchmarks include all of the power profiles. We decided to drop the silent or power-saving profile for gaming benchmarks as these lowest profiles generally produce unplayable framerates, especially at 1440p and above resolutions. Moreover, games are tested at the laptop’s native resolution(in the G14’s case, 1800p) as we expect most, if not al gamers to game on the laptop’s native resolution.
For more information read our Benchmark Methodology article.
ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 2024 Synthetic and Productivity Benchmarks
OCCT Benchmark
OCCT is a popular benchmark and stability testing tool among overclockers, enthusiasts and system integrators
CINEBENCH 2024
Maxon’s Cinebench benchmark is one of the most iconic benchmark applications used by reviewers and enthusiasts. The latest Cinebench 2024 uses the latest rendering architectures, including Intel’s Embree ray tracing technology and other advanced features from AMD and Intel that allow users to render the same scene on the same hard.
PROCYON
Procyon benchmark suite is developed by the UL, the same team behind 3DMark and PCMark benchmarks. The UL Procycon video editing benchmark uses Adobe Premiere in a typical video editing workflow. The benchmark starts by importing two video project files with various edits, adjustments, and effects – the second project uses several GPU-accelerated effects. Each project is exported in 1080p with H.264 encoding and again in 4K with HEVC H.265. The reported score is based on the time taken to export all four videos.
PCMark10
From the same developers of the popular game benchmarking tool 3DMark, PCMark 10 is a benchmarking app for measuring a whole PC’s performance. It covers a wide variety of tests to reflect common tasks performed in a modern workplace. We selected PCMark 10’s extended benchmark and reported both the overall score and Digital Content Creation Score.
