Asus ROG Strix G16 (2025) review: The beauty in the beast

So this is the new ROG Strix G16 (2025) from Asus that I have in for review today, and it’s one of the best gaming laptops I’ve ever used. I’m not even kidding! I was waiting so long to test next-gen machines with NVIDIA’s RTX 50 series GPUs — and man — the Strix G16 didn’t disappoint at all. Well… I did come across a few issues with this guy that you’ll definitely want to know before spending all your money ‘cause the Strix G16 certainly isn’t cheap. Trust me. The one I’ve been testing has an RTX 5070 Ti GPU, Intel’s Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU, 32GB of DDR5 memory, and 1TB of Gen4 SSD. And a…ll this is gonna cost you exactly NPR 416,900 in Nepal. So before you spend all your money on this beast, I highly suggest you check out my review till the very end. But first, let's take a brief look at what it's packing.

Asus ROG Strix G16 (2025) review: Specifications

• Dimensions, Weight: 13.94 x 10.55 x 0.90 – 1.21 inches (W x D x H), 2.65 kg
• Display: 16-inch "ROG Nebula" IPS panel, WQXGA resolution, 240Hz refresh rate, 100% DCI-P3 color gamut, 500 nits brightness
• Keyboard: Full-size per-key RGB backlit keyboard
• Security: Windows Hello face login
• CPU: Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX (TSMC N3B)
  • 24 cores, 24 threads, up to 5.4 GHz boost clock
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti (140W TGP, 12GB GDDR7 VRAM)
• RAM: 16GB DDR5-5600 (up to 64GB, 2x DDR5 SO-DIMM slots)
• Storage: 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4 SSD (2x M.2 slots)
• Audio: Downfiring 4-speaker system (2 tweeters + 2 woofers)
• Battery: 90Wh Li-Ion battery with 280W charging
• Webcam: FHD (1080p) IR camera, no physical privacy shutter
• I/O Ports: 2x USB-C (Thunderbolt 5), 3x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x 2.5G LAN, 1x 3.5mm headphone jack
• Price in Nepal: NPR 416,900 (16GB RAM, 1TB SSD)
• Check the full specifications of Asus ROG Strix G16 (2025) here

Buy Asus ROG Strix G16 (2025) here

Asus ROG Strix G16 (2025) review:

Design and build

• 13.94 x 10.55 x 0.90 – 1.21 inches (W x D x H)
• 2.65 kg, aluminum lid, plastic keyboard deck

Okay, so I’ll talk about all the things I don’t like about this laptop in just a minute — but as always — I wanna start with the positives. And some of you might find it a little hard to believe, but one of the most impressive things about this year’s Strix G16 is actually the design. So it’s got the usual stuff like a premium build in this not-so-inspiring colorway, right? This lid here is made of aluminum while the rest of the chassis is all-plastic to keep the weight down. Which definitely makes sense since the G16 is already pretty heavy at 2.65 kg! And despite the metal/plastic hybrid build, I found everything to be perfectly sturdy here. From the hinge to the keyboard deck… everything.

So like I said… it’s the usual stuff. But flip this thing over and that’s where the real magic is.

‘Cause Asus has completely redesigned the Strix G16 this year to make it the most upgrade-friendly laptop I’ve laid my hands on yet. Easily. I don’t need to worry about different types of tiny screw heads or misplacing them since all I gotta do is slide the tab to the left and lift it open. That is literally all I need to do to access the RAM, the SSD, and even the three fans of this laptop. The M.2 slots for storage and the SO-DIMM slots for the memory also use that “Q-latch” system we first saw on Asus motherboards… which means I don’t even need any external tool in case I wanna make any upgrade. It’s so easy, it’s so cool, I absolutely love it!

Thunderbolt 5, baby!

What makes the Strix G16’s design even cooler for me is that this is also the very first laptop I’ve used with a couple of next-gen Thunderbolt 5 ports alongside everything else! Yeah, not Thunderbolt 4 but Thunderbolt 5. With twice the data transfer speed, much better support for external monitors, and up to 240W of power delivery… just to name a few. Of course, the entire “Thunderbolt 5 ecosystem” is very much in its infancy right now, but at least the Strix G16 is future-proof on that front. The only thing I wish Asus had done differently is put some of these ports — like the one for power and the two-and-a-half gigs ethernet connection — at the back for a cleaner cable management. But I guess since this Strix G16 no longer has exhaust vents on the sides like last year’s model, the back of the laptop had to be all about letting the warm air out.

Display

• 16-inch "ROG Nebula" WQXGA (2560 x 1600) IPS panel
• 100% DCI-P3 colors, 500 nits brightness
• 240Hz refresh rate, G-SYNC, Advanced Optimus

Alright. So just like the design, I love this display as well. It sucks that Asus is still reserving “OLED” gaming for its more expensive “Zephyrus” and “SCAR” lineup but man… this is — excuse me — a damn fine IPS display. It’s sharp, it’s smooth, it’s bright, and it’s perfectly color-accurate.

I mean, what else do I need to say about it?

You’re looking at a giant 16” IPS panel with a 2.5K resolution, a buttery 240Hz refresh rate, 100% DCI-P3 colors, and 500 nits of maximum brightness. Although my unit of the Strix G16 actually peaked at 555 nits at 100% brightness, so that’s all the more impressive! I also love this nice matte coating to get rid of light reflections around me, which could’ve been rather distracting. So doesn’t matter if I’m gaming, doing some color-sensitive work like photo and video editing, or just handling some casual business, the Strix G16’s display is totally a “one-size-fits-all” thing. But I must tell you that I had to do quite a bit of “diagnosing” to get it working just right.

It's never Lupus.

So the thing is, auto-brightness is something I always disable on any laptop I use. But instead of the “Intel Graphics Command Center” app where this setting usually hides, it turns out Asus has overridden that with its own setting inside the “Armoury Crate” app. What’s worse is that my unit of the Strix G16 simply wasn’t as vibrant by default. The colors looked visibly washed out, and when I measured it, I was right! This guy was only carrying 75% of the DCI-P3 gamut versus 100% as Asus promised.

And after a lot of Google searches looking up potential solutions on different forums, it turns out I needed to replace that Intel app I talked about earlier with a newer “Intel Graphics Software”. Then I had to update the display driver and also disable the "auto color management" feature from system settings.

Keyboard

• Full-size chiclet keyboard, no Numpad
• Per-key RGB backlight

I didn’t have that many problems with its keyboard though. Maybe Asus could’ve added a little more contrast to the key engravings — at least for the Function keys — since they’re quite hard to read. The right Shift key is also smaller than I’m used to, and I’m sure some of you are already clenching your fist for the lack of a numpad on a 16-inch laptop as well. But in spite of all those things, I have totally loved typing here. ‘Cause coming from my MacBook’s short 1mm travel keys, the Strix G16’s keys have double the travel distance. Which means you really feel the keys register for that satisfying feel. This is also among the quietest keyboards I’ve used, and of course, it’s got per-key RGB lighting that I can customize so easily from the “Aura Creator” app. It’s not just the individual keys either. The Strix G16 even brings an RGB lightbar that covers the entire bottom chassis for a glorious, glorious lightshow.

Performance

• Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU (24 cores/threads)
• NVIDIA RTX 5070 Ti graphics (140W TGP)
• 32GB DDR5 RAM, 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD (both upgradeable)

Okay, with all that out of the way, let me now talk about its performance. So, to recap what I said earlier in this review, the Asus ROG Strix G16 (2025) ships with Intel’s latest “Arrow Lake-HX” processor: the Core Ultra 9 275HX. There is technically a slightly more powerful mobile CPU in Intel’s lineup, but the only difference between these two is 100 MHz of clock speed so… I don’t really mind calling it a flagship processor.

Upgrades, upgrades, everywhere.

And compared to last year’s Core i9-14900HX, it has a healthy 20% upgrade in terms of multi-core performance. Whereas your GPU options here range from the budget RTX 5060 all the way to RTX 5080. The one I’ve been testing has RTX 5070 Ti, and you know what? It might just be the GPU you should be considering if you really wanna see that generational upgrade in the RTX 50 series GPUs. Or the more expensive ones if money’s no object. I say so because just like on the older RTX 40 lineup, the performance of RTX 5060 and RTX 5070 mobile GPUs don’t really scale that much beyond 100W.

Which is totally not a problem for the 5070 Ti, by the way.

The Strix G16’s RTX 5070 Ti has a total 140W TGP (including 25W from Dynamic Boost) — and in all the benchmarks I ran or the games I tested — it had no problem sipping 140W of power when needed. And unlike the lower-tier RTX 50 series GPUs with just 8 gigs of VRAM, the 5070 Ti also has 12GB of VRAM… so you can really game at higher resolution with smooth fps and good visual fidelity. And when I played a bunch of games at native 1600p resolution at the highest settings I could find, almost all of them ran without any sort of “out of video memory” error. I was originally planning on testing them at 1440p as well, but since most modern laptops have a taller 16:10 display, I thought this should be standard from now on.

One more thing.

I also disabled the MUX switch on this thing since I was getting frequent stutters in some of the games. While I even had some creative apps like Premiere Pro crash on me when disabling the integrated graphics using the MUX switch. Alright. So the first game I played was Cyberpunk 2077. And with both graphics and ray tracing set to “Ultra”, I was getting 32 fps on average with a 1% low of 22 fps. Not bad for a “70” series GPU, but you probably already know that the RTX 50 series has a special trick called “DLSS 4” to make the gameplay feel a whole lot smoother and responsive. Especially with something called “Multi Frame Generation” that uses AI to generate up to three additional frames for each real frame the GPU renders. It doesn’t work with all games — but on the games that do support DLSS 4 — it can be a literal game-changer. Since I went from just 32 fps average to 114 fps with multi frame generation set to 2x on Cyberpunk 2077. Or a ridiculous 175 fps at the 4x option. Now, cranking up the multi frame gen settings can result in some graphical artifacts, but… this is pretty cool.

But what about input delay?

Next up, I played Marvel Rivals. This one also supports multi frame generation, which means I went from just 60 fps average to an impressive 220 fps with a simple click of a button. I was kinda worried about input latency here since adding artificial frames in between the real ones can add a lot of input delay. Plus, unlike Cyberpunk, it’s also a pretty fast-paced game… so you would totally feel the increased latency if it existed. But I must say I honestly never noticed any sort of input delay. I had a couple of my colleagues try it out as well, and they said they had a similar experience too. And other than these two, I played Forza Horizon 5, Counter-Strike 2, and GTA V… all of which managed an easy 100+ fps with just pure. rasterized. rendering. Control was the only game that felt a little too much to handle for the RTX 5070 Ti at “Ultra” settings. With a near 30 fps on average. Although after I lowered the render resolution to just 800p and then used DLSS to upscale the image, I was getting a much more playable 70 fps average.

So cool!

Besides excellent gaming results, I’m equally impressed by the Strix G16’s thermals. Because no matter what game it was, the keyboard deck itself felt perfectly cool to touch. Never hitting beyond 36 – 37ºC near the “WASD” and the arrow key area. And even at its max fan speed (under "Turbo" profile), the Strix G16 only ever got as loud as 47 dB. I have seen gaming laptops with far louder fan noise (at 50+ decibels) with far worse thermals, so… this is just spectacular! I was also taking a close look at the CPU and GPU temperatures when I was gaming — and although that Intel chip would easily climb to 90ºC and beyond — the GPU remained significantly cooler at around 70ºC only. This was a trend I noticed when using creative apps as well. There was definitely no performance throttling — and everything from working with 4K video projects with multiple layers on Premiere Pro to working with 3D animation on Blender went as smoothly as I expected them to — but that’s something you need to know about anyway.

What's not so great about the Strix G16?

Okay. So far… I’ve talked about the Strix G16’s design that I love, its display that I love, its keyboards that I love, and its performance that I love even more. And as you might have already guessed, I’m not that fond of the rest of the stuff.

Trackpad

• Glass trackpad with Windows Precision drivers

Like it trackpad, for example. I mean, it has all the right ingredients for a great trackpad, but it just doesn’t act like one for me. It’s spacious, it’s glass-topped, but I don’t know man… there’s like a 30% chance it accidentally decides to select text or drag something off the screen when I’m simply trying to scroll through a page.

Webcam and speakers

• FHD (1080p) IR camera (no physical privacy shutter)
• 4-speaker system (2 tweeters + 2 woofers)

I also found that the Strix G16 pretty much has a potato for a webcam. It does support Windows Hello face login but... the video itself looks so grainy and so lacking in detail that I’d rather use my phone as a webcam in case of any important online meetings. And for a big 16-inch laptop, its speakers and battery life aren’t that great either. Yes… its downfiring speakers get quite loud, but it sounds a little too thin with not a lot of bass for me to actually enjoy the music.

Battery

• 90Wh battery, 280W AC adapter

Whereas I can’t call 3.5 – 4 hours of battery life that great either. I know that’s pretty in line with what you get with most gaming laptops with an Intel CPU… but yeah.

Asus ROG Strix G16 (2025) review: Conclusion

Alright… I guess I'd better wrap it up now. So, despite all its minor flaws, I think Asus has absolutely nailed it with ROG Strix G16 (2025). The flashy redesign paired with fiercely powerful new chips means there are just so many things to love about this guy. And if you’re looking for a powerful gaming/content creation laptop that will age gracefully over the years, the Strix G16 definitely looks like one of your top choices at around NPR 4 lakhs. Yes, I completely agree that Asus could've done a better job in terms of the price. Considering there are other RTX 5070 Ti laptops in Nepal at a lower price, like the Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 AI (2025). But the Strix G16 does have its own charm with a superior design, Thunderbolt 5 connectivity, nicer RGB, and slightly better thermals, to name a few.

• Watch our video review of the Asus ROG Strix G16 (2025)

Asus ROG Strix G16 (2025) review: Pros and cons