I tested the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 (2026) — it's past mistakes are fixed, but you will have to donate your kidney to afford one

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 is often one of our favorite gaming laptops, though the 2025 model lost us with its expensive price tag, sub-par keyboard, and abysmal battery life.

While the 2026 model does have better battery life to go along with its powerful CPU and GPU performance, lightweight design, and vibrant display, it still suffers from a hefty price tag and disappointing legacy features like the same chiclet keyboard and heavy proprietary power brick.But can the new Zephyrus G16’s premium features make up for its high price tag to become one of our best gaming laptops?

Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 (2026): Cheat sheet

• What is it?: The Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 is a premium, light and thin gaming laptop.
• Who is it for?: Gamers on the go, students, and professionals who need a laptop with a powerful GPU while still being able to commute to and from work or school.
• What does it cost?: Pricing for the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 starts at $3,699
• What do we like?: The Zephyrus G16 is a portable powerhouse with strong CPU and GPU performance, impressive battery life, a sleek design, and vibrant display.
• What don’t we like?: The Zephyrus G16, like all gaming hardware in 2026, has been hit with the same memory shortage price increase which makes it far less affordable for students and gamers. The power brick is also a bit heavy for a commuter laptop.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 (2026): Specs

Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 (2026): The ups

The Zephyrus laptop line has always been premium with the build quality and features to match. The 2026 model is no different, with a sleek design, robust audio, vivid display, strong CPU and GPU performance, and good battery life.

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A sleek gaming machine

Asus hasn’t changed much on the Zephyrus G16’s chassis this generation. So it’s still a slim, easily portable aluminum chassis with a shiny chrome stripe that runs on an angle across the top panel lid. The Asus Republic of Gamers logo is subtly embossed on the lower left-hand corner of the panel, leaving the rest of the design on the more understated side.

Combined with slim display bezels, a smooth keyboard deck, and an edge-to-edge touchpad that takes the entire vertical space between the keyboard and the edge of the palm rest, the inside deck of the laptop is as sleek as the outside panels, maintaining the Zephyrus’ modern aesthetic.

The top-firing quad-speaker audio system features Dolby Atmos tuning and achieves impressive volume with crisp clarity, so you can go without a pair of headphones. The built-in audio is loud enough to be heard over the Zephyrus’ cooling fans, so you don’t need to worry about losing audio entirely while gaming.

The 16-inch OLED display is also on the vibrant side, boasting Pantone validation for color accuracy. While our own testing validated an 80% accuracy for the display, we do expect some variation on OLED panels based on our testing methods compared to the methods used to measure display accuracy used by manufacturers like Asus.

The Zephyrus’s display is also bright, hitting an average SDR brightness of 469 nits, with a peak HDR brightness of 1,052 nits. Whether you’re using the Zephyrus G16 for a Netflix binge or for a visually immersive gaming session, it’s going to be an enjoyable experience.

Stronger CPU and GPU performance

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 (2025) wasn’t exactly a slouch when it came to performance, it just wasn’t quite powerful enough to justify its price tag.Compared to last year’s Zephyrus G16, the 2026 Zephyrus packs a more powerful punch in CPU multicore performance on Geekbench 6 and Handbrake, which is helpful since the 2025 Zephyrus was a bit underwhelming in terms of raw power.

The Zephyrus also gets stronger multicore performance than the MSI Stealth 16 AI+, despite having the same Intel chipset. Even when put against our best premium gaming laptop, the Razer Blade 16 (2026), the Zephyrus comes out with a slight edge on multithreaded performance.

As for the Zephyrus’ GPU performance, things get a bit more complicated. The 2026 Zephyrus scraped together a few more FPS on Cyberpunk 2077 at 1600p compared to the 2025 Zephyrus (which was running at 1440p resolution). The 2026 Zephyrus G16 also benchmarked well when compared to other RTX 5080 gaming laptops like the Razer and Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10.

The Zephyrus G16 trailed only a few FPS behind the to the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i on games like Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Black Myth: Wukong and Cyberpunk at Ultra 1080p settings, though the Razer Blade 16 outperformed both the Legion and Zephyrus G16.

I was easily able to achieve framerates of 200fps or higher on games like Doom: The Dark Ages on Ultra settings at 1600p resolution with DLSS enabled, while native performance without DLSS was around 60fps.

Highly optimized titles like Baldur’s Gate III and Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail also performed well above 100fps even without super sampling. So you are getting proper gaming performance even if the Razer Blade 16 might be just a bit more powerful.

All-day battery life

Gaming laptops are rarely known for having great battery life, but there have been a few notable exceptions over the years. The Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 (2026) is one of those rare gaming laptops that gets over 10 hours of web surfing battery life.

At 150-nits of brightness, the Zephyrus G16 lasted over 13 hours and 45 minutes. That’s an hour longer than the Razer Blade 16 (2026), about 3 hours more battery life than the MSI Stealth 16 AI+, and more than 3x the battery life of the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i.

Things do take a bit of a downturn when it comes to gaming battery life, however. The Zephyrus has just 55 minutes of gaming battery life on the PCMark 10 Gaming battery test, while the MSI Stealth and Razer Blade 16 both have nearly two hours of gaming battery time.

However, you’re unlikely to game on a laptop when running on battery power, so that’s less of a detriment than it could be otherwise. Just make sure to pack your charger, especially if you’re going to be doing a lot of GPU-heavy work.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 (2026): The downs

While the ROG Zephyrus G16 (2026) has plenty to recommend it, all those positives do come with a few downsides. The biggest one is the price-tag. But the new Zephyrus shares a chassis with the 2025 model, which means it has the same lackluster keyboard and hefty proprietary power brick.

Beyond expensive

All tech hardware has become nigh unaffordable, but some laptops have gotten hit by the supply chain price hike worse than others. The ROG Zephyrus was always a pricey, premium gaming laptop that fit into the working professional to STEM student venn diagram. But with a starting price of $3,699 for the RTX 5070 Ti version, it’s hard to see how the 2026 Zephyrus G16 could ever function as a student laptop.

Last year’s Zephyrus G16 at least had a starting configuration that was priced at $2,799. That’s still steep for your average college student but it’s still more affordable than this year’s model which is at least $900 more expensive and comes with less storage capacity than last year’s entry level configuration.

While some of this price hike is due to supply chain issues, the Zephyrus G16 has been steadily increasing in price over the past few years which is beyond the realm of the AI Data Center memory shortage. And that makes the hefty price tag of the 2026 Zephyrus even harder to justify.

Portability stops at the power brick

I’ve always appreciated the svelte design of the Zephyrus G16 and G14 laptops. They’re slim, they’re lightweight, and yet they pack a powerful punch that’s more than enough to do some high-power gaming even when on the road. Thin, portable gaming laptops are among my personal favorites.

But there’s one aspect of the Zephyrus G16 that feels stuck in the past. Between the proprietary AC-port and the heavy 250W charge brick, the Zephyrus G16 is a bit less portable than it appears. While the laptop itself weighs just 4.3 pounds, the power supply itself weighs an additional 1.3 pounds. And that brings the total carry weight of the Zephyrus G16 to 5.6 pounds.

Sure, it gets 13 hours of web-surfing battery life. But if I’m doing anything that will turn on the discrete Nvidia GPU, that battery life expectancy drops through the floor. The gaming battery life of the G16 is only 55 minutes, so the power brick isn’t an optional accessory.

It’d be one thing if Asus used a Thunderbolt 4 port for the G16. But the RTX 5080 is too power hungry for that. And thus we’re still stuck in the dark ages with a hefty external power supply that makes this ultraportable laptop just a little less comfortable to carry on a long commute.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 (2026): Verdict

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 is often one of our favorite gaming laptops, however we were rather disappointed by the 2025 model thanks to its high price tag, sub-par keyboard, and grim battery life.

The 2026 model does fix the battery life issue, but it still suffers from the same lackluster keyboard and heavy proprietary power brick as last year’s model. And it’s even more expensive.

But if you’re looking for a highly commutable, powerful gaming laptop or STEM machine, the Zephyrus G16 is still a solid choice. As long as you’ve got the cash.