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00:00Hey guys, I'm Tom from TechJap and just take a look at this.
00:15This is the brand new ROG Zephyrus G14 and it is a stunning looking laptop, although
00:21the eagle-eyed among you may have noticed that I have another laptop here.
00:25This is actually last year's G14, we've got the 2021 and the 2022 versions.
00:34Although I should say that you can get them both in black or white, I just so happen to
00:38have one of each, but the white is definitely the better looking, right?
00:42So ASUS have fixed just about every complaint I had.
00:46This is faster, it lasts longer, they've refreshed the design.
00:50This laptop is so much better.
00:52But actually the really exciting bit is what's going on on the inside as this has gone full
00:56team red with an AMD CPU and an AMD GPU combo.
01:02This is legitimately a huge overhaul even over last year's G14.
01:06Firstly, you can see we now have a much bigger touchpad, also bigger and more comfortable
01:11keycaps.
01:12The hinge now goes all the way back, making the old G14 feel quite restrictive actually.
01:17We get a brighter, faster, and taller 16x10 screen.
01:21Brightness is now up to 500 nits, up from 300, and I measured pretty close to that,
01:26around 480 with last year's maxing out at about 315.
01:29Response times have been slashed from 25 down to just 3 milliseconds.
01:34And also now we get this taller 16x10 aspect ratio, so this 14-inch screen feels a little
01:40less cramped.
01:42We also get Adaptive Sync, Dolby Vision HDR, 100% P3 color accuracy, it's Pantone certified,
01:48and it is still a matte panel.
01:51It's a lovely screen, and not just for gaming.
01:53You could use the power of this for work and productivity apps as well, and because it's
01:57color accurate, for me, even as a video editor, I would definitely consider using this.
02:01And I think side by side, these are both set to 175% scaling in Windows, they're not zoomed
02:06in at all in Chrome, and you can see just how much extra stuff we're getting on screen.
02:12I'm trying to avoid the word screen real estate, but it does make a difference, and now we've
02:15got rid of this big chunky chin at the bottom, it looks a lot better as well.
02:19And they've even managed to squeeze in a webcam, hooray!
02:22We didn't get one last year for whatever reason, and it is still pretty basic, but it's better
02:26than nothing.
02:27And we get an IR sensor so it supports face unlocking, and that's alongside the fingerprint
02:31reader that's built into the power button.
02:33Round the sides, there is a new microSD card port, although a full-size SD would have been
02:38nicer.
02:39There are two full-size Type-A USB ports, along with two Type-Cs, which I'm told at
02:43least one of will be updated to support USB 4 sometime in the near future.
02:47And on the inside, we have the latest WiFi 6E, and also PCIe 4 SSD storage, which is
02:53a little bit faster than before, but nothing really to write home about.
02:56And powering everything is a decent-sized 76Wh battery, with charging via DC or the
03:02Type-C ports.
03:03Oh, and also the power brick is a little bit bigger now, and 240W up from 180.
03:08You barely feel this carrying around in a backpack.
03:11If you have the money or very rich parents, this would be a really good work laptop, gaming
03:17laptop for students as well.
03:19You could carry it around all day, especially as the battery life is better as well now,
03:22which I'll come back to in a second.
03:24It's amazing how much they can cram in such a small form factor.
03:28And also the famous Anime Matrix LED makes a return.
03:31This is an optional feature on certain models, but it is now 20% brighter, and we get more
03:36LEDs.
03:371,449 to be exact.
03:40I do still think it's kind of fun with little messages or logos, but you can turn it off
03:44to save battery.
03:46Slightly more importantly though, if you boot up the ASUS Armoury Crate, you can use the
03:50little shortcut button here, you will see that the new G14 supports an MUX switch, which
03:57is either in the default hybrid or the dedicated GPU modes.
04:01And so hybrid will actually switch to the less power-hungry integrated graphics on the
04:05processor when you're doing less demanding stuff, which can make a big difference to
04:09your battery life.
04:10So if all that is not reason enough to upgrade, the big news, the headline really with the
04:15G14 is what's going on on the inside.
04:17We've got these two AMD stickers.
04:20There's not an Intel Core or an RTX in sight.
04:22We're full AMD here, and you can get this with either a Ryzen 6800HS or 6900HS.
04:28These are both 8-core, 16-thread chips, and also either a Radeon RX 6700S or 6800S graphics
04:35card.
04:36This is all new hardware for 2022, and it's also paired with up to 32GB of DDR5 RAM and
04:42a terabyte of SSD storage.
04:45Now if you don't already know, can you guess how much this might be?
04:48Because it's a lot.
04:50This top-spec new G14 will set you back a cool $2,500, although it does start from $1,600,
04:57which I think is actually going to be the better option.
04:58It's a lot of money and more expensive than last year.
05:02Now if we can get a little bit nerdy for a minute, most of the CPU improvements here
05:06are down to the new 6nm Zen 3 Plus cores.
05:10That's down from 7nm on the previous 5000 series chips.
05:14And also we're getting improved power management.
05:16For example, this can put idle cores, or even all of them, to sleep to save power, and it
05:21does this even during tiny pauses like when you stop scrolling or between inputs.
05:26The 35W TDP of both chips doesn't really tell you that much as it can go up or down
05:30significantly based on what you're doing.
05:33So with these new chips, it's all about efficiency, efficiency, efficiency.
05:36I love that joke.
05:38The thing is, it's actually not that much faster.
05:41Versus the 5900HS in last year's G14, in Cinebench R23 we're looking at a 7% boost
05:48in single core and just 3% in multi-core.
05:50However, it's the efficiency and also having that MUX switch that means we are getting
05:55a nice bump in battery life here.
05:57For example, after an hour of YouTube, last year's G14 had 85% of its battery left versus
06:0390% on the new one.
06:04And I've been getting around 8 hours of normal non-gaming use out of this, whereas
06:08it was closer to 6.5 last year.
06:11But gaming on battery is still pretty rubbish.
06:14It slashes your frame rate at least in half and neither the new or the old G14 lasted
06:18a full hour.
06:19Now this older G14 can be specced with up to an Nvidia RTX 3060 and that's what I've
06:24got in here.
06:25This is the top spec model also with a QHD screen.
06:27I actually bought this myself just so I could compare it for this video and hopefully that's
06:31worth a little subscribe and maybe a ding of that bell icon.
06:34But now on the new one we have a couple of AMD options.
06:37On the cheaper models you get the 6700S or you have the higher spec 6800S which I've
06:43got here.
06:44Now there are a bunch of variables, but the 6800S is roughly between the 3060 and 3070
06:50in terms of performance.
06:52Both AMD cards do support DXR ray tracing, so through Windows' DirectX 12, and also
06:58more importantly we get FidelityFX Super Resolution aka FSR aka AMD's version of Nvidia's DLSS
07:05tech.
07:06Which does work well, but it's still not as widely supported and that can be an issue.
07:10Now before we get to the gaming tests, there is one other thing to consider about this
07:14and that is what's called the AMD Advantage.
07:17The combination of using an AMD CPU and a GPU basically gives you more than the sum
07:22of its parts.
07:23This could be a whole video by itself, but one of the big features is called Smart Shift
07:27Max, where the CPU and the GPU can actually transfer power to each other dynamically in
07:32real time based on what you're doing and whether you have a more CPU or GPU intensive task.
07:37But the fact that it allows the 6800S to boost from 80 up to 105 watts in graphically intensive
07:43apps or games by taking power from the CPU when it's not needed as much, that's pretty
07:48cool.
07:49Then there's also our good friend SAM or Smart Access Memory, which lets the CPU take
07:54advantage of the GPU's VRAM if it needs to in heavily CPU bound tasks.
07:59It's all very clever and also very technical, but it goes on behind the scenes and essentially
08:04gives you extra performance for free.
08:06Okay, so I've kept you waiting long enough.
08:09Let's put this to the test.
08:10Is it really much of a step up?
08:13In the 3DMark TimeSpy benchmark we're looking at a 19% optic and then in the extreme version
08:18of the same test, it's 15% faster.
08:21Not too shabby, but of course it is all about the games and look at that, half of the ones
08:26on test are actually slower on the new G14.
08:30And the main reason for that is NVIDIA's DLSS, which in Battlefield and Fortnite make
08:35quite a big difference to your frame rate.
08:37Although surprisingly in Rainbow Six Siege, with or without DLSS, I couldn't get close
08:41to the frame rates on the new G14 and that's despite it not even supporting AMD's FSR.
08:48So I would say at this point it's worth considering what you play, if you've got a favourite game
08:52and whether that supports DLSS or AMD's FSR or both.
08:56And then maybe that's a reason to either not upgrade or pick this one over this one, but
09:01going forward we're only going to see more and more developers optimise for FSR, I was
09:05going for the wrong one there, for AMD's FSR and that will definitely even the playing
09:09field.
09:10But all things being equal, if we turn off or ignore the upscaling tech just for a moment,
09:13this is a good 15-18% faster than this and puts it much closer to the RTX 3070.
09:20Both laptops still get pretty toasty though, I recorded 97 degrees on the CPU during my
09:24testing so no difference there, but I did notice the exterior temps on the new G14 were
09:29a couple of degrees lower, but it's not really that significant.
09:32And also where you actually have your fingers on the WASD keys, it's much the same.
09:37When you're not gaming and have the G14 in windows or silent mode, you never really hear
09:41the fans and it doesn't heat up which is nice and it definitely makes this usable as
09:45a work or everyday laptop as well.
09:47But under load it does get quite hot and especially in turbo mode, you'll want a pair of headphones
09:51to drown out that fan.
09:54So the big question, should you buy the new G14?
09:57Well if you have the current G14, no it's not worth it, yes there's lots of nice to
10:01have upgrades and it's a little bit faster in some games, but absolutely not, this is
10:05still a fantastic laptop and if you can get this on a good deal or a discount, especially
10:08as this comes out, definitely still worth considering, but this as I say does also
10:13fix pretty much every criticism I had about this.
10:16Bigger trackpad, more comfortable keyboard, longer battery life, much nicer screen, we
10:20get the webcam back, it's 16 by 10, having the mux switch which I guess goes towards
10:25that battery life point, but it is such a refined laptop and the performance results
10:31from this all AMD setup are impressive.
10:34Now there's two things to think about, firstly DLSS often can be better or at least as I
10:39say more widely supported and also the price, this top spec model $2500 is an awful lot
10:45of money, maybe just the premium you pay for a 14 inch form factor, I mean the new Razer
10:49Blade 14 for example which comes with a slightly beefier 6900HX processor and a higher end
10:55NVIDIA GPU costs almost $3000 and to be honest I think if you don't have your heart set on
11:02this 14 inch G14 then consider its slightly bigger brother the G15 which will get you
11:07a much better bang for buck in terms of performance.
11:10But that is not to say that I don't genuinely love this laptop, it's one of my favourite
11:14gaming laptops or actually just one of my favourite laptops of the year so far, although
11:18I do appreciate we're only in February, but for me while I haven't tested it yet I do
11:23think the cheaper or maybe even the entry level model of this is going to be a better
11:27option.
11:28But what do you reckon?
11:29Would you be tempted to buy this and also is it a big deal not having an NVIDIA GPU?
11:33Are you happy or even excited for an all AMD setup?
11:36Let me know in the comments below and if you did enjoy the video a like and subscribe would
11:40be very much appreciated and I will see you next time right here on the Tech Chat.