Customer Ratings & Reviews

TLDR: Great gaming laptop, great 165hz IPS, RTX 5060 with frame gen, but didn't pass Q&A as my USB-A port only 1 works. I'm sure it is just my unit, but everything works great and fine, but only 1 of 2 USB-A ports work out of the box. See images. Opening the unit, streamlined/straight forward experience, nothing special here. Unit itself is ok, not light, but not heavy, and the power cord/brick was average size, nothing here. Turning it on, updating the GIMATE / Gigabyte software, then updating Windows, updating NVIDIA drivers, etc took about 2 hours, so be prepared for that. Once done, the feel of the keyboard is large/spacey feels great, excellent for gaming, no mis-taps. The speakers were better than average, things souned clear and deep enough, and average acceptable soundstage. The chassis is great, very thing profile, so thin there's no ports in the back, keeping things compact, but yet feeling great. I really enjoyed that aspect of the laptop. The screen was great, it's rated at 500 nits, but felt brighter than 500 nits. I appreciate the matte finish so there's no glare. It is IPS, not OLED, but still better than expected contrast. The 2560x1600 resolution really gives things definition, and paired with a capable 50 series felt great. I think most games have peaked in terms of graphics fidelity. Running a 5060 class is now good enough, especially if the game has frame gen. You can see in my screenshots, I had diablo 4 running with frame gen and overwatch 2 without frame gen are both very capable at medium settings at this resolution. The frame gen makes it beyond capable and running on high settings and still >100fps. I also included some benchmarks, which improved after updating the drivers, to give point of reference. Updating the drivers always help. Overall, I LOVE the laptop. I had to open the laptop and re-align it to ensure the USB ports were finally aligned. Unfortunate because I don't think most consumers will be able to do that, nor should they have to do that. It should've just been perfectly aligned out of the box. I unfortunately have to take away 2 stars, it's drastic enough, especially USB-A ports are used for dongles that most gamers will need for their mice/etc, and the laptop is clearly marketed for gamers. The other gripe is the software typically isn't very good, and it's no different here. I wish the interface was easier and snappier to navigate, and the battery setting would be easier to navigate to. But I am sure the USB situation is probably only unique to me, and that most people should have a better experience.

First, I am not going to discuss value here. These are crazy times with AI sucking up all of the memory and storage, prices are at a bad place right now. In a few months things might be better or worse. After removing the 100% recyclable box, you get just the slip laptop and the 150 W power brick that uses a barrel plug. I was hoping that it would come with a USB-C charger, but such chargers do work if you supply your own (more on this later). Other than this, there was nothing else except some paperwork. The chassis is actually rather nice, but I was hoping for metal at this price point. Still, the chassis is pleasingly stiff, but a bit of a fingerprint magnet. The looks are understated. From the outside, there is nothing about this machine that screams that it is for gamers. This would look at home in any business were it not for the keyboard. It uses a “gamer” font, and the keyboard has RGB backlight. The backlight is not per-key, but you can pick one color for the entire keyboard. By default it just shifts through the colors. The touchpad is the usual plastic surface (I would have rather had glass), but it is large and very functional. But being for gaming, the vast majority of people will be using a mouse. The keyboard is also good, but rather unexceptional, and claims n-key rollover, which appeared to work perfectly running through a few levels of Doom. But turning to the sides, the port selection is strange. The entire back as well as the rear portion of the sides are reserved for cooling, which pushes the ports further forward than I would prefer. But even stranger is the port selection. The left features the barrel jack for power, an RJ45 for ethernet, a full-sized HDMI port, one fast USB-3 type A, and a USB-4 type C. The right side has a USB 2 (yes, really), another USB-3 type A. So there is only one solitary USB-C connector, two fast USB-A connectors, and one slow USB-A connector. I would have expected at least two USB-C jacks, and finding only one was a bit of a surprise. But this one jack does support Thunderbolt 4, DisplayPort connections, as well as charging, so this can connect to a docking station with one cable. I plugged in a USB-C charger capable of 120 W, but I saw a maximum of 95 W being pulled, so I would assume that to be the limit. The computer complained about not getting enough power, but this should be plenty for anything but the heaviest of gaming sessions, so a USB-C power supply should be adequate for travel use. While the speakers are on the underside, they did sound quite impressive, and the volume level should be good for anything less than filling a room. There was no deep bass, but the lows were present, and are among the better laptop speakers that I have experienced. The bezels are very thin, but a little thicker on the top to accommodate the camera with “Windows Hello” facial recognition (no fingerprint sensor on this machine). The face unlock works well, and the camera is certainly more than adequate for the occasional teleconference. But the display is the star of the show. It has a 2500 x 1600 display that comes out of the box running at 165 Hz (the only other choice is 60 Hz). The display is beautiful, and made playing games quite pleasing. While not OLED, it worked great. So much for the outside. What about the inside? This is advertised as a gaming machine, and indeed it has the gaming chops to go with it. The CPU is a Ryzen 7 260 with integrated graphics. This features 8 cores and 16 threads. The integrated graphics is great because it can handle the easy display tasks, leaving the nVidia GPU turned off for power savings. Of note is that this features a video mux, which selects between the two graphics chips. Other cheaper laptops route the video from one source through the other, which increases latency and reduces performance. But this chip is a beast for a computer this size. The GPU is also impressive for this size. In the laptop version of an nVidia RTX 5060, and it has the ability to play any modern game if you are flexible about the quality settings. The down side is that the GPU only has 8 GB of VRAM, but given the current RAM crisis, this was not unexpected. But Doom and Cyberpunk 2077 ran well, as you can see in the benchmark chart that I have attached to this review. The rest of the specs are rather a mixed bag. The laptop only supports WiFi 6e. I would have hoped to see WiFi 7 in this class. Still it is usable and works well. The storage is a Kingson 1 TB stick. It appears to be a Gen 4 drive, as speeds were lethargic at less than 5 GB/s read speeds. But this is still good enough for gaming. What is downright disappointing is the memory. This computer supports dual-channel RAM, but only one 16 GB stick was installed. This means that in its default configuration you are giving up half of your bandwidth. On the plus side, you can add another memory stick to get dual-channel 32 GB without having to throw away the other stick. But rampocalypse, etc. etc. The cooling was also well done. All tests (unless otherwise noted) were run in “balanced” mode, which is the default out of the box. Running Furmark got the CPU up to 75C, which is quite respectable. The GPU was pulling around 55W, and the fans were making a little noise, but not much, and the final score was 6943 points, or 113 FPS. Setting the power to the gaming mode brought the scores up to 8080 points, or 133 FPS, but the fan got quite loud, enough to be distracting. I would rather run in balanced mode and drop the graphics settings, but the choice is yours. I also ran a battery life test where I played a YouTube video over WiFi for several hours with the screen at 50% brightness. My estimate is that the battery should last somewhere above 9 hours. Obviously less demanding tasks will allow it to last even longer. Of note is that the “GiMate” software allows easy control over the power profile, as well as forcing the nVidia GPU on for power, off for battery savings, or auto. The Windows install was also pleasingly vanilla, with no trace of McAfee or Norton bloatware installed. So overall, this is a mostly positive review. Only one USB-C port is disappointing. Only one stick of RAM is also unfortunate, but that could be corrected later. But this laptop does have plenty of power to handle gaming. If you can find this at a good price, it is built well and powerful.

The GIGABYTE AERO X16 (X16) strikes a nice balance between gaming performance, and everyday portability. The AMD Ryzen 7 AI processor, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 graphics card, and the 16GB of DDR5 memory on the X16 delivers good performance for those that want to game on the go or don't have space for full fledged PC gaming rig. One of the biggest highlights is the 16-inch WQXGA (2560x1600) display. The 165Hz refresh rate provides smooth gameplay and fluid desktop performance while revisiting my old steam library. The color reproduction is very good which makes the X16 a capable gaming laptop, media laptop, and a decent photo editing laptop. You are definitely paying for that performance with weight. The speakers aren't the best but I use a headset or headphones most of the time anyway so this ain't a dealbreaker for me. The webcam is not going to win any awards but it will be enough to hold zoom calls. The X16 is for the understated gamer or content creator because it doesn't scream GAMER. I can take this anywhere and it doesn't draw any more attention than anyone else’s laptop. As with all gaming laptops the X16 will have significant fan noise under heavy load from gaming or intense rendering. I also prefer a gaming and content creator laptop to have 32GB of RAM but fortunately i can upgrade the RAM myself in the future. The X16 barely fits in my backpack computer pocket which tells you they packed as much as they could into this laptop without creeping into ridiculous dimensions that generally render gaming laptops useless in terms of portability. The minimalist design and solid capabilities of the X16 will keep your gaming or workflow needs going when on the go and will allow you to blend with the crowd.