ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 Laptop: Ryzen 9 7940HS, 14" QHD, 512GB SSD, RTX 4060 Expired

Question of the year. Can't go wrong with either. I personally prefer the white color of this rig but slim 5 is the shiny new toy in the mkt vs this was released a few years past.

Slim 5 16's screen isn't that great but 14 has Oled 400 nits vs this one is wqxga 500 nits. If you work outside in sunny or bright weather, get this one otherwise people prefer OLEDs for color fidelity. 400 nits is a decent enough brightness although i prefer atleast 500 nits.

This one is a bit more 'gamey' looking than slim 5 if you travel a lot & it matters.

Got an opened box fair for 923 or 1014 after taxes in CA. Machine looks new.

I tried to downgrade to windows 10. Most work except sound

Don't you lose dual channel this way?
*Edit* disregard, saw @jazzespresso's answer above. Thanks!

either way its irrelevant. I have a legion 7 slim that still has 16gb of ram (havent bothered to upgrade it) and guess what? It works just fine at everything i ask of it. I play FH5, Rocket League, Minecraft, Warzone, Fortnite. And they all run very well. 16gb is enough

Baldie's post, "saying 16gb soldered + 32gb stick", what happens here 16x16 will be dual channel, but remaining RAM will be on single channel which won't take advantage of having 48gb total RAM, you don't see performance improvements, so having 16gb soldered + 16gb stick would indeed give you perfect 32gb dual channel RAM configuration and better performance.

Finally got to open the machine. Installed an extra 16gb and comes out to be 32gb with the built in stick. Added 2TB NVME. Swapped out the wifi card with Intel 210 6e wifi card. The machine works great now.

I gave up and ended up with reinstalling windows 11 instead of trying to make windows 10 works. It runs kinda warm when gaming.

Finally got to open the machine. Installed an extra 16gb and comes out to be 32gb with the built in stick. Added 2TB NVME. Swapped out the wifi card with Intel 210 6e wifi card. The machine works great now.

I gave up and ended up with reinstalling windows 11 instead of trying to make windows 10 works. It runs kinda warm when gaming.

We had none new in local store, so I tried an open box excellent. After all my testing, even with good results for backlight bleed inspection, I found at the end that part of the keyboard backlighting was not functional. Tried a different "excellent" from another store, and the backlight bleed was really bad. Returned both, and looked at another one that the sore said they had in "excellent" used condition (not listed online) - it also bad backlight bleed, visible at half brightness, with bright store lighting. It would be extremely annoying to use at home.

I fell in love with the first machine, but keyboard issue made me return it. I'd rather pay full price and have a fully working machine (and not have to drop the resale price down the road due to an obvious defect). Now I'm waiting weeks for a new unit to ship. I think it's worth the full $1100 - excellent machine after removing the Asus software, and installing G-Helper in its place. The one I had ran at -30 in the undervolting section of G-Helper, giving me 300Mhz more all-core load in stress tests, and fully stable in prime95. Only drew 4W at idle with screen at half brightness, compared to 10W at 0 brightness in stock, bloated form. 100% brightness, would idle at 7 Watts. Non-idle loads you can't really compare as everyone's software load is different, but I usually cut the numbers in half for light desktop or web usage - that gives me a real world 8-9 hour useful life for productivity.

Also, in Silent mode, the GPU performs about the same as an old desktop GTX 1070. Balanced is about GTX1080, and Performance is about 1080Ti. Also works fine with Thunderbolt 3 hubs on its USB 4 connection. USB-PD at 65W and 100W both worked well, and being able to set the battery to 50% max charge when in desktop mode is great for longevity.

In short - I love this laptop. Lack of RJ45 is my main gripe, beyond the common backlight bleed issue. I just wish that the Legion 14.5 OLED had a memory slot for upgrades. Maybe in a refresh after a couple years...maybe.

Patiently waiting for the new-in-box to arrive.

Is there a need to change out the wifi card, or you just wanted 6e?