I finally bought my first gaming laptop — why the hell did I wait so long?!
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Please bear with me, as this next sentence is probably going to read like the most contradictory statement I’ve written since joining Tom’s Guide. Though I make my living writing about computing, I’ve never once owned a gaming laptop in my 39 years on this spinning rock.
There are a couple of major factors behind this. First off, I’ve been a diehard fan of the best gaming PCs since 2004 — the year I taught myself to build my first rig because I was desperate to play the original Far Cry. Remember when that series used to be about blasting bargain basement Doctor Moreau beasties rather than having to overthrow increasingly megalomaniacal despots? It has meant that my need to own a gaming laptop over the last two decades has been pretty much zilch.
Then when I joined Tom’s Guide over a year ago, manufacturers started to send me some of the best gaming laptops on loan, which I’d review then send back. Over the past 12 months, it’s been rare that I haven’t had access to a high-end portable PC lying around my apartment. Thus there was basically no reason to fork out my own money for one.
And to fully embrace the Columbo “just one more thing” meme, there’s also the small factor of Steam Deck OLED. I bought Valve’s sensational device on launch week last November and over the eight or so months I’ve owned it, I’ve played some of the best Steam games on it almost every single day. In my book, it’s the best handheld gaming console there’s ever been. Sit back with Forza Horizon 5 for even 10 minutes on that gloriously bright HDR screen then try to disagree.
Ghost in the machine
A couple of months back, though, my outlook towards laptop gaming completely changed. As soon as Asus loaned me the ROG Zephyrus G14 (2024) for a month, I knew there was no going back. I was so instantly impressed with this mighty RTX 4070-powered machine, pretty much every weekday in May you’d find me counting down the minutes until I could start playing it once my shifts started to wind down.
My computing colleague Tony Polanco brilliantly summed up the quality of the latest 14-inch Zephyrus by hailing it as the “MacBook Pro of gaming laptops” in his review, which is high praise indeed. And you know what? Tony is completely on the money, as the new G14 is easily the finest gaming laptop I’ve ever used.
For a long time I didn’t think a laptop could tear me away from my PC, mainly because it houses the world’s fastest consumer GPU in the form of Nvidia’s RTX 4090. Yet two weeks after buying the ROG Zephyrus G14, I’ve been using my desktop exclusively for work, not gaming.
It helps immeasurably that Asus’ portable PC is as performant as it is pretty, and hoo-boy is it easy on the eyes. With subtle all-white RGB lighting on its fabulous keyboard, a large and responsive touchpad and super-skinny bezels that surround its glorious 2.8K screen (2800 x 1800) that has a max refresh rate of 120Hz, this is an OLED laptop that’s both an utter pleasure to type and game on.
It also helps that we’re going through a reasonably strong period for PC ports at the moment. Last year served up some true stinkers, like The Last of Us Part I and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. The former was eventually knocked into good shape after a number of post-launch patches, but Cal’s Stormtrooper-slicing adventure is still a stuttering mess on PC some 15 months after its initial release.
Thankfully, Sony and porting specialist Nixxes at least seem to have learned their lessons, as the small clutch of PlayStation games that have been released on PC since TLOU have pretty much smashed it out of the park.
Over the past few months Horizon Forbidden West and Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut have both been treated to terrific PC versions that feature excellent ultrawide support, super sampling and even frame generation. Both of these former PlayStation exclusives look and feel far sharper to play on the G14 than their PS5 versions, and it’s great to finally see Sony taking the PC market semi seriously at last.
Shere brilliance
The ROG Zephyrus G14 (2024) is also simply a great all-round laptop. That incredible OLED display makes surfing the web or watching the best Disney Plus movies a joy. And once I paired Asus’ system with a pair of budget but brilliant Bluetooth speakers, I've been using my LG G3 OLED TV a whole lot less. That’s a big deal, considering it’s comfortably the best television I’ve ever owned.
I’ve rewatched 2016’s live-action Jungle Book for about the 7th time on Asus’ laptop, five binged seasons of Yellowstone are now under my belt in embarrassingly short order, while I also watched several crunch knockout games from the recently contested Euro 2024 Finals. Although that was mainly because the live 1080p feeds from the BBC and ITV over here in my native U.K. looked pretty poor on a large 4K TV.
The big caveat is I’ll have to do some serious belt tightening over the next 12 months. Why? That’s when the interest-free, “buy now, pay later” installment plan I went with is due to end on a laptop that cost me $2,199 / ￡2,399 (good old rip-off Britain).
So yeah, I’ll probably be eating the cheapest of the cheap microwave meals for a while. Yet that’s a small price to pay for a gaming laptop that has already brought me so much joy over a short space of time.
