Asus ROG Strix G16 (2025) Review

Gaming laptops are ever a equilibrium betwixt price, performance, and portability. The Asus ROG Strix G16 manages to find a bully equilibrium betwixt each three. Though a fewer much plan updates would beryllium welcome, its RTX 50-series graphics and Ryzen 9 9955HX3D processor signifier a potent operation that delivers bully gaming show for the money.

Asus ROG Strix G16 - Design and Features

If I asked you to representation a “gaming laptop”, there’s a bully accidental thing similar the Asus ROG Strix G16 would travel to mind. A batch of its plan plays into the stereotypes but falls into the mediate with however acold it takes them. It isn’t bladed oregon light, measuring 13.94 x 10.39 x 1.2 inches and weighing 5.51 pounds. It has a agleam RGB keyboard and beforehand LED portion to overgarment your table successful colored light. And the benignant is assertive with a large ROG oculus connected the lid and plentifulness of hard angles and “Republic of Gamers” debossed connected the hinge.

The strategy is beautiful, if a spot excessively akin to past year’s version. Big plan changes are hardly a request for a large gaming laptop, but the Intel mentation of the 2025 Strix G16 has immoderate meaningful upgrades that could power which whitethorn beryllium the champion fit. While surely not shabby, this mentation offers an improved enactment of ports (Thunderbolt 5 and an other USB Type-A), upgraded WiFi 7 compatibility, wraparound RGB lighting, and includes a larger trackpad.

The AMD strategy I’m reviewing comes with 2 USB 3.2 Type-A ports, 2 Type-C USB 4 ports, a full-size HDMI 2.1 video out, an RJ45 ethernet jack, and a 3.5mm audio combo port. Only 1 of the USB 4 ports tin beryllium utilized for charging, dissimilar the Intel version, and some Type-A ports are connected the close side, which tin get successful the mode of the rodent with trailing wires oregon larger dongles.

The AMD mentation is nary slouch, either. Outfitted with a Ryzen 9 9955HX3D processor and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, it has some the brains and brawn to tally the latest AAA games astatine a precocious framerate. It comes with 32GB of DDR5 RAM and a 2TB NVMe SSD for accelerated load times and speedy multitasking. Both the representation and retention tin beryllium upgraded and tin beryllium accessed easy by unscrewing and removing the backmost panel.

The “X3D” successful the processor is important and points towards the imaginable amended gaming show acknowledgment to its 3D V-Cache design. Broadly speaking, you tin deliberation of a processor’s cache arsenic its ain idiosyncratic RAM supply, keeping the astir important accusation information disposable for accelerated access. Usually, these representation dies are laid retired connected a level plane, but the G16’s Ryzen 9 9955HX3D stacks them vertically, lowering latency for improved performance. Compared to the modular Ryzen 9 9955HX, the 9955X3D besides doubles the full magnitude of L3 cache bringing the full to 128MB. In short, this variant tin entree more, and much quickly, which straight translates to amended gaming performance.

Keeping that hardware chill is 1 of the astir important factors successful performance. Unlike the Intel model, which received a caller vapor enclosure cooler this generation, the AMD mentation features the aforesaid three-fan, vigor tube plan arsenic past year. It besides uses liquid metallic connected the graphics paper to assistance support temperatures low. Air is drawn successful done vents connected the bottommost and done the keyboard and exhausts retired the backmost and sides. When the fans ramp up to afloat speed, you tin decidedly consciousness the vigor connected your rodent hand, but I didn’t find it uncomfortable.

While it would person been bully to spot the aforesaid upgrades Team Blue received, the existing strategy works good capable to debar thermal throttling. After aggregate benchmarks, I recorded a highest CPU somesthesia of 85C and a highest GPU somesthesia of 87C successful turbo mode. Though the strategy is susceptible of moving silently astatine idle, it decidedly gets large capable portion gaming that it whitethorn fuss anyone sitting nearby.

There’s nary OLED surface connected the G16, which comes arsenic a spot of a astonishment fixed that galore of its competitors bash (see the Gigabyte Aorus Master 16 and Razer Blade 16). There’s nary mini-LED either, truthful HDR isn’t an option. It inactive gets plentifulness agleam astatine astir 500-nits and offers vibrant and comparatively close colour reproduction, truthful everything from games to editing YouTube videos looks reliably good. If you don’t attraction astir gaming successful HDR oregon privation to debar burn-in risk, it’s a coagulated enactment and helps the terms enactment reasonable.

Instead of OLED, the show offers a 1600p solution and a accelerated 240Hz refresh rate. This solution offers a mediate crushed betwixt clarity and performance. At 16 inches, this translates to 189 pixels per inch (PPI), which appears crisp and elaborate successful some inactive images and games. It besides doesn’t necessitate an RTX 5090 oregon debased settings to deed 60 FPS oregon higher successful astir games. It won’t vie with OLED successful responsiveness, but its 240Hz refresh complaint is surely up to the task for competitory play and reduces question blur and input lag that mightiness springiness an force the advantage.

The keyboard and trackpad are conscionable fine. The keys person bully tactility and aren’t mushy, but deficiency the crispness of competitors similar the HP Omen Max 16 oregon adjacent Asus’s ain ROG Zephyrus G16. They bash connection programmable lighting and customizable macro buttons on the apical row, though.

The trackpad is connected the smaller broadside astatine 3.4 x 5.1 inches but is inactive ample capable to easy usage and allowed maine to debar activating it with my palms. The trackpad besides features a built-in fig pad enactment that tin beryllium activated by clicking the precocious close corner. When pressed, a fig pad is illuminated, allowing you to property numbers alternatively of moving the cursor. This tin beryllium convenient but much than erstwhile I activated it by mishap and had to property aggregate times to get it to crook off.

The speakers get comparatively large and debar distortion astatine each but the highest level. They besides connection a astonishing magnitude of bass, truthful games and movies dependable fuller and much affluent than laptops typically are. A gaming headset volition inactive connection a superior experience, particularly if you’re trying to perceive force footsteps, but you could decidedly usage the built-in speakers and person a bully clip extracurricular of competitory games.

The strategy comes with a 1080p webcam, but it’s thing peculiar and doesn’t enactment Windows Hello facial recognition. While it’s not a marque oregon interruption feature, it’s a bully convenience and disappointing to spot near retired here.

Finally, we travel to artillery life. The G16 comes with a 90 WHr artillery capacity, truthful you won’t tally into immoderate issues taking it connected a plane. To trial its uptime, I enactment it done Procyon’s artillery beingness test, which simulates mixed-use for productivity. In this test, it lasts 5 hours and 12 minutes. Gaming connected artillery is expectedly acold lower, averaging astir an hr and 10 minutes. The strategy comes with a 220W powerfulness brick, which adds different lb oregon truthful to the system’s full weight, but if you’re readying connected gaming, you’ll decidedly privation to transportation it with you.

You tin besides complaint the strategy done 1 of its USB-C ports astatine up to 100-watts. I recovered this to beryllium precise inconsistent, however. Even with the RTX 5070 Ti wholly disabled, the strategy acceptable to Silent and Eco GPU mode successful Armoury Crate, and Windows acceptable to prioritize artillery life, it still wouldn’t complaint consistently. After troubleshooting antithetic chargers and cables, it appears that it whitethorn beryllium a bug related to artillery attraction settings successful the MyAsus application, though I can’t beryllium sure. I americium definite that the strategy shouldn’t person been draining moving murphy settings with brightness acceptable to minimum, though.

Asus ROG Strix G16 - Software

The G16 relies connected a operation of Armoury Crate and MyAsus to customize its antithetic settings. MyAsus is an exertion included connected virtually each modern Asus laptops, adjacent extracurricular of gaming, and is designed to beryllium beginner friendly. It gives you a speedy overview of the system’s cardinal stats and offers a fig of diagnostics to pinpoint the basal origin of antithetic problems that whitethorn arise. The bundle besides provides a scope of options that are mostly doubled-up successful Armoury Crate, but are simpler toggles for things similar Battery Care and Picture Modes.

Armoury Crate is wherever the bulk of the G16’s settings reside and it lone takes a speedy glimpse betwixt the apps to spot that it’s importantly much analyzable and diagnostic rich. Within, you tin spot the aforesaid diagnostics but importantly expanded to see timepiece speeds and temperatures. The location leafage offers each of your astir communal settings, specified arsenic your existent show mode (Windows, Silent, Performance, Turbo, and Manual) and respective shortcuts similar disabling the Windows support to get gaming faster. Clicking Manual mode allows you to dial successful your ain overclock, but similar astir laptops, determination truly isn’t overmuch headroom extracurricular of the preset modes.

Clicking done the tabs connected the left, however, and you’ll find settings for lighting, remapping keys, configuring the GPU show mode, changing the representation preset, and more. There’s adjacent a wallpaper tool, a crippled launcher, and arsenic an update instrumentality truthful you tin ever beryllium definite you’re moving the latest drivers.

There’s a batch present and it’s not the champion presented, but it’s besides the nonstop aforesaid we’ve seen connected ROG laptops for respective years. If you’ve utilized it before, you’ll cognize what to expect. If not, hole to instrumentality immoderate clip to research each tab successful depth.

Asus ROG Strix G16 - Performance

The Strix G16 has the on-paper specs to connection large gaming performance, but arsenic with immoderate laptop, there’s much astatine play than elemental specs. Temperatures, wattages, timepiece speeds, and however agelong it’s capable to support them each travel into play.

To get an thought of what you should really expect for performance, I ran the strategy done a artillery of synthetic and real-world gaming tests. These tests are tally connected each of our gaming laptops and each is designed to measure a definite quality, similar ray tracing show with and without DLSS. All tests are performed astatine Ultra settings unless different noted and are conducted astatine some autochthonal solution and 1080p oregon the equivalent for its facet ratio.

Beginning with synthetics, the G16 performs well, which isn’t astonishing fixed the precocious its beefy processor. Its RTX 5070 Ti graphics are nary slouch either, which is besides represented here. Obviously, if you put successful a strategy with a higher-tier graphics card, you’ll spot immoderate gains, but the G16 sits successful a saccharine spot betwixt terms and performance.

Looking astatine real-world gaming benchmarks, the Ryzen 9 9955HX3D gets to flex its musculus a spot more. While the biggest benefits tin beryllium seen astatine 1200p, the G16 besides sees a show vantage astatine 1600p. As I’ve tested the strategy implicit the past respective weeks, I’ve been capable to bash anecdotal investigating with Ready oregon Not, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Battlefield 6. While I don’t person a modular Ryzen 9 9955HX to trial against, the G16 averaged betwixt 7 and 16% FPS higher than the ROG Zephyrus G16 and G14, each with the aforesaid GPU, erstwhile tested astatine the aforesaid resolutions successful these games.

Given the charging issues I experienced, I had to transportation the powerfulness ceramic immoderate clip I needed the strategy for much than a fewer hours without worrying astir utilizing powerfulness redeeming options which tin little performance. The value of the strategy is already astatine the enactment for being excessively bulky and that pushes it implicit arsenic a regular carry.

With that aside, the strategy itself is reliable extracurricular of its middle-of-the-road artillery life. The chassis is coagulated and the hinge is stable. The keyboard is decent capable that it doesn’t basal retired negatively and the trackpad, portion connected the tiny side, works well. The surface and speakers are definite standouts, and with hardware astatine the level it offers, there’s small that it cannot do. It’s not a standout successful immoderate ways, but if you don’t need features similar best-in-class artillery beingness oregon other ports, it’s a bully prime for maximizing in-game framerates.

Christopher Coke has been a regular contributor to IGN since 2019 and has been covering games and exertion since 2013. He has covered tech ranging from gaming controllers to graphics cards, gaming chairs and gaming monitors, headphones, IEMs, and much for sites specified arsenic MMORPG.com, Tom’s Hardware, Popular Science, USA Today’s Reviewed, and Popular Mechanics. Find Chris connected Twitter @gamebynight.