ASUS Zephyrus G14 Hits Stores With Trick Dot-Matrix LED Lid

ASUS has put its striking Zephyrus G14 laptop up for sale, though unlike most notebooks you might actually want to look at the lid rather than the screen. Announced back at CES 2020, the latest Republic of Gamers model has a dot-matrix display embedded into its outer lid, which can be used to show custom graphics and animations.

ASUS calls it the AniMe Matrix, and it uses more than a thousand individual LEDs. It's a subtle effect – the LEDs are all a single color, white – but by adjusting brightness and refresh rate it can be quite effective nonetheless.

Happily the rest of the ROG Zephyrus G14 shouldn't fall short. Indeed, ASUS claims it's the world's most powerful 14-inch Windows 10 Pro gaming laptop, with up to an 8-core AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS processor paired with GeForce RTX 2060 graphics with its own 6GB of dedicated GDDR6 VRAM.

Three display options will be offered. The entry panel is a 1920 x 1080 IPS screen with a 60Hz refresh rate, 100-percent sRGB coverage, and Pantone Validated. As an option, though, ASUS will offer a Full HD IPS screen with 120Hz refresh and adaptive sync, for gamers. Finally, if resolution is more important to you, a 14-inch 2560 x 1440 60Hz panel with adaptive sync is on offer.

Regardless of display, there's up to 32GB of DDR4 3200 MHz memory, and either 512GB or 1TB of M.2 NVMe PCIe 3.0 SSD storage. Connectivity includes a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port with DisplayPort 1.3 and power, a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, an HDMI 2.0b, and a 3.5mm headphone/microphone combo jack. There's also WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0.

Two 2.5W speakers and two 0.7W tweeters are built in, with ASUS including Dolby Atmos support. The whole thing tips the scales at 3.53 pounds without the AniMe Matrix display, or 3.75 pounds with it. ASUS will offer the notebook in metallic Eclipse Gray or pearlescent Moonlight White finishes, with a magnesium-aluminum alloy deck with a fingerprint-resistant coating.

Sales kick off from today, priced from $1,999.99 with the AniMe Matrix display, 16GB of memory, and the WQHD screen option.