For the last few weeks, I’ve been playing around with the ‘ASUS Republic of Gamers Zephyrus G16 2024 GA605 gaming laptop’, and more specifically, the newer series equipped with AMD processors. I tend to favour Intel with my builds, and there’s no real reason for it, but this portable powerhouse has quite possibly swayed my preference.

The minimalistic design is only broken by a diagonal slash across the rear of the monitor panel and the ROG logo in the bottom corner. Controlled by Armoury Crate, the slash is made up of several white LED panels that spring to life as soon as the power button is pressed, and users can choose from a number of preset options, including one that pumps in time with the device’s audio.

The single-zone RGB backlit keyboard is technically a three-quarter size, but the keys themselves are slightly bigger than usual, stretching across the same amount of space as the 16” ROG Nebula Display. Boasting a 2.5K resolution, 240Hz refresh, and an aspect ratio of 16:10, the OLED screen leans well into both gaming and viewing or editing media, particularly with being Pantone Validated and having a DCI-P3 rating of 100%. The colour reproduction is immaculate, and watching movies or playing games is a buttery smooth experience.

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16 2024 GA605 gaming laptop comes with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 series card with support for NVIDIA GeForce RTX Studio; AI-driven performance boosts. The model we received came with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 GPU, with 8GB GDDR6, up to 1655MHz through ROG boost, and delivering up to 321 Trillion Operations Per Second (TOPS) AI. Not only did this increase the graphical performance, but I also feel like it aided in increasing the overall system performance.

This was further supported by the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor, with a 36MB Cache, 12 cores and 24 threads, offering up to 5.1GHz performance, and combined with the AMD XDNA Neural Processor, potentially provides an additional 50 AI TOPS. This doesn’t mean that your flashy new computer will take over other devices in your home, but it does mean that it can off-load some of the more mundane computing tasks to allow the Processor and GPU to focus on the tasks that really matter, such as playing your favourite game on the highest specs with raytracing and DLSS 3 switched on.

Two 16GB LPDDR5X sticks provide ample memory, running at up to 7800 MT/s and supporting dual channel memory, while a 2TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD gives you plenty of space to install the latest First-Person Shooter and keep it up to date. Once you’ve filled that out, there is space to add an additional M.2 drive through the second slot, although this doesn’t appear to be easily accessible by the user, and I wasn’t prepared to pull this one apart.

There are plenty of USB ports, enabling you to connect all of your favourite peripherals, including two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports that offer transfer speeds up to 10Gbps, as well as two USB Type-C ports. One of these is USB 3.2 Gen 2, with DisplayPort and power delivery, also transferring data at up to 10Gbps, and the second is a USB 4, again supporting DisplayPort and power delivery, but allowing up to 40Gbps data speeds.

A single HDMI 2.1 FRL port offers additional connectivity for external monitors, and a 3.5mm Combo jack will connect your favourite set of headphones with Smart Amp Technology, Dolby Atmos, AI noise-cancelling, and Hi-Res certification, but if you’re not using headphones, the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16 2024 GA605 gaming laptop comes with a 3-microphone array built-in, and a 4-speaker (Dual Force Woofer) sound system with Smart Amplifier Technology and two tweeters.

While there’s no RJ45 ethernet port, it does come with Triple band Wi-Fi 7(802.11be), which also supports Bluetooth 5.4, and a 1080p Full-High Definition IR camera will clearly broadcast your likeness to your followers while also allowing you to sign in to your system with a simple glance at the camera. Alternatively, if you’d rather use a dedicated camera to record video or take photos for your content, be it for YouTube or otherwise, an SD card reader, supporting SD Express 7.0, will have you editing and uploading your content faster than you can find the USB cable to connect the camera.

With all of this in mind, it was time to play some games, and I’ve been switching between a couple lately. I’ve taken a bit of a liking to ‘Grey Zone Warfare’, which being in the Alpha state, isn’t the most reliable game when it comes to performance. I can get my regular system to typically maintain close to 60 FPS in FHD, but I do have to drop most of the display settings to medium, and even then, I find it can drop below 15 FPS depending on the area. Keeping the fact that the game is still very early in its development and hasn’t been optimised, the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16 2024 GA605 gaming laptop was able to maintain closer to 80 FPS with the display settings bumped back up to high, and when it dropped, it was still comfortably sitting above 40 FPS.

On the other hand, playing something more refined, such as ‘Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2’ showed some significantly more promising results. Again, my normal PC will comfortably sit around 60 FPS on high display settings, dropping closer to 30 FPS when things start to get a bit more visceral. The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16 2024 GA605 gaming laptop was capable of maintaining closer to 80 FPS on the highest settings, and it only seemed to drop below 60 FPS when the mouse powering my infamously bad Australian Wireless NBN needed a short break. If I bumped the resolution up, taking advantage of the 2.5K screen, I was easily maintaining over 60 FPS, and again, it only seemed to drop when the rodent needed some water.

Bringing AI-supported performance enhancements to the forefront and weighing less than 2KG, the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16 2024 GA605 gaming laptop is a portable powerhouse. Not only does it come equipped with some of the most powerful components on the market, but they are supported by companies constantly developing AI systems, such as NVIDIA GeForce RTX Studio and the AMD XDNA NPU, making the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16 2024 GA605 gaming laptop ideal for both work and play.

Written by: Mathew Lindner