Compact gaming laptops can be immensely convenient thanks to their portability, but it’s really difficult to pull it off successfully. Companies have to balance performance, design, features, and battery life with size constraints, and that often comes with compromises. Out of every attempt, though, one company has done the absolute best. The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 is an insanely good gaming laptop that happens to boast a 14-inch display, and its RTX 4060 configuration (perfect for 1440p gaming) is on sale for just $1,199.99 at Best Buy.
The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 is a brilliant compact gaming laptop, and this configuration is mostly well-balanced. However, 512GB of SSD storage is on the small side, and you may want more than 16GB of RAM depending on what you’re doing. Fortunately, ASUS has a detailed guide on how to upgrade the storage and memory on your ROG Zephyrus G14, and we have recommendations for the best components to get. While you’re at it, you might as well get a good gaming mouse and headset, because you’ll need those, too.
TLDR: The ROG Zephyrus G14 has one M.2 slot, so you’ll need to replace it to upgrade the existing SSD. That slot supports up to PCIe Gen 4.0 SSDs. You have two DDR5 SODIMM slots, with one taken up by the existing 16GB. The laptop supports up to 32GB of RAM in total, so your best bet is adding another 16GB stick in the second slot (ASUS recommends minimum 4,800MHz for RAM speed).
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The best balance of power and portability in the business
ASUS makes a ton of… Well, everything PC related. The company makes laptops and desktops (gaming and otherwise), PC components, monitors, even gaming handhelds and phones. Not everything the company churns out is top-notch, but the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 is consistently one of the best 14-inch gaming laptops on the market, offering a better balance between portability, power, and price than competitors from Razer and Alienware.
This configuration isn’t the mostly wildly powerful configuration of the Zephyrus G14 (this laptop can get crazy fast), but it is perfect for most PC gamers with capable hardware and a reasonable price (even before this discount, which shaves an extra $400 off). With this laptop, you’re getting a very powerful AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS CPU to handle all your processing needs (and then some), combined with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 with 8GB of VRAM, 16GB of DDR5 RAM, and 512GB of PCIe Gen 4.0 SSD storage.
That combination of hardware is more than powerful enough to take advantage of this laptop’s 14-inch, QHD 1600p display with a 165Hz refresh rate. That display looks great, too, with up to 500 nits of brightness and vivid colors. You can play all the best PC games with medium-to-high settings pretty comfortably with this setup, and the Zephyrus G14 does a fantastic job with thermal management despite its diminutive stature.
All of this is wrapped up in a premium, immaculately constructed chassis made of aluminum, magnesium alloy, and plastic (I just love this white color, which stands out in a crowd of drab grey and black laptops). It weighs less than 4lbs and is less than 19mm thick; with thin bezels around that 14-inch display, this is a highly compact laptop that can fit into almost any laptop bag or backpack.
For ports, you have two high-speed USB Type-C 3.2 ports (one with Power Delivery), two USB Type-A 3.2 ports, an HDMI 2.0 port, a 3.5mm audio jack, and even a microSD card slot. In the box you get a 240W barrel plug charger to keep that battery topped off, although this laptop actually has decent longevity as long as you’re not pushing that GPU away from the outlet. You also get 1-month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate included with your purchase, helping you get started with hundreds of high-quality PC games.
Don’t worry, the fun doesn’t stop there. Dolby Atmos bolsters the onboard speakers, Windows Hello biometric authentication helps with faster logins, and the backlit keyboard features customizable RGB lighting. Sure, you could spend far more to get ASUS’ most powerful gaming laptop, but most people would be best served by the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 (2023), which can pull double-duty as a gaming PC and an everyday laptop. It’s not just the best 14-inch gaming laptops, it’s one of the best gaming laptops period… And I really wish I had one on my desk right now.
