They Ruined my Favorite Laptop - ROG Zephyrus G16 (2024) Review

**The Asus ROG Zephyrus G16: A Close Look at its Webcam and Display**

This is what the webcam looks like on the G16 again, the quality is very similar to the G14 because Asus is using the same sensor. Uh and the microphone sounds similar as well. You've got three modes directional recording stereo enhanced and 3 CDG recording right now there's an airplane going above the office and I'm not sure if this is going to pick it up or not but the noise cancelling stuff certainly helps so I'm glad that uh it's doing its thing. I did wish if they included a privacy shutter switch kind of like what Lenovo does with their Legion laptops even Razer included a physical privacy switch on their blade laptops so yeah that's something would have been really thoughtful uh for the G16 and the G14 as well but yeah something to take note of Asus.

Asus has managed to pack a lot of ports into this laptop, considering how thin it is. On the right-hand side, you get USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port which doubles as display port 1.4 that's directly linked to the GPU and it also supports 100W PD charging. You also get USB Type-A and a full-size HD card slot which by the way is UHS-2 compliance so that's great news for content creators who need a fast reader. Switching over to the left side, you'll find audio jacks, second USB Type-A port, Thunderbolt 4, HDMI 2.1, and the new proprietary port.

These displays are indeed top-tier, created with a 16-inch 2.5K OLED panel with a 240Hz refresh rate, which is faster than the G14's 120Hz panel. You still get beautiful color reproduction with ink blacks and excellent color gamut covering up to 100% P3, however, choosing OLED means sacrificing peak SDR brightness performance especially when you compare it to mini LED panels. Our sample averaged around 420 nits which is still pretty good. You also get VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) basically Asus partnered with Samsung and Nvidia to achieve a 960Hz pixel emission rate ensuring a tear-free gaming experience regardless of brightness levels.

I've talked about this in depth in my G14 video if you're interested in learning more, um, you can check that out. But yeah, overall I love gaming on this display.

**Getting Underneath the Hood**

Getting underneath the hood is pretty straightforward though. Keep in mind that there are two silicone covers at the top hiding a few screws so make sure you remove them to access the internal components. Unfortunately, just like the G14, Asus has taken away access to the RAM modules, so what you configure online is what you're going to stick with for the rest of the laptop's lifespan which really sucks. I mean, this is a 16-inch gaming laptop, I mean, I'm sure Asus could have done something to give users set flexibility but yeah, at least you get two M.2 slots. The primary SSD is pretty fast at least on the G16 model we got around 7GB per second on read and 5GB per second on write. The 470 model was pretty decent there's a considerable amount of performance loss compared to the 480 because Asus uses a Samsung PM 91 SSD on the 480 versus WD 560 on the uh 4070 I just thought it was worth mentioning so that's a story with the ROG Zephyrus G16.

**Conclusion**

This laptop has a lot of potential guys, and honestly most of the performance issues can be sorted with a bios update because let's face it you're not just buying into a product solely on looks. You want it to work seamlessly as well when both hardware and software play nice this laptop shines but if they just don't synch up it's a bit of a let-down that being said, I have to give major props to Asus for pushing the boundaries with the G16's display and its League design, I'm totally sold on the idea of OLED gaming, it's pretty awesome. And these laptops are almost as Slim as my 16-inch MacBook Pro. It seemed like the perfect upgrade to me but I reckon I'll hold off until they iron out the performance Kinks.