Customer Ratings & Reviews

This PC is awesome, been using it for a month now, it gets even better once you upgrade the RAM on it. It supports DDR5 5200mHz SO-DIMM RAM and it became a beast once I put 2x16gb sticks of Crucial RAM on it, more than I'll ever need but leaves extra room for smooth performance. It only cost 80$ for that upgrade and it was an easy install. You do need a T6 Torx Tool and some kind of guitar pick to open it up but it doesn't take long. The lock for the RAM that was originally there was so hard to take out I thought I would give up and not risk breaking it, but it came out with a bit of downforce close to where the lock got stuck, not sure why but I'm guessing it's the tape was gluing it very well on the board. The 1080p 144hz display is well built with no creak sound and barely any backlight. At this price point it is a laptop that feels premium and is very sturdy, although the case being a dark grey makes your fingerprints very visible even when you try to avoid it. My personal favorite detail is probably the touchpad with the holographic colored effect. The Gigabyte control center is very useful and gives you lots of control. The only problem I had so far is related to the BIOS. I'm still not sure if it is a hardware or software problem, but when I try to warm reboot my PC it gets stuck on the BIOS. If I do a cold restart it boots up normally with no problem. I'm guessing the BIOS is new cause I can't find any help online, no BIOS looks like mine. It doesn't have a Boot Priority option so I can't even change that to try and solve it, and I'm not currently living in the U.S. so I'm guessing Best Buy can't help me. But oh well, cold restarts are better anyways. But I wish this hadn't happened.

It's pretty nice. Graphics are good, I can run games with ray tracing. (Only have a couple right now) better lasts a pretty good while, don't have like everything open at once though. Doesn't stuffer when I'm online or anything.

It works well and hasnt slowed me up at all so far. It runs a little loud and a little hot but it does run great.

Fantastic gaming computer for the price! The graphics are good. If there is any lag, it's provider or server related. This computer is ready willing and able to perform!

Good computer, overall good specs. Have been using it 5 days out of 7 at least 13 hours a day for work and school. Nothing bad to say, never crashed or blue screen. Good for working online and multitasking, good for gaming. Fortnite ultra like water warzone too and throne and liberty. I use another monitor and it is overall a great computer.

Pc is fire. Upgraded the ram and hard drive and it runs great looks great rgb is extra but all around a great buy. I wanted the asus tuf gaming laptop but this in my opinion is top notch with a better gpu. The screen isnt the biggest but for a mobile gaming device i cant complain. Its very responsive, the battery life coukd be a bit better but it also charges quick. The proformace mode is easy to enable, but the fans can get pretty loud but also easy to adjust with the given software.

The Gigabyte Aorus 15 is a good entry level gaming laptop with the potential to be great. It has a couple of component choices that take away from the experience but they’re nothing that cant be fixed with a few more bucks and a YouTube video. More on that in a bit. The Aorus has what I consider amazing build quality. I have had a couple of gaming laptops before that were much more expensive ad did not feel as quality or as solid, had massive back light bleed, or all the above. It has no chassis flex, no creaking, and most everything feels like metal, even the non metal bits. It a nice looking matte black color with a nice gloss Aorus logo in the center of of the lid. It has an RGB strip in the bottom of the monitor that reflects off the cooler and the can match or be different that the RGB keyboard. While it looks very nice, it IS a finger print magnet, but nothing a damp cloth wont take off. The laptop is easy to maintain and mostly easy to work on as the internal components are smartly laid out and the expansion slots are easy to find. My biggest knock is they used Torx T6 screws to put the bottom shell on instead of more common #1 or #2 Phillips screws. Unless you have a purpose built electronics kit the likelihood of you having a Torx driver lying around isn't that great. Oddly enough the internals ARE held together with #0 and #1 Phillips. It weighs in a roughly 5.5lbs, and combined with the big CPU GPU cooler it is not the most portable laptop, but its nowhere near as bad as a lot out there. It comes with a pretty chonky 240w power brick that is able to power the i5-13500H and RTX 4050 very well, and when not plugged in allows the MUX switch to run the integrated graphics and give you a reasonable 6-7hr web-surfing time and 3-4 streaming time. Gaming on a gaming laptop while on battery is generally a terrible idea and it proved true on this one as well. FPS suffers heavily running on integrated graphics and unless you drop settings to as low as they’ll go and the battery dies pretty quick after about an hour and a half or so in my testing. It has a 99Wh battery which is as big as airlines allow so you can fly and frag if you so desire. The laptop has a 15” 144hz panel that for some reason is labeled both 144hz and 165hz on Gigabytes product page, but I have not found any screen overclocking feature and Windows says its 144hz so that's what I’m going with. Gigabyte again doesn’t inform us if its TN or IPS instead saying its TUV Rhineland certified, but judging by the poor side viewing angle I’m willing to say its a TN panel, which seems fairly common at this price range. Its also NOT G-Sync or Free Sync compatible so something to be aware of. I noticed screen tearing the most when in smokey environments in fast paced games, or in foggy environments. Most other game play situations were crystal clear and I really REALLY had to be looking for any screen tear just so I could nit pick about it. It also has no noticeable back light bleed (at least on my model). The RTX 4050 is the bottom of the NVIDIA GPU lineup, however it doesn’t perform as such in modern games. My other laptop has a Ryzen 5900HS and a RTX 3060 and the i5-13500H / RTX 4050 easily outpaces it. At 1080p, running the same balanced settings in MW2 and Shadow of the Tomb Raider bench tests I was easily getting another 25-35 fps on this laptop with its bigger 15” display vs my other laptop with its 14” screen. Part of this is the i5-13500H being better than the 5900HS, but the 4050 is improved over the 3060 by a noticeable amount. All games I played were playable and ran smoothly for the most part, however this is where the laptops first shortcut shows its head. If you are just doing average tasks like browsing the web, looking at e-mail, etc, 8GB or ram is fine. But the fact it is a gaming laptop with only 8GB of ram really hurts it. Its sluggish in Windows menus when trying to open Edge, type to your friends in Discord, download games, let alone trying to get a game up and going. Once in game the game play is fine, but graphically heavy games have problems loading all textures in menus. For example, looking at my guns, camos, operators, or the Battle Pass in MW2 caused many textures to fail to load, giving a lump of mud appearance on everything. Game play was normally fine as those textures are prioritized as they should be but every now and then there would be some hitching that wasn't network related as more information was being loaded into the ram. Same issues in the menu and Item Shop in Fortnite. Task Manager shows just doing basic Windows tasks eats up 40-60% of the available ram. Games immediately sent it to 100%. Luckily Windows is fantastic at ram management and gives the game priority while shutting down and shifting priority away from other tasks you don’t need at the time. It really sucks they couldn’t include at least 16GB but I understand why at this price point. It is an easy upgrade even if you don’t know much about the internals on computers and whether you want to just get one 8GB stick or go for 32GB, you have 2 REAL SO-DIM slots instead of some of the ram being soldered to the motherboard like many laptops are guilty of. I stuck another 8GB stick in and Windows and a few background tasks immediately jump ram usage to 45% (so near the old total ram amount) and MW2 jumped it to 73% and Fortnite jumped it to 85%. Other AAA games were within this range as well. So if you throw ram at this laptop it will benefit. Textures immediate load as they should, games run even better with no more hitching and stuttering, etc. Frame rates went from an average of 134 to 148 in MW2 and from 127 to 149 in Tomb Raider. VERY impressive.. Next on the list is the 512GB gen 4 m.2 SSD. 512GB is not a lot of room anymore with games easily taking 50+GB and some well over 100GB. Many people would knock it, and I’m one of them, however I understand at this price point. I applaud Gigabyte for at least including another 2280 length m.2 slot so you can easily pop in another drive unlike many other laptops that cost even more that require you to buy an external housing to flash your operating system and all the drives contents onto a new drive before replacing it , or just losing everything and starting from scratch. However before you go buy another drive ask yourself how what all will be on your PC. I currently have 15 games ranging from AAA titles eating up 100GB to a few Indy games barely over 500MB and still have 90GB free. Even if you end up needing more room, if you have fast internet you can quickly get them again. If not, unlike current gen consoles, you can use a standard external hard drive to easily expand your gaming storage instead of having to buy a special designed SSD cartridge in the case or an expensive gen 4 m.2 with a heat-sink. I ended up putting in a 1TB gen 3 SSD, bringing total capacity to 1.5TB and now have more room than I will need for a long time. The laptop also includes a genuine Intel AX211 WiFi 6E card instead of off brand card. This card proved very fast getting 400-600MB/s on my 1gig internet. It never dropped nor did I experience really any more lag than with a wired connections. Speaking of, this laptop actually includes a real Ethernet port so if you are in a situation that allows you to plug in to get faster and more stable internet you will be able to without buying a USB to Ethernet adapter like many other laptops require. When it comes to a clean Windows install, Gigabyte deserves some credit here. Other than standard Microsoft programs, the only things installed were Gigabyte Control Center and Network Dragon, and NVIDIA Control Center. Network Dragon can be uninstalled, as you don’t need anything monitoring your internet while you play a game, as you really shouldn’t be doing any major background tasks while gaming in the first place. Control Center is decent. You go there to adjust the computers mode from gaming to battery saver to anything in between, adjust fan curves and RGB settings, etc. Its light and the settings are not buried in dozens of sub menus like one of my other laptops. The one of two thing that annoys me is that even though I can turn the track pad off to keep from bumping it while using a mouse, I cant disable the Windows key without installing a third party program or editing the Windows registry. I use the left Alt key to ping items in-game, and I kept hitting the Windows key instead and pulling me out of the game! Super simple thing they could fix in a future Control Center update. The other thing that bugged me was the lack of disabling the RGB turning off. If you don’t use the keyboard in 60 seconds or so, the back-lighting turns off. Again there should be an option to enable always on if you’re plugged into an outlet. Last on the list is how the PC runs… or doesn’t? This laptop has an amazing processor and a stupid fast Gen 4 m.2 SSD. Yet for some reason this laptop takes an ETERNITY to turn on, restart, and even enter and exit the BIOS menu. I have 0 idea why this is a thing, but it reminds me of a PC with an old spinning hard drive. You can turn it on and literally go get a cup of coffee before it gets to the Windows log in screen. I believe this is squarely on Gigabytes shoulders and hopefully a future update will fix this issue. In conclusion, for $1,000 you get a very well built laptop with an amazing processor, a surprisingly great GPU, and can easily upgrade the ram, SSD, and WiFi cards. That price tag limits you to a screen without G-Sync / Free Sync, the bare minimum ram to run, and a OK size SSD and a sluggish boot sequence. Are these problems? Yes. Will they reduce your enjoyment of the product? For most people who are new to PC gaming or buying this for their kids, I say no. Other than the screen and the boot sequence the problems can be fixed with $100 and a couple YouTube videos or you can always take it to Best Buy and have them do it for you.

Its the most amazing gaming machine ive ever owned. Far exceeds any console available. Just wish it had bigger ssd and ram options at purchase.

The 15BLF is the entry-level model in AORUS gaming series of thin and light laptops. It features a 15.6 inch 16:9 QHD display with a resolution of 2560 by 1440 on a 165 Hertz panel. It comes preloaded with windows 11 home edition and features an Nvidia GE force RTX 40 series laptop GPU. This model has a 13th generation Intel Core i5-13500H series processor. It supports up to 64 gigabytes of DDR5 memory but comes preinstalled with just 8 gigabytes. More on that later… The Intel I5 13th generation processor also features an integrated video chip resulting in two video controllers internal to the laptop. These can be toggled using the provided MUX software switch technology, the purpose of this configuration is the integrated video consumes less power when the discreet NVIDIA video controller is disabled. For situations when performance of the video is not a necessity you can change the configuration to either optimize performance or for longer battery life. This is achieved easily through the provided control panel software. The 512 Gigabyte hard drive is a type 2280 SSD NVMe form factor occupying one of the two PCIe slots. As with the onboard memory, the extra slot means you can increase the amount of storage or install faster hardware. Or both. The battery size is rated at 99Wh which under the best conditions should give you 8 hours of use. My findings were varied because of different types of use. Heavy duty gaming on battery alone you might get two hours. If you’re using it for productivity, you can expect 8 to 9 hours. Most gamers know that if you’re playing a video game you should be plugged in. And on that thought while this has a very fast Wi-Fi controller, it also has built in Ethernet and a wired connection is always the best way to go. Pro tip, if you don’t use Wi-Fi or the Ethernet NIC – disable them in the BIOS, if possible, along with anything else you don’t plan on use. This should free up resources and may extend your battery life a bit longer. In addition to gaming, I used this laptop for productivity purposes. I installed Microsoft Office and used all the apps, I also installed OPS, Adobe premiere and Photoshop. All performed well, I was able to edit photos and videos, made use of the office software for business work, connected to a laser printer and a scanner that all configured quickly and worked perfectly. I suspect that the Quick-Sync technology embedded In the Intel processor can be credited for the excellent video encoding and decoding I experienced while editing videos. So if you are a digital creator, take note that this laptop can serve a dual purpose. Depending on the performance setting you’ve selected in the Gigabyte Control Center software the fan noise can be quite loud in the highest performance setting. That’s not unusual, gaming laptops get very hot. Gigabyte did an excellent job with the cooling piping across the CPU and GPU, and the fans are fast spinning 72 blade rotors. They do an excellent job at ingress and egress of air, the hot air is expelled out the back of the system away from the user. I’ll also note that the area below the keyboard is kept cool, which is a sign of excellent heat distribution management. If you’re using productivity software applications, you'll hardly notice the fans coming on at all. They generally only get loud when CPU & GPU are heavily taxed. The engineers did a great job on the thermals, but I will say I wish the frequency level of the fan noise was lower in pitch. Again, not a dig against this manufacturer, many laptop fans have a high pitch sound to them. It would be nice if they could figure out a way to lower the sound frequency while keeping the amount of air volume the same. Fast moving air isn’t the important part, it’s the volume of air moved around which is important. The boot up time from a cold power on was rather long. I went through the BIOS firmware setup thinking there might be a quick start option. There was not. Perhaps this will be fixed in a later firmware update, but for now I will have to deal with a longer than usual boot up time. Restarting from within windows (warm restart), seems to be OK or about average. But overall, it’s still slow in comparison to other computers I’ve used. From a cold start it takes some time to get into windows, and the lack of on-screen progress indicators made me wonder at first if there was a problem. There wasn’t, that was just the normal startup time. The facial recognition using Windows hello is excellent, it recognized me with and without eyeglasses on. It also recognized me from different angles in different depths. The 4050 GPU does a pretty good job at handling graphics, I would prefer going up one level to the 4060 but it is an inexpensive gaming laptop and going up to the next level would add a lot more cost. You would notice an increase overall in your gaming satisfaction. The 4060 is a more robust higher performance GPU, but besides costing more it also consumes more wattage which would result in a shorter battery life. So, nothing’s ever free… The 4050 GPU is much better than its predecessor (the 3050), and significantly better than GPUs from a few years ago that were more expensive. So really, again - nothing to complain about. The GIGABYTE Control Center is fundamental to getting the most out of this laptop. Once you're in the Windows operating system you should launch this application and keep it always open in the background. It gives you full control over the special features that this laptop offers. Take time to learn and figure out all its many features. This is where you will control the performance profiles of your CPU and GPU. It provides a feature called the AI Boost, a unique future that will continuously monitor your game usage and modify the settings so that the hardware is optimized for each game title. Microsoft Azure AI technology is powering this and will automatically and dynamically optimize the CPU and GPU power for different applications using deep learning on the Microsoft Azure network. The 4050 GPU manages an average increase of 25% over last year’s 3050 GPU. It has 6 gigabytes of GDDR 6 memory its bandwidth is 192 gigabytes per second at 40 watts. Again, if this were the 4060 GPU the performance would be much higher but also the amount of energy used would be much greater (and it would cost much more). The Intel Core I5 dash 13500 H processor has 18 megabytes of cash and up to 4.7 gigahertz. It has 12 total cores four of which are performance cores and eight are efficiency cores total number of threads is 16 and processor base power is 45 watts. It will map up to 64 gigabytes of ram, with a Max speed of 5200 MTS. Its integrated processor graphics is an iris XE graphics eligible, with a Max dynamic frequency of 1.45 gigahertz. The audio is provided via DTS: X ultra-audio technology which produces an immersive 3D audio experience when using Microsoft spatial sound. Combined with compatible headphones you can experience multi-channel and object-based audio for enhanced gaming accuracy. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 GPU is based on the AD 107 chip and uses the ADA Lovelace architecture offering 25160 shaders on 6 gigabytes of GDDR 6 dedicated memory with an effective clock speed of 16 gigabytes per second. On the 96-bit memory bus, the total graphics power (TGP), can be set to 35 to 115 watts thus producing different performance levels. The boost clock depends on TGP settings and ranges from 35 watts up to 115 watts with dynamic boost enabled. The 4050 features 80 tensor cores and supports DLSS3 including frame generation which can have a big impact on games. Aorus laptops are the first on the market to be equipped with the Microsoft Azure AI technology, which is the basis of Ai Boost. AI Boost learns over time how to best optimize your gaming experience by continually fine-tuning the GPU and CPU settings. The control panel also provides real-time monitoring of the vital system components in terms of temperature and usage to optimize performance. Speaking of performance gamers often like to tweak their system. For those that feel comfortable doing this you can go to the Intel website and obtain utilities for the 13th generation Intel Core processors. Similarly you can go to the NVIDIA website and download utilities from them directly as well. Just remember these are not necessarily tested by GIGABYTE on their platforms, so you’ll be on your own if you have a problem. But you have the opportunity to tweak performance even further. For example using intel's extreme tuning utility you may be able to overclock the processor. Again be forewarned that this may void your warranty, or cause other issues. Check with your retailer or manufacturer before doing anything like this. It’s possible to damage internal components by pushing them beyond their normal ranges. In summary this is a terrific laptop in this category, that I can recommend for many reasons. It’s not only affordable at a gaming computer, but it’s multipurpose and can be used for an everyday computer as well. It’s not overly flashy so you don't look like you're playing video games when you're at work. But at lunchtime you can put on your headphones and disconnect for a little while. Games played: Battlefield 5 Dying light two CS: GO Grand Theft Auto 5 Winter tales Cyberpunk 2077 Marvel’s Spiderman remastered. Hogwarts legacy Ran at just about 40 FPS Cyberpunk 2077 ran at 53 FPS. Warhammer 3 ran at 35 frames per second. Witcher 3 ran at 39 FPS. Dead Space ran at 18.4 FPS. A plague requiem ran at 47 FPS Apex legends ran at 53 FPS Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 ran at 42.8 FPS

At first, this seems like a great value. Excellent construction quality in a handsome package, with good specs and upgradable RAM and SSD. However, over the course of purchasing three of these, the panel quality was terrible on everyone. They all show excessive yellowing in the corners and blacklight bleed through, especially when displaying a black screen. If you can manage to see past this, it's a nice laptop, but the low quality screen and screen defects are too much for me to accept.

counting the time to playing my favorite games on my first gaming computer. i’m so happy!

This laptop excels in some areas but falls short in others. The best things are the fact that has fast refresh rate, no glare monitor and fast PCI SSD though only half a terabyte. Gigabyte makes excellent motherboards and other PC components, so I expected this laptop to be excellent as well but unfortunately it is just overall good due to how heavy it is, very loud fan when under heavy use. The fan has 4 setting ranging from Eco the most quiet to Turbo the loudest with a custom setting that can be loud depending on the adjustments. The sound is not as clear as it should be at high levels. The bezel size is larger than the monitor which makes it difficult to fit in a back pack for 15.6 in laptops, however, a laptop bag fits it quite well. The connections on the back are very convenient for LAN, HDMI, DP, USB-C and USB3 so that there is no need for a docking station which makes it for a very good business laptop. The keyboard light has several settings and colors for most tastes and also has quick access buttons on the right. I'd recommend using an external keyboard for more comfortable playing or use a Game controller for better comfort. All games play smooths with a bit delay while playing high GPU demand first shooter games. This is a heavy laptop so it is best suited for heavy office use or desktop gaming. Battery life for games is about two hours with non-stop play as I tested it. As I see it, this is a very good business laptop and good mid-range gaming laptop. Memory and CPU are average.

The GIGABYTE AORUS 15 is a good entry level budget gaming laptop with a modern cpu and graphics card. The overall design is nice and has a good sturdy feel and the available ports should be plenty for on the go. In anticipation of Diablo IV tested D3 with all setting maxed out and was easily able to run >144fps thanks to the RTX4050 and the 6GB of video ram and the 13th gen i5 13500 processor. When under load the fans are loud but that is expected to keep the temps down, but when not under load the laptop is very quiet. Bootup is a little on the slow side, but that can be addressed with a few minor upgrades. The screen is clear and bright and the sound is decent for this formfactor. The 1080p webcam is great and will support Windows hello, so you can utilize facial recognition to bypass password entry. The bundled Gigabyte control center software is very helpful with keeping the drivers up-to-date as well as providing you with quick and easy customization options and controls. One drawback though is the lack of number pad, but that is somewhat expected with the footprint. As spec'd his laptop twill get you started, but to get the most out of it does require some additional hardware upgrades as it is limited on the storage space and available RAM, but the expansion ports are available when you are ready to do so.

The Gigabyte AORUS is a gorgeous laptop with a glaring problem: not enough RAM. Over the years, software has become more demanding and hardware has to work to keep up. The lack of System RAM in this device gives an incomplete gaming experience. [PROS] The laptop showcases a simple yet sleek design. I really love the engraved emblem and subtle inclusion of other colors within the trackpad and keyboard. All of the components inside this laptop are of the newest generation which is a huge win for the consumer. The SSD is PCIe Gen 4 (both NVMe slots), the RAM is DDR5, the Thunderbolt port is Gen 4, the CPU is Intel's 13th generation processor, and the GPU is a 40 Series card. With this construction, no performance is left on the table Another highlight is that the 144hz panel and 4050 GPU pair well for 1080p gaming. The display is perfect for eSports and other competitive multiplayer games while being on the go. The fan noise level can be high, but thermals are awesome for a slim gaming device I've dealt with laptops being hot to the touch during gameplay, but the cooling system of this computer is very effective. This PC also contains a diverse and healthy amount of ports for connection. I'm used to gaming laptops only containing 1 USB C port, but this device contains 2 making it versatile for different types of equipment needing to be plugged in. [MIXED BAG] One of the highlights for this laptop is also one of its biggest drawback which is storage. Can you add another SSD? Yes. As a matter of fact, you can upgrade the primary drive and/or add a secondary NVMe SSD. Both will be PCIe Gen 4 ensuring that you get the latest speeds. Will you need to add or upgrade the storage? It very likely. The reason being is that mainstream titles are ever increasing in size. Here a few examples: God of War (64GB), Horizon Zero Dawn (72GB), Far Cry 6 (60GB), and Forza Horizon 5 (132GB) are fan favorites. If you plan on playing these types of games then that leaves you with enough room for two more 60GB titles (a total of 6 installed games) because only 454GB of that 512GB drive is usable. If you only prefer games like Fortnite (27GB), Apex Legends (38GB), or content from smaller Indie developers then there's nothing to worry about. [CONS] I dealt with a number of crashes from the lack of system memory (RAM) as opposed to video memory (GPU VRAM). After porting my library over into the new PC, I was able to get a number of titles running, but I noticed that a few of them were crashing after 5-10 minutes of gameplay such as Forza Horizon 5 and Spiderman Remastered. For the record, this laptop doesn't meet the recommended requirements specified for these games, but it does meet the minimum. Graphically impressive, popular games seemed to be very problematic unless I used a medium preset at 1080p, and obviously without ray tracing. I was able isolate the issue after noticing that the PC was using 6.1 out of 7.7 (Usable) GB of RAM from me only being in the menu of FH5. When no other applications were open, the system averaged 3.9 to 4.1GBs of RAM used. This clearly lets me know that the system needs a bit more muscle to manage a healthy gaming workload. Another quirk was that the laptop was very slow to setup. Every computer upon initial setup will need to download and install crucial updates which is normal. With a Gigabit wired internet connection, the update took over an hour to complete. Furthermore, I also had to deal with the Gigabyte Control Center closing constantly forcing me to restart updates. [CONCLUSION] The Gigabyte AORUS is an entry level laptop for this generation that will require upgrades to reach its full potential. Because it only contains 8GB of RAM, it will require an additional purchase. Upgrading RAM is a very easy task, but the person buying an entry level gaming laptop/desktop may not be comfortable enough (or desire) to do so. On the other hand, if you don't upgrade the RAM then it is highly unlikely to do other tasks while gaming such as streaming, chatting, or etc. due to system resource limitations. In recent times, GPUs with 8GB of VRAM are starting to be concerning, but the 6GB of VRAM found within the 4050 should be still adequate for 1080p. I look forward to what the laptop can be, I just can't full enjoy it because of what it is right now.

KEY FEATURES nVidia GTX 4050 Graphics Card with 6GB Dedicated VRAM Display capable of 100% DCI-P3 Color Range Intel Core i5-13500H – 12 Cores / 16 Threads DDR5 Memory Support Upgradeable to 64GB RAM and Larger NVMe SSD’s INITIAL SET-UP AND CONFIGURATION The Aorus 15 ships with the latest edition of Windows 11 Home, 64-bit. Windows set-up and initial configuration proved trouble-free with all initial necessary drivers included. This is not a totally clean install of Windows 11, as Gigabyte throws in their share of software, they believe to be a value add. Among the included software is their Gigabyte Control Center and Realtek Dragon Network monitoring tool. The Gigabyte Control Center is supposed to be your one-stop shop for customizing the laptop and for driver updates, while the Realtek Dragon software monitors your network throughput and allows you to prioritize traffic and applications if you so choose. All was going well as Windows Update ran and updated 11 as well as found any additional driver updates that occurred since manufacture and shipping. Once all was updated, I started the Gigabyte Control Center to check for any pending Bios and/or Firmware updates. The program found several updates and that is when things took a turn for the worse. While this was a VERY time-consuming process, most went without fuss (although the length of time required to make some updates was quite worrisome), some did not. A keyboard firmware update downloaded and installed, immediately bricking my RGB lighting and keyboard. The trackpad worked and a USB mouse worked, but all the RGB lighting and keyboard were dead. This lasted quite some time. Had I not had an extra USB keyboard, I would have been dead in the water. After several restarts and yet another keyboard firmware update, things began to work properly again, but not after close to a half hour of fussing and troubleshooting. USE My go-to program to test CPU power is always Handbrake. Scouring through some old home videos, I found a 21:12 minute video that was recorded in 1080p and weighed in a lofty 8GB. I set up Handbrake to compress the 1080p home video to a much smaller 480p/30fps file. Using only the CPU to render the encode, the new Intel Raptor Lake CPU was able to compress the video in 2 minutes, 47 seconds, averaging 191 fps with an average CPU utilization of 40%. As a comparison, I took the same video file and performed the same compression on a 2022 gaming laptop. This laptop sports a Ryzen 7 5800X processor that has 8 physical cores and 16 threads. The Aorus’ competitor was able to match the average framerate and completed the file compression in 2 minutes and 45 seconds. Within the margin of error. What wasn’t in the margin of error, was the CPU utilization. While the Aorus kept its cool, barely breaking a sweat at 40% utilization, the Ryzen 7 used all 100% of its available resources to complete the task with the cooling fans at a much less tolerable sound level. GAMING Gigabyte bills this laptop as a gaming system and in theory, it is. It has the power potential to play nearly anything and everything that is out today. However, that low amount of RAM kills the overall performance. Even so, it wasn’t a total wash. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 played excellently at high settings. With a GPU utilization of 85% and a RAM utilization at 90%, I was still able to achieve 150fps on High. CoD MW2 looked great and played smoothly, free of any lags or stutters. Next up was Forza Horizon 5. Using the built-in benchmarking software, the game reported back a lackluster 72fps with only 45% GPU utilization. This was all on Low and Medium settings. What? How can that be? This is a GTX 4050. Time to manually tweak settings. I set everything to Ultra, the highest setting allowed in FH5. Manual testing revealed 95% GPU utilization, 90% RAM utilization, and 88fps. AWESOME!! Why didn’t the game pick this to begin with? I left everything as is and went straight to a race. After about 30 seconds into a race, I found out while the system had dialed itself back. Low System Resources. Forza kept producing errors and giving low resources warning. Ultra? Nope. High. Nope. Medium? So-So. Low? Yes. There just isn't enough RAM. I encountered the same issues queuing up Microsoft Flight Simulator too. With 98% GPU utilization, I was able to achieve a best of 60fps with most time spent in the 40’s. There was just not enough overhead to allow the computer for function as it should. CONCLUSIONS For a laptop that has this long of a list of high-end parts, this is the most frustratingly slow laptop I’ve used in quite some time. It honestly feels like a much less powerful machine than it is. Most of this can be blamed on the limited amount of RAM installed in the system. One stick of 8GB DDR5-4800 memory is all that is installed, and it is NOT enough. After all updates and restarts were performed and the machine sitting idle, RAM usage did not drop below 42%, often hovering in the mid to high 70% range. Opening any applications or additional software immediately caused a spike and RAM usage that was not uncommon to be in the 90% range. As it ships from Gigabyte, I can’t give it a recommendation. There is just too much left wanting. The machine is powerhouse and can easily be brought to life, but not without additional hardware, at an additional expense. Most any gamer will find the results garnered from buying the laptop and leaving it as is, as unacceptable. Not only is the laptop crippled by its lack of RAM, it is also frustrating to use on a day-to-day basis. Powering up the laptop from fully off takes what seems like FOREVER. I can power up the Aorus, then power up my Ryzen-based gaming laptop or my other 12th generation i7 based gaming machine and be playing Call of Duty before the Aorus even boots to the Windows login screen. Not sure what Gigabyte has done in the bios, but startup times are unacceptably slow. It is comparable to an old school machine I’ve got a spinning hard drive in. What gives? Not sure. I haven’t been able to figure out a setting to make it boot faster in the bios. Can the laptop be fixed to perform as intended? Yes, it can. But what did it take? For me, it involved purchasing a Predator Gen 4x4 1TB NVMe drive rated at a throughput of 7000MB/s and 32GB of Crucial DDR5-5600 RAM. The extra RAM, working in dual channel configuration, was a game changer for this machine. It was a night and day type of difference. EVERYTHING was much more peppy and snappy feeling. RAM utilization went from highs in the 90’s to highs in the 40’s. It was sorely needed and should be considered an essential change, if not 32GB, then at least increase RAM to 16GB. Not only is the laptop crippled by low amount of RAM, it is also hobbled by the slowest DDR5 RAM available. The i5-13500H is capable of supporting 5200MHz RAM and my addition of 5600MHz DDR5 immediately triggered faster RAM timings and clock speeds in the system bios, matching the 5200MHz spec by Intel. Sadly, even with the additional RAM and much faster SSD, bios boot times failed to improve. The laptop’s potential alone are the only thing earning this a 3 star rating. The addition of extra RAM and a bigger hard drive would encourage me to give a 4 star rating, but that isn’t the point. The fact of the matter is, there are better performing laptops with more accurate displays at this price point. NOT RECOMMENDED.

It's pretty popular to be upset with Nvidia right now for their pricing, but honestly this 4050 is amazing for its price!!! I'm the typical gamer that likes to buy the top-of-the-line GPU to ensure that I won't have any issues running any game for years! A kind of 'investment' if you will. Not really an investment, but you get what I mean. I'm investing in longevity. All that said and the mobile 4050 is better than the mobile 3070 in my experience and less expensive, you get more performance for less money, that's a win in my book. Basically the 4050 is MUCH better than I originally thought it'd be. Playing CyberPunk without Frame Generation and no Ray Tracing and NO DLSS, I was getting 44 - 50 FPS at 1080p on ultra. After I turned all the tech back on, it bounced up to 102-118 FPS with Optimus. Yes, it has a MUX switch and yes, I left on Optimus so I can do work and other things on it and not have to deal with a restart or have the battery draining super-fast. I am sure I could get more performance out of it if I disabled integrated graphics, but it's more convenient of a laptop with it on if you're doing other things. It has an amazing battery for being a gaming laptop. Was able to do my taxes, homework, and work from home on it before it died just over 6 hours at 50% brightness. Basically, using Office and the web browser. Basically in Witcher 3, Halo, Call of Duty MW, High on Life, Wo Long, etc. it ran it perfectly fine at high or ultra and if there was DLSS or FG, it ran even better! Halo for example doesn't use anything and though I couldn't put it on Ultra due to VRAM limitations, it ran perfectly fine on High. I love the build quality of the laptop. It feels more expensive than it is. The rubber feet stop it from sliding all around which I appreciate. The cheap rubber feat on other gaming laptops is terrible, but Gigabyte added some good ones here. I also love the easy upgradability, and the fact the speakers are decent. Typing on the laptop is also fantastic, easily was able to do what I needed to in terms of work and school. The BIOS is easy to understand, and it stays cool during all the gaming I've done! Honestly this laptop is pretty sweet, but it's not all sunshine and rainbows though. 8 GBs of system RAM isn't enough, I wish it came with more standard. 10 or 12 GB would have been a good starting point. The fan noise is high pitched and can get loud, I wish it was more of a 'whoosh' than what it's doing. Screen uniformity on my unit was not too bad, but it did have bright spots in the corner for black or dark scenes, but I got used to it pretty quickly and I wish the screen got brighter. I'm thinking this is a 300 Nits screen. With these negatives, it's not a deal breaker though! I added an extra stick of RAM and the performance increased. So it's not as if you're adding RAM to make it more usable, you're also getting a bump in performance. Fans though are pitchy, the fans aren't blasting at full speed during gaming sessions 24/7 (Unless you're in turbo mode), it ramps and subsides throughout your session. None are deal breakers in my opinion! Overall, this is a fantastic laptop and deserves it's 5 stars and it has opened my eyes to the power of the 4050! It's WAY more capable than I thought it'd be. Take a look at my screenshots of 3DMark, and the Witcher and Cyberpunk! They're really good IMO. If you'd asked me 3 months ago if the 4050 was a good gaming laptop, I'd have a much different answer than if you asked me today! Highly recommended laptop, both the performance AND the build quality are great!

Pros: - The 13th Gen Intel Core i5-13500H Processor and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU provide exceptional performance for gaming and other tasks. - The 165Hz display with up to 100% DCI-P3 color gamut certification is incredibly smooth and vibrant, making for an immersive gaming experience. - The laptop is surprisingly lightweight and thin, making it easy to take on the go. - The backlit keyboard with individual RGB lighting for each key is a nice touch, especially for gaming in low-light conditions. - The laptop has a range of ports, including Thunderbolt 4, HDMI 2.1, Mini DP 1.4, and more, which makes it easy to connect all your peripherals. - The laptop features Intel Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth V5.2, ensuring fast and reliable connectivity. Cons: - The laptop only comes with 8GB of DDR5 memory, which is not ideal for most games nowadays - The laptop's battery life could be better, as it only lasts for a few hours on a single charge. - The laptop's design is not particularly innovative or eye-catching, which may not appeal to some users who are looking for a more unique or stylish design. Overall, the GIGABYTE AORUS 15.6" FHD Gaming Laptop is an impressive machine that offers powerful performance and excellent visuals for gaming and other tasks. While it does have a few drawbacks, such as limited RAM and battery life, its lightweight and thin design, range of ports, and reliable connectivity make it a great choice for gamers who need a high-performance laptop that can keep up with their needs. Overall, I highly recommend the Gigabyte Aorus 15.6" FHD Gaming Laptop to anyone looking for a top-of-the-line gaming laptop that can handle anything you throw at it.

I’m a pretty big gamer and love playing on all platforms. PC gaming has always been one of my favorite platforms to play on because of its flexibility and performance options. I have a mid-level gaming PC and thought this Gigabyte Aorus 15 would be a great extension of that to use on the couch or on trips and I’ll break down how well it worked for me in this review. I’ll give my overall impressions first and then break it all down. Overall Impressions: The Gigabyte Aorus 15 BMF packs some decent specs in a well-priced package and shouldn’t be overlooked by PC gamers looking for a competent gaming laptop on a budget. Between the 13th generation i5 13500 and the RTX 4050 6GB, this laptop has enough power for most games and other tasks as well. Coming in at about 5.5 lbs, it’s hefty, but not too heavy to travel with if you’re serious about your games. I’d recommend the Gigabyte Aorus 15 to any mobile gamer that’s on a budget without reservation. Design/Build Quality: The Gigabyte Aorus 15 is a big, thick, and heavy laptop. Its all-black finish isn’t too much of a fingerprint magnet which I appreciate, but it doesn’t do a whole lot for the aesthetics. If you’re looking for something flashy that shows off your gaming pedigree then you’re probably going to want to get some decals, stickers, or skin for this laptop because it’s unremarkable otherwise. Personally, I enjoy the low-key look of it, but I’m a huge introvert and others may think it’s pretty boring when it’s not powered on. When it’s powered on you’ll get to flaunt the RGB light strip underneath the LCD and on the keyboard itself. The laptop is built from plastic and what feels like metal. There is a bit of flex on the monitor lid, but overall the laptop feels solid and hefty. The keyboard feels nice and the overall build quality seems to be better than average. The trackpad is good, if not really good, and is better than quite a few other laptops I’ve owned. Gaming Performance: You’re probably wanting to know how well games run on the Aorus 15, so let’s get to it. The Aorus 15 is a competent budget gaming laptop with its Nvidia RTX 4050, 512GB SSD, and 8GB of DDR5 memory paired with a 1080p 15.6 inch 165hz display. I tried several games on the Aorus 15 and had a pleasant experience playing most of them. 512GB of storage gives you plenty of room for a couple of big games, your OS and some smaller games as well, but upgrading the m.2 NVMe is also super easy if you’d like to do that in the future. Biomutant - 60FPS+ Doom 2016 - 100FPS+ Shadow of the Tomb Raider - 45FPS+ with RTX ON and 80FPS+ with RTX OFF Borderlands 3 - 120FPS+ Assassins Creed Origins - 75FPS+ New World - 50FPS+ in most areas Ark Survival - 50FPS+ on Epic settings in most areas Halo Infinite - 100FPS+ Forza Horizon 5 - 60FPS+ This laptop isn’t built for hardcore gaming, it’s built for the more casual gamer that doesn’t want to spend several thousand dollars on a gaming laptop or maybe just wants something to serve as an extension of their gaming PC. I’d also recommend adding another 8GB stick of DDR5 right away if you plan on playing more modern games. As a matter of fact, Forza Horizon 5 warned me about not having enough system memory during its benchmark, so I think shipping this laptop out with only 8GB, even on their lower-end model was a mistake. Luckily upgrading the memory is 9 screws away and is super easy to do as both memory slots and m.2 slots are readily accessible from the bottom of the laptop. The Gigabyte Control Center allows you to customize everything from the fan profiles, keyboard colors, and other laptop features in a single pane which is pretty great. The Aorus 15 does get quite loud when under load, but no louder than other gaming laptops I’ve used. During normal usage, you won’t hear the fans or the laptop at all though. Sound is powered by DTS: X-enabled speakers that sound great but of course, a good pair of headphones would most likely serve you better, but the laptop puts out pretty decent sound. The 15.6-inch 165hz screen is crisp, clear, and bright, although view angles tend to suffer at an angle since I believe the panel is based on TN technology to be able to get to this high of a refresh rate. If you’re looking for OLED black levels with this unit then you’re going to be disappointed, but I think most people will like this display just fine. Usability/Features/Battery Life: The Aorus 15 comes with a couple of USB ports in the back and side of the unit, providing USB-A and C connectivity. It also packs an HDMI 2.1 port which is nice and a Mini-DP as well. The Aorus 15 comes with Wifi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2, and a 99-watt-hour battery that will garner you some play time, but when gaming I wouldn’t expect more than a couple of hours of unplugged usage. The Aorus gets loud and a little warm, but never too hot. The included RGB lighting is a fun feature if you’re into it as well, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how to keep it on as it seems to turn off after about a minute of not using the keyboard.

GIGABYTE’s AORUS FHD gaming laptop sports the common gaming laptop look and feel. Some gaming laptops do go overboard on the looks at times but this one does have a neat lowkey gaming laptop exterior. I do prefer this lowkey look so kudos to GIGABYTE for that. Also, I love the number of ports this laptop has for your different peripherals. At some point I was using a mouse, an external SSD, and a gaming racing wheel! On the other hand, this is a mid-range gaming laptop, so the internals won’t be something to look forward to. The AORUS contains a 13th Generation Intel Core i5, 8GB of RAM, the NVIDIA 4050 graphics card, and a 512GB SSD. As you can see, not the best of parts but I did find that the AORUS will run most games fine if you’re planning to get it for that. More on this later. When first turning on this laptop, the fans did kick up fairly loudly. Bootup is slow as well. Also, Microsoft now requires you to get connected to a network in order to setup the laptop which is disappointing. I first decided to run some benchmarks with this AORUS once booted up. I first wanted to see if the laptop was capable of running some popular games. I headed to canyourunit and found out that the laptop is fully capable of running 99% of popular games with minimum requirements. But the laptop can only run 80% of games with recommended requirements. I also decided to run a PCMark Benchmark test to see how it fares with a variety of tasks that are usually done in the workplace. Some of these things are word processing, photo editing, video conferencing, and 3D rendering. I was able to get a score of 5732 which is decent and 60% better than all of the results but unfortunately, from testing, I found out that “decent” isn’t the correct word to use to for explaining how the laptop fares with daily computing tasks. In reality, the AORUS does tend to struggle with daily tasks. For example, as I am typing this, I am getting a lot of keyboard input lag. A lot of these struggles come down to the limited amount of memory this laptop has. Running Google Chrome and Word alone takes about 85% of RAM. But many will buy this laptop for gaming. One of the games I used to test the AORUS was Forza Horizon 5. I let the game run a benchmark to see what default requirements it would set for me. The game had set everything to low. I knew the AORUS was capable of more and decided to first test out the game on medium settings. As I was gaming, the game was running fine for some time, but I did end up getting a notification for low system memory which was expected. I closed some background apps and then decided to run the game on high settings. To my surprise, the game ran well, I am sure framerate was sacrificed but I still ended up getting the dreaded low system memory notification. Some other notes: -Not a lot of bloatware came preinstalled but some social media apps like TikTok and Instagram were there -RGB and fan control is customizable using Gigabyte’s Control Center(comes preinstalled) -Battery life is lackluster, I was averaging 2-4 hours while gaming, I recommend keeping it plugged in -Additional RAM and storage can be added or upgraded which I highly recommend for better performance -Cooling system a good job at keeping the laptop cool during gaming, I’ve used gaming laptops that get extremely hot, this one gets hot but not as much as some I’ve used before -Built-in speakers are good for the most part but I recommend headphones or external speakers for a more immersive experience -A Wi-Fi 6E AX211 card is installed on the laptop which is one of the better Wi-Fi cards -The 512GB SSD will be filled up quick if you plan to install multiple games, Forza alone is 100GB plus Overall, the AORUS as a standalone gaming laptop tends to perform well. Simply make sure not to have a lot of background apps running or the game will struggle. As a daily computer, I would certainly look somewhere else. Unless you are planning to upgrade parts or add more RAM, the AORUS will struggle with running multiple applications at the same time. I did enjoy the outside minimal aesthetics of this laptop but unfortunately the internals did come short and caused some limitations on what can be done with this computer. Not many will be buying this just to upgrade parts later so therefore, I cannot recommend this for the average person.

Arrived nicely double boxed. Got laptop out, and not sure if alloy or plastic construction, but it felt solid with no flex in the body. Even the lid had little flex, and maintained it's position perfectly. Did the usual setup, and Windows updates. When using, the keyboard had a nice feel, with good travel. RGB back light can be set for different effects. Trackpad performed equally well. Speakers were adequate, not much bass, but with headphones audio came alive. The screen was bright - I set to about 60%. Even though the resolution is only 1080P, the display was quite sharp. I was wondering how day to day performance would be with only 8Gb installed ram. However, with the 13th Gen I5 - 12 core, and 4.7 max frequency, this thing was very fast. Now wanted to see what the Nvidia RTX 4050 would do on gaming. I installed a little older game I like - Doom, to see how it would do. I put all settings to high and started the game. FPS went to 144 and stayed there. The game was very smooth, no blurring or pixelation. This is a quick gaming machine. All is not perfect, however. With only a 512 SSD, and no slot for a Micro SD card, storage is very limited. I also had an issue with the Gigabyte Control Center not opening up. The control center is necessary for keyboard and other functions. Did an uninstall, re-installed - and more of the same. I did finally get the control center to open and run. Even with that, I did not see a battery charge setting to limit charge level. But even at full charge, the battery will not last long on gaming.