The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 was sitting proudly among the rest of this year's best gaming laptop contenders at CES last week. If you were early to the show, however, you might have snuck a peek at a very special model at the Intel booth. Teased late last year, a configuration of the 2026 G14 running (and only running) Intel Panther Lake processors was doing the rounds in the first few hours of the show, only to be shuffled away later on.
Asus was running its new G14 simply on the Intel Arc B390 integrated graphics system, rather than adding a separate Nvidia discrete card for full power. However, this looks to be a project cancelled at the last minute.
As first reported by Les Numeriques, the integrated graphics laptop was being proudly shown off at Intel's CES booth after Asus had already removed it from its own roster. The rig disappeared entirely shortly after. This was a machine first spotted on Geekbench halfway through last year, and then press-tested in December, so it definitely existed and certainly doesn't anymore.
It's not the first time Asus has experimented with integrated graphics. AMD's Ryzen AI Max 390, with Radeon 8050S graphics, sits front and center in the brand's Asus ROG Flow Z13 device. It's the best gaming tablet on the market because of this sheer power, and impressed with its punch and stability in testing.
Integrated graphics are coming our way, but the cancellation of the Intel Arc B390 Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (however bungled it was at CES) shows we're not quite ready to say goodbye to discrete cards. Last year's Flow Z13 was the first time I had properly sat down with a modern integrated system and it took me by surprise.
Asus ROG Flow Z13 | Now $2,169.99 (was $2,299.99) at Best Buy
This tablet was running everything from Indiana Jones and the Great Circle to Avowed without breaking a sweat, though while costing up to $2,799.99. The tablet form factor certainly benefits from the move to integrated graphics, and the best gaming handhelds are showing us how far these chips can run.
Gaming laptops are going to take a little more time to catch on, though. While it's unclear why the Intel-only Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 was abandoned, it's easy to see a future where more affordable gaming laptops become a reality again.
I track all the latest gaming laptop deals week to week, and one thing has become clear from the last year; it's a lot harder to find a decent RTX 50-Series machine around the $1,000 price tag than it was the RTX 40-Series. If integrated graphics can keep up with weaker discrete GPUs for a lot less cash, I'm in.
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I'm running through all the other Asus gaming laptops on the market right now, and finding the best Razer laptops and best Alienware laptops for some different flavorings.
