NotebookCHECK - Notebook Forum

disappointing response times and battery life

ITs looking like a bug the Asus have? 30W idle is weird. Other sites got almost 10h on looped Video. And way less idle WAtt

Definitely a misstep in the power tests. I'm going with what Hardware Unboxed and others found since something is definitely not right here with the battery tests.

The battery test here is very weird, much worse than the results of tomshardware, hardware unboxed and others. I wonder why this happened.

thank gods, i feel so much bettter now.

Indeed battery test is wired. And also the fan noise. Did the tests have been done only in performance/turbo mode? How does it behave in silent mode?

That response time & idling power consumption are so weird, hope those can be fixed on stock version.

BTW, may I know if you guys did any test about the maximum power through USB type-c PD charging? I believe ASUS just claimed it can be charging through 65W PD charger, will it support higher input current so can be charging faster through some high-power PD chargers (like Apple 87/96W or MSI 90W)?

If you are doing a followup, may you use HWINFO to discover the PCIe topology?

From the GPU-z, we see the dGPU gets 8 PCIe lanes. This is better than the 4 lanes most of the previous gen APU + dGPU setups got. We know the WiFi card demands 1 lane to even work (BT part of the card uses USB).

If the APU was 12 lanes like the old one, the SSD usually also got clipped to 2 lanes. The SSD benchmarks with the 660p are inconclusive, since the 660p is generally incapable of using more than 2 lanes of PCIe 3.0 bandwidth anyways, so I was unable to use performance comparisons from that end to settle this question.

Also, as an aside curiosity, does Freesync still work when using the Nvidia dGPU via Optimus?

Thank you!

Quote from: TOMA on March 30, 2020, 19:17:37
That response time & idling power consumption are so weird, hope those can be fixed on stock version.

BTW, may I know if you guys did any test about the maximum power through USB type-c PD charging? I believe ASUS just claimed it can be charging through 65W PD charger, will it support higher input current so can be charging faster through some high-power PD chargers (like Apple 87/96W or MSI 90W)?

Another question to the testers & editors, are both USB-C ports capable of PD laptop charging, or just the one you labeled with PD?

Allen Ngo how much money did you receive from Intel to say at Conclusion that Ryzen 4900HS is on par with intel 9980hk, it is 20-30 faster, only with the Helios 700 laptop is on pair but that i9 cpu has 100w tdp.
Also what is wrong with your batttery test, all the reviewers, tomsharware, linus, hardwareunbox said it has about 10-11.5 hours, here in the article only 4.
I thought notebookchat is a serious site, but looks like it is receiveing a lot of money, for fake test. How you said at the end that ryzen 9 has the performance of i7 6 cores, and than you modified because people were commenting. Shame on you!

30W on idle and almost 6h of battery life? Is there like 180Wh battery or what?

Those are some pretty good thermals considering.

Though battery life at idle numbers seem odd as mentioned, was something running in the background? Specifically, the D3D usage seems to be preventing the GPU from idling.

Ho Allen. Thanks for the detailed review. You might have a bad unit there re fan speeds and battery e.g. hardwarecanucks reporting 10hrs as are others. Also things like fan noise can be fixed with bios update

Was the article changed.
Because I swear I saw nonsense that the CPU perf is less then i9's like 2 hours ago !

Nearly perfect, but screen isn't the best and it runs too loud. For my money the Lenovo Y740 is still the best laptop around, since everyone refuses to use a display of the same caliber. Or make quiet laptops. It still has some issues because there is literally no such thing as a good laptop, but if you put in the extra cash and time (like with any laptop) and are willing to void your warranty they can be mitigated.

Quote from: TOMA on March 30, 2020, 19:17:37
That response time & idling power consumption are so weird, hope those can be fixed on stock version.

BTW, may I know if you guys did any test about the maximum power through USB type-c PD charging? I believe ASUS just claimed it can be charging through 65W PD charger, will it support higher input current so can be charging faster through some high-power PD chargers (like Apple 87/96W or MSI 90W)?

To my knowledge it does not support higher input current (The 65W is accurate)

Quote from: jeremy on March 30, 2020, 20:08:28
Another question to the testers & editors, are both USB-C ports capable of PD laptop charging, or just the one you labeled with PD?

Just the one I believe.

Quote from: jeremy on March 30, 2020, 20:06:44
Also, as an aside curiosity, does Freesync still work when using the Nvidia dGPU via Optimus?

I would imagine not, but I 2nd this question.

normally i rely 100% on laptop reviews from your site. but something is really off especially about the battery

I know AMD is to credit for their hard work on creating this CPU architecture with such short pipelines, but it is both a surprise and no surprise to me that this package first comes from Asus.

The Zephyrus M GU502GW (or another GU502 model) is what I would call second closest to this, as far as great GPU in a slim package great for travelling, though it is 15.6". These Zephyri also have USB PD charging over their type-C port. I adore my RTX 2070 laptop powered by a charger the size of a cell phone charger! I can actually use my ROG Phone II charger with it. Sure beats using a 1.5kg brick. I'll also confirm only 65W max, also supports down to at least 30W.

Just be warned that I once completely drained the battery by leaving it on sleep for long, with no hibernation, and type-C charging did not work until I charged via the barrel connector for a few percent. I had to ask nicely at an Asus store in China to use their charger for a few minutes (wasn't completely sure that was the problem at the time, but luckily that was it). Are you listening, Asus? It's a great feature, if you change this behavior you can make it even better!

Matebook d14 2020 (€650) has better response time.
That screen on G14 is an epic fail.

Response Time Black to White (Matebook)
28.8 combined   
16.4 ms rise   
12.4 ms fall

Response Time Black to White (G14)
34.8 ms combined   
20.4 ms rise   
14.4 ms fall

Same question as the other. Why did your battery test strange while the others reviewers have like 10+ hours battery life? Even my country reviewers said the same 10+ hours

Another review noted that the Nvidia GPU didn't deactivate, so it might be a bug.

Certainly sounds like a bug with the dGPU not decrivating as it should, considering we're seeing 2x battery life in other tests of the same notebook. Even if the testing methodology isn't the same, that's too big a delta to explain. Looking forward to a follow-up on this.

Quote from: Valantar on March 31, 2020, 08:59:08
Certainly sounds like a bug with the dGPU not decrivating as it should, considering we're seeing 2x battery life in other tests of the same notebook. Even if the testing methodology isn't the same, that's too big a delta to explain. Looking forward to a follow-up on this.

It certainly could be a software or firmware issue. Even faulty hardware. However, there is also the fact that the laptop has a 76 Wh battery and reportedly lasted idling for 5:42. That works out to about 13 W average. Not 30 W. Clearly, the laptop wasn't really idle when they measured those 30 W. Or it has a much higher draw when powered from the charger. Or something funny is going on when plugged in.

I've been waiting on this review since this laptop was announced earlier this year. 14" is the sweet spot in size for me and I've been waiting for a nice machine with a dedicated GPU to release. Unfortunately I don't know if I can spend this much money on a machine without TB3 or a webcam.

Will you be reviewing the more modestly specced SKU when it's released? I'm hoping it has better fan management and battery life. I doubt I'll ever max this CPU and 10 - 15% GPU performance would be easy for me to sacrifice for a quieter/cooler/longer battery laptop.

Misleading review, as always. Go one, rave about Intel and Dell.

You guys have gone from reliable to utterly useless morons.. Why didn't you reinstall windows and drivers when something OBVIOUSLY is off regarding idle/power ...? You're supposed to be pros at this, what a shame. (And btw when 90% of other reviews show totally different results, aiaia...)

Linus review shows 10hr battery life, more than dell XPS.

The 10 hour battery life seems to do with performance mode selection.
According to CNET, they got the 10 hours using the "Silent Mode" but only 6 with "Performance" mode enabled.
This article says "4 hours of real-world WLAN use on the Balanced profile with the integrated GPU active".

The article could've benefited from using multiple modes for testing -- and what those modes do. 

How many external monitors are supported (probably 2) and what resolutions/refresh rates can drive?

This is a very unprofessional review. I usually trust your reviews, but what you did with battery tests is just terrible. From now on I'll keep in mind to always look at other tech websites for notebooks reviews before buying one.

The numbers do not add up even in this very article.  With 30Watt Idle the notebook should only last 2 hr 20mins on idle. But you show it as almost 6 hr. With that extension, the idle power cannot be more than 12watt by your own numbers, given that the battery is a 72WH.
  I was posting my disappointment at other sites regarding idle watt, but was unable to complete the sentence as what I was writing was not making sense. This review needs a revision.  >:(

*yawn*
almost all ryzen 4000 seem to come with 8gb. I dont see the point of that.

Asus Zephyrus G14 GA401IV seems to be aimed at gamers. And any person buying a laptop to game on is insane. Your gaiming can't be that important.

20NE000BGE still the best option it seems. Half the price, but no discrete GPU.
Lenovo ThinkPad E495, Ryzen 7 3700U, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD
or 20NF001HGE if 15" is needed.

Quote from: Caribou on April 07, 2020, 03:25:00
*yawn*
almost all ryzen 4000 seem to come with 8gb. I dont see the point of that.

Asus Zephyrus G14 GA401IV seems to be aimed at gamers. And any person buying a laptop to game on is insane. Your gaiming can't be that important.

20NE000BGE still the best option it seems, except no discrete GPU, but half the price.
Lenovo ThinkPad E495, Ryzen 7 3700U, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD
or 20NF001HGE if 15" is needed.

Quote from: Caribou on April 07, 2020, 03:25:00
*yawn*
almost all ryzen 4000 seem to come with 8gb. I dont see the point of that.

Asus Zephyrus G14 GA401IV seems to be aimed at gamers. And any person buying a laptop to game on is insane. Your gaiming can't be that important.

20NE000BGE still the best option it seems. Half the price, but no discrete GPU.
Lenovo ThinkPad E495, Ryzen 7 3700U, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD
or 20NF001HGE if 15" is needed.

Far, far too early to say that. Ryzen 4000 models have barely started trickling into the market. There will be plenty of 15GB models. And while the laptops you mention are great for most average users, anyone caring about my kind of performance or battery life will do much better waiting for 16GB Ryzen 4000 laptops. Better battery life, much better CPU performance, better responsiveness, better GPU performance - what's not to like?

Also, "your gaming can't be that important"? What are you talking about? The vast majority of gaming laptop buyers have that as their only PC. Do you imagine people just buy gaming laptops to game on the go, while using a desktop at home? Don't be daft. Most people aren't that rich. Gaming on a laptop these days is perfectly sensible (even if desktops are still better in most respects), and while the G14 does indeed have some compromises, it's also an outstanding package for someone who wants a small, portable laptop that can also play AAA games. Saying this just makes you sound woefully out of touch with reality.

I can't share that sentiment. gaming laptops are a waste of money. not my money though.

all I know is that following products are a waste of resources. It's not like these idiots didn't know by now AMD can deliver. I guess intel pays better.

>The vast majority of gaming laptop buyers have that as their only PC. Do you imagine people just buy gaming laptops to game on the go, while using a desktop at home?
the only demographic I see this catering towards, are students. but they dont have that amount of cash.
I can't imagine there are that many people working on oil rigs that it would pay off catering towards those. Also they don't seem to me as the gaming type.

but yes, 4800hs and 2060 is a good combo. I just don't understand how these idiots can release such processors with 8 gigs of ram.

You *really* should do un update regarding battery life.
Seems like you ran into the same issue Anandtech has:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/15708/amds-mobile-revival-redefining-the-notebook-business-with-the-ryzen-9-4900hs-a-review/4

Quote from: Caribou on April 07, 2020, 21:59:40
I can't share that sentiment. gaming laptops are a waste of money. not my money though.

You are of course welcome to that opinion, and while I don't disagree that gaming laptops are poor value compared to desktops, your phrasing and insistence on this point in exclusion just points to you speaking from a very privileged point of view and/or having a very narrow view of how people game on PCs.

Not everyone has the room for a desk where they live, let alone one big enough to house a desktop PC with room to spare or one exclusively for using said desktop. Not everyone prefers sitting in a desk chair when gaming - some people prefer sitting in their sofa or a lounge chair for comfort. Not everyone wants to juggle two PCs with the (IMO minor, but nonetheless) hassle that entails. And lastly, not everyone can afford to have both a gaming desktop and a laptop for use on the go. Sure, there are absolutely budgets where desktop+laptop will give you better value than just a do-it-all laptop, but €1500 isn't it when the laptop performs like this. You'll struggle significantly hitting this performance level in a PC below €1000, and you won't find a laptop for €500 or less that's even remotely as good for on-the-go usage as the G14 is according to reviews. And while this laptop does seem to be a rather unique proposition, remember that for people less concerned with portability, there are laptops around €1000 with near identical performance.

Quote from: Caribou on April 07, 2020, 21:59:40all I know is that following products are a waste of resources. It's not like these idiots didn't know by now AMD can deliver. I guess intel pays better.

Laptop development cycles aren't that short. They are generally in the realm of 1 1/2-2 years, meaning that laptop OEMs had no way of knowing the 4000-series APUs would be this good back then. Remember, Zen 2 launched around 8 months ago, and while OEMs obviously have access to early silicon, they definitely didn't have ES Ryzen 4000 APUs 1 1/2 years ago. And while previous generation APUs weren't bad, they weren't even close to this good.

Also, AMD has said there are 100+ designs with 4000-series APUs coming in 2020. This also underscores that these chips are too "fresh" for many designs to be ready (the ones that are ready are pretty much all made with a lot of engineering assistance from AMD, which it would be impossible to give to every model). In other words: as OEMs have time to finalize their designs for these chips, more choice will arrive. On the other hand, Intel's option is (near) identical to previous chips, so in that case OEMs are already deeply familiar with the architecture, motherboard design requirements, etc., and could re-use or tweak existing designs to bring updated models to market quickly. This isn't due to Intel paying them, but due to the realities of engineering a modern PC.

Quote from: Caribou on April 07, 2020, 21:59:40>The vast majority of gaming laptop buyers have that as their only PC. Do you imagine people just buy gaming laptops to game on the go, while using a desktop at home?
the only demographic I see this catering towards, are students. but they dont have that amount of cash.
I can't imagine there are that many people working on oil rigs that it would pay off catering towards those. Also they don't seem to me as the gaming type.

First off, it would be really nice if you actually used the quote functionality of the forum, as that would make your posts much easier to read.

Beyond that, as above, your perspective narrow to the point of being outright wrong. First off, while a €1500 laptop is indeed a lot for most students, that doesn't mean that many can't afford a laptop like this or won't save up for one. As for other demographics: this should appeal to anyone who fits any of what I described above, which could be anyone from infrequent gamers to people living in small apartments to anyone else with any reason that to them makes a laptop more practical than a desktop, and who can afford one (which is far easier today than even five years ago thanks to monumental increases in mobile GPU performance).

Quote from: Caribou on April 07, 2020, 21:59:40but yes, 4800hs and 2060 is a good combo. I just don't understand how these idiots can release such processors with 8 gigs of ram.

There we can agree, though for some of these laptops (thin-and-lights) 8GB is frankly sufficient for simple home and office use still, and likely will be for years to come - but there ought to be 16GB options available for those who want more. Of course for any gaming with integrated graphics 8GB is too little. The same goes for dGPU gaming - while 8GB is technically sufficient today, it's definitely on the low end of what's acceptable and will become a bottleneck well before the laptop is otherwise obsolete. At least all the gaming laptops seem to be upgradable, and adding a SODIMM isn't the most difficult undertaking (though most of these seem to use DDR4-3200 and likely need JEDEC DDR4-3200 DIMMs to run at full speed with any added RAM - and there isn't any of that currently on the market). IMO base SKUs with 8GB are fine, but anything even remotely premium (say, once you reach the 512GB SSD range) should also include 16GB of RAM for longevity's sake.

Quote from: Joschn on April 09, 2020, 19:35:42
You *really* should do un update regarding battery life.
Seems like you ran into the same issue Anandtech has:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/15708/amds-mobile-revival-redefining-the-notebook-business-with-the-ryzen-9-4900hs-a-review/4

Completely agree with this. Getting results that differ so dramatically from every other review and then not investigating this further is a very poor journalistic practice.

Quote from: Valantar on April 11, 2020, 15:17:02

Quote from: Joschn on April 09, 2020, 19:35:42
You *really* should do un update regarding battery life.
Seems like you ran into the same issue Anandtech has:

Completely agree with this. Getting results that differ so dramatically from every other review and then not investigating this further is a very poor journalistic practice.

As much as I appreciate the thoroughness and information value of Notebookcheck's reviews, I have to agree on this one. Although on one side I get it –⁠ they most likely have to make good on the bribes they seem to be receiving from Intel, so they gimp products with AMD chips in their reviews in one way or another. This is by far not the first time (and most certainly not the last time) this happened. :( 

Ah yes, heat. AMD's old enemy. That's why I switched to Intel about 15 years ago and never looked back.

Well, until now. The performance promised by these new Ryzen CPUs made me think that I could get the same performance as out of a similar Intel CPU but at less noise and power consumption. But looking at this review (as well as others elsewhere), it seems like they gain that performance advantage not through more efficient architecture, the 7nm process or something but by outputting more heat.

... and when I say "heat", I mean "fan noise" in this case. One obviously tends to lead to the other...

I purchased this laptop and it is very disappointing. At idle it makes too much noise and it is a high pitch annoying noise. Armoury Crate software from Asus has a Manual mode that allows you to reduce the fans speeds which is great. However, this mode is available only when you are connected to AC, which is dumb. I want the laptop to be quiet when I watch a movie on my couch or I read something, not when I am at my desk. I played GTA V for 30 minutes with ultra settings on 1080p. The performance is great but the laptop gets too hot, especially the top part of the keyboard. I verified the temperatures in Hwinfo64 and the CPU got to 103C degrees. Heat and especially the fan noise during idle made me decide to return it. The metallic case is also very easy to scratch. I scratched the palm rest area with my watch while I was very attentive. This is a nice looking device, but the phrase "too good, to be true" applies here.

Will you guys ever update battery life tests?

Let me say that without Notebookcheck's battery test I would not have known that there is a problem with this laptop's discrete GPU turning on whenever the display is refreshing at 120Hz. No, notebookcheck did not themselves research and diagnose the issue like anandtech's reviewer did (thank you Joschn for the link). But they did test the laptop according to their real-world test, and dutifully published the results even when other reviewers disagree.

To turn down the 120Hz screen to 60Hz is a *workaround* and to me is *unacceptable*.

To do this for the PURPOSE OF BENCHMARKING is absolutely misleading, and I am ashamed that anandtech simply copied Asus' internal practice of nerfing their hardware to get better numbers, but I do respect them for at least explaining this in text.

The next laptop I buy will have a 120Hz screen at a minimum, and I fully expect to be able to use it, with no shenanigans like brightness-dependent refresh rate like on the Pixel 4, and without it being automatically disabled when on battery, none of that "gotta make the benchmarks look better" crap.

If a laptop's GPU switching is broken, it's broken. It can probably be fixed in software, but until that time I don't expect the battery life numbers to be any different.

Thanks to the below useful links, I am able to run my GA401II-HE003T (Ryzen7/GTX1050Ti) silent and cool (in daily use, browsing etc):

www.reddit.com/r/ZephyrusG14/comments/gpx549/summary_about_controlling_fansboosttdp_all_is/
You can set fan control to Fanless (no noise, mostly) or Low-speed (approx. half as of how "Silent" profile runs).

www.autohotkey.com/
To get over the annoying PgUp/Down Home/End affair (with Alt+)

As well as getting rid of Armoury Crate and using Power saver mode (on very conservative settings) helps with battery runtimes.

Might be useful to check for yourselves.

This article's 30W idle consumption has two reasons.
1. This article must be measuring the AC power consumption of the power brick. Efficiency of this power brick is relatively low to make it small.

2. radeon software prevent dgpu to sleep. killing the task from task manager reduces around 7~8W.

Actual power usage for browsing+watching youtube was 7~10W according to windwos 10 battery report and HWIinfo.

Quote from: taitai on June 06, 2020, 22:26:39
This article's 30W idle consumption has two reasons.
1. This article must be measuring the AC power consumption of the power brick. Efficiency of this power brick is relatively low to make it small.

2. radeon software prevent dgpu to sleep. killing the task from task manager reduces around 7~8W.

Actual power usage for browsing+watching youtube was 7~10W according to windwos 10 battery report and HWIinfo.

There's likely something off in the testing here, but software power consumption numbers are notoriously unreliable and inaccurate, so what you are saying isn't necessarily any more correct.

As for the AC brick being "relatively inefficient" to make it small? That is nonsense. First off, there are minimum efficiency requirements for such bricks if they are going to be sold in the EU, so it can't be very low. Secondly, low efficiency means more heat output from the brick, which means it needs to be bigger to dissipate said heat. The only way to shrink power bricks is to make them more efficient, not less, and the best is to use a gallium nitride based architecture, which means they can get very small and very efficient.

Do you plan to ever update this review with your own findings ?
("We retest the Asus Zephyrus G14 battery life and now it s over two times longer than before")

I do not know what keeps you from doing it and admit your oversight - other reviewers found out what kept them from getting good battery endurance.

Since I never had that issue with my unit I asume that Asus just updated the software/setting that was causing that issue...

I was getting close to pulling the trigger on this when I realized the geniuses at ASUS didn't bother putting Home/End/PgUp/PgDn keys on it. Who designs a keyboard and leaves those out completely, especially Home and End?? It's bad enough when they put them as functions on the arrow keys, but to not even bother including them at all is just ridiculous. I just don't understand all these manufacturers' refusal to make a decent keyboard. It's the main interface the user has with the computer, and so if it sucks, it doesn't matter how good the specs are. A fast computer that's annoying to use is not a good computer, regardless of how well it performs. Why can't other OEMs take a page from Lenovo, which is widely regarded by the vast majority of people that have used one to have the best keyboards? It would be such an easy way to significantly improve the usability and therefore desirability of their computers.

Beautiful laptop checking in the shop, chassis, screen response, specs...but that aircraft sounding fan ....will likely be the head turner and not for good reasons. :'(

Could you pls try retesting the screen brightness with the AMD driver provided by ASUS(V27.20.1020.2002) at rog.asus.com -> support&downloads ?

With that ASUS graphics driver the screen can go even brighter at max and much dimmer at minimum (similar to those ThinkPad and Macbook, should be just ~5cd/m^2, instead of 15cd/m^2).