If you happen to be a fan of international star DJ Alan Walker, and especially if you ever wanted to try your hand at producing music yourself, Asus is about to make you very happy with the announcement of the ROG Zephyrus G14 Alan Walker Edition.
In a collaboration with the mega-popular DJ and music producer, Asus developed a special edition of its hit 14-inch gaming laptop. Walker worked closely with the laptop maker to create a unique look, as well as a functional outer box that, in a definite first, doubles as a mixing board.
We were able to get hands-on time with the products, and interview Walker himself to get his thoughts on technology, smart wear, and the special edition laptop. First, a look at the laptop itself...
If the mixing-board packaging, in particular, is difficult to wrap your head around, it’s all covered in the above video, so check it out for a walkthrough. A written explanation of the laptop and the ROG Remix box follows, too, and the interview video is also embedded below.
Laptop Design by Walker
First, some context. If you’re unfamiliar with Alan Walker, he’s a British-born Norwegian DJ and producer with multiple hit songs, followed by millions of YouTube subscribers and monthly Spotify listeners.
He most notably rose to prominence on the back of his hit 2015 song “Faded,” the video for which has over 3.1 billion views on YouTube, the all-time 20th most-watched music video on the website at the time of this writing. Watch our interview video, below, to get to know Walker; I got to spend a little while with him quizzing him on various tech aspects of his career...
Now that you’re a bit more familiar, let’s check out the laptop itself. We reviewed the original ROG Zephyrus G14 last year and were big fans of the compact gaming system. We currently have our hands on the updated, non-Alan Walker version with superior components for review, but the base shape and size are the same on the original, updated model and the Alan Walker Edition. It’s a portable and high-quality machine that helped pave the way for 14-inch gaming laptops; it was a pioneer at that screen size.
Visually, though, the Alan Walker Edition looks very different from the other iterations. It’s charcoal instead of white, with text-laden fabric straps woven into the lid. This is a definitive touch of Walker’s techwear style, and the darker color scheme fits the artist’s signature hoodie-and-mask look.
Opening up the laptop reveals a uniquely colored keyboard, with black and gray keys alongside some light-blue highlight keys. The "A" and "W" keys, important ones for PC gaming as part of the "WASD" cluster, is each fittingly inscribed with Walker’s “AW” logo. The laptop also features a custom boot-up sound effect and animation, both created by Walker.
The lid boasts the same matrix of LEDs that the special AniMe Matrix version of the G14 has, which can be used to run preset or custom animations or images. In this case, the lid lighting can sync with the laptop’s music and lighting. (More on that in a moment.) The laptop’s speakers have also been juiced up compared with the standard G14's, letting Alan Walker fans blast their tune of choice.
Specs and Pricing: Built for Gamers, Too
What’s inside this system? The components are not the same as the standard G14, and this edition is less concerned with top-end power, as Asus figures Walker’s fans will be more interested in the special design and the tie-in.
The laptop is priced at $1,999 and includes an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HS processor, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti graphics, 16GB of memory, and a 1TB SSD. That’s a bit of a price premium over the latest, ordinary version of the G14 for a less potent GPU, and expensive on a pure component basis. But again, if you had to pay for the design and maxed-out power, the price would quickly shoot upward.
The 14-inch display bears a 2,560-by-1,440-pixel native resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate, as well as support for adaptive sync. The chassis includes two USB Type-C ports, two more USB 3.1 Type-A ports, and an HDMI connection.
Be the DJ: Meet the ROG Remix Box
If you watched the video, you’ll see that it’s not just about the laptop itself. The packaging it comes in is not just a box, but a functional mixing board named ROG Remix, which you plug into the laptop to use.
The translucent top panel of the ROG Remix features touchpads for playing or pausing songs, triggering and switching between sets of sound effects and samples, speeding up the track, and applying a low-pass filter.
The side of the box includes a USB-C port, so once you connect the included cable to it and the Zephyrus G14 Alan Walker Edition, the laptop will launch the ROG Remix software. The software is pre-loaded with Walker’s song “Sorry,” but you can open any song you have saved locally, as well.
Pressing play on the ROG Remix box will play the song out of the laptop speakers, and you can then use the rest of the buttons to alter the song as you see fit. The effect pads play a quick sound effect, which you can make fit with the song with some good timing (and once you learn and remember which effect is on which pad), and play a visual effect in the software. Asus’ Aura Sync software also matches the lighting in the ROG Remix box’s LED trim and the laptop lid to the music.
If that’s a lot to take in, again we suggest watching the video to see it at work, because it’s actually pretty simple in practice. It’s not professional DJ equipment by any stretch, but it’s a very fun pack-in for fans, and the sideshow to the main event that is the laptop itself.
More Walker Accessories
A few more extras come in the box. This special edition comes with a laptop sleeve, a set ROG/Alan Walker socks, and a baseball cap, all thematically tied in to Walker’s brand and the laptop design. The sleeve has reflective striping...and the socks and cap are one-size-fits-all.
Check out the hands-on, and our video interview with Alan Walker, if you’re hungry for more of our impressions of this unique laptop, or are considering a buy.