Gaming laptops do not stand still, and in addition to regular hardware updates, they try to bring interesting solutions with them in terms of design and curious tricks. For example, last year we tested a compact gaming laptop ROG Zephyrus G14, which was equipped with an interesting solution in the form of a matrix display AniMe Matrix on the lid of the device. Then ASUS released not only the regular version of the laptop, but also a limited edition in conjunction with a design studio Acronym, received a limited design.
Apparently, ASUS ‘idea of collaboration turned out to be successful, as this year the company decided to launch a limited ROG Zephyrus G14 sample of 2023. The new laptop was created in collaboration with a Norwegian DJ and producer Alan Walker, who is widely known for his composition “Faded“in 2015.
Recently in the editorial office GameMAG.ru the laptop entered the test ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 Alan Walker Special Edition (GA401Q), and today we are ready to tell you about it. Pre-order for such a model in Russia will open on August 18 in the official ASUS online store. The configuration is the only one, and the price will be 179,990 rubles…
PACKAGING, COMPLETE SET, APPEARANCE AND FEATURES
Special editions of laptops tend to be rich in bundles, which is why the ROG Zephyrus G14 Alan Walker Special Edition comes in a large box.
The black outer packaging has the standard ROG eye logo on the front, as well as the AW logo superimposed on each other, which is the official logo of DJ Alan Walker. Traditionally, on the other sides there are various stickers with technical information and characteristics of the device inside. The box opens from the top, and there is also a plastic handle with an embossed ROG lettering for easy portability.
Inside, the laptop and accessories are housed in two boxes and one cardboard box. The latter contains a black case-folder, stylized as the ROG x ALAN WALKER collaboration, as indicated by the inscription on a white background on the front side of the accessory and various logos on a piece of nylon strap on the side. At the back, the manufacturer adorned the surface with four nylon straps with the slogan “Join the Republic”. Three are firmly glued to the case, and one is sewn so that you can grab onto it and hold the bag comfortably when carrying it. There is a convenient ring on the side, for which you can attach the bag to the carabiner. The very same outer material of the bag to the touch resembles eco-leather, and two compartments of the bag are hidden under hidden zippers, which can be seen only by the dogs on the end and front side of the accessory. Bologna fabric is used for interior decoration. The main section is divided by a soft partition.
The main part of the accessories is located in a thick black box. It opens like a box, and the first thing that catches your eye is the cap. It is made of black velor, looks very good and of high quality, and sits on the head of the author of these lines like a glove. Various promo lettering and logos are applied to the sides and front, while the buckle is dotted with lines in pink and blue at the back. But the unusual equipment does not end there either, since the manufacturer also hid black socks with white advertising text under the cap. They are 80 percent cotton and stretch well thanks to the elastane composition, so they should be suitable even for people with very large feet. In a small compartment on the side, there are already more traditional accessories: a 180-watt power adapter, a network cable and a USB cable with Type-C at both ends.
The laptop itself is in the last box, which is protected by two forms made of polyethylene foam, and is also partially additionally covered with an external dense cardboard form, which separately resembles a vertical holder for folders.
The box itself consists of two parts: a base made of thick cardboard with a pleasant to the touch glossy texture and a transparent lid with many different inscriptions, lines and shapes, which we will talk about a little later. Inside we are greeted by a black piece of paper with the message “delete before use” and a QR code on the back, leading to a demo video about the interesting features of the device. The laptop itself is hidden in a transparent plastic bag, and under it there is a thin cardboard box, which contains various documentation: instructions, a warranty card, a flyer with information about the MyASUS application. A small envelope contains a welcome booklet with information about a special service for repairing the device, which involves the delivery of the device from the client to the service and vice versa.
In terms of body construction, this is still the same G14 we saw last year. The dimensions are 324 x 221 x 19 mm, and the weight is 1724 grams. If you plan to carry a laptop with you, then to this weight it is worth adding another 547 grams of a weighty power supply unit in the form of a neat brick and a detachable network cable. It is based on the minimalist style of office notebooks with a honeycomb structure for durability.
The case is traditionally made of gray magnesium alloy. However, in the limited edition, the manufacturer has made several changes to the exterior of the laptop. The first thing that catches your eye is the nylon straps that pierce the laptop lid. They bear the advertising slogans of the collaboration. For reliability, they are not only fixed inside, but also glued to the outside of the case. An attempt to somehow pry them or move them was unsuccessful. The traditional mirrored nameplate in the corner of the lid now shimmers in blue, and on top not only the ROG logo is applied, but also the AW logo with the signature of the star. A small line on the edge of the lid next to the vents on the back of the laptop is adorned with the words “For Those Who Dare”, which ASUS used to advertise the G14 with the DJ at the beginning of the year.
Half of the laptop’s lid is occupied by the previously mentioned AniMe Matrix display, which consists of more than 6 thousand luminous points. The official Armory Crate app allows you to sync it with music, display animations and images on it. Naturally, this body part has been collaborated, and there are four animations in the app, created in collaboration with the producer. The dot matrix display is active in sleep mode and periodically displays selected animations when the laptop lid is down.
The bottom of the computer has not undergone any changes, except for the ROG X ALAN WALKER inscription, which is unique to this edition. Below there are several holes for cooling the laptop, through which two coolers of the cooling system are clearly visible, symmetrically located on different sides of the laptop. Four separate rubberized feet securely hold the laptop on the table and prevent slipping during use.
The model does not differ from last year’s model with connectors – they are distributed on the sides of the device in a ratio of 50 to 50. On the left side, the creators placed a power connector for connecting a complete 180-watt charger, an HDMI 2.0b port for displaying images on external screens with a resolution of up to 4K and 60 Hz, one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C with DisplayPort and Power Delivery support, and a 3.5mm combo audio output for wired headphones, microphones and headsets. On the right side of the laptop is another USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C, two USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A and a Kensington lock hole.
The lid of the laptop can be opened easily with one hand, since the main weight is on the base. The proprietary ErgoLift hinge, which we have already seen in the G14 and G15 models, raises the base about 15 degrees above the surface, which gives an additional flow of air to the laptop. Thanks to the hinge design, the screen can be opened up to about 130 degrees.
The bezels of the laptop screen are very thin. The side ones are only 4 mm each, at the top only 7 mm, and at the bottom with the ROG ZEPHYRUS inscription, as usual, the largest – by 28 mm. There is no built-in camera, but there is a microphone array located above the screen. It supports three modes (one-way, stereo and omnidirectional) and noise cancellation, which uses the CPU to intelligently process incoming audio.
SCREEN, SOUND AND FUNCTIONAL
The laptop received a screen from Thermotrex Corporation. It is an 8-bit IPS-matrix with a matte antiglare surface, QHD resolution (2560 x 1440 pixels) and a refresh rate of 120 Hz. The maximum brightness is 300 nits and the contrast ratio is 1000: 1. With such brightness, it will be impossible to use the computer outdoors under the direct light of the sun, but it is clearly not made for this.
To prevent tearing and distortion in dynamic scenes, the model’s screen is equipped with Adaptive-Sync technologies. The response time from gray to gray is 3ms. The matrix supports a color gamut of 100% sRGB and 84% Adobe RGB. Color reproduction is high when viewed from any angle. Also, from the pleasant moments, it is worth mentioning the complete absence of PWM when the brightness is reduced. The backlighting of the screen is uneven – we noticed several highlights on the lower part, including one large one almost in the center of the lower edge.
To achieve high-quality sound, ASUS installed four speakers of 2W each in the laptop. The two tweeters point upward and output sound to the user through the holes on the sides just below the keyboard. Two pairs of woofers are located in the front of the cabinet and point downward. They sound excellent by the standards of laptop solutions, and most importantly – very loud, and there is a pronounced bass. This comes as no surprise since the ROG Zephyrus G14 Alan Walker Special Edition was created in collaboration with a music-minded person. Good surround sound can be customized using the preinstalled Dolby Access app.
And since we touched on the topic of sound, it is worth going back to the box in which the laptop was stored. There is a recess on the side of the package where the manufacturer installed the USB-C connector. When you connect a laptop to this connector (this is what the included USB-C cable is for), the system instantly launches the ROG Remix application, and the outline LED backlighting is activated inside the box. Actually, here you understand that we have one more hidden accessory – a sampler. With the touch buttons on the plexiglass lid, you can create your own mixes in the ROG Remix app. The touch panel allows you to play and pause the current track, speed up and slow down the playback speed, and also use a low-pass filter, which is able to cut off high-frequency content by setting the spectrum border, at which the cut-off occurs. Six large buttons are responsible for playing 18 recorded samples for this accessory. You can switch between the lists of samples by alternately pressing the triangle-shaped button. In general, not a bad toy for those who are fond of music, but the average user will most likely abandon it in a couple of evenings.
The laptop power button is located on the right above the keyboard. It is made of glass and has the shape of an asymmetrical hexagon. It has a built-in fingerprint sensor for quickly unlocking the ROG Zephyrus G14 Alan Walker Special Edition using a scan of the fingerprints registered in the system. The scanner works without problems. Turning on the computer takes about 13 seconds, which is within the normal range for a solution on an SSD M.2 drive.
Most of the base inside is occupied by the keyboard, which is slightly recessed into the case. Regardless, the keycaps are about 1mm above the rest of the base. The influence of the collaboration was also reflected in the color palette of the keyboard. The ESC, Enter and Right Shift buttons are highlighted in light blue. Some of the functional buttons are colored in light gray, and the other in dark gray. However, most of the caps are still black. Most of the attention is drawn to the A and W buttons, which are painted blue on the sides, and the top is in Latin style in the style of the Alan Walker logo. The keys themselves are pleasant to the touch. The keyboard travel is 1.7 mm, which is undoubtedly a plus when typing.
Naturally, there is no digital block in this case. But there is a dedicated block of arrows, although the sizes of the buttons are much smaller than usual. Additional buttons PageUp, PageDown, Home and End are assigned to them, which work in combination with the FN button.
Above the keyboard, there are four additional buttons that are responsible for adjusting the sound, turning on / off the microphone and quick access to the ASUS Armory Crate app.
The keyboard is equipped with AURA RGB lighting, which has three levels of brightness and is adjustable by the FN + F2 / F3 keyboard shortcut, and FN + F4 allows you to change the lighting effect. In the dark, it does not dazzle, and it is enough to use it comfortably in the dark.
The touchpad is small here. Its dimensions are 103 x 58 mm. The surface of the touchpad is made of glass with a satin finish. It is very pleasant to the touch, and the sensor perfectly fulfills all commands and supports multi-finger gesture control. The bottom corners are pressed through and mimic the main mouse buttons.
FILLING, BATTERY, OPERATION AND TESTS
The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15 that came to us for the test is built on the basis of a 7-nanometer AMD Ryzen 9 5900HS processor, clocked at 3.0 GHz. The processor is 8-core and operates in 16 threads and 16 MB of L3 cache, and the maximum frequency is 4600 MHz. TDP of the central processor – 45 W.
There are two video adapters in the laptop: an AMD Radeon RX Vega 8 accelerator built into the CPU with 512 MB of video memory and a discrete NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Laptop card with 4 GB of GDDR6 memory. The TDP of this GPU is 65 W.
The laptop has two memory modules of 8 GB each (operating at 1600 MHz in dual-channel mode) with a maximum frequency of 3200 MHz from Samsung. One module is soldered on the board, and the second can be replaced if desired. The internal drive in the test sample was played by a 1 terabyte NVMe SSD from Samsung. There are no additional slots for SSD in this device, but if necessary, you can replace the one that is.
The disk speed in Crystal Disk Mark was 2934 MB / s for reading and 1699 MB / s for writing. The AS SDD test, as usual, shows more modest results – 2590 MB / s for reading and 1189 MB / s for writing. In idle, the temperature of the disk was kept in the range of 50-53 degrees, and with short-term heavy loads, the temperature readings reached 81 degrees.
The ROG Zephyrus G14 uses a 76Wh Li-ion battery. A full charge will last for 9-10 hours of normal use (at 50% screen brightness and with Wi-Fi turned off), such as surfing the Internet, working with documents, watching videos and listening to music. In active gaming (efficiency) mode, the laptop runs for about 80-90 minutes. Maximum performance is achieved only in Turbo mode, which is available when the power supply is connected. You can control modes, as well as monitor temperature and performance data, through the ASUS Armory Crate App. Boost Charge lets you charge your ROG Zephyrus G14 Alan Walker Special Edition up to 50% in 30 minutes.
In standard mode, when idle, NWiNFO64 shows the following temperatures on average:
- CPU – 52 ° C
- GPU core – 49 ° C
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Laptop – 49 ° C
- SAMSUNG MZVLQ1T0HBLB-00B00 – 44 ° C
Under long maximum load in benchmarks, the notebook CPU heats up to 93 ° C, and averaged 78 ° C under load.
In the multi-threaded test Cinebench R23, the processor was able to score 12035 points, and the frequency remained in the range from 3.0 to 4.6 GHz. In a single-threaded CPU, it was able to earn 1461 points at an operating frequency of 3.2 to 4.6 GHz.
In graphics tests, the RTX 3050 Ti performs rather ambiguously. All tests were carried out in performance mode (Turbo) of the system with power on.
In the Superposition benchmark test on the Unigine 2 engine at 1080p at extreme settings, the system showed from 18 to 29 frames, while in the optimized 4K mode, the GPU was able to show from 27 to 40 frames.
The second test was the Chinese benchmark Boundary, which is based on the upcoming tactical online shooter of the same name in a space setting. This test uses ray tracing technology. The test was carried out with two resolution settings – 1080 and 1440p – with tracing and DLSS in quality and ultra-performance modes:
- 1080p, RTX, DLSS Quality – 36 FPS (from 13 to 177 FPS)
- 1080p, RTX, DLSS Ultra Performance – 87.9 FPS (19 to 249 FPS)
- 1440p, RTX, DLSS Quality – 23 FPS (from 2 to 115 FPS)
- 1440p, RTX, DLSS Ultra Performance – 58.4 FPS (13 to 168 FPS)
In the already traditional gaming benchmark Final Fantasy XV Windows Edition, the device managed to get good results:
- 1440p, High – 3763 (Standard)
- 1080p, High – 5321 (Fairly High)
Decent figures were also obtained in the fresh performance test of Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker, which also ran in two common resolutions at maximum settings:
- 1440p, Max – 9175 (High)
- 1080p, Max – 13273 (Very High)
The system was also tested in the in-game tests of Forza Horizon 4, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Gears 5 in Full HD and 2K resolutions:
- Race from Playground at maximum graphics settings was able to produce an average of 37 FPS in 2K and 55 FPS in Full HD.
- Gears 5 with the ultra settings and the ultra texture pack installed showed an average frame rate of 43 FPS at 1440p and 59 FPS at 1080p.
The in-game RDR2 benchmark was run at ultra settings with TAA anti-aliasing and ended up with an average of 35 FPS in Full HD. The discrete card had too little memory to run in 2K resolution.
Next, we tested the laptop for 1080p performance directly in gameplay:
-
Прошлогодний DOOM Eternal мы протестировали на настройках графики “Высокий” из-за ограниченного количества дискретной видеопамяти со сглаживанием DLSS в режиме “Быстродействие”. Настройка лучей была заблокирована игрой, и связано это, скорее всего, тоже с недостатком памяти. В среднем частота кадров в данном динамичном шутере на первом уровне “Ад на земле” держалась на отметке в 39 кадров в секунду.
-
Далее мы испытали Control от Remedy. Проект запускался в разрешении 1080p на максимальных настройках графики с RTX и DLSS с разрешением рендеринга 540p. При этих настройках картинка на экране ноутбука выглядит хорошо, а средняя частота в игре на данных настройках держалась на отметке в 43 кадра.
-
Наконец, мы также испытали Cyberpunk 2077 и проверили игру на высоких настройках графики с включёнными отражениями при помощи трассировки и DLSS в режиме “Ультра-производительность”. В городе система выдаёт в среднем 38 FPS, а в динамических сценах во время сражений в закрытых локациях средний показатель находился на отметке в 43 FPS.
Что касается показателей шума, то ноутбук практически не слышно в тихом режиме при комнатном уровне шума в 25-30 дБ. При сильных нагрузках начинает работать мощное охлаждение, и аппарат становится шумным, а корпус в области клавиатуры сильно греется. Средний уровень шума под нагрузкой в режиме турбо составляет 50-52 дБ, что чуть выше средних пределов для игровых ноутбуков. При максимальной громкости динамиков гул вентилятора всё же будет слышно на фоне, так что лучше играть в наушниках. При игре от батареи в режиме эффективности уровень шума держится в районе 40 дБ.
TOTAL
ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 Alan Walker Special Edition – это ноутбук, созданный для фанатов электронной музыки. Он отлично подойдёт для тех, кто любит создавать миксы, а также любителям стоять у пульта в клубах или на вечеринках, так как одним своим видом будет привлекать окружающих. С другой стороны, его вряд ли назовёшь мощным игровым решением, так как 3050 Ti, установленная в нём, имеет слабую производительность. От ограниченного издания ноутбука ожидаешь чего-то более мощного за столь недешёвый прайс. С другой стороны, для работы и просмотра фильмов в дороге он очень хорош, благодаря большой автономности, компактности и достаточно небольшому весу. В целом перед нами устройство от фанатов и для фанатов, которое в любом случае раскупят, так как тираж будет очень ограничен.
Author: Sergey Dyakonenko (Madnfs)
Read also: Turned on, installed games and enjoy: Review of gaming PC ASUS ROG Strix GA15 G15DK-R5800X145T…
