I was about to jump from one wing of an airplane onto another while both aircraft were careening wildly through the streets of Shanghai. Creeping to the edge of the wing and looked around, I took in the view right before making my jump. I was deep into the game Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, playing as the iconic character. I had an Xbox controller in my hand but I was firmly in the realm of high-end computer gaming. Thankfully, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 gaming laptop I was testing was seriously up to the challenge.
Never once during my play-testing with the Indy game or any other recent titles (including a new variation in the Call of Duty series called Black Ops 6) were there any glitches, slowdowns, or hiccups. The laptop just kept humming along. It is powered by an amazing NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 laptop GPU that pumped up the visual experience.
Let me quickly explain what that meant during the Indy game. First, my favorite scene was when Indy and a “friend” arrived in the Himalayas. The realistic-looking snow folded and puffed around them. They left their footprints behind like the opening scenes from the game Red Dead Redemption 2 (minus the horses). It’s super-realistic and fun to see. The game never chugged or felt sluggish. In another scene, Indy comes to an overlook. The entire scene looked hyper-realistic but also moved quickly with each controlled flip. I was impressed by all of the realism.
The ROG Zephyrus G16 gaming laptop specs
Not all gaming laptops can do this. It’s a mouthful to say and quote from the specs, but the chipset is ready for anything. It’s an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 Processor with 45+ TOPs AMD Ryzen AI and a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) power. Say that three times fast. For me, it meant testing Adobe Lightroom with thousands of images never caused the laptop to buckle under the strain. I also ran multiple high-end apps all at the same time with no problems.
A few other specs stood out to me. This is an OLED display with a 0.2ms response time, 2.5K resolution, and uses NVIDIA G-SYNC to keep everything running smooth. Quick turnarounds in the games I tested were lightning fast and never caused that typical stutter you see on lesser gaming rigs. The system has 32GB LPDDR5X RAM and a 1TB PCIe Gen 4.0 SSD. I feel like it would be hard to outgrow that even with new high-end PC games coming out soon.
The ROG Zephyrus G16 gaming laptop stays cool during my testing thanks to the use of liquid metal, which Asus says keeps the gaming rig 13-degrees cooler than most gaming systems. The fan stayed silent during most computing chores like web browsing and checking email, and only kicked in when I was playing high-end games.
The laptop has one other big perk worth mentioning. You can use Xbox Game Pass for 90-days for free with this system, which is a really nice benefit. The subscription service includes so many games, even ones that only came out recently.
I was impressed by all of the power and performance. At a price of $2,299.99, it is really something to consider depending on how many games you play and if you need the portability. For what is included (the NVIDIA chipset and graphics, for starters), it’s a good buy.