Technology

I really hope Asus didn’t ruin the Zephyrus G14

Published

2 years ago

January 20, 2024

I really hope Asus didn’t ruin the Zephyrus G14

[Editor’s note: Monica Chin is The Verge’s former senior laptop reviewer, currently taking a break from tech journalism. But some things are hard to quit.]

Once upon a time, in the olden days of March 2020, a little company called Asus released a spritely whippersnapper of a gaming laptop called the ROG Zephyrus G14. It weighed just over 3.5 pounds, and it was powered by a truly monstrous AMD processor, the likes of which had never been seen in a 14-inch form factor.

I still remember reviewing that laptop, almost four years ago, like it was yesterday. I remember running the Red Dead Redemption 2 benchmark — the ultimate test at that time — over and over again, poring over the game settings, trying desperately to figure out what I’d messed up to make the egregiously high frame rates I was seeing make sense. (The best Intel had to offer at the time, remember, was Comet Lake. And, well, we don’t talk about Comet Lake in this household.)

The G14 as it was.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

And then there was the design. The G14 sported a retro aesthetic, spaceship-y in nature with large, luxuriously comfortable keycaps and a keyboard font that evoked Johnny Rockets. The lid eschewed the smooth and sleek aesthetic around which laptops were just beginning to converge at that time, opting instead to be covered with a curious but totally unique dot matrix. If you paid a bit (okay, a lot) of extra money, those dots became animated LEDs that you could do all kinds of funky things with, from raising a virtual pet to making a dude’s head continuously explode. Since then, there’s been a G14 model that doubles as a DJ deck and another covered in obscure shapes with “BLACK HOLES IN THE NOW” scrawled across the bottom. It has never been a laptop concerned with blending in.

Ain’t nobody mistaking this for a MacBook.

Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge

I remember emailing Asus to ask if the $1,449 price they’d sent me was a typo — shouldn’t something this exceptional be $1,000 more? And I viscerally remember the feeling I got when Asus’ representative replied that no, believe it or not, that was the real price. It was a realization that this computer was something new — that this computer was something different.

The G14 went on to create what was essentially a new category of gaming laptop over the next few years. The product’s popularity made it basically impossible to buy for quite some time. It’s been a huge product for Asus, a near-consistent presence on Best Buy’s bestseller lists, and, anecdotally, one of the gaming laptops I most often saw in the wild.

These days, innovative 14-inch rigs abound. Asus’ wasn’t the first ultraportable gaming notebook — that honor, of course, belongs to the Razer Blade — but the Zephyrus G14 still proved to everyone that not only could heavy-duty games run well on a 14-inch laptop with all-day battery life and a funky, bold design, but also that such a machine did not need to cost an arm and a leg.

It redefined the category, in other words, by being the exact opposite of a MacBook in basically every way.

RIP to the dot matrix exploding head thing.

Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

Fast-forward to CES 2024. The G14, which has largely retained a facsimile of its 2020 chassis since release, was unveiled with a major redesign. It is much thinner and much lighter. The spaceship vibe is no more. Gone is the dot matrix, as are the exploding heads and virtual fauna that it wrought. The lid is now sleek and professional, with a — I don’t know, is it a slash? — across the center as the sole decoration. Everything about it is rounder, more polished, and prestige. As reports from the show have pointed out, it suddenly looks, feels, and seems a heck of a lot like a MacBook.

The G14 is far from the only CES release that’s blatantly chasing the Mac line when it comes to design. Dell has swapped out its 15-inch and 17-inch XPS configurations for a 14-incher and 16-incher, respectively (sound familiar?). The models have lost not only their full-sized SD slot (sigh), but also their physical function row in favor of haptic touch buttons (another thing a certain Cupertino company tried). Everyone and their mother is grumpy about it. And it’s emblematic of a larger trend we’ve been seeing throughout the computing space in recent years, in which 13-inchers and 14-inchers are converging on a boardroom aesthetic while getting thinner and lighter at all costs.

Now, I understand the desire to emulate the MacBook. It’s a phenomenal line of computers. It’s on top of Best Laptop pages all across the internet, and there’s little disagreement as to its value.

But there are a few things I really hope manufacturers will keep in mind as they mull over whether to scrap designs that were unique and different in pursuit of the MacBook’s look and feel. The first is that the MacBook is not just its look and feel. It’s much more.

I would argue that the reason Apple computers have become the machine that, like, every professional has is, moreso than anything else, their performance. It’s the category-topping power of both their chips and their battery life — it’s the combination of strength and efficiency that they offer. After all, the early-2020 MacBook Pro 13 and the late-2020 MacBook Pro 13 had very similar chassis, but only the latter had both category-topping performance and category-topping battery life, and it only took a few months to totally eclipse its Intel counterpart’s sales. Category-topping performance and category-topping battery life, incidentally, are also what the G14 has had for several years.

I don’t mean to imply that design is unimportant. I am saying that the pursuit of thinness, sleekness, suaveness, whatever you want to call it, often comes with costs.

We’ve seen that play out time and time again. You can look to the transition from the Dell XPS 13, an all-around exceptional laptop that was topping Best pages in the pre-M1 era, to the Dell XPS 13 Plus, a flaming fireball of an ultrabook with about five minutes of battery life, a shallow touchpad, disappointing performance, and a frustrating keyboard that got middling reviews from pretty much everyone. (Tom’s Guide, noted fans of the XPS line, slammed it as “a stunning step backwards.”)

You can look to the ThinkPad Z-series, which had to leave out most of the features that make ThinkPads world renowned in order to maintain a slim frame. The Razer Blade has been doing the thin-and-sleek thing for years on end, and it has consistently been louder, hotter, pricier, and worse in the battery life department than the G14. Heck, you can even look to Apple. After all, the thin-at-all-costs mindset is what subjected us to five years of butterfly keyboard.

I hope this isn’t what’s happening to the G14, the XPS 13, and other major laptops that received redesigns at CES this year. But I’m seeing some warning signs. Last year’s G14 could accommodate up to an RTX 4090 — Nvidia’s top guns — while this year’s caps out at an RTX 4070. I can’t be certain that this is due to the thinner chassis’s reduced cooling capacity, but that seems a likely explanation.

And then there’s battery life, which has long been one of the G14’s most outstanding features. Not only does the 2024 G14 have a smaller battery than its predecessor, but it has a higher-resolution OLED screen. Don’t get me wrong: I love me an OLED screen, especially for gaming, and the Zephyrus’ looks great. But last year’s QHD Mini LED panel was already stunning, with some reviewers reporting that it was basically as good as an OLED. And high-resolution OLED screens combined with H-series processors are rarely a recipe for exceptional battery life. I’ll point you, again, to the XPS 13 Plus. The Acer Swift 3. The HP Pavilion Plus 14. The Asus Zenbook 14X OLED. The HP Spectre x360 13.5. I mean, literally, just take your pick.

I understand the impulse to follow the cool kids to their cafeteria table. Truly, I do. But the Zephyrus G14 had a good thing going. It wasn’t for everyone, but it was wholly and unapologetically itself. It would be a shame, as Windows machines across the market race to catch the MacBook, if such bold products disappeared.

Technology

Xbox’s Towerborne is switching from a free-to-play game to a paid one

Published

2 hours ago

January 9, 2026

Press Room

Xbox’s Towerborne is switching from a free-to-play game to a paid one

Towerborne, a side-scrolling action RPG published by Xbox Game Studios that has been available in early access, will officially launch on February 26th. But instead of launching as a free-to-play, always-on online game as originally planned, Towerborne is instead going to be a paid game that you can play offline.

“You will own the complete experience permanently, with offline play and online co-op,” Trisha Stouffer, CEO and president of Towerborne developer Stoic, says in an Xbox Wire blog post. “This change required deep structural rebuilding over the past year, transforming systems originally designed around constant connectivity. The result is a stronger, more accessible, and more player-friendly version of Towerborne — one we’re incredibly proud to bring to launch.”

“After listening to our community during Early Access and Game Preview, we learned players wanted a complete, polished experience without ongoing monetization mechanics,” according to an FAQ. “Moving to a premium model lets us deliver the full game upfront—no live-service grind, no pay-to-win systems—just the best version of Towerborne.”

With the popular live service games like Fortnite and Roblox getting harder to usurp, Towerborne’s switch to a premium, offline-playable experience could make it more enticing for players who don’t want to jump into another time-sucking forever game. It makes Towerborne more appealing to me, at least.

With the 1.0 release of the game, Towerborne will have a “complete” story, new bosses, and a “reworked” difficulty system. You’ll also be able to acquire all in-game cosmetics for free through gameplay, with “no more cosmetic purchasing.” Players who are already part of early access will still be able to play the game.

Towerborne will launch on February 26th on Xbox Series X / S, Xbox on PC, Game Pass, Steam, and PS5. The standard edition will cost $24.99, while the deluxe edition will cost $29.99.

Technology

Hackers abuse Google Cloud to send trusted phishing emails

Published

2 hours ago

January 9, 2026

Press Room

Hackers abuse Google Cloud to send trusted phishing emails

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Cybercriminals have found a clever new way to get phishing emails straight into inboxes.

Instead of spoofing brands, they are abusing real cloud tools that people already trust. Security researchers say attackers recently hijacked a legitimate email feature inside Google Cloud.

The result was thousands of phishing messages that looked and felt like normal Google notifications. Many slipped past spam filters with ease.

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How this Google Cloud phishing attack worked

At the center of the campaign was Google Cloud Application Integration. This service allows businesses to send automated email notifications from workflows they build. Attackers exploited the Send Email task inside that system. Because the messages came from a real Google address, they appeared authentic to both users and security tools.

According to Check Point, a global cybersecurity firm that tracks and analyzes large-scale threat campaigns, the emails were sent from a legitimate Google-owned address and closely matched Google’s notification style. Fonts, wording, and layout all looked familiar. Over a two-week period in December 2025, attackers sent more than 9,000 phishing emails targeting roughly 3,200 organizations across the U.S., Europe, Canada, Asia Pacific, and Latin America.

Attackers used trusted Google Cloud infrastructure to route victims through multiple redirects before revealing the scam. (Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

MALICIOUS CHROME EXTENSIONS CAUGHT STEALING SENSITIVE DATA

Why Google phishing emails were so convincing

The messages looked like routine workplace alerts. Some claimed you had received a voicemail. Others said you were granted access to a shared document, like a Q4 file. That sense of normalcy lowered suspicion. Many people are used to seeing these exact messages every day. Even more concerning, the emails bypassed common protections like SPF and DMARC because they were sent through Google-owned infrastructure. To email systems, nothing looked fake.

What happens after you click

The attack did not stop at the email. Once a victim clicked the link, they were sent to a page hosted on storage.cloud.google.com. That added another layer of trust. From there, the link redirected again to googleusercontent.com. Next came a fake CAPTCHA or image check. This step blocked automated security scanners while letting real users continue. After passing that screen, victims landed on a fake Microsoft login page hosted on a non-Microsoft domain. Any credentials entered there were captured by the attackers.

Who was targeted in the Google Cloud phishing attack

Check Point says the campaign focused heavily on industries that rely on automated alerts and shared documents. That included manufacturing, technology, finance, professional services, and retail. Other sectors like healthcare, education, government, energy, travel and media were also targeted. These environments see constant permission requests and file-sharing notices, which made the lures feel routine.

“We have blocked several phishing campaigns involving the misuse of an email notification feature within Google Cloud Application Integration,” a Google spokesperson told Cyberguy. “Importantly, this activity stemmed from the abuse of a workflow automation tool, not a compromise of Google’s infrastructure. While we have implemented protections to defend users against this specific attack, we encourage continued caution as malicious actors frequently attempt to spoof trusted brands. We are taking additional steps to prevent further misuse.”

The incident demonstrates how attackers can weaponize legitimate cloud automation tools without resorting to traditional spoofing.

Ways to stay safe from trusted-looking phishing emails

Phishing emails are getting harder to spot, especially when attackers abuse real cloud platforms like Google Cloud. These steps help reduce risk when emails look familiar and legitimate.

1) Slow down before acting on alerts

Attackers rely on urgency. Messages about voicemails, shared files or permission changes are designed to make you click fast. Pause before taking action. Ask yourself whether you were actually expecting that alert. If not, verify it another way.

2) Inspect links before you click

Always hover over links to preview the destination domain. In this campaign, links jumped across multiple trusted-looking Google domains before landing on a fake login page. If the final destination does not match the service asking you to sign in, close the page immediately.

3) Treat file access and permission emails with caution

Shared document alerts are a favorite lure because they feel routine at work. If an email claims you were granted access to a file you do not recognize, do not click directly from the message. Instead, open your browser and sign in to Google Drive or OneDrive manually to check for new files.

The final step led users to a fake Microsoft login page, where entered credentials were silently stolen. (Stack Social)

4) Use a password manager to catch fake login pages

Password managers can be a strong last line of defense. They will not autofill credentials on fake Microsoft or Google login pages hosted on non-official domains. If your password manager refuses to fill in a login, that is a red flag worth paying attention to.

Next, see if your email has been exposed in past breaches. Our #1 password manager (see Cyberguy.com/Passwords) pick includes a built-in breach scanner that checks whether your email address or passwords have appeared in known leaks. If you discover a match, immediately change any reused passwords and secure those accounts with new, unique credentials.

Check out the best expert-reviewed password managers of 2025 at Cyberguy.com.

NEW GOOGLE AI MAKES ROBOTS SMARTER WITHOUT THE CLOUD

5) Run strong antivirus software with phishing protection

Modern antivirus tools do more than scan files. Many now detect malicious links, fake CAPTCHA pages, and credential harvesting sites in real time. Strong antivirus software can block phishing pages even after a click, which matters in multi-stage attacks like this one.

The best way to safeguard yourself from malicious links that install malware, potentially accessing your private information, is to have strong antivirus software installed on all your devices. This protection can also alert you to phishing emails and ransomware scams, keeping your personal information and digital assets safe.

Get my picks for the best 2025 antivirus protection winners for your Windows, Mac, Android & iOS devices at Cyberguy.com.

6) Reduce your exposure with a data removal service

Phishing campaigns often succeed because attackers already know your email, employer or role. That information is commonly pulled from data broker sites. A data removal service helps remove your personal information from these databases, making it harder for attackers to craft convincing, targeted emails.

While no service can guarantee the complete removal of your data from the internet, a data removal service is really a smart choice. They aren’t cheap, and neither is your privacy. These services do all the work for you by actively monitoring and systematically erasing your personal information from hundreds of websites. It’s what gives me peace of mind and has proven to be the most effective way to erase your personal data from the internet. By limiting the information available, you reduce the risk of scammers cross-referencing data from breaches with information they might find on the dark web, making it harder for them to target you.

Check out my top picks for data removal services and get a free scan to find out if your personal information is already out on the web by visiting Cyberguy.com.

Get a free scan to find out if your personal information is already out on the web: Cyberguy.com.

7) Enable two-factor authentication (2FA) everywhere

Even if attackers steal your password, two-factor authentication (2FA) can stop them from accessing your account. Use app-based authentication or hardware keys when possible, especially for work email, cloud storage, and Microsoft accounts.

8) Report suspicious emails immediately

If something feels off, report it. Flag suspicious Google or Microsoft alerts to your IT or security team so they can warn others. Early reporting can stop a phishing campaign before it spreads further inside an organization.

Google phishing emails looked like routine workplace alerts. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

Kurt’s key takeaways

This campaign highlights a growing shift in phishing tactics. Attackers no longer need to fake brands when they can abuse trusted cloud services directly. As automation becomes more common, security awareness matters more than ever. Even familiar emails deserve a second look, especially when they push urgency or ask for credentials.

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If a phishing email comes from a real Google address, how confident are you that you would spot it before clicking? Let us know by writing to us at Cyberguy.com.

Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson is an award-winning tech journalist who has a deep love of technology, gear and gadgets that make life better with his contributions for Fox News & FOX Business beginning mornings on “FOX & Friends.” Got a tech question? Get Kurt’s free CyberGuy Newsletter, share your voice, a story idea or comment at CyberGuy.com.

Technology

Most dubious uses of AI at CES 2026

Published

14 hours ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

You can’t shake a stick without hitting an AI gadget at CES this year, with artificial smarts now embedded in just about every wearable, screen, and appliance across the show floor, not to mention the armies of AI companions, toys, and robots.

But those are just the beginning. We’ve seen AI pop up in much stranger places too, from hair clippers to stick vacs, and at least one case where even the manufacturer itself seemed unsure what made its products “AI.”

Here are the gadgets we’ve seen at CES 2026 so far that really take the “intelligence” out of “artificial intelligence.”

Glyde smart hair clippers

An extremely normal hair-cutting experience.

Photo: Dominic Preston / The Verge

This is a product that would be silly enough without the AI add-on. These smart hair clippers help amateur hairdressers deliver the perfect fade by dynamically altering the closeness of the cut, helped along by an ominous face mask that looks like it belongs in an optician’s office.

But it’s taken to the next level by the real-time AI coach, which gives you feedback as you cut. Glyde told me it’s working on voice controls for the AI too, and that eventually it will be able to recommend specific hairstyles, so long as you’re willing to trust its style advice. Are you?

Gotta love a CES booth that hands out mystery pills like they’re candy.

Photo: Dominic Preston / The Verge

“Where Pills meet AI.”

That was the message emblazoned across the SleepQ booth, where company reps were handing out boxes of pills — a multivitamin with ashwagandha extract according to the box, supposedly good for sleep, though I wasn’t brave enough to test that claim on my jetlag.

Manufacturer Welt, originally spun out of a Samsung incubator, calls its product “AI-upgraded pharmacotherapy.” It’s really just using biometric data from your smartwatch or sleep tracker to tell you the optimal time to take a sleeping pill each day, with plans to eventually cover anxiety meds, weight-management drugs, pain relief, and more.

There may well be an argument that fine-tuning the time people pop their pills could make them more effective, but I feel safe in saying we don’t need to start throwing around the term “AI-enhanced drugs.”

I always wished my vacuum was more intelligent.

Photo: Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

Startup Deglace claims that its almost unnecessarily sleek-looking Fraction vacuum cleaner uses AI in two different ways: first to “optimize suction,” and then to manage repairs and replacements for the modular design.

It says its Neural Predictive AI monitors vacuum performance “to detect issues before they happen,” giving you health scores for each of the vacuum’s components, which can be conveniently replaced with a quick parts order from within the accompanying app. A cynic might worry this is all in the name of selling users expensive and proprietary replacement parts, but I can at least get behind the promise of modular upgrades — assuming Deglace is able to deliver on that promise.

AI-generated art of a bulldog wearing 18th-ish-century military garb and seated on a golden throne, in the style of an old oil painting.

You too can hang beautiful art like this in your home.

Photo: Dominic Preston / The Verge

Most digital picture frames let you display photos of loved ones, old holiday snaps, or your favorite pieces of art. Fraimic lets you display AI slop.

It’s an E Ink picture frame with a microphone and voice controls, so you can describe whatever picture you’d like, which the frame will then generate using OpenAI’s GPT Image 1.5 model. The frame itself starts at $399, which gets you 100 image generations each year, with the option to buy more if you run out.

What makes the AI in Fraimic so dubious is that it might be a pretty great product without it. The E Ink panel looks great, you can use it to show off your own pictures and photos too, and it uses so little power that it can run for years without being plugged in. We’d just love it a lot more without the added slop.

Into the ModuVerse.

Photo: Dominic Preston / The Verge

Infinix, a smaller phone manufacturer that’s had success across Asia for its affordable phones, didn’t launch any actual new products at CES this year, but it did bring five concepts that could fit into future phones. Some are clever, like various color-changing rear finishes and a couple of liquid-cooling designs. And then there’s the AI ModuVerse.

Modular phone concepts are nothing new, so the AI hook is what makes ModuVerse unique — in theory. One of the “Modus” makes sense: a meeting attachment that connects magnetically, generating AI transcripts and live translation onto a mini display on the back.

But when I asked what made everything else AI, Infinix didn’t really have any good answers. The gimbal camera has AI stabilization, the vlogging lens uses AI to detect faces, and the microphone has AI voice isolation — all technically AI-based, but not in any way that’s interesting. As for the magnetic, stackable power banks, Infinix’s reps eventually admitted they don’t really have any AI at all. Color me shocked.

This looks pretty smart, but it really is just a microwave.

Photo: Dominic Preston / The Verge

There’s a growing trend for AI and robotic cooking hardware — The Verge’s Jen Tuohy reviewed a $1,500 robot chef just last month — but Wan AIChef is something altogether less impressive: an AI-enabled microwave.

It runs on what looks suspiciously like Android, with recipe suggestions, cooking instructions, and a camera inside so you can see the progress of what you’re making. But… it’s just a microwave. So it can’t actually do any cooking for you, other than warm up your food to just the right temperature (well, just right plus or minus 3 degrees Celsius, to be accurate).

It’ll do meal plans and food tracking and calorie counting too, which all sounds great so long as you’re willing to commit to eating all of your meals out of the AI microwave. Please, I beg you, do not eat all of your meals out of the AI microwave.

A vertical monitor displaying an image of a margarita. There is a webcam mounted on top.

Yes, that is just a Dell monitor with a Logitech webcam stuck on top.

Photo: Dominic Preston / The Verge

The tech industry absolutely loves reinventing the vending machine and branding it either robotics or AI, and AI Barmen is no different.

This setup — apparently already in use for private parties and corporate events — is really just an automatic cocktail machine with a few AI smarts slapped on top.

The AI uses the connected webcam to estimate your age — it was off by eight years in my case — and confirm you’re sober enough to get another drink. It can also create custom drinks, with mixed success: When asked for something to “fuck me up,” it came up with the Funky Tequila Fizz, aka tequila, triple sec, and soda. What, no absinthe?

A palm-sized device with a small screen displaying a cartoon version of Elon Musk.

Photo: Dominic Preston / The Verge

Should you buy your kid an AI toy that gives it a complete LLM-powered chatbot to speak to? Probably not. But what if that AI chatbot looked like chibi Elon Musk?

He’s just one of the many avatars offered by the Luka AI Cube, including Hayao Miyazaki, Steve from Minecraft, and Harry Potter. Kids can chat to them about their day, ask for advice, or even share the AI Cube’s camera feed to show the AI avatars where they are and what they’re up to. Luka says it’s a tool for fun, but also learning, with various educational activities and language options.

The elephant in the room is whether you should trust any company’s guardrails enough to give a young kid access to an LLM. Leading with an AI take on Elon Musk — whose own AI, Grok, is busy undressing children as we speak — doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

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