I’ve spent weeks testing the perfect little gaming laptops and there is just one they will must prise from my chilly, lifeless palms

I’ve spent a very good few weeks now agonising over which of those two notebooks can declare the crown of finest 14-inch gaming laptop computer—ought to it’s the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 claiming the title for the second 12 months operating, or does the redesigned Razer Blade 14 do sufficient to topple the incumbent champ?

Actually, from once I first began enjoying with the brand new Blade 14 my thoughts was made up. It is slimmer than final 12 months’s machine, cheaper, and an entire lot quieter than the frankly annoyingly noisy Zephyrus G14. However that is to not say there hasn’t been some conflicting ideas going round in my head.

As a result of, on paper, it is actually not so lower and dried a outcome. Within the US, the Asus laptop computer is $100 cheaper, and that is for the model with the RTX 5070 Ti GPU—the Blade 14, against this, can solely be configured with both an RTX 5060 or RTX 5070. The G14 can be sporting the perfect cellular APU that AMD has ever created: the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 with it is wonderful Radeon 890M built-in graphics.

The Blade 14 can be an AMD-powered gadget, however it makes use of the weaker Ryzen AI 9 365 with the identical form of iGPU because the last-gen APUs.

So… it is acquired a lesser spec and it is dearer. “How are you going to be recommending this gaming laptop computer with simply 8 GB of VRAM over the clearly superior Zephyrus?!” That is the query I think about being screamed at this web page proper now, however bear with me and I shall clarify.

In order for you a gaming laptop computer with a ton of graphical grunt before everything, then a 14-inch machine is not for you. This kind issue is about having a genuinely transportable pocket book that can play video games on the go. It is concerning the expertise, not the uncooked numbers. Whereas you’re going to get increased body charges out of the Asus in contrast with the Razer—although given the slight silicon variations between the 2 GPUs, not by a lot—there’s a price to be paid. And it will likely be paid by your ears.

The brand new Zephyrus has this uncomfortable two-tone nature to its fan noise which is vastly distracting and the one method to mitigate it outdoors of some actually good noise cancelling headphones, is to make use of the guide configuration choices to drag again on efficiency. And at that time, attending to the identical fan sound because the quieter Blade 14, you are then operating your RTX 5070 Ti on the similar body price as an RTX 5070.

I additionally simply straight desire the design of the Blade 14, too. The modern matte black MacBook aesthetic has lengthy been a draw for the Razer laptops, and with this new, thinner chassis that is much more pronounced. It is a pretty factor, with a beautiful OLED display screen, an honest keyboard, and nice battery life, too.

For me, it is the perfect compact gaming laptop computer round.

The short listing

The perfect gaming laptops