Warning: The 2026 Zephyrus G16 Isn’t What You Think

[00:02] 2026. If you don't know what this laptop is, guys, this is one of the best gaming laptops that you can buy. It is very premium and well-built. It looks great, at least here in that beautiful silver color. It is very thin and portable for

[00:15] some top-tier creature comforts like a gorgeous OLED display. But, what really makes this Zephyrus so thin and light laptops that you can get with a top-tier Nvidia GPU, the 5070 Ti,

[00:31] 5080, or 5090. The G16, in fact, it is such a good laptop that last year when recommendation, this is what I told him to buy. But, because its GPU was capped at 130 W, I told him to get the 5070 Ti

[00:46] version, not the 5080. That's because those higher-end GPUs, the 5080 and 5090, they max out at 175 W, which, of course, would be wasted in this chassis. Well, this year's Zephyrus G16, it promises to change all that. It comes

[01:01] with one of Intel's new Panther Lake Series 3 chips. This chip is far more efficient than the one in last year's G16. Under a max CPU load, ASUS now feeds it 15 W less, yet it performs better. This is very important in a

[01:15] gaming laptop. You see, gaming laptops, they like to feed their CPUs less power so that they can give more to the GPU. Because of this, and those redesigned vents underneath the laptop, ASUS has upped the max GPU wattage to 160.

[01:29] This should mean that the 5080 is now viable in this laptop. So, we fired up some games. Cyberpunk, maxed out settings, screen's native resolution, the game was very playable, but we noticed something odd. This new G16, it

[01:44] only performs a tiny bit better than last year's model. In fact, it barely beat out the much smaller Zephyrus G14, and that laptop has a 130 W 5070 Ti. What is going on? Let's look at our Razer Blade 16 from last year. That one

[01:59] is a good comparable. Same form factor and it also has a 160 watt 5080. The Blade has noticeably higher average FPS in Cyberpunk. That being said, it does have worse 1% lows. When we switch to Time Spy, which allows us to isolate the

[02:14] CPU and GPUs performance, we get a sense of what's going on here. The Blade with its AMD CPU from last year, it is terrible and holds back that laptop. But, if you look at its GPU score, the Blade beats the Zephyrus by 10%. In

[02:28] which is a newer benchmark that's very GPU intensive, the Blade it's almost 14% faster than the Zephyrus. And once again, this new G16 it isn't that much faster than last year's model, which is supposedly the model it's replacing.

[02:44] Ray Tracing 2, a pure GPU benchmark, here the Blade again is ahead. Let's now switch over to more CPU bound games like Marvel Rivals. Now, really depends on the type of game and

[02:57] resolutions they're less demanding on the GPU and more demanding on the CPU. As you raise the resolution, it becomes more demanding on the GPU. Anyway, here you can see that the better Intel Panther Lake chip in this

[03:11] for the win. That's over last year's Blade. But, the smaller G14, which has the same CPU and a supposedly worse 5070 Ti, it ties with this laptop. This should be impossible. And ASUS's own much cheaper

[03:26] Strix G16 that also has a 5070 Ti, it beats both of them. Now, the Strix, it is a perfect example of how important the CPU is in a gaming laptop. It has a much more powerful AMD HX 3D processor.

[03:40] We initially thought that the G16's underperformance was not only due to its processor, but because it's a thin gaming laptop. The Strix is a regular size laptop, but take a look at the Predator Helios Neo 16S. It's also a

[03:53] thin gaming laptop like this one, but it has a low wattage 5070 Ti. It ties with the Zephyrus. So, in this specific game on these settings, the CPU's performance is likely holding it back. That slim Predator has a more powerful HX CPU, and

[04:09] Acer, they're allocating it more of its total power budget. All right, the new Forza Horizon 6, it's a better story for this G16. It does now beat the smaller G14 and the Blade from last year, and it performs similar to the Strix.

[04:22] Look, this new Zephyrus, it clearly gives you enough performance to handle modern AAA titles, at least the screen's native resolution with very good settings, normally averaging around 100 FPS with 1% lows above 60.

[04:35] But, it is crystal clear that this laptop significantly underperforms what you'd expect from an RTX 5080 better 160 watts. So, Sam, who recently joined us as our gaming laptop specialist, he dived in,

[04:49] and he spent a ton of time looking into this. Here is what he found. >> Acer's ROG gaming laptops, they come with three stock performance modes. performance, and turbo. Then, there is also a manual mode. He tested every mode

[05:03] on Forza Horizon 6. In turbo, the highest stock performance mode, the G16 only averages 120 watts to its supposed 160 watt GPU. Now, we don't normally see

[05:16] GPU wattage here, but it should be higher than this. The Blade 16, it averages 140 watts. To feed that much power to this G16's GPU, you have to run it in manual mode. Look, the issue we have here as laptop reviewers is that

[05:32] all our comparison graphs use the manufacturer's highest stock performance mode, not manual. That is because we believe that if a gamer changes their performance mode to the best one, in this case turbo, it

[05:45] should perform the best. They shouldn't have to manually tune their laptop. Like, guys, what does ASUS think that is above turbo here? Lightspeed? The only reason we even show you manual mode in our breakdowns, that's because

[05:59] we want to demonstrate what happens if, you know, set the fans to max and And normally, it doesn't make much of a difference. But with this Zephyrus, you really have to do that to unlock that extra power. But unfortunately, when you

[06:12] do, as you can see from the results I'm showing you on screen, the laptop's fan showing you on screen, the laptop's fan noise is insanely loud, 65 dB. So, Sam tried to find a middle ground, but he didn't really like using ASUS's Armory

[06:24] It's a third-party app that makes it easy to configure these settings. He ended up landing on 80% fan speed with a TGP maxed out. He was able to match that same 140 watts to the GPU, but with much less fan noise, 57 dB. This is the same

[06:40] actually produces, but there are trade-offs here. The laptop, it did feel didn't perform as well in 1% lows as when the fans were maxed. But as a whole, in Forza, his manual mode did beat turbo for the same fan noise. But

[06:57] it does vary from game to game, guys. In Cyberpunk, which appears to be very GPU heavy, his manual mode got a completely different level of performance, ahead of the Blade and closing in on this year's Alienware 16 Area-51, which has a

[07:11] full-wattage 5080. In Marvel Rivals, which is more CPU bound as I already talked about, it was the opposite. Here, it didn't make much of a difference. You see, in this game, the Zephyrus, it's still not feeding its

[07:23] So, that was a lot. I'm going to summarize. Firstly, both ASUS and Razer, they're being very misleading claiming these laptops have 160 watt GPUs. Sure, in FurMark, you can hit that, but in actual gaming, when the CPU is in use,

[07:38] you can't. You really need a thicker gaming laptop that has a beefier cooling can be fed more power. Next, the CPUs matter far more than we thought in gaming laptops. You really need to pair one of these high-end GPUs

[07:53] with an HX processor to get the most out of them. And finally, ASUS needs to make their turbo mode their actual highest performance mode, otherwise it's again very misleading. Guys, that was a lot of information. Speaking personally, I

[08:06] almost need to take a break here. Good on Sam for finding all of this stuff feels like to actually game on this laptop, it's fantastic. Most of the heat is kept well away from where your hands are. And the fan noise, it really

[08:19] already showed you. If you run on performance, it's not bad at all. If you run on turbo or Sam's manual mode, it's pretty standard for a gaming laptop. video editing and creator work. In Premiere Pro, the Zephyrus G16 performs

[08:35] as it should. The lack of power fed to its GPU in its turbo mode, it isn't really affecting things here. Video editing it heavily uses media encoders me. Now, in DaVinci Resolve, it does lose out to the Blade, but Resolve tends

[08:48] to do well on AMD CPUs. In Blender for 3D rendering, it's neck and neck with the Blade. But overall, if you're using this laptop for creator work, guys, it's a good one. Before I move on for performance, we haven't talked about

[09:00] using this laptop for light tasks like office and web browsing. It didn't have completely joking. Obviously, it's a very powerful, powerful enough for those tasks, but I did want to mention that this laptop is never completely silent,

[09:14] not even in its silent mode. It's not overly loud in terms of its fan noise or disturbing, but if you want a completely quiet laptop with an Nvidia GPU, get the Yoga Pro 9i. I've linked it down below. Battery life is another area where the

[09:26] G16 excels. When you compare its battery to other Windows gaming laptops, it blows them out of the water. It actually competes really well with Apple's MacBook Pro 16, which is very impressive. This year it gained a modest

[09:39] performing light tasks like Microsoft Office. If you do want the unplugged, the smaller Zephyrus G14, that's the one to get. But this G16, If you do want to know if you lose CP performance when you're unplugged, you

[09:55] don't. Now, we don't test GP performance on battery as guys, Nvidia's cards are your battery just degrades due to those frequent charge cycles. The rest of the G16 is mostly unchanged this year, which is a good thing. It's very well-built

[10:10] and feels premium, and it's one of the best to carry around. It remains the lightest 16-in in its class, coming in lighter than the Blade 16, and only being heavier than the smaller G14. Its thinness combined with that diagonal

[10:22] just doesn't cut into your wrist like a lot of thicker gaming laptops do. On that note, the G16 with the more powerful Nvidia GPUs, 5070 Ti and above, it's ever so slightly thicker. It also has a different cooling solution.

[10:37] it has more zones. Yay. But what we really like is that when you turn it off, it looks better. It just looks like one cohesive line. It isn't loud or The laptop still comes in two colors. You got the silver, which just looks so

[10:51] much better. Get that one if you can. The display is easier to open with one every point of the hinge, which adds to that premium feeling. This year's screen is still an OLED panel with great colors, the same 240 Hz refresh rate. It

[11:05] still has G-Sync and Advanced Optimus. What's new this year, though, is it now gets brighter. We measured it at 530 nits for SDR content, which is around 100 nits more than it was before. I like this, as this is a glossy screen,

[11:18] and that high brightness, in combination with its anti-reflective coating, it reflections. This year's screen has no noticeable see colored pixels peeping through white colored content, also a good thing.

[11:32] Now, just like most OLED displays, PWM flickering is used to control the brightness. It didn't bother me, though. We have mixed feelings on the G16's keyboard. Sam and Sierra love it. I find it good, but not as good as some others

[11:44] out there. Basically, it has 1.7 mm of key travel with a tactile click, but it press than I personally like. I prefer the Blades. One thing I really do like about it, though, is its standard layout. I had no mispresses when using

[11:59] this keyboard. On the the entire keyboard to the left. So, I frequently mispress keys because of that. The key characters changed slightly, which we do like, as it just looks more modern. One thing you

[12:14] may not like, though, is the RGB. It's only a single zone. The keyboard just doesn't look as special as the one on the Razer Blade. The trackpad continues Tracking is very smooth and accurate, but the click requires a bit more force

[12:26] than I'd like. I actually didn't have palm rejection issues from this large trackpad, but Sam said he did. So, you may want to bring a mouse with you. This all being said, for this laptop's price, which is crazy expensive, it's time to

[12:38] put in a haptic trackpad. The ports, they haven't changed this year, aside from the swap positions of the USB A and C port on the left side. On that side, you have the proprietary charging port, an HDMI 2.1 port, a Gen 2 USB A port, a

[12:51] Thunderbolt 4 Type-C port, and a combo headphone mic jack. The right side has another Gen 2 USB A port, a USB 3 Gen 2 Type-C port, and it also has a full-sized SD card reader. Either of those Type-C ports can be used

[13:03] to charge this laptop, which I really like. It's just more convenient to have a charging capable port on either side. I just wish the right side one was at least Thunderbolt 4, especially at this laptop's high price. Another thing I

[13:15] like is that if you use the DisplayPort to drive a monitor from the left side cable, which charges the laptop and drives the display, it goes via the iGPU. If you use the right one, it goes via the dGPU. I like having this option.

[13:31] office work, I don't want to engage the dedicated GPU, which can warm up your laptop. The speakers on this laptop are fantastic. They sound very crisp and get very loud. Take a listen.

[13:43] very loud. Take a listen. >> [music]

[14:00] excellent studio light. So, this is about as good as it's going to get. point, I really think ASUS needs to do better. It does have Windows Hello off our studio lights and use our dimmer house lights, here's what I look like.

[14:15] When we open up the laptop, the Wi-Fi card has moved and the installed SSDs it's a very similar story to last year's model. Battery, Wi-Fi, and storage are Now, there are two different cooling designs depending on the GPU you get.

[14:30] Here's the other one. For Linux, we booted up Ubuntu 26 with the dedicated GPU disabled. The microphone, webcam, speakers, keyboard backlight, Wi-Fi, thing we couldn't get to work was changing the display's brightness. With

[14:44] the Nvidia GPU on on hybrid mode, that is, the G16 was able to boot into Ubuntu and the results were the same. We then tried Fedora 44 and it didn't boot at all. It just went into this boot loop. Big thanks to our patron supporters and

[14:56] YouTube members. It's your generosity, guys, that allows us to spend time join, we'll start to do even more like full installs and even try switching to Batocera, which I really want to do. All right, let's wrap. The Zephyrus G16, it

[15:10] continues to be one of the best thin, portable, and premium gaming laptops, but this year's update, it's a bit of a letdown. We were led to believe that this laptop would finally be able to drive high-end Nvidia GPUs like the 5080

[15:22] or 5090. It wasn't, at least not for gaming. You should not be buying this laptop with more than a 5070 Ti. Now, since the main selling point of this year's model just didn't play out, if you can find last year's version at a

[15:35] decent amount cheaper, well, that's what you should get. In fact, at the time I made this video, over at our website bestlaptop.deals, we actually found last year's model for $1,000 less. I'll place a link to it down below. If you truly do

[15:49] want 5080 or 5090 levels of performance in a laptop, well, you really should be buying a full fat one with a more powerful CPU. The Legion Pro 7i or even Asus's own Strix SCAR 16, those are our two favorites. Again, links down below.

[16:03] I do want to end by being clear on something. Our disappointment on this year's G16, it does not extend to the smaller G14. That one is massively better than its predecessor and worth paying up for. We've already reviewed

[16:17] it, link will be down below, too. Well, that's all I got time for. This was a really big video, guys. I really hope you liked it. If you did, just drop a comment down below. Till next time, I will catch you later.