ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16: Intel Ultra 9 185H, 16" QHD+ OLED 240Hz, RTX 4070, 1TB SSD Expired

Hundy or so more you could probably research and find a 4080… 30 percent faster

I think on this one you are paying for the display, it's a little special compared to average.

It looks nice and all, the OLED screen is stunning, but in typical Asus fashion it runs really loud and hot. G-helper couldn't even help it. Plus the screen wobble pissed me off. It's not as bad as some of the YT reviews I've seen, but I know it's enough to annoy a lot of people. Plus ram is soldered, can't upgrade it at all.

If this was the 4080 version with the better cooling solution that they skimped on with this 4070 model then I would be tempted for sure, but not with this as it is. Way overpriced.

The problem is the 4080 will probably never be discounted until maybe black Friday and even then, only a couple hundred. The m16 and g14 higher rtx models barely got discounts last year. As is, the 4080 model is already $2700. That's almost $1k more

I hear conflicting things about the heat and noise. Do you have first hand experience? And was it months ago or recent? The core ultra laptops have had wild reviews about battery life and heat on numerous laptops. The very first ones gained like 20% multicore performance after a bios update.

GeForce Now is a great idea if you need portable gaming and have good WiFi or ethernet available.

$100 a year.

I feel like generations get suckered into laptop gaming and then realize they're basically thermonuclear space heaters, kind of unreliable, impossible to upgrade. Put the money into your desktop, get a cheap MacBook or whatever else and run GeForce now for portability.

Not good for competitive games and the whole point is when traveling you never know how good the internet is going to be. We're not really there yet.

Still I agree a MacBook is generally better alongside your beefy desktop as long as you're not going to be gone for a long time. But the more time goes on, the more you wish you had your capable gaming machine with you.

Heat: it stays very cool to the touch on the keyboard where your hand/arm is. I don't monitor temps because frankly as long as it's not shutting down I don't care.

Noise: no worse or better than a G14. I didn't mind the noise. I mean who doesn't wear headphones when gaming? But I'm telling you with these speakers you don't even need them.

The vapor chamber might be a little quieter but you're not going to upgrade for that (at least I don't recommend it) - you're going to upgrade for the 4080 and 32GB RAM.

If the specs work for you, don't be worried about heat/noise. My G14 feels like lava is about to spew from it at times. I am pretty sure the G16 feels cooler to the touch due to the aluminum chassis that naturally dissipates heat better.

Yes you can spend $300 more and get a Legion Pro 7i with 4080 and get about 50-60% better performance or more in games. The tradeoff is it's about 2 pounds heavier with a worse screen. Legions have excellent keyboards and although they switched to plastic for the trackpad this year, reviews say its fine. Speakers supposedly very good on the Legion as well which is important to me. But I know for a fact they're extremely good on the G16.

So yeah, you're paying for the size/weight and the screen on the G16. Everything else, you're far better off with the Legion. Is the screen worth it? Honestly outside of gaming probably not. OLED is great and all but it's not the end game. Text still looks best on standard subpixel layouts - which is not a fault of OLED, it's Windows poor handling of the situation.

But the G16 is definitely THE MacBook of the PC gaming world - more-so than Razer Blade IMO because of size and weight alone.

The Legion is what your rational brain wants but the G16 is what your heart wants.

It's funny that you mention the legion pro 7i, which I returned last year. Maybe my brain works different, but I have championed oled for years and only "settled" for the legion pro because the lack of oled gaming laptops then. I had poor experiences with regular gaming laptops in the past, which the legion pro was the spitting image of, but of course the Internet kept on saying it was amazing, the screen was amazing, the sound was amazing, the software was amazing. And everything was a complete lie. I probably will just get the g16 once my credit card arrives and try it out, but the Internet has been utterly useless for this model and for most laptops in general. I am still pretty bitter that multiple YouTube and website reviews claimed the silent mode on the msi ge78hx was the quietest in the field. Reality? Even the msi software reports 3000rpm on idle doing absolutely nothing. It's literally the same loudness a legion pro makes playing a light video game on balanced, but far worse since it ramps up and down. I honestly think it's a giant conspiracy where everyone is drunk on some koolaid. This will be my last attempt.