New laptop – ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14

After 8 years with MacBook Air I had to upgrade it. The main reason was the urge to back to Windows ecosystem. I still think that no serious work can be done on MacOS.

Anyway, after some research I wanted to get something with 14″ screen and with Ryzen 9 from 6000 series (great performance when needed + superior energy saving features). I had to place the order in July/August 2022, and my options were… none! I wanted a Lenovo ThinkPad, but they’re just not available. I saw Asus laptops showing up briefly in some shops and I was able to snipe something that had almost everything I wanted.

Some raw specs:

• Model: GA402RK – L8152W
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS (8 cores, 16 threads, 3.30–4.90 GHz, 20 MB cache)
• GPU: AMD Radeon 680M with 8GB GDDR6
• RAM: 32GB (DDR5, 4800MHz)
• Storage: 1TB NVMe (upgradeable)
• Screen: 14″ mat LED IPS, 2560 x 1600, 120Hz
• Weight: 1720g
• Two power supply units provided (lighter USB-C for travel + heavier dedicated one for performance)

It arrived in a nice, premium packaging. I had to charge it before first run. The build quality is good, but not nearly what Apple provides. It has 4 speakers, but the sound quality is super bad, compared to a 8 year old MacBook Air.

It comes with Windows 11 Home, so I’ll have to upgrade it to Pro at some point. It took quite a bit of time to set up the very basics, which was annoying. I still can’t get it to properly enter power saving mode when I close it, so it uses 1% battery per hour if I don’t power it off. The on-case bling bling display is just annoying. I’m uses to high-end Razer mechanical keyboards, so I was underwhelmed with the feel of the one I got with the laptop. That pretty much sums up the downsides.

On the good side – the screen is great, camera is decent, and performance is really, really good. With my average use the battery lasts 5 hours. I can get over the small issues I pointed out above, so in the end I’m pretty happy with this laptop.