Introduction

Note: This article was first published on 9 September 2019.

Blazing fast performance

The Aorus 15 was designed with raw performance in mind. You can think of it as the spiritual successor to the X5 v8 (the last we've reviewed in this series is the X5 v6), at least until Gigabyte chooses to release the X5 v9 or its equivalent. 

Gigabyte's Aero series of gaming laptops have shifted to focus more heavily on content creators, leaving the Aorus notebooks to take up the gaming mantle. Compared to the X5, the Aorus 15 makes some trade-offs in order to achieve a far more palatable price. It is not one of those super slim and light laptops that have you paying a premium for advanced materials, design, and performance. 

Instead, it's quite frankly pretty chunky, but it makes up for that with excellent gaming performance. 

Here's an overview of its specifications:

• 15.6-inch 1,920 x 1,080-pixel 240Hz IGZO display
• Intel Core i7-9750H processor (2.60GHz, 12MB L3 cache)
• 16GB DDR4-2666 dual-channel RAM
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070
• Intel SSD 760p 512GB + Seagate Barracuda 2TB HDD
• 62Wh battery
• Dimensions: 361 x 246 x 24.4mm
• Weight: 2.4kg

It'll cost you S$2,999, which is a really attractive price for its specifications. Plenty other GeForce RTX 2070 or 2070 Max-Q laptops cost closer to S$4,000, so you're getting quite a bit of performance for your dollar.

If you don't particularly need a super svelte and portable gaming machine, the Aorus 15 is shaping up to be a good pick. Is there a catch to this tempting package? We delve deeper in the next few pages.