Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 review (GU603VV model – i9, RTX 4060)

41 Comments

  1. titan

    March 3, 2023 at 8:29 am

    Hey, nice review but 2 questions:1-when you review asus x16 2023? 2-working with igpu(not dgpu),how much improve battery life?is that significant?(for light use in university).tnx

    • Andrei Girbea

      March 3, 2023 at 12:32 pm

      Working on the X16 review as of right now. ETA around 2 weeks or so.

      The dGPU is automatically disabled by Optimus in the battery tests.

      • Homer

        March 5, 2023 at 1:08 pm

        Is this a 4060 or 4070 X16?

        4060 seems to be almost on par with the 3070 Ti in X16, making it a compelling value option. 3070 Ti costs here 3200 Euro with Mini LED. 4060 without Mini LED 2489 Euro. Difficult to choose the right one :)

      • Andrei Girbea

        March 6, 2023 at 10:56 am

        the x16 that we're working on is 4070. the 4060 will perform similarly to this G16

      • Andrew

        March 7, 2023 at 6:56 pm

        I got the X16 Flow with the 4060 today. On Turbo and GPU Ultimate I get scores as high as 10,7k in Time Spy (Graphics value). Perpaps this is due to better cooling compared to the G16.

      • Andrei Girbea

        March 7, 2023 at 8:31 pm

        We got pretty much the same on this unit on Turbo. The cooling is better on the X16, but shouldn't make a difference in shorter tests such as 3DMark

      • mk

        March 8, 2023 at 11:03 am

        Hi ya, why do you say X16's cooling is better than G16? What's so different with their mechanisms or do you have data?

      • Andrei Girbea

        March 8, 2023 at 11:07 am

        tri-fan and larger radiators on the X16. better outflow of hot air as well. Read the reviews. The X16 2023 review isn't up yet, but the 2022 model is up on the site.

      • John

        March 21, 2023 at 9:32 am

        Any news regarding the X16 review?

      • Andrei Girbea

        March 21, 2023 at 10:19 am

        a few days. the tests have been finalized for a while now, but haven't yet completed the write-up.

    • LUIS MIGUEL ESCOTTO

      November 7, 2023 at 4:23 pm

      WHAT IS THE RECOMMENDED THICKNESS FOR NVME THERMAL PADS?

      • Andrei Girbea

        November 8, 2023 at 5:00 pm

        Luis, I don't have the right answer for your question. Maybe someone else can help.

  2. Steve

    March 3, 2023 at 3:44 pm

    Great review, but in the screen section, you mentioned about a higher tier RTX 4070 ti model.

    Otherwise, an interesting overall laptop!

  3. pawel

    March 6, 2023 at 9:05 pm

    Thanks for the review! Great one.

    Do you know which of the HDMI 2.1 specs are fulfilled? Earlier, HDMI 2.1 meant that every feature must be supported, so it can be officially called like that. This changed at some point in time, so that vendors can declare it as HDMI 2.1 even though it does not fulfill the entire HDMI 2.1 spec. Hence, my concrete question:

    Can it output 4k@120Hz, directly over the HDMI port?

    • Andrei Girbea

      March 7, 2023 at 12:31 pm

      The HDMI 2.1 port on most of the 2023 ROG laptops is FRL (Fixed Rate Link), so 4K 120Hz should work just fine.

  4. Elias

    March 8, 2023 at 2:01 am

    The model sold in US at Bestbuy has an I7-13620H processor.

    • Andrei Girbea

      March 8, 2023 at 10:27 am

      Ha, thanks. Updated. Not sure how I missed that aspect.

  5. Daniel

    March 15, 2023 at 4:04 pm

    Doom Eternal(DX 12, Ultra Preset, RTX On, DLSS Quality) has 1/3 of the fps as DLSS off? Is that a misplacement of data or really bad driver?

    • Andrei Girbea

      March 16, 2023 at 2:08 pm

      I saw that as well. Idk what happened there and I no longer have the laptop to retest.

    • Michele

      May 6, 2023 at 3:43 pm

      Thank you for this nice review. May I know your thoughts about this model vs last year g15? They are quite similar and g15 is now offered at very aggressive prices (3070ti version in particular) under 2000 euro.
      Which is the best choice according to you?

  6. Doruk İlhan

    March 15, 2023 at 6:20 pm

    thx for the review, i was between the dell xps 15 and this asus g16 i can play games with both but which one would you recommend i do daily basis and rarely games.

  7. Aurelio

    March 18, 2023 at 11:55 am

    The lower mid-tier for this G16 will be no doubt in the sweet spot for price/performance.

    Very excited for this series. Not even the "compromises" will be a deal breaker.
    FHD+ with 16:10 ratio is not ideal but good enough, specially if you mostly use an external monitor.
    DDR4 3200 on lower tiers means dirty cheap memory upgrade options to dual channel 32Gb or even 48Gb.
    i7-13620H means lower prices, multicore performance on par with 12700H (pretty good), but still much better single-core performance (snappy AF).

    I'm lovin' it. Always considered the M16 a great computer, but way overpriced (compared to the competition).
    This time with the G16, we get last year's M16 with even some gains in performance at an affordable price, specially if we can wait till the end of the year (when all the promotions usually come).

    Thank you ASUS for giving great options for the people who can't afford the top tiers.

  8. Thracios

    March 27, 2023 at 3:53 pm

    Thanks for the review ! I was wondering, how come the battery life is that much longer than the M16 which uses the same CPU – or the Scar 16 which you also reviewed. Is all the difference a result of the screen consuming a lot of power?

    • Andrei Girbea

      March 27, 2023 at 5:31 pm

      as far as I can tell, yes, the difference is due to the different screens

  9. Lenno

    April 20, 2023 at 7:54 pm

    Hi, I want to ask for your recommendation, which do you recommend more, the last year Zephyrus G14 or this Zephyrus G16? I will use the laptop for university. So I need it last long in terms of battery and fair weight to carry around everyday. Thank you.

    • Andrei Girbea

      April 21, 2023 at 9:05 am

      they're different in many ways. First off, I'd start with size in mind, do you want a 16-inch device or something smaller? And then go over the differences in platforms, performance, ports, displays, pricing.

      • Lenno

        April 21, 2023 at 9:13 am

        the screen size does not matter for me, I could go with 14 or 16. And for the other parts I can check on it later. But based on your testing in terms of battery performance, is the last year g14 better than the g16 or the opposite?

      • Andrei Girbea

        April 21, 2023 at 9:17 am

        you have the numbers and the results in the reviews, for 2023 G16 and previous years' G14 models. Compare them and decide for yourself based on the configurations that you're interested in. I haven't yet tested the 2023 G14.

        I cannot be the judge of what's better for you, you know your needs and preferences so you'll have to decide in order to be happy with your purchase.

  10. Michele

    May 8, 2023 at 9:09 pm

    Thank you for this nice review. May I know your thoughts about this model vs last year g15? They are quite similar and g15 is now offered at very aggressive prices (3070ti version in particular) under 2000 euro.
    Which is the best choice according to you?

    • Andrei Girbea

      May 9, 2023 at 10:14 am

      What's the price difference? Performance wise, the CPU is somewhat faster in the G16, but whether you'll notice that or not depends on the activities that you're running. For daily use, both generations are fine. That means the major difference between them is the screen and panel (larger and brighter on the G16).

      • Michele

        May 9, 2023 at 10:16 am

        600 euro

        Gaming and daily use

      • Andrei Girbea

        May 9, 2023 at 10:23 am

        I'd go with the G15 then. You're getting the QHD 1440p display, right?

  11. Michele

    May 9, 2023 at 10:25 am

    Yes with 3070ti instead of 4070

    • Andrei Girbea

      May 9, 2023 at 10:38 am

      Sounds good. Let us know how you like it once you receive it.

  12. Aurelio

    December 8, 2023 at 5:46 am

    Hello, Andrei,
    I'm finally ready to buy this one, but the memory specs now concern me a bit.

    You said: "older and cheaper DDR4-3200 standard… IN practice, this hardly makes any difference with real loads".
    My thoughts now (when comparing with other mach. with DDR5) are: really? even under intense load of almost the full 32Gb? and how would this affect the iGPU use?

    My main daily use case scenarios uses *a lot* of RAM, with heavy multitasking, 60+ tabs open, and once a week video editing.
    32Gb is just enough, but I worry that the G16 with the i7-13620H and DDR4-3200 ($1300) would be less "snappy" than a LOQ with a 7840HS and DDR5-5600 ($915), specially when using only iGPU to save battery.

    Am I worried for nothing?

    I would prefer to have the G16 due to the metal chassis and superior general quality, if possible.
    …but I don't know if I am being a bit stubborn/stupid in this choice. ;-)

    • Andrei Girbea

      December 8, 2023 at 12:35 pm

      you'll have to look into some detailed comparisons on the matter in order to draw conclusions. DDR4 should be fine for general use, but there might be some specific scenarios where it might not be quite on par with DDR5.

      The difference in design, size, screen quality is significant between this g16 and the Loq. Different classes entirely.

      • Aurelio

        December 8, 2023 at 4:50 pm

        Thanks for the reply! :-)

        I did some more digging, and found a few pages to be really helpful.
        kingston.com/en/blog/pc-performance/ddr5-overview
        edu.finlaydag33k.nl/calculating%20ram%20bandwidth/

        Comparing both systems with DDR4 and DDR5, there is a 75% increase in bandwidth (51.2 GBps vs. 89.6 GBps), so I would think that whenever I push the system far enough close to the limit this characteristic could become quite apparent – both in multitasking and in the iGPU performance.

        In a way, because of DDR5 characteristic of operating with "Dual 32-bit sub-channels", I would expect a jump in performance (similar to what we see when we install an extra DDR4 module to make a system operate in Dual-channel mode) – specially with DDR5 with Dual-channel being actually Quad-channel with quite a bit more bandwidth.

        But I made a nice spreadsheet mostly with data from Geekbench 6 (plus a few other benchmarks); comparing these specific systems (G16 and LOQ) I found out:
        – on the G16 there is a huge difference between systems with Single and Dual Channel (as expected), varying between 30% and 75%.
        – a difference of only around 10% in Multi-core (in favor of the system with DDR5 operating in Quad Channel) and somewhat negligible in Single-core.
        – granted, these are completely different computers, but I was still expecting higher values due to the memory bandwidth differences.

        I still don't know if it makes sense for me to buy a Laptop with DDR4 in this point in time (unless my workload was a lot more mild than what it actually is). Maybe Asus will launch the G16 next year with either AMD processors and/or DDR5 memory. I might as well wait one more year, I guess…

      • Andrei Girbea

        December 11, 2023 at 9:39 pm

        you'd be in for a surprise if you'll wait for the next gen :)

  13. Aurelio

    December 12, 2023 at 8:37 pm

    You said: "you'd be in for a surprise if you'll wait for the next gen :)"

    It got me really curious…
    Good surprise or bad surprise? :-)

    I'm afraid you might be about to tell me that the next gen of G16 will still come with DDR4, because, as you stated, there is (relatively) not a lot of "real world" difference.

    If that's the case, I wouldn't the shocked but still disappointed.

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