The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is already one of the best gaming laptops you can buy. I called it “damn near perfect” in my ROG Zephyrus G14 review. But Asus is giving its thin and light gaming laptops a big boost at CES 2025, adding just a bit of extra size so it can pack up to an RTX 5080 laptop graphics card.
Clocking in at just 0.63 inches thin and 3.46 pounds light, Asus says you can pack in up to an RTX 5080 and AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 into its 14-inch laptop. With last year’s Zephyrus G14, Asus topped out the range with an RTX 4070 in order to achieve a form factor that’s even thinner and lighter than a MacBook Pro. This year, Asus says it’s able to extend up to an RTX 5080 by adding 2mm in size to the laptop — that’s really not much.
All of the things that made the Zephyrus G14 great last year are present this time around, too. Outside of the RTX 5080 — which Asus says can draw up to 110 watts — you get up to 2TB of PCIe 4.0 storage, up to 32GB of LPDDR5X-7500 memory, and the same 2,880 x 1,800 ROG Nebula OLED display that comes with a speedy 240Hz refresh rate. You’re also getting the latest wireless connectivity, including Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4.
Despite a small bump in size, the 2025 ROG Zephyrus G14 is basically identical to last year’s model externally. The laptop is housed in an all-aluminum chassis, and it comes with Asus’ Slash Lighting light strip, which you can customize. Unfortunately, the issues with last year’s model are present, too. The memory is soldered, so you can’t upgrade or replace it, and the thin size likely means the laptop will run hot. I’ll need to wait until I’ve tested the laptop to see how that assumption holds up, however.
The 16-inch Zephyrus G16 is also getting an upgrade with next-gen Nvidia components, scaling up to an RTX 5090 with up to 130 watts of power. Alongside the GPU, Asus says you can include up to 64GB of memory along with an Intel Core Ultra 9 285H. The changes to Asus’ 16-inch Zephyrus are just under the hood, though — externally, everything is identical, short of swapping one of the two USB-C ports to the other side of the laptop.
Asus hasn’t revealed the release date of these laptops yet, nor how much they’ll cost. The cost will be important, as last year, Asus slightly increased prices to account for the aluminum chassis and OLED display. Hopefully there won’t be another price increase this year.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Google DeepMind's AI world model Genie 4 can now build interactive worlds that you can explore and reshape as they run. It also generates ambient sounds, music, and dialogue that respond to your actions.
The new world model builds on Genie 3 with improved realism, more natural human movement, and better simulations of real-world physics. It could eventually help with everything from game development to training robots.
Apple has an incredible talent for making me admire its products while simultaneously questioning what on earth it's thinking with the pricing. This isn't even something as bizarre as a monitor stand, but the audacity for starting a new laptop lineup from $2,000 doesn't surprise me.
The newly announced 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 is just the latest to showcase this. The funny thing is, I already know that it's going to be a reliable workstation. You get a powerful new 2nm M6 processor, a gorgeous Liquid Retina XDR display, and up to 24 hours of battery life. We were impressed by the M5 MacBook Air, so the high-end M6 powered MacBook Pro definitely won't let us down.