– Massive battery life improvement on 2026 model due to Intel Panther Lake efficiency
– 2026 model has a brighter OLED screen (especially for HDR) and full-size SD card slot
– 2025 model offers nearly same gaming performance for $600 less
– Price increase across 2026 laptops due to memory crisis, not limited to Asus
– RTX 5070 Ti is still the same GPU; no new Nvidia generation for 2026
Powerful Compact Design Gets a Tune-Up
The ROG Zephyrus G14 is a very powerful compact gaming/multimedia laptop and Asus improved several aspects on the new 2026 model, which we covered comprehensively in our recent review. These improvements include the switch to a current Panther Lake CPU from Intel, and while the overall performance is not much better compared to the previous AMD chip, we saw a massive improvement of the battery runtime thanks to improved efficiency.
Display and Connectivity Upgrades
Asus also replaced the microSD-card slot with a full-size slot and updated the OLED screen. It still features the 2.8K resolution with 120 Hz and accurate colors, but the brightness (espesially in HDR scenarios) was drastically improved. This is particularily good news if you are a fan of HDR gaming.
Price vs Performance Conundrum
While the new model is definately a better overall package, there is also the issue of the price and the new version is around $600 more expensive than the old 2025 model, which is still a great option. You pretty much get the same gaming performance from the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti combined with the AMD CPU and you still get the great chassis with excellent speakers and one of the best keyboards thanks to 1.7 mm travel.
- Old model config: GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, AMD CPU
- Chassis: Excellent speakers, 1.7 mm key travel
- OLED panel: Not as bright, but image quality is still superb
- Old model price: $2599 with 32 GB and RTX 5070 Ti
Recurring Market Pressures
This is a reacurring issue right now and not only limited to Asus. New 2026 model prices are affected by the memory crisis and we basically see price increases across the board, while the new products often only offer small improvements or are even worse in terms of memory and SSD capacities. Gaming laptops in particular are in a difficult spot, because Nvidia did not release a new GPU generation at the beginning of the year (except for the recent refresh of the RTC 5070 with 12 GB VRAM).
Leave a Reply