At this moment, I have the laptop for almost a month and I have been impressed. It really blew my old laptop away with the performance and battery life, while maintaining a sleek, low-profile appearance.
PROS:
+ Battery life. So far I have been able to chuck in 6 to nearly 7 hours of light usage under the power saver setting. Smaller ultrabooks can still outlast this, sure, but considering this is a gaming laptop with serious hardware bolted on (more on that later), it is more than acceptable. If you don't use the laptop in a frequent basis, you can use it on the go without bringing the charger around.
+ Performance: Intel i7-8750H and a Max-Q Geforce 1070. This really handles newest games pretty well. Combined with the 144Hz screen, wow. This laptop can play demanding titles at more than 60 frames per second. For example, I was able to get 72fps on Forza Horizon 4 alone with settings auto-detected on ultra. There is minimal thermal throttling and the laptop handles its thermals pretty well. Unfortunately I can't give more details on temperatures as I struggle trying to get the RivaTuner app working.
+ Portability, aesthetics and build quality: You are expected to pay a premium for this laptop but the build quality is really excellent. Screen is sturdy and there is a minimum use of plastic on the laptop itself (see hinge). And since I bought this laptop during the Black Friday week, there was a discount to sweeten the deal. Aesthetics and portability drew me to this laptop because it has managed a really good job cramming serious hardware into an unassuming chassis. I brought this laptop several times in my college and no one batted an eye, or even notice that it is a gaming laptop underneath. Portability is really impressive. At 2kg, I can easily bring this in my backpack without adding too much weight penalty.
+ Thunderbolt 3 port: This is definitely a plus as I've been rather skeptical on how mobile GPUs can future-proof themselves. Fortunately, there is a Thunderbolt 3 port which allows external GPUs to be connected and run in near future, should the mobile GPU runs out of steam.
Some CONS/MISSES:
- Storage and RAM: The stock storage, while it has an SSD by default, kind of left me skeptical. While it is rather fast, I have doubts putting in more stuff, let's say videogames because it will take quite a lot of storage space and I might run out before I know it. I am a college student and there is a chance I might run into situation I am putting a lot of schoolwork into the hard disk. The single-channel 16GB RAM is kind of a bummer as well. It is probably the bottleneck for more performance in games. I've seen reviews of this laptop and they recommend swapping for dual channel RAM for more frames per second.
- RGB lighting: at first I had fun with the gimmick, but it gets old pretty soon. When I got the laptop I have a chance to play around with it by turning the RGB lighting on to "wave" setting which was pretty cool at first, but after few weeks I left it on static white because it looks more clean and sophisticated. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of RGB lighting but some people have their own tastes (me included) and I want to preserve Aero's clean aesthetics.
- Keyboard: I really wish there is an option to have the Aero WITHOUT the numpad. Sure, there are certain groups of people that needs a numpad in their life, but for my own personal use I do not use the numpad often. Keyboard travel is pretty much satisfactory, with me getting a lot of satisfying clicks and feedback, but would it be better to have more key space if the numpad were absent. It gets tiring to type on the keyboard for extended amount of time, especially in productive work.
-Speakers: Also a miss because some people might demand more from a speaker in a laptop that costs 2 grand. While I can live with it, the speaker sounds like a sub-one thousand dollar laptops in terms of sound quality.
Update: I found an issue with the webcam after several Windows update. It worked perfectly out of the box but I encountered camera timeout issue with the Windows camera app. The odd thing is the built-in AmCap software is able to display a webcam output while the Windows camera app shows a camera timeout issue. This is something that I need to address to the local service center.
Conclusion: The Gigabyte Aero 15X is an excellent laptop for people who wants performance for their gaming demands while maintaining subtlety and battery life while they are not gaming, which can be useful in public/professional situations. The wealth of hardware offered, screen quality, and other merits command a premium but there are shortcomings/compromises that prevents this laptop from getting a perfect 10 in real life.
Overall personal rating: 4.5/5
| Standing screen display size | 15.6 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1080 pixels |
| Max Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1080 Pixels |
| Processor | 8032 |
| RAM | 16 GB DDR4 |
| Memory Speed | 4.1 GHz |
| Hard Drive | SSD |
| Graphics Coprocessor | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 |
| Chipset Brand | NVIDIA |
| Card Description | Dedicated |
| Wireless Type | 802.11ac |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 1 |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 1 |
| Average Battery Life (in hours) | 10 Hours |
