- Asus has raised the price of its ROG Zephyrus G16 range in the UK
- The sales prices represent a painful increase over last-generation laptops.
- The base model is 28% more expensive (although the GPU is a notch higher) and gamers are generally unimpressed.
Asus revealed its new ROG Zephyrus G16 at CES 2026 (among a host of other laptops), and now we’ve learned the price in one region, and it’s not pretty.
Notebookcheck.net noted (via VideoCardz) that prices appeared for these gaming laptops on the UK Asus store ahead of hardware availability. There have been some big boosts that have taken players by surprise, even given the current component climate.
The new entry-level Zephyrus G16 model with an Nvidia RTX 5070 GPU (plus 32GB of RAM, 1TB of SSD and an Intel Core Ultra 9 386H CPU) costs £3,199 in the UK, around 17% more than the equivalent model of the latest generation of G16 laptops.
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The twist, however, is that there’s no RTX 5060 model this time (there was in the last-gen range), so the entry-level G16 for 2026 is actually 28% more expensive than in 2025 (although it’s obviously more powerful with that 5070 GPU).
Do you want the G16 by 2026 with an RTX 5080? So you’re looking at an outlay of £4,099, and for this year’s flagship G16 model with the RTX 5090, the laptop costs £4,899 (with those models, you get 64GB of RAM and a 2TB drive, with the same CPU).
As Notebookcheck.net points out, the current next-gen entry-level G16 is now discounted by £400 in the UK, and compared to that, the new entry-level model has a starting price that’s more than 50% more than its predecessor (albeit with that more powerful GPU, as noted). Of course, this is a very steep increase.
As one player on Reddit put it: “I don’t know what I was expecting, but I certainly wasn’t expecting that… 3 bags for a 5070. That’s crazy.”
Analysis: What does this mean for prices elsewhere?
Gamers in the UK are not impressed with the new prices, even though everyone knew that laptop increases were (and probably still are) in the works, due to the crisis with PC components. (RAM and storage, but also other parts, like GPU, and we’re hearing about more expensive CPUs lately, so yeah, the bad news keeps coming.)
And in other regions, these increases are also worrying gamers, considering they represent such a considerable increase compared to Asus’ 2025 models. However, in the case of the US, we must remember that while the new base price in the UK (£3,199) converts to around $4,200, there is little point in considering a direct currency conversion.
This is because prices in the United States are much cheaper (minus the cost of importing, sales tax, and other factors). Those of us in the UK typically find that technology costs the same in pounds as it does in dollars (if not more). Just look at the recently launched MacBook Neo, for example, which costs $599 in the US and £599 in the UK.
Additionally, the Neo is a good example of how it’s still possible to keep laptop prices affordable (although Apple has certainly used its vast resources to good effect in terms of inventory and being able to take advantage of more favorable prices on components).
All in all, the price increases for the ROG Zephyrus G16 seem unreasonably high, but that said, the situation with US pricing may look better when it is announced (which should be very soon). Better will be a relative term, of course, and there is no guarantee of that either.
Of course, the UK situation is an ominous omen for the US and other countries, as is the pricing of Asus models in Canada, such as the ROG Zephyrus Duo for 2026 (the dual-screen laptop), which starts at $5,499 CAD (and £3,999 in the UK). That’s the base price, just to be clear.
The reaction on Reddit has been one of disbelief, punctuated by resignation at the increasingly high prices of hardware. There’s even a marked theme of people saying they’d rather buy a MacBook given the new Asus ROG prices, even though Apple’s laptop is clearly not a gaming laptop.
What this story of pricing issues also highlights is that it’s worth looking at last year’s model (at a discount, as currently seen in the UK) rather than paying top dollar for the contemporary laptop, and this is true now more than ever.
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