ASUS ROG Strix 16" G615LM-DS96 Eclipse Gray 2025

The ASUS ROG Strix G16 is a top-tier gaming laptop with a brilliant 240Hz display and a monster Intel Core Ultra 9 CPU. It's heavy and the battery life is short, but the raw performance for gaming and creative work is outstanding. At its real street price, it's one of the best desktop replacements you can buy.

In our testing, the Core Ultra 9 275HX is an absolute monster for multi-threaded work. It sits in the 97th percentile among all laptops we've tracked, which means it chews through rendering, compiling, and heavy multitasking without breaking a sweat. For gamers, the RTX 5060 is the real workhorse here. It's an 83rd percentile GPU, which puts it well above average and capable of driving the 1600p display at high settings in most modern titles. You can expect smooth frame rates well above 60fps in demanding games, and esports titles will easily push past 200fps to take advantage of that 240Hz refresh rate.

The 32GB of DDR5 RAM is in the 88th percentile, giving you plenty of headroom for running games, streaming software, and a dozen Chrome tabs simultaneously. The 1TB SSD is snappy and falls into the 82nd percentile for storage speed, so load times are short. The real-world experience is fluid. The cooling system, while loud under full load, keeps the CPU and GPU from throttling during long gaming sessions. Just don't expect to do any of this quietly on battery power, the 90Wh battery is decent for a gaming laptop, but you'll want to stay near an outlet for any serious work or play.

The ASUS ROG Strix G16 goes head-to-head with some heavy hitters. The Lenovo Legion Pro Series 7i Gen 10 is its most direct rival, often offering a slightly more premium metal build and a more subdued design, but typically at a higher price for the same GPU and RAM. The MSI Prestige PRE13EVOA2088 is another alternative, but it leans more toward pure content creation with a thinner chassis, sacrificing some raw gaming cooling capacity. If you're even considering an Apple MacBook Pro M5, you're looking at a completely different world of battery life and single-core speed, but you'll give up most AAA gaming and that high refresh rate display. The Strix G16 carves out a niche by offering top-tier Intel CPU performance and a fantastic screen for both gaming and creative work, something the MacBook can't touch for gaming and the MSI can't match for sheer multi-core grunt.

Value is a bit of a mixed bag here, mainly because the pricing is all over the place. We've seen this exact configuration listed from $1,799 up to a ridiculous $388,062 from some third-party sellers. Obviously, ignore the crazy numbers. At its real street price around $1,800 from retailers like Newegg, the Strix G16 is a strong deal. You're getting a best-in-class CPU, a very capable RTX 5060, a gorgeous screen, and 32GB of RAM. A comparable Lenovo Legion Pro 5 or a higher-spec MSI model will often cost you a few hundred more for similar specs. If you can snag it at the lower end of that price spread, it's a fantastic value for a creator-focused gaming laptop.

If you're hunting for a high-end gaming laptop that can pull double duty for creative work, the ASUS ROG Strix G16 (G615LM-DS96) is a serious contender. It packs Intel's new Core Ultra 9 275HX, a 24-core beast, alongside an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 with 8GB of GDDR7 VRAM. You also get 32GB of DDR5 RAM and a 1TB NVMe SSD, which is a solid foundation for both gaming and demanding apps like video editing. The star of the show is the 16-inch Nebula display, a 2560x1600 IPS panel running at a buttery 240Hz with full DCI-P3 color coverage. It's built for speed and color accuracy, and our database shows it lands in the 91st percentile for laptop screens, which is genuinely impressive.

At around 2.73kg, this isn't an ultrabook, and it doesn't try to be. The Strix G16 is a desktop replacement that prioritizes cooling and raw power over portability. Its compact score sits down in the 8th percentile, so you'll feel it in your backpack. But for a machine that can handle AAA games at the native 1600p resolution and chew through CPU-intensive tasks, that's a trade-off a lot of people are willing to make. The port selection is fantastic, with Thunderbolt 4, multiple USB-A and USB-C ports, HDMI 2.1, and Wi-Fi 7, putting it in the 98th percentile for connectivity.

ASUS has positioned this as a premium all-rounder, and the specs mostly back that up. The combination of the Core Ultra 9 and RTX 5060 is a smart pairing for 1440p gaming, and the 500-nit bright display is a joy to use. While the price is listed as N/A in some spots, we're seeing it around the $1,799 mark from retailers like Newegg, which puts it in a competitive spot against other RTX 5060-powered machines. Just be aware that some vendor listings show wildly inflated prices, so shop smart.

Skip the Strix G16 if you need a laptop to carry around every day. At over 2.7kg with a bulky power brick, it's a chore to travel with. Students or commuters will be much happier with something like the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro or an Apple MacBook Pro M5, which offer all-day battery life and a fraction of the weight. You should also look elsewhere if you're sensitive to fan noise, this machine needs to move a lot of air to stay cool and it's not shy about it.

The ASUS ROG Strix G16 is a powerhouse that knows exactly what it is: a big, fast, no-compromise desktop replacement. It's not trying to be thin and light, and it's all the better for it. The Core Ultra 9 and RTX 5060 combo is a perfect match for the stunning 1600p display, making games look sharp and run smoothly. The 32GB of RAM and fast storage mean it's ready for anything you throw at it right out of the box, from video editing to the latest AAA titles.

Should you buy it? If you want a laptop that lives on a desk most of the time and need maximum CPU performance for work and high-refresh gaming, this is one of the best options on the market right now. The screen alone is a reason to consider it. Just be prepared for a hefty machine, some fan noise, and the need to keep the charger handy. If you can find it for around $1,800, it's an easy recommendation.