Asus read the room. The ROG Zephyrus G16, although an excellent gaming laptop in its own right, had one big problem. It came with soldered RAM, and for the most sensible configuration of the laptop, that was limited to only 16GB. With the introduction of AMD’s new Zen 5 mobile CPUs, Asus went back and addressed the problem.
The updated Zephyrus G16 isn’t too different from the model we saw earlier this year. It’s using the same thin aluminum chassis, and it comes with the same gorgeous 240Hz OLED display. The main difference is under the hood, with the laptop sporting a Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 CPU. For those not up to date on AMD’s new mobile naming scheme, this is a high-end chip running on the latest Zen 5 architecture.
Although a new processor is exciting, small changes elsewhere make the Zephyrus G16 much more enticing. For starters, Asus got rid of the models packing an Nvidia RTX 4080 and RTX 4090. This is a thin and light gaming laptop, and frankly, the design just can’t handle that level of GPU. Instead, you have the choice between an RTX 4070 and RTX 4060.
The big change comes with the RTX 4070 configuration, which now comes with 32GB of LPDDR5X memory. The previous version of this laptop with an Intel Meteor Lake CPU only came with 16GB. The memory is faster, too, with speeds up to 7,500 MT/s.
Elsewhere, Asus updated the wireless connection to Wi-Fi 7, and it’s offering this new model in a white color option. This isn’t quite a full refresh of the G16, but it’s certainly more than a hardware swap. It’s just a shame we didn’t see this option when Asus released the Zephyrus G16 earlier this year.
For now, it seems the updates are exclusive to the AMD configuration of this laptop. That’s not ideal if you were in the market for one of Intel’s CPUs, which were the only option on the Zephyrus G16 previously. On the plus side, this refresh should mean that prices on Meteor Lake configurations drop as Asus clears out old inventory.
Asus says the updated G16 will be available in July — on Best Buy — and prices are slightly higher. You’ll spend $2,300 for an RTX 4070 configuration and $1,900 for an RTX 4060 configuration.
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