My spine yearns for a portable yet powerful gaming laptop and this RTX 4070 powerhouse is just the ticket for $1,150

Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 2023 on a teal deals background — (Image credit: Asus)

Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 | RTX 4070 | Intel Core i7-13620H | 16-inch | 165 Hz | 1080p | 512 GB SSD | 16 GB DDR4 3200 | $1,599.99 $1,149.99 at Best Buy (save $450)
There's a couple of caveats here to be aware of, but this thin, light and powerful little laptop is still a superb deal. You get a 120 W RTX 4070, a 10-core (six Performance, four Efficient) Intel chip, and 16 GB of DDR4. That 512 GB SSD is on the small side, but there's two M2 slots so it's easy to drop in some extra storage—and while that screen is only 1080p, it's still a vibrant and fast panel.

Price check: Newegg $1,599

I've recently had the (dubious) pleasure of lugging around an 18-inch monster of a gaming laptop, and it's made me all too aware that portability matters. Which is why I'm such a big fan of the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 and G16 gaming laptops, both the 2024 refresh models and the 2023 versions.

While it doesn't have the fancy OLED screen of the 2024, it's still got a lovely 16-inch 165 Hz panel. It's only 1080p, but to be honest at a 16-inch screen size it's still going to look sharp enough for gaming, and it's much less strain on the GPU.

Speaking of GPUs, this has a proper mobile RTX 4070. At 1080p, it's got a good shot of throwing 165 frames at that screen in most games—and there's always DLSS 3 and Frame Generation to fill in the gaps when even this powerhouse of a mobile GPU starts to falter.

The Core i7 13620H might not be the latest and greatest, but it's still a 10-core (six Performance, four Efficient) chip with a speedy 4.9 GHz boost clock that's more than a match for demanding gaming, with a decent turn of speed in productivity tasks too. Plus, you don't really want a mega-spec CPU in a laptop this thin and light anyway, as you'd spin up the fans to jet-engine levels pretty quickly.

Nope, this machine is stripped down, lean, mean, and ready to go wherever you might take it. It's a refined beast for very reasonable cash, and exists in a sweet spot between truly portable and properly powerful.

My only reservation really is that 512 GB SSD, which will fill up pretty quickly once you start installing a few games. Luckily, the G16 has a spare M2 slot, meaning that it's a trivial matter to unscrew the back plate and slot in something appropriately sized next to the existing drive, like this:

Yep, for a mere $75 extra you can throw in our favorite budget SSD. That'll leave you with the pre-installed 512 GB as a dedicated system drive, and a chunky 1 TB model for plenty of game and app installs.

Job done. For an all-in price of $1,225, you'll have snagged yourself a speedy, super-portable gaming laptop with looks to make your friends (or co-workers, natch) go green with envy. All in a day's work, folks. All in a day's work.

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Andy built his first gaming PC at the tender age of 12, when IDE cables were a thing and high resolution wasn't—and he hasn't stopped since. Now working as a hardware writer for PC Gamer, Andy spends his time jumping around the world attending product launches and trade shows, all the while reviewing every bit of PC gaming hardware he can get his hands on. You name it, if it's interesting hardware he'll write words about it, with opinions and everything.