Hands-on with the ASUS ROG Strix G16 G614FR

The newly updated ASUS ROG Strix G16 G614FR is built for those who want to game out loud. Featuring a bold strip of RGB, an NVIDIA RTX 5070 TI, and a Ryzen 9 9955HX3D processor, this is a laptop designed to crush the competition and make sure those who fell know who came out on top.

Combining an NVIDIA 50 Series GPU with the AMD X3D processor has become fairly common in gaming desktops, but still pretty unusual in laptops, making the Strix G16 a standout laptop before the box has even been opened.

Our video team got their hands on the last generation model and had a great time with it. So when I had the opportunity to sit down with the latest revision, I obviously jumped at the chance. And, I’m pleased to report, it has only gotten better.

Initial Impressions

Without any RGB glowing, the G16 is a gorgeous, sleek piece of hardware. While it’s undeniably thicker than its general-use brethren, it still feels nice and thin, despite packing a 5070 Ti GPU under the hood. The chassis itself offers plenty of venting for fans, but integrates them seamlessly into the design, giving the whole laptop a futuristic, minimalist edge.

Opening it up and turning it on, however, reveals how much RGB is tucked into this piece of hardware. Not only does the G16 feature per-key RGB on the keyboard, but it also has a wide RGB light strip at the front of the laptop, fully customizable via ASUS’ Armoury Crate application; you can even turn the RGB all off and give the G16 a reasonable chance of passing for a more traditional laptop.

The keyboard is a fairly traditional membrane affair, common for gaming laptops. However, the keys are a bit firmer than most laptop keyboards I’ve used, giving it more of a high-quality feel. I’ve typed most of this review on the G16 and my appreciation for the keyboard has only grown as the wordcount has.

Also included is a number pad built into the track pad; simply rest your finger on the “NUMLK” at the corner of the track pad for one second and the whole thing lights up, removing mouse functionality but adding a full number pad.

Photo: Jacob Bobo 

Underneath the hood, you have an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, an AMD Ryzen 9 9950HX3D (a mobile version of the 9950X3D, the current gaming CPU champion), 32GB of DDR5-5600 RAM, and a 1TB M.2 SSD. That’s plenty of speed and storage for any gamer, and will double nicely as a college laptop as well. 

And, while it’s got some heft, it’s not the chunk of solid plastic its predecessors were. Even the power brick, relatively big as it may be, feels compact and discreet, easy to slide under a desk. Beyond the barrel jack for the power cable, the G16 has a gigabit ethernet port, one HDMI port, two USB-A 3.2 ports and two USB-C 4.0 ports for a fairly exhaustive set of connection options .

The Screen

Before booting a game or even updating GPU drivers, the screen stands out. A 16-inch screen  tends to be the sweet spot for portability, offering enough screen space to be visible, but not so much that the laptop becomes immovable.

Featuring 500 nits of brightness with 100 DCI-P3 color coverage, we still haven't talked about the 2.5K screen's most exciting feature: a whopping 240Hz refresh rate. For comparison, my once-high-end gaming monitor caps out at 165Hz; nearly 100Hz less.

If you’re not sure why that’s important, the Hz of a monitor directly relates to how many frames are actually visible. Even if Overwatch 2 is running at 240FPS, if your monitor has a 60Hz refresh rate, you’re only seeing a quarter of the frames. A 240Hz refresh rate updates 240 times a second, so you’ll actually be able to see all the frames an ultra-powerful GPU, like the included 5070 Ti, can produce. Which will really matter when we start…

Gaming on the Strix G16

The G16 offers two distinct ways to game. While I was playing around with my old standby Ultrakill while on battery power, the G16 disabled the 5070 Ti and set a hard 60FPS limit to the game. The game still performed flawlessly, even in this limited state. And while I can’t speak too much to the battery life — I plugged it in shortly after my initial test — this mode should help keep you gaming on the go longer, but I wouldn’t expect extraordinary battery life from any gaming laptop.

Plug the G16 in (or manually override the battery saving mode) and the laptop opens up. My Ultrakill FPS immediately jumped to well over 200 and stayed there thanks to its cutting-edge graphics card. NVIDIA’s RTX 5070 Ti is a potent GPU, not just because it’s got the latest hardware, but because it also gives access to DLSS 4, frame generation software that can vastly improve the frame rate and smoothness of your game. Check out our Cyberpunk 2077 benchmarks below for all the details: