Asus ROG Strix G16 review: Fierce where it counts

Price When Reviewed

$2,499

Best Prices Today: Asus ROG Strix G16

The Asus ROG Strix G16 (G614) is a solid gaming laptop entering the mid-to-high range of the market, as it’s capped at an RTX 5070 Ti. It may not have the most elegant build, combining mostly plastics with an aluminum lid, and its IPS display isn’t quite as jaw-dropping as OLED rivals, but the Asus ROG Strix G16 puts up powerful performance for the money, proving itself a worthy rival to the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10, even if it can’t quite dethrone that beast. With a starting price of $1,599 and options up to $2,499, there’s a good bit of room to configure a system that suits your needs without going overboard. But as tested here at the height of the range, it’s one heck of a performer.

Asus ROG Strix G16: Specs and features

• Model number: G614
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX3D
• Memory: 32GB DDR5-5600
• Graphics/GPU: Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti 12GB VRAM, (140-Watt TGP)
• Display: 16-inch, 2560×1600 IPS, 240Hz, 500 nits, 100 percent DCI-P3, G-Sync, Dolby Vision HDR
• Storage: 1TB PCIe Gen4 SSD
• Webcam: 1080p + IR 
• Connectivity: 2x USB4 (1x 100W PD support), 2x USB-A 10Gbps, 1x HDMI 2.1 FRL, 1x GbE, 1x 3.5mm combo audio
• Networking: WiFi 6E 2×2, Bluetooth 5.4
• Biometrics: Windows Hello facial recognition
• Battery capacity: 90 watt-hours
• Dimensions: 13.94 x 10.39 x 1.2 inches
• Weight: 5.22 pounds
• MSRP: $2,499 as-tested ($1,599 base)

The Asus ROG Strix G16 comes in several configurations. A few come from Asus directly while some are exclusive to Walmart and Best Buy and have different displays from Asus’s direct offerings. All of them are built around AMD CPUs and RTX 50-series GPUs. Support for Wi-Fi 6E, dual SSD slots, 1TB of included PCIe Gen 4 storage, 90Wh batteries, and 280W chargers are all common among them. 

The base model is a Walmart-exclusive, starts at $1,599, and includes an AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX CPU with 16GB of memory, and an RTX 5060 GPU. The display here is a 1200p IPS panel with a 165Hz refresh rate, 300 nits of brightness, and 100 percent sRGB color gamut. Best Buy has two more models using the same display. These both come with an earlier AMD Ryzen 9 8940HX CPU. A $1,699 model includes an RTX 5070 and a $1,999 model bumps to an RTX 5070 Ti. 

The rest of the configurations come directly from Asus and bump up to a 1600p, 240Hz panel with a 500-nit brightness level, G-Sync, 100 percent DCI-P3 coverage, and Dolby Vision support. They also get 32GB of memory. The first of these models is $2,199 and includes an RTX 5070. For $2,399, the GPU gets a further upgrade to an RTX 5070 Ti, but all else remains the same. Finally, at $2,499, we reach the configuration tested here. This bumps up CPU, swapping to an AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX3D.

These varied configuration and retailer options provide an interesting mix that should allow gamers to select their priorities. Walmart offers the cheapest entry point, while Best Buy’s options favor value on the GPU side, letting you land an RTX 5070 Ti for $400 less than Asus’s configuration. Meanwhile Asus’s configurations offer a higher-grade display for those who plan to do a lot of gaming directly on the laptop. 

Asus ROG Strix G16: Design and build quality

IDG / Mark Knapp

The Asus ROG Strix G16 isn’t subtle about being a gaming laptop. From its textured and striped exhaust tail, the large grilles on both the sides and back, various branding on just about every surface, a completely over-engineered base plate (done up to look a bit like a motherboard with a CPU socket), and all the RGB lighting, it just about shouts “gamer.” The RGB even extends a bit beyond the typical keyboard backlight. A lightstrip stretches across the front edge of the laptop to cast a colorful glow in front of the Asus ROG Strix G16.

The system is bulky, measuring over an inch thick, but it’s almost surprisingly light for its size. It weighs 5.22 pounds, which still isn’t light but is kind of light for a 16-inch gaming laptop. A lot of that weight and size is coming from the cooling system. The Asus ROG Strix G16 has ventilation wrapping around the back half of the base, completely spanning the rear and covering a portion of each side. There are even two little vents on a little hinge shelf above the keyboard. Asus uses a triple-fan arrangement to cool the internals, though one of these is quite small. With such wide ventilation, the system doesn’t have to go shrill during heavy gaming. It produces a light breeze sound that’s not unpleasant to hear even at an arm’s length

With all that’s packed in, the Asus ROG Strix G16 ends up sturdy, with little flex to the base even though it’s all made out of ABS and polycarbonate. Only the display lid gets a touch of the premium with an aluminum cover. The ABS plastic on the bottom of the system feels rough and a little cheap, but still tough. There’s just enough flex from the display that it bends a little when opening or closing it with a hand on the corner, but a little lip at the top provides a more balanced point for opening and closing. 

The Asus ROG Strix G16 comes with a beefy 280-watt power brick for charging, and it adds almost another 1.5 pounds to the package. On the bright side, 100-Watt USB-C charging is also supported if you want to use a smaller charger on the go. 

Asus ROG Strix G16: Keyboard, trackpad

IDG / Mark Knapp

Physically, the keyboard is a joy to type on. It has a satisfying, soft bottom out that makes for comfy typing. I was comfortably able to type at over 110 words per minute without feeling like I was rushing in Monkeytype, and managed a fair degree of accuracy. 

It has a couple of downsides, though. Asus prioritized full-sized arrow keys, and it shrank the right shift key considerably in the process. I find myself regularly hitting the up arrow when I mean to hit shift, and instead of getting a capital letter, I start messing up a whole paragraph. As helpful as the RGB keyboard lighting is for seeing key legends in the dark, the slightly dark key legends when backlighting is off can make it a little hard to see the keyboard even in a well lit room. 

Once in the course of my testing, in the middle of using it, the keyboard suddenly stopped working entirely. The trackpad still worked, but neither keys nor keyboard shortcuts worked. After plugging the system in and letting it restart, the keyboard resumed proper functioning, but it was an odd and upsetting experience nonetheless. I’ve never known a computer not to have the odd hiccup now and then, though, and as this wasn’t a recurring issue, I didn’t raise too much concern. 

For gaming, the keyboard deck gets a little warm, but the palm area doesn’t, and the WASD keys are comfortable to rest on. Only the area around the number row and above heats up, as that’s where most of the heatsink sits.

The Asus ROG Strix G16’s trackpad is reasonably spacious, pleasingly smooth, and offers a satisfying, soft physical click. t could be wider, but after experiencing frequent palm rejection issues on the Razer Blade 16’s ultra-wide trackpad, I’m not mad at Asus for keeping it modest. 

The trackpad has a special function seen on a number of other Asus laptops. With a long-press  near one corner, it can turn into a number pad with illuminated characters and math function keys. It’s an interesting feature to have, but the beauty of a number pad is how muscle memory allows for touch typing, and this setup doesn’t really facilitate that quite as well. 

Asus ROG Strix G16: Display, audio

IDG / Mark Knapp

The Asus ROG Strix G16’s display is good overall. It has a lot going for it. For one, it delivered 480 nits of brightness in my testing, and that combines with a strong anti-glare coating that makes it easy to see in almost any conditions. The 2560×1600 resolution is respectably sharp, and it runs at a super-smooth 240Hz with only minor ghosting. It’s also wonderfully colorful, fully covering the DCI-P3 color space. Color accuracy wasn’t on point, though. The display also exhibits some annoying dimming behavior, slowing ramping the brightness up or down depending on the screen content. It doesn’t show up much while gaming or watching movies, but while browsing the web, where the brightness of content can change suddenly, it becomes distracting.

The two down-firing speakers provide respectable, clear audio for voices, making for a good way to listen to instructional/educational videos or have voice calls. They pump out plenty of volume, but it’s a bit harsh at max volume. Dialed back, the speakers still provide ample volume and decent fullness without the same harshness. There’s even a bit of bass. Asus suggests they’re capable of Dolby Atmos audio and can play into virtual 5.1.2-channel surround sound, but that is extremely generous for speakers that barely manage basic stereo.

Asus ROG Strix G16: Webcam, microphone, biometrics

The webcam on the Asus ROG Strix G16 is decent. It can get a little grainy in dimmer environments, but it does an impressive job with exposure. It manages to get most of the picture clear without overexposing. It’s not a master though, in extra-dim rooms with one strong light, it can run into overexposure in its effort to get the rest of the picture lit up, but even then it looks acceptable. 

The microphones are solid. They pick up my voice loud and clear without too much room echo. They also do a good job cutting down on background noise. Even with a box fan running in a window nearby and construction outside, my voice remained clear without awkward compression or clipped words, and the fan itself was inaudible while the construction was reduced to subtle clinking. 

Unfortunately, you’ll be relying on a password, PIN, or security key to log onto the Asus ROG Strix G16. It doesn’t feature any facial or fingerprint recognition technology. 

Asus ROG Strix G16: Connectivity

IDG / Mark Knapp

Like most big gaming laptops, the Asus ROG Strix G16 provides a good smattering of ports. You’ll find two USB4 Type-C ports on the left side, and one of those supports 100W power delivery for charging without the G16’s beefy power brick (though don’t expect full performance while plugged in this way). There’s also a 3.5mm headset jack, HDMI 2.1 port, and Gigabit Ethernet port over there along with the main DC barrel jack. The right side of the laptop includes two USB-A 10Gbps ports. An extra USB-A port or SD/microSD card slot would have been nice to see. Unfortunately, Asus’s cooling design takes up the entire rear of the laptops and half of each side, so all of the ports are lined up along the front half of either side. I find this awkward when  plugging in multiple devices, especially if you plan to game that way, as you’ll have USB dongles/cables sticking out right where you’d likely want a mouse. 

Wireless connections have been dependable. The system supports Wi-Fi 6E, letting you get a quick and stable connection or even step up to the 6GHz band for extra throughput. Tested on a normal Wi-Fi 6 network with fiber internet, the Asus ROG Strix G16 made the most of the speeds. 

Asus ROG Strix G16: Performance

The Asus ROG Strix G16 is no slouch. Of course it couldn’t be for the price it demands, but it’s making its components work for it. We haven’t tested a lot of systems recently that have closely matching components, but prior generation heavyweights like the Gigabyte Aorus 16X, Alienware m16 R2, and Alienware x16 R2 show what kind of performance gains this latest generation of hardware can deliver. And the RTX 5080-equipped Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10 offers a look at how the Asus ROG Strix G16 stacks up to a laptop in the next tier up. While that Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10 was $3,599 as tested, there is an RTX 5070 Ti configuration that goes for $2,849, making it more competitive with the Strix G16. 

IDG / Mark Knapp

The Asus ROG Strix G16 immediately proves its competency in everyday tasks with a high score in PCMark 10, a holistic test that tasks the system with launching apps, web browsing, making spreadsheets, editing photos and video, and rendering 3D graphics. With a fast processor, GPU, and storage, the Asus ROG Strix G16 performs exceptionally, beating out all three 2024 systems and nearly keeping up with the pricier Lenovo Legion. 

IDG / Mark Knapp

A lot of that performance can be chalked up to the CPU. The AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX3D in here is a veritable beast. It manages to complete our handbrake encoding task in 9 minutes, stepping up considerably from even heavy hitters like the Intel Core Ultra 9 185H. It couldn’t quite match the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10’s Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX, but the AMD CPU also has 8 fewer CPU cores, so the fact it comes as close as it does is still impressive.

IDG / Mark Knapp

Unsurprisingly, we see similar performance in Cinebench, with the Asus ROG Strix G16 slightly tailing the Lenovo Legion as both put up simply excellent performance numbers. And it’s not just multi-core performance. The Asus ROG Strix G16’s CPU has excellent single-core performance as well, again beating all of the other systems except the Lenovo Legion, which it narrowly trails. Since all 16 cores in this AMD CPU are performance cores and they prove so capable, it’s understandable how the AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX3D is coming close to the Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX (which offers an 8P+16E arrangement) despite having considerably fewer cores overall.

IDG / Mark Knapp

The Asus ROG Strix G16 also puts up excellent gaming performance. In 3DMark’s demanding Port Royal test, which employs a lot of ray-traced effects, the Asus ROG Strix G16 shows how much the RTX 5070 Ti steps up from the RTX 4070, even coming close to the RTX 4080’s performance. The RTX 5080 in the Lenovo Legion still distances itself in this test, though. The cooling in the Asus ROG Strix G16 also helps it maintain its performance. In 3DMark’s Steel Nomad Stress Test, which runs the benchmark sequence 20 times in a row, the Asus ROG Strix G16 maintained 97.7 percent consistent results. 

IDG / Mark Knapp

The results we saw in Port Royal line up closely with the Asus ROG Strix G16’s performance in Metro Exodus. The Asus ROG Strix G16 is capable of running the game smoothly even in its Extreme settings preset, again outpacing the weaker two systems, almost keeping up with the RTX 4080-equipped Alienware x16 R2, but still lagging behind the RTX 5080-equipped Legion. 

IDG / Mark Knapp

Shadow of the Tomb Raider’s benchmark shows that the GPU was the impediment for the Port Royal and Metro Exodus tests. This game is less demanding on the GPU, particularly as it doesn’t rely on ray tracing. And in this case, the CPU gets to help out more, letting the Asus ROG Strix G16 rocket ahead of the Alienware x16 R2 and come much closer to the Lenovo Legion than in the other tests. 

That CPU performance can let the Asus ROG Strix G16 get in close to the RTX 5080-equipped Lenovo Legion in other cases as well. Running Cyberpunk 2077 with the Ultra preset (no ray tracing) at 1080p, the Asus ROG Strix G16 pulls of 137 FPS average to the Legion’s 151 FPS. That actually lets the Asus ROG Strix G16 beat the RTX 5090-equipped Razer Blade 16 due to that system being CPU-bound in that test. 

Bumping up to 1440p or the monitor’s native 1600p sees more load shift to the GPU, and in those conditions the Asus ROG Strix G16 falls back a bit further from the likes of the Lenovo Legion and Razer Blade 16. It still performs well, but you’ll want to stick with 1080p/1200p if you plan to take advantage of the built-in monitor’s 240Hz refresh rate. 

Asus ROG Strix G16: Battery life

Gaming laptops are getting better at running on battery power, but they’re generally still not great. The Asus ROG Strix G16 fell just a few minutes shy of a six hour runtime in our local 4K video playback test, and that’s with the dGPU disabled, all keyboard lighting off, Airplane mode, and the screen set between 250 and 260 nits (and self-limited to 60Hz). Real-world use takes that even lower, with the laptop generally giving me 3-4 hours of everyday use. It’s still competitive for most gaming laptops, though the Razer Blade 16 recently impressed with over 10 hours in our testing.  

The Asus ROG Strix G16 even tries to help conserve power. The system will pop-up a notification if an app is keeping the dGPU active while on battery power — useful! But that notification will take you to Armoury Crate, and from there, the “Stop all” button for ending those tasks that were using the dGPU doesn’t always do its job. Also, the system isn’t set up ideally for battery life. Nvidia Optimus was not enabled by default, and the “Optimized” setting in Armoury Crate was not active. It’s still possible for the “Standard” mode to turn off the dGPU on battery power, but there’s no guarantee it will, unlike the Optimized mode. 

Asus ROG Strix G16: Conclusion

The Asus ROG Strix G16 is a hit. It offers excellent performance, especially as configured, with its CPU helping make the most of the RTX 5070 Ti inside. This smart balance avoids CPU-bound scenarios at 1080p, giving it a leg up on plenty of its competition. The performance combines with an overall good package that benefits from a sturdy design, quality display, respectable speakers, and satisfactory connectivity. It’s a worthy rival to the Lenovo Legion 7i Pro 16 Gen 10. It’s a bit thicker, but lighter than Lenovo’s system, and it comes at a small discount for a comparable configuration from Lenovo.