One of the best multimedia laptops gets a brighter OLED - Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 2026 Review

[Redaktion]

Asus switched to Intel CPUs for the new ROG Zephyrus G14 and powered by the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, it is still one of the most powerful 14-inch laptops you can buy. You also get an updated 120 Hz OLED screen, which now reaches brightness levels of more than 1,000 nits.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/One-of-the-best-multimedia-laptops-gets-a-brighter-OLED-Asus-ROG-Zephyrus-G14-2026-Review.1321952.0.html

[Alpa]

As a g14 '25 user, I am disappointed to see that they haven't addressed probably the only real drawback with this design - the screen flex cable. The thing is notorious for breaking in older generations. Basically, it is a real gamble to purchase one without  at least 2 year warranty, as the issues usually come 6-18months into ownership and the fix is stupidly expensive, as you must replace the whole screen.

[Vilmir]

In France on the Asus store, the 5070 version is listed right now for 3899€ and the 5080 for 6299€. The 5070 Ti version will certainly be well above 4000€.

This is insane Jack.

[People forget]

"Nobody is going to buy a steam machine. It's using old slow low end parts and will costs 1000+"

I sure as hell will consider it, if the options are between this with a 5070 for 4000 and that.

Ain't no way the price for portability, screen and battery worth 3000 extra.

[Crazy price for 12GB VRAM]

Crazy price: You'd get a much better bang for the buck from a desktop gaming PC, and it would be upgradable, repairable and run (much) quieter (the Performance energy profile in this laptop is at 49.8 dB(A), this is pretty noisy) and last longer due to better cooling. And for the rest money that would be left, you could get an Apple Air 13 or 15.

[What are you smoking?]

Crazy price

You complain on this site about pricing while simultaneously advocating for 256 GB of ram in systems for LLM usage?

Pick a side. Can't have it both ways.

[RobertJasiek]

We want large storage at pre-AI-crisis prices without upselling ripoff.

[Vilmir]

What we want is not the point, it is a matter of affordability. 6500€ for a laptop is a very, very high expense for a reasonably wealthy person in Europe.
I upgraded all my machines, by luck, before the price hikes but clearly if I did not, I would not buy at these new prices. I would just stick to my hardware longer, or game only on desktop.

[Gastredner]

Wow! 56db is insanely loud for a heavily throttled 5070 Ti (100W instead of full 140W). Bigger gaming notebooks provide 175W graphics at this noise level. 100W would be fine for me, but then I would want mid 40db fan noise at max.

Crazy price: You'd get a much better bang for the buck from a desktop gaming PC, and it would be upgradable, repairable and run (much) quieter (the Performance energy profile in this laptop is at 49.8 dB(A), this is pretty noisy) and last longer due to better cooling. And for the rest money that would be left, you could get an Apple Air 13 or 15.

The reason, people consider buying gaming notebooks is to have strong graphics performance in a portable form factor for bringing it to the office, a vacation rental, a hotel, a friend's house, a student apartment and so on.

Nothing wrong about it. The G14 though, is WAY too ultra super duper portable. It is much too thin for no reason than style, much too light. Therefore the cooling is so bad, that the fans get super loud despite its already throttled down graphics card. Asus should have made the chassis at least 5-6mm thicker and 500-600g "heavier". This would still be plenty portable, but not stupidly ultra super duper portable and ultra super duper loud.

[Kostia]

Where the DPC Latency picture went? I was hoping to see it 

[Mattias Aronsson]

Wow! 56db is insanely loud for a heavily throttled 5070 Ti (100W instead of full 140W). Bigger gaming notebooks provide 175W graphics at this noise level. 100W would be fine for me, but then I would want mid 40db fan noise at max.

Crazy price: You'd get a much better bang for the buck from a desktop gaming PC, and it would be upgradable, repairable and run (much) quieter (the Performance energy profile in this laptop is at 49.8 dB(A), this is pretty noisy) and last longer due to better cooling. And for the rest money that would be left, you could get an Apple Air 13 or 15.

The reason, people consider buying gaming notebooks is to have strong graphics performance in a portable form factor for bringing it to the office, a vacation rental, a hotel, a friend's house, a student apartment and so on.

Nothing wrong about it. The G14 though, is WAY too ultra super duper portable. It is much too thin for no reason than style, much too light. Therefore the cooling is so bad, that the fans get super loud despite its already throttled down graphics card. Asus should have made the chassis at least 5-6mm thicker and 500-600g "heavier". This would still be plenty portable, but not stupidly ultra super duper portable and ultra super duper loud.

I totally aggree to above conclusion about the laptop is over-optimized to thin size, instead of having a reasonable cooler system for the cpu & gpu power installed. The cpu is amazingly efficent, i measured 1W idle in Fedora, then the total system usage was 11W, with everything enabled (RTX 5070). System fan is also weird, if its off, its obviously silent, then first speed available is 2400 rpm (tried low-level controlling it, sometimes it could settle at 900rpm, but this was only when lowered from 2400rpm, so fan is unable to start at 900rpm), and 2400 rpm is already noticeable, although low (like 36dB notbookreview measured, seems reasonable), this is the noise floor for any cooling, and just doing anything will trigger more fan speed which quickling gets annoying if you are sensitive to fan noise. There are no resonances or weird pitched noise, just smooth wind noise, so if they just used a larger chassis+fan, the larger height of the fan would move much more air, ideal spinning at lower than 2400 rpm (i believe air resistance is so large, fan cannot run at lower speeds than 2400 rpm in current setup, a sign of a choked air flow system). My old G14 with a 5900hs (2021:ish I think), has 7mm vent holes on the sides, this allow slightly more airflow, so this laptop sits at 46C with only occasional low fan noise.

There are so much good components in the new 2026 laptop, so it was hard to let it go. Amazing OLED, keyboard is great, finish is great, new intel CPU is amazing, nvidia gpu very good. But cooling is a very important part for this kind of laptop, portable gaming and nowadays local AI inference use.

Next iteration of G14 laptops from ASUS, please allow more space for larger internal fans. Optimize for cooling, not thin size. Thin laptops are for iGPU laptops.