MAY 2020 PCWorld 55promising.
We also wanted to see if the laptop’s
keyboard would get excessively hot, so we
shot a thermal image near the end of our
gaming workout. The laptop’s keyboard was
fairly comfortable, with no sections climbing
above 105 degrees Fahrenheit.
We should also say that fan noise with the
laptop set to Turbo mode under very heavy
CPU loads was pleasant and almost hard to
hear in a daytime home environment. Gaming,
however, pushed the fans to very high
speeds. While not offensive, it was borderline
loud, so put on your gaming headset, folks.BATTERY LIFE
Our last report covers all-important battery
life. Your mileage will vary greatly depending
on what you do, of course. Our rundown test
involves looping a 4K video using Windows
10’s Movies & TV app. We set the screen
brightness to 250–260 nits, with airplane
mode on and earbuds connected (with
volume at midrange), much as you’d set the
laptop while watching a movie on an airplane
with the cabin lights on. For comparison we
have a stack of gaming laptops, which ran
from criminally bad to decent battery life.
We’d slot the ROG Zephyrus G14 right
into very good—for a gaming laptop—with
just over six hours of run time. Considering its
smaller battery, that’s actually quite decent.
Obviously, if you play a game, expect
maybe 90 minutes of life, if you’re lucky. Beat
on the CPU harshly, and you probably
shouldn’t expect more than a couple of
hours. Browsing will also likely cut life in half.
The key message is there’s just enough
staying power in the G14 to make it actually
quite usable.Our video rundown tests puts the Zephyrus G14 in
the range of decently good runtime.
Gigabyte Aero 15X
Core i7-7700HQ
Gigabyte Aero 15Core i7-7700HQMCore i7-8750HSI GS75 StealthAsus ROG Zephyrus G14
Ryzen 9 4900HS
MCore i7-9750HSI GS65AlienwCore i7-9750Hare M15 R2MCore i9-9880HSI GE65 RaiderDell G7Core i7-9750HAlienwCore i7-7820HKare 17 R4Origin PC EVOCore i9-8950HK -17SAlienw51m R1are Area
Core i9-9900K
Acer Predator Helios 700
Core i9-9980HK
Acer Predator Helios 500
Ryzen 7 27004K Battery Life
MinutesLONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE41432339927441030138322316313613 412272