ROG Strix G16 Gaming Laptop: If It Ain't Broke, Improve It Further

Over the years, the ROG Strix G series has been a staple for the ASUS gaming brand and stretches over throughout its history as its go-to offering for a simple reason — it performs. Portrayed as both the entry-level to the Republic of Gamers family as well as improving to a mid-range powerhouse performer for the true hardcore gamer, the Strix G lineup has proven its reliability as a gaming hub without outshining its bigger-and-better brother, the SCAR series.

Today, we have one their newest gaming laptop over at our studio, namely, the ROG Strix G16, equipped with a 13th Gen Intel® Core™ i7 CPU and latest NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 40 Series GPU with MUX Switch included. We’ll do a deep dive on its design and features as well as some benchmarks on various synthetic testing and games alike.

Design & Specification

Before we go into its design, I'd like to gloss over some accessories that you'll get as well when you buy a Strix G16. Besides the actual laptop, you'll receive a nice and exclusive ROG branded backpack, an ROG Strix Impact gaming mice, it's 280W power brick and lastly an alternative pocket-sized 100W Type-C charger.

The ROG Strix G16 is not a light laptop. With a weight of 2.5 kg, this gaming beast feels solidly built but still keeps its sleek and stylish gamer design. The top cover is made up of aluminum featuring a brushed metal finish and bold accents, including the iconic ROG logo, giving it an edgy yet modern look. Our loan unit comes in Eclipse Gray and a Volt Green option is available too for those who prefer a flashier look. I prefer the gray color more as it has a subtler and classy feel to it. The RGB lighting on the keyboard and around the edges of the laptop add a touch of personalization and create a captivating gaming aesthetic. It’s still pretty similar to the design language from past models with not much changes in its overall look. Overall, it definitely screams gamer so it might not be the best formal meeting laptop if that’s a consideration, but it’s definitely toned down compared to the older versions.

Under the hood, the ROG Strix G16 is rigged out with up Intel® Core™ i7-13650HX,a 14-Core CPU that can handle most tasks effortlessly, and NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 4060 Laptop GPU with 8GB of GDDR6 Memory, for an immersive gaming experience. Our unit also comes with two sticks of 8GB DDR5-4800 SO-DIMM memory and finally a 1TB PCIe® 4.0 NVMe™ M.2 SSD with another extra M.2 Slot for future storage expansion.

Display & Speakers

Over on the screen, you can immediately see and notice a wider screen real estate — which has been the trend for a lot of ROG laptops over the last few years. The G16 features a 16-inches display with a 16:10 resolution and a 90% screen-to-body ratio. The screen still sticks to FHD+ but now offers 165hz refresh rate, offering smoother frames without sacrificing too much on details and battery life. Sadly, it's IPS display is still susceptible to glare due to its measly 300 nits of brightness; however, at max brightness, while not the best, the contents in the screen are still clear enough to read as long as it’s not in a white background. Other users and tech reviewers commented the amount of backlight bleed that they have over at their unit but luckily for us, the bleeding is not that evident but I do hope that this should be properly addressed in future productions as this laptop is not cheap to begin with. Another huge improvement is the addition and return of a built-in 720p webcam — decent enough for your casual online conference calls where you need to show your face. Sadly the Nebula display that ASUS is hyping about is not available on the local market.

The two bottom firing speakers are actually decent for this laptop, whether on a table or on your lap, you can hear music or any audio clearly with enough bass, depth, and clarity. However, the bass doesn’t pick up as much when it’s not on a flat surface. ASUS also mentions that this laptop is Dolby Atmos certified but there is no way for me to confirm this as of the moment.

Keyboard & Trackpad

As for the keyboard area, layout is pretty similar with last year's Strix G15 but with some noticeable improvements as well. The keys have a comfortable amount of travel and tactile feedback, making it easy to type and game for extended periods without experiencing fatigue. It also features a good number of media keys and the designated macro buttons at the top area are also customizable over at the Armoury Crate software. At the same time, you can change the per-key RGB lighting over there too. The trackpad area is much more noticeably bigger as well, with 10% more area to play with.

Connectivity

As for I/O ports, the Strix G16 has Two Type-C ports — one supporting Thunderbolt 4 while the other one is limited to USB 3.2 Gen 2 with both display and 100w PD support, an audio jack, a full size HDMI 2.1 port, a Gigabit ethernet port and the laptop's charging port. Over on the right, it has two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports. Something to note is that if you’re using a wired mouse with a USB-A port connection, it eats some space on your mouse pad area — especially noticeable for myself that plays FPS games. While not visible, our G16 is also equipped with Intel's WiFi 6E for seamless wireless connectivity .

Benchmark

Even just hearing the specs of this gaming machine, most of us will already assume that this laptop will run most games easily, and it actually delivers. It can even run ray-traced games and maximize performance with the additional support from DLSS 3.0. And comparing it to previous generation, we did get a noticeable single core uplift, even overtaking last gen's Core i9 on most tasks. The RTX 4060 on the other hand, demolishes all results that we have so far and this is a huge win both for NVIDIA and the Strix G16.

Temps, Noise & Battery Life

As mentioned a while ago, this laptop is heavy and I am quite certain that this has something to do with its cooling. The Strix G16 does comes with 7 copper heat pipes, three fans and a total of 32% surface area to cool the all components inside. I almost forgot to mention that this laptop comes with lots of vents; one on each side and a longer one at the back. Pushing the entire system to its limits, CPU temps only averages at 84°C while GPU is at 86°C. What's even better about these results is that the CPU has managed to maintain a 4.1Ghz all P-Core boosts and GPU clocks didn't drop below 2150Mhz. It gets a bit loud as expected on a gaming laptop but as long as you stay on performance preset then you should be able to enjoy a balance between noise and temperature.

Battery life is surprisingly good on the Strix G16, the 90Wh battery lasted almost 7 hours while running our usual YouTube playback and that is on max volume and brightness. Gaming on battery is as expected again to other gaming laptops, the G16 didn't even reach two full hours before reaching sub 5% battery life. I wouldn't recommend using this on battery and instead use the included 100W Type-C PD charger for a much enjoyable gaming experience.

Conclusion

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it — but you can definitely improve it and ROG has simply done that. Keeping its strengths and improving it even further to keep up with today’s standards over its counterparts. There is the latest CPU and GPU of 2023, but it also offered wider screen, a built-in webcam, and many more. These upgrades alone can ultimately differentiate the G16 as against to its previous iterations.

In over a three week span, I can say that the ROG Strix G16 maintains its widely-known reputation as one of the best laptops you can get in the mid-range segment. I would recommend it as a long-term investment whether it is for gaming or just for general productivity.

Pricing & Availability

The ROG Strix G16 is available now in your nearest ASUS and ROG stores and currently come in two variants: