Gigabyte Aero 15X notebook review: Small improvements go a long way

A good laptop gets better

The original Gigabyte Aero 15X was already at the top of its game when it came to slim and lightweight gaming laptops. Its thin bezels were ahead of its time, and the edge-to-edge IPS display was vibrant and gorgeous to look at.

However, even though I really liked the Aero 15X’s display, its 60Hz panel was still a glaring weakness for a gaming laptop.

Gigabyte obviously realized this, and 2018’s Aero 15X now boasts a 144Hz IPS display for silky smooth gameplay.

That’s not the only change however, and the laptop also sports a range of other small improvements. For starters, the speakers now support Dolby Atmos. In addition, the chassis has been slimmed down slightly and now measures just 18.9mm thick.

The keyboard has been improved as well, and it supports N-key rollover now. On top of that, the card reader has also gotten an upgrade. Gigabyte has switched to the new UHS-II interface that reportedly delivers up to 12 times faster read and write speeds, so you can transfer large files more quickly from your SD card.

Here’s an overview of the laptop’s specifications:

• 15.6-inch 1,920 x 1,080-pixel 144Hz IPS display
• Intel Core i7-8750H (2.2GHz, 9MB L3 cache)
• 16GB DDR4-2666 RAM
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q
• 512GB M.2 PCIe SSD
• 94.24Wh battery
• 356 x 250 x 18.9mm
• 2kg

The Aero 15X is slim, light, and fast, but it is going up against very tough competition. For instance, the new Razer Blade feels more premium, and its webcam isn’t even located awkwardly at the bottom.

At S$3,799, the Aero 15X will need to show that it’s at the very top of its game.

A utilitarian outlook

This year’s Aero 15X v8 comes in a brand new all-black color scheme. While the older v7 was also available in black, it still came with bright orange accents on the lid. 2018’s Aero 15X is a nod toward those who prefer a stealthier look, and its aluminum chassis gives it a pleasantly robust feel.

Gigabyte also replaced the boring company logo beneath the screen with a stylized Aero logo, which looks a tad bit sharper to me.

To be honest, not a lot has changed from the previous model, and that’s not really a bad thing. After all, the first Aero 15X was a winning blend of power, portability, and battery life, so it made little sense for Gigabyte to break a formula that was so clearly working.

Instead, it’s improved on it with small but crucial upgrades. As I mentioned earlier, the display is now a 144Hz IPS panel, which addresses a major weakness of the earlier model. It also retains its X-Rite Pantone certification, so it comes factory calibrated out of the box for more accurate colors.

The Aero 15X’s display remains one of the best I’ve seen on a laptop. Colors appear spot-on and vibrant, with pleasing contrast levels. And while some screens have a noticeably cooler or warmer bias, I noticed no such issues on the Aero 15X. My only complaint is that the screen can feel a little dim, so a boost in brightness would have been nice.

G-Sync support is still missing, but that’s a relatively small omission since the technology’s impact is less pronounced on a high refresh rate panel like this one.

The screen is paired with dual 2-watt speakers with support for Dolby Atmos, but you shouldn’t expect too much from them. While audio comes through clearly enough, the speakers are still lacking in the lower frequencies.  

The razor-thin bezels on the Aero 15X put it in the same company as laptop’s like the MSI GS65 Stealth Thin, Razer Blade, and Aftershock APEX 15, all of which are 15.6-inch laptops crammed into much more compact bodies.

The Aero 15X stands out for having among the thinnest bezels around. The edge-to-edge display is gorgeous to look at, and even the top bezel on the laptop has been slimmed down to match those on the left and right. However, some sacrifices have had to be made to accommodate the thin bezels, and the webcam sits at the bottom, just as it did on the previous model.

Personally, I’d have been willing to put up with a slightly thicker top bezel, even if it were just to fit in the webcam. The awkward webcam placement makes for some seriously unflattering camera angles, so I wouldn’t want to make this my main machine for video calls/streaming.

The other key upgrade comes in the form of the keyboard. It now supports N-key rollover, or 80 simultaneous key presses to be specific, so you shouldn't run into problems for games that require you to execute complicated combos. In addition, there are per-key customizations so you have access to nearly limitless options.

Gigabyte has once again crammed a full-sized keyboard here, and it occupies the entire width of the notebook. For such a thin laptop, the keyboard is surprisingly springy and offers nice feedback. The slightly concave keys also help guide your fingers into place.

However, while I like Gigabyte’s efficient use of space here, it’s possible that some of you may find the keyboard a little cramped.

Unfortunately, the touchpad is merely average. It’s not a Windows Precision Touchpad, and it overall feels less precise than the one on the new Razer Blade. As a result, it also doesn’t support certain three- or four-fingered Windows 10 gestures.

The SD card reader was another thoughtful inclusion on the original Aero 15X, especially for a laptop that was targeted at both creative professionals and gamers. This time around, Gigabyte upgraded the card reader to a faster UHS-II interface, which supposedly delivers up to 12 times quicker read and write speeds than the USB 3.0 interface on the previous model.

That aside, Gigabyte has stuck to the same port layout as before, and you’ll find one USB 3.1 (Gen 1) Type-A, two USB 3.1 (Gen 2) Type-A, one Thunderbolt 3 port and one RJ45 LAN port. For display outputs, you get one HDMI 2.0 and one Mini DisplayPort 1.4 connector, so the laptop can actually output to three monitors at once.

This makes it a good fit for a workstation system, but the laptop lends itself well to getting work done on the go as well. It’s reasonably light and compact for a 15.6-inch laptop, and its super-thin bezels mean that it’s closer in size to a 14-inch laptop.

It’s also marginally thinner and lighter than its predecessor, measuring just 18.9mm thick and weighing 2kg. I thought the Aero 15X v7 was a little on the heavy side, so I’ll take whatever weight reductions Gigabyte can work in.

The ebony aluminum chassis feels well put together, but it doesn’t feel quite as good as the Razer Blade’s unibody chassis. Compared to the Blade’s smooth lines and angular design, the Aero 15X still feels a little rough around the edges. It’s not badly built by any means, but the Blade simply feels more refined and polished.

Finally, as with most slim gaming laptops, the Aero 15X can also get quite loud under load (it’s thankfully quiet with non-gaming workloads though). It uses dual fans and two heat pipes to channel heat away from the CPU and GPU, and the exhaust vents are located at the bottom of the notebook so you won’t get hot air blowing against your hand when using a mouse.

Test setup and performance

Here’s a full list of the notebooks we’re looking at:

• Gigabyte Aero 15X v8 (Core i7-8750H)
• Razer Blade (2018)
• Gigabyte Aero 15X v7 (Core i7-7700HQ)
• Aftershock PRIME-15

I’ll be comparing the Aero 15X v8 against the new Razer Blade, which is one of its direct competitors in the space. In addition, the Aero 15X v7 and Aftershock PRIME-15 were chosen to show how the Aero 15X v8 stacks up against laptops equipped with Intel’s last generation Core i7-7700HQ processor.

[hwzcompare]

[products=642013,642009,634369,614728]

[width=200]

[caption=Test notebooks compared]

[showprices=1]

[/hwzcompare]

We ran the notebooks through the following benchmarks:

• PCMark 10
• 3DMark
• VRMark
• Ashes of the Singularity
• Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
• Tom Clancy’s The Division

PCMark 10 Extended

PCMark 10 Extended assesses the performance of systems in a variety of workloads, including basic computing tasks, productivity applications, digital content creation, and gaming. Compared to PCMark 8, it also adds in new test metrics, such as app startup times, which quantifies how long it takes to launch a variety of real-world apps, and a rendering and visualization workload to simulate professional graphics and engineering applications. In addition, existing workloads have been updated to reflect modern usage.

The hexa-core 8th-generation CPU on the Gigabyte Aero 15X v8 served it well here, and it was nearly 9 per cent quicker than its v7 counterpart. However, while it also took first place in terms of overall scores, it was actually barely a hair quicker than the Razer Blade, and it’s safe to say that there were no significant differences between the two here.

That said, a look at the score breakdown shows that there’s only a small boost in terms of performance for things like the Essentials (app start-up, web browsing, video conferencing) and Digital Content Creation (photo and video editing, rendering and visualization) benchmarks. What’s more, both laptops with the Core i7-8750H were also lagging behind the Aftershock PRIME-15 in the Productivity benchmark, which comprises tasks like writing and spreadsheets.

It’s clear that not all applications will be able to fully utilize the hexa-core chip, which comes with a lower 2.2GHz base clock but higher 4.1GHz boost clock. Nevertheless, gaming seems to be one area where the new processor comes in handy, and the Aero 15X v8 was 7 per cent faster than the v7.

3DMark

3DMark is a more relevant assessment of gaming performance, and it puts the system through a range of graphics and computational performance tests at different resolutions, starting at 1080p and going all the way up to 4K.

The Gigabyte Aero 15X v8 was around 5 per cent faster than the v7 in 3DMark Fire Strike, a tiny improvement that doesn’t come anywhere close to justifying an upgrade. In addition, it also lagged slightly behind the Razer Blade, and the latter was roughly 3 per cent quicker.

VRMark

Futuremark’s VRMark benchmark is designed to assess a PC’s ability to handle high-performance headsets like the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. If a PC passes the Orange Room test, it is ready for the latter two systems. The benchmark also has a target frame rate of 109FPS, and I've included the average FPS each notebook managed to provide a clearer measure of their respective performance.

The way things look, VRMark still places a greater emphasis on higher single-core clock speeds and isn't quite able to fully utilize hexa-core Core i7-8750H. The latter has a 2.2GHz base clock and maximum turbo frequency of 4.1GHz, compared to the 2.8GHz base clock and 3.8GHz boost clock of the Core i7-7700HQ.

While the 8th-generation Coffee Lake processor has a higher turbo boost frequency, it seems like that couldn't make up for the considerably lower base clock.

The Gigabyte Aero 15X v8 turned out to be slower than the both the Razer Blade and the Aero 15X v7, a rather disappointing result. It trailed the Razer Blade by just under 12 per cent, and was a whopping 30 per cent slower than the v7.

This is just the start of a run of inexplicably slow performance from the Aero 15X v8. At first I thought that the CPU frequency was being throttled, but a look at the monitoring numbers showed that it was constantly boosting to 4.1GHz and holding that speed consistently, the same as the Razer Blade, so the performance differential may come down to firmware optimization issues.

Ashes of the Singularity

Ashes of the Singularity is a demanding real-time strategy game that puts thousands of units on screen, and it’s capable of pushing even the most powerful GPUs.

The Aero 15X v8 had another poor showing here, and it was 20 per cent slower than the Razer Blade at High settings (DirectX 11). It was slower even than the Aero 15X v7, which is a pretty abysmal showing.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Mankind Divided is one of the most demanding titles to run today, but the Razer Blade is more than capable of delivering a playable experience.

The Aero 15X v8 continued to lag behind here, even if it wasn’t by that large a margin. It was just under 7 per cent slower than the Razer Blade at High settings, and it also failed to keep pace with the laptops equipped with the Core i7-7700HQ.

Tom Clancy’s The Division

The Division isn’t as demanding to run as Ashes of the Singularity or Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, but its Snowdrop engine can still stress cards with the use of dynamic lighting and the like.

The same story repeated itself here, and the Aero 15X v8 was roughly 8 per cent slower than the Razer Blade at High settings. It also continued to trail the other notebooks, which makes it hard to recommend the Aero 15X v8 from a performance standpoint.

Temperature, battery life, & portability

Temperature

I measured the external temperatures of the four quadrants of the notebook after 40 loops of 3DMark's Fire Strike Extreme stress test. This amount of time is more than enough to get an idea of your average maximum running temperature for this workload.

Temperatures on the Aero 15X v8 were more or less in line with the competition, although surface temperatures on the palm rests were lower than on the Razer Blade.

Battery life and power consumption

I used the built-in battery life benchmark in PCMark 8 Home to assess the battery life on the laptops.

Battery life continues to be the greatest strength of Gigabyte’s laptop. The Aero 15X v8 is equipped with a large 94.24Wh battery, and that really helps it outlast the competition in terms of battery life. For a gaming laptop, it certainly puts out very impressive numbers, and there are few laptops that come close to challenging it. The Razer Blade puts up a good fight with its 80Wh, but it still falls short in the end.

This is truly a gaming laptop that you can comfortably use on the go without constantly worrying about running out of juice. It doesn’t last as long as the v7, probably due to its more powerful hexa-core processor, but it is still miles ahead of nearly everyone else.

Portability

The portability index is an objective measure of how portable a notebook is, taking into account factors like size, weight, and battery life.

The Aero 15X v8’s excellent battery life, slim dimensions, and relatively light weight helps it power ahead in the portability index. It doesn’t quite measure up to the v7, but it’s still excellent compared to the rest of the competition.

It’s one thing to have a slim and light gaming laptop, but quite another to have good battery life as well. After all, a slim chassis and a large battery don’t exactly go hand-in-hand.

A gaming laptop for the road

The Gigabyte Aero 15X v8 has all the makings of a great laptop. It improves on its predecessor in meaningful ways, adding in a higher refresh rate display, N-key rollover, and a faster UHS-II card reader. In doing so, it sticks to the same formula that made the original so good, boasting a slim and light aluminum chassis and seriously impressive battery life.

Given how crowded the field is today with laptops like the Razer Blade and MSI GS65 Stealth Thin, battery life is really what helps the laptop stand out. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that it is the best out there, and the Aero 15X is really one of the rare few gaming laptops that can spend a reasonable amount of time away from a power socket.

Unfortunately, the only thing that’s holding me back from recommending the Aero 15X is its questionable performance in select gaming benchmarks. It’s not entirely clear why the laptop performed as it did, but it was noticeably slower than the competition, and even the previous generation of laptops with the Core i7-7700HQ. That said, it’s possible that this may be the product of some issue at the firmware level.

Unfortunately, Gigabyte also switched from dual-channel memory to single-channel on the new Aero 15X, and it’d have been nice if it had retained the former configuration. The company said it did this in response to user requests for an empty slot in order to make room for RAM upgrades, but I still feel like more people could benefit if dual-channel memory was installed right at the start.

The Aero 15X is a well-designed laptop with all the features gamers and creative professionals could need. It’s just a pity it doesn’t perform as well as its spec sheet suggests it should.

Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.