The latest Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 and G15 add a webcam

Sure, you could play Titanfall 2, but many newer games should run just fine here. | Asus

Asus has delivered some big upgrades to its ROG Zephyrus G14 and G15 laptops for 2022. These lines have already been beloved for great battery life, solid performance for gaming and creative work, and aggressive pricing. The most notable feature improvements for both laptops include the Windows Hello IR camera (both laptops previously omitted a webcam), while the G14, with its 14-inch display, has a 50 percent bigger trackpad, along with a jump to 16:10 aspect ratio displays from its previous 16:9 (the G15, which has a 15.6-inch display, is still 16:9).

That’s not all, though. The G14 features up to AMD’s new Ryzen 9 6900HS processor, paired with a Radeon RX 6800S graphics chip. This offers 105W of graphical power by taking advantage of the AMD-exclusive SmartShift and SmartAccess Memory features that allocate power where it’s needed most. In fact, the G14 for 2022 seems to be an all-AMD affair, and it’s far from the only laptop like this announced at CES 2022. Alienware’s M17 R5 Ryzen Edition might interest you if you want an even more powerful (and bigger) laptop.

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2022’s G14 and G15 sitting side-by-side.

On the other hand, the larger G15 can sport up to AMD’s Ryzen 9 6900HS and up to Nvidia’s new RTX 3080 Ti. While that model lacks the SmartShift feature, its GPU can be boosted to pull 120W of power, which should deliver great results that, like last year’s model, will likely defy its thin size. Both the G14 and G15 have MUX switches that’ll let you manually toggle between integrated and dedicated graphics options.

Focusing on displays, the G14 has received more love than the G15, featuring (at the high end) a 16:10 aspect ratio QHD display with a 120Hz refresh rate, a peak brightness of 500 nits, 100 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 color gamut, and Dolby Vision support. A 16:10 1080p panel will also be available, featuring a 144Hz refresh rate, 450 nits of peak brightness, and 100 percent coverage of the sRGB color gamut.

The G15’s display is still in the 16:9 aspect ratio, and it comes in one configuration: QHD resolution with a 240Hz refresh rate, 300 nits of peak brightness, and 100 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 color space. It’s worth noting that this display supports Dolby Vision and adaptive sync. All displays mentioned in this paragraph have a 3ms response time and are Pantone-validated for color accuracy.

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A top-down view of the G14. Note the bigger trackpad.

The G14 and G15 start to look similar when it comes to the configurable RAM, storage, and port selection. Both can support up to 32GB of fast DDR5 memory clocked at 4,800MHz (up to 16GB of it will be soldered to the board, leaving one slot for you to use later on). You can use PCIe 4.0 M.2 2280-sized SSDs in the G14 and G15, though the G14 has only one slot (1TB max), and the G15 features two slots with RAID 0 support.

Both laptops feature two USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 ports with DisplayPort 1.4 video output and PD charging at up to 100W. You’ll also find two USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports, an HDMI 2.0b port, a UHS-II microSD card reader, and a headphone combo jack. The G15 has an RJ45 ethernet port.

As for battery life, Asus asserts that the G14’s 76Wh battery should offer over 10 hours of video playback. If this laptop is anything like previous versions, it should last nearly that long for other tasks, too. The G15’s 90Wh battery can last up to 14 hours by the same metric.

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Both the G14 and G15 can be tricked out with the improved Anime Matrix LEDs to give your machine a unique look.

Asus is giving people the option to buy the stock G14 or G15 or trick it out with the Anime Matrix LED lighting on the lid’s exterior for a flashier design. The company says it has increased the number of LEDs to 1,449 (a 19 percent boost) and “more than doubled” the number of holes in the matrix to allow for better-looking animations. To that end, it has added new animations, virtual pets, and mini games that can be controlled with a mouse.

Asus says that these models won’t ship until mid to late 2022, and it didn’t share pricing for any of these models, but we’ll be testing them as soon as the company can accommodate us, so we can report as to whether these are 2022’s definitive gaming laptops or not.