GIGABYTE - GAMING A16 Gaming Laptop - 165Hz 1920x1200 WUXGA - RTX 5070 - AMD Ryzen 7 260 - 1TB SSD - 16GB DDR5 RAM - Black Steel

While this isn't the greatest time to buy computer hardware, this computer feels like it does a good job of offering good performance for productivity and gaming while not going crazy on the concessions. The 8GB of VRAM (Doom Dark Ages reported it as 6.7GB) is probably the biggest issue you're going to find for your gaming needs. You might also feel bottlenecked by that memory for any local AI models you intend to run. Otherwise, things work pretty well. Setup is as easy as any other new windows install. Just follow the setup prompts and wait a while for updates to finish (you can skip the updates during setup but it's probably for the best to just let it go). After setup, there was minimal extra software to uninstall. No McAfee! The bundled software feels fairly light weight. The main GiMATE app is what you'll use to run system updates and change modes to performance when your gaming. There are also a few extra "AI" settings for things like monitoring when you get up so it can lock your screen or check if someone is "peeping" at your screen so it can lock your screen or alert you. The more interesting bundled apps if you're interested in AI are the GiMATECoder and GiMATECreator apps. These actually link up with HuggingFace to download and use local models for coding assistance or generative things. The neat part, to me, is that it's not an app trying to hawk and sell their own AI stuff and they, instead, only allow you to choose and download your own models. I didn't find any performance issues with general productivity work. I haven't tested crazy workloads but I haven't found myself noticing any issues with coding tasks. Obviously, lighter productivity work that's mostly done in web apps work splendidly as well. Gaming performance is pretty great but you're kind of limited by the screen. You have a 16:10 "1080p" resolution for the most part. Brightness is fine but I wouldn't trust being able to see much outside. My two benchmark games are Doom Dark Ages and Cyberpunk 2077. Doom was the most limited by the VRAM as I wasn't able to even set everything at "high" without getting a VRAM warning. Mostly high settings was getting me around 70fps, though. Cyberpunk was more impressive as the defaults started at Ray Tracing Low and got around 77fps. I tested Ray Tracing Medium (55fps) and Ray Tracing Ultra (45fps) as well. The 5070 in this laptop does good work and I just really wish it came with more VRAM. Speaking of RAM, the second biggest limiter for this laptop is going to be the 16GB of RAM. Luckily, the RAM isn't soldered in so you can upgrade that at a time when prices aren't insane. You also get a 1TB NVMe drive. It's also replaceable if you feel like it's not enough (and prices go down). Input is really good for a Windows laptop. The keyboard feels good and is sized right so I don't miss keys. I'm typing this review on it as we speak. The trackpad is also really large and feels good to use. All in all, this is a pretty good laptop. Prices aren't in a good place so I would only recommend this laptop (or really any PC at this time) if you really need it. But you get good performance and a lot more upgradability than most options these days. If you're in the market, this isn't a bad choice.

I jumped into this laptop with some doubt about the real-world performance of its GPU, but my actual experience proved those worries wrong. This machine delivers smooth, highly responsive gameplay on some demanding titles - games like Baldur's Gate 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 run fluidly without the stuttering or compromises I braced myself for. The performance when on battery power is great - and I haven't noticed any issues with battery life, either. I especially like how well-engineered the cooling system is. The fans do their job efficiently without sounding like a jet engine or adding massive bulk. It fits much better in my bag than my previous laptop, which had a ridiculous amount of extra plastic jutting out the back just to accommodate heat sinks. However, making the chassis this compact forced a few design choices, including one major layout quirk. The peripheral connectors are much further forward along the sides than normal. If you use a wired mouse, having cables plug in right where your hand needs to maneuver makes mouse operation incredibly awkward. I ended up switching over to a Bluetooth mouse—which isn't my baseline preference for gaming, but it simply made life easier here. Another minor hardware complaint is that we are apparently still trapped in the barrel-connector era for power delivery. One day we'll be in the era of universal USB-C charging adoption on high-performance machines, but we just aren't there yet. Aesthetically, the keyboard deck is a bit of a neutral curiosity. It’s a very simplistic layout. On the positive side, Gigabyte restrained themselves from cluttering the deck with bloatware buttons; there’s only one dedicated key for their proprietary "GiMATE" software assistant, and thankfully it’s tucked away in the normal top row with the function keys. The flip side of this minimalist layout is that you get a massive touchpad—which is responsive and has great haptics—surrounded by a ton of empty plastic on either side. It’s not a bad design, just an unusual physical aspect you have to get used to. I think this is a solid entry- to mid-level gaming laptop. It feels like the sacrifices made to hit its price point show up as minor physical quirks rather than actual compromises to in-game performance.

I was planning a trip for a gaming event but needed to bring along a newer gaming laptop. I wanted something thin with some options to upgrade, while being ready to play at medium to high settings out of the box. I saw that Gigabyte was releasing the Gaming A16 with an AMD Ryzen 7 and Nvidia RTX 5070, which was within the specifications I was looking for. Pros: - Thin and Light for a Gaming Laptop. - Powerful Performance with AMD Ryzen 7 and Nvidia RTX 5070. - Upgradeable Memory and Storage options. Cons: - MUX Switching is enabled by default which impacts graphics performance. - Loud fans when running at High Performance. Setup: Gigabyte packages the Gaming A16 is nicely with black plastic sleeve and sheet between the keyboard and display. Included in the box is the Gaming A16 Laptop and a 150W Adapter with manuals. Gigabyte left the Windows 11 setup mostly as default, the only major change is the included Gigabyte GiMate branding during startup. I had no issues setting up windows and getting everything updated. GiMate: Gigabytes GiMate functions as the control software for the RBG, special features and update tool. Overall, it is an improvement over the older Gigabyte Control Center as it is quicker and more streamlined. There are 4 tabs and settings: Home, System Settings, Scenario Profile Settings, and Apps. Home has general performance information on the CPU, GPU, and Battery displayed in a dashboard. There is a quick select for performance modes between Silent, Balanced, and Performance that control the power draw and system cooling, along with a System Profile drop down. The System Profile sets the system settings based on what you are using the laptop primarily for, such as Moderate, Gaming, Creator, Power Savings, and Online Meeting. The details of each Profile can be viewed and modified under the Scenario Profile Settings tab, with much of the settings being related to either performance and cooling or AI Features to help with specific usages like canceling out background noise or keeping your eyes line focused on the camera. I find the Nvidia Broadcasts noise cancellation for the microphone to be the most useful of the features offered. I’ve used Nvidia Broadcast as a standalone app for years, which is also an option if you want to uninstall the GiMate. The Apps tab provides a marketplace style search of the third-party apps, which are mostly Microsoft or Nvidia tools. Specifications & Upgrades: Gigabyte packed the Gaming A16 with an AMD Ryzen 7 260 Processor, which has 8 cores/16 threads with base clock speed of 3.8GHz and boosted clock up to 5.1GHz. The default power consumption is only 45W, which is great for thin and light laptops to keep the temperatures down while still delivering plenty of power. For graphics processing it has a dedicated Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 8GB for the heavy lifting, but also has an integrated graphics through the Processor. The integrated graphics card is the AMD Radeon 780M that can provide respectable graphics without consuming as much power as the dedicated graphics. By default, MUX switching is enabled which sends the dedicated graphics through the integrated graphics, for better performance it is recommended to disable MUX Switching, only using the dedicated graphics. This will consume more power but greatly reduce latency and increase frame rates. Gigabyte made a great choice for future upgrades with the Memory, deciding to include 1x16GB stick of DDR5 5600MT/s instead of 2x8GB sticks. This allows for a simple future upgrade of adding 1 additional 16GB stick to bring the system total to 32GB instead of having to replace both sticks with 2x8GB. For Storage, by default there is a 1TB NVMe drive, with read and write. Additionally, there is 1 empty NVMe slot next to the battery that can be upgraded later for additional storage once these SSD prices come back down to earth. There is also a removeable Wi-Fi 6E & Bluetooth v5.2 card, which can be upgraded in the future if the next Wi-Fi cards use the same standard. The display is 16” 1920 x 1200 resolution IPS display with a 165Hz refresh rate and 300nit peak brightness. It would have been nice to have a nicer OLED or Mini-LED display but that would have greatly increased the cost of the laptop. Case & Keyboard: Gigabyte fit all of that into a slim and modern case for the Gaming A16. The case is between ~0.8in to ~1.15in thick, the smallest is the thinnest part without any footing. This isn’t the thinnest gaming laptop out there due to the feet on the bottom, but without them then the average thickness is only 0.91in which is respectable considering what’s on the inside. The laptop otherwise measures a width of 14.1in and a depth of 10.3in. The laptop weights 4.85lbs, which is on the lower end of the average for gaming laptops. There is a large trackpad that is ~ 3 9/16in by 5 1/4in, providing plenty of space. The keyboard is a slim tenkeyless style, standard laptop keyboard, but with a RBG backlight. There is only 1 Zone for the RBG, meaning all the keys are only 1 color at a time. Both the trackpad and keyboard feel good, with solid feedback while typing or navigating and little to no unnecessary flexing. Connectivity: The Gaming A16 comes with Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth v5.2 for wireless, and a 1 Gigabit Ethernet port for wired. Gigabyte included plenty of additional ports, from the Left side there is from back to front the Power, 1 Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI 2.1, USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, and USB4 (Type-C) DisplayPort 1.4 and Power Delivery 3.0. On the Right side is USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, USB-A 2.0, and 3.5mm Combo Jack. Additionally, the Right side has the Power Charging and Battery LED’s next to the 3.5mm Combo Jack. Performance: There are many ways to test the performance of a laptop, my preferred is using a baseline test and compare it with actual gameplay test. For the baseline test I use PassMark Performance Test 11.1 currently, more so because it provides a good breakdown of each area and an overall score to compare system to system. I prefer to test with default settings before making any adjustments to the system. On default settings, I was able to score a total score of 8966.3 for the Gigabyte Gaming A16, with the lowest scores in the Memory (Scored 2505.5) and 2D Graphics (Scored 588.6). I expected these to be the 2 lowest scoring areas in the test. For the memory, this is due to there being only 1 stick of memory, which greatly reduces the overall performance of the system which is designed to run in Dual Channel mode with 2 same sized sticks of Memory. This can be fixed by getting another stick of 16GB DDR5 5600MT/s and installing it. The reason I suspected the 2D Graphics would also be an issue is due to the MUX Switching, as this forces the laptop to route the dedicated graphics output through the integrated graphics before getting to the display. This introduces an artificial bottleneck, which adds latency and greatly reduces framerates. Simply disabling the MUX Switching, restarting, and running the PassMark test again resulted in a total score of 9745.5 and 2D Graphics score of 1191.8, more than double the initial score for 2D Graphics. If you plan to mainly play games while plugged in, just disable the MUX Switching as it will only impact your gaming performance and experience. For gameplay tests, I decided to jump back into some Destiny 2 as there is a resurgence of the game with the final update. I set all the settings to Medium and took the in-activity frame rate range. I was able to hit around 55-80 fps with the default settings. After disabling the MUX Switching, I was able to hit between 90-105 fps. A massive improvement over the default settings. Once I upgrade the Memory to 2 sticks of 16GB, I’m confident that I’ll see frame rates around 120fps. Cooling: Gigabyte didn’t skip out on the cooling solution for the Gaming A16. You will notice right away when starting up a game that the laptop fans become very noisy. This is to be expected for cooling the processor and graphics, it will be very noisy but hopefully just as effective. Gigabyte didn’t miss a beat. In gaming, I didn’t hit the thermal limits for either component, 100C for the Processor and 85C for Graphics. The maximum temperature I hit on the Processor was 88C. For Graphics I hit 82C. Under a performance test, I was able to hit thermal limits on the processor, but that was with the laptop on Performance Mode and on the Gaming Profile. This isn’t as likely of a situation while gaming, as not all cores will be used for a single game, but possibly while working on a Creative or Work project it might occur. I’m not at all concerned, as the cooling seems to be sufficient. I might consider a cooling pad in the future. Conclusion: If you’re looking for a powerful gaming laptop that is portable yet able to keep it’s cool while gaming, the Gigabyte Gaming A16 is a great consideration. Not only are the default specifications decent, but they’re configured in a way that provides you with an option to upgrade the Memory and Storage in the future with minimum effort. Overall, I’m very happy with the gaming performance for the size and portability of it. I’ll be taking the Gigabyte Gaming A16 along with me on many trips to come.

This is my first go at using a Gigabyte laptop, and I am 100% happy that I took the chance on them. After having a variety of other similar high-end laptops, I was looking for something a little more up to date when I came across the new A16 from Gigabyte. Performance is there, I have been able to run every AAA title at High-Ultra settings and still managed to get great frame rates, generally near or above 60fps. My current favorites, Diablo 4, Crimson Desert, Cyberpunk 2077, and WoW all run perfectly. If you are planning on using this as is without an external Monitor, or gaming audio (Headphones/Speakers) then I can also say that you will be very happy with the 165Hz 1920x1200 screen. Everything looks very crisp and clear. I never really noticed any screen tearing even when playing some fast, twitchy games like Warzone. The audio is also very nice, with some great separation and oomph from the built in speakers. The fan noise can get a bit loud when you are really pushing it, so you will need to crank up the volume, but it still sounds good. You get all the necessary I/O, but I do wish all of that was either at the back of the laptop or further back on the sides. Overall build quality feels great, with a little flex on the screen and around the keyboard, but nothing worrisome. I've been using this as my primary gaming rig, connected to a great gaming monitor, and a nice pair of gaming speakers and I have been thoroughly impressed every time I start playing. This would be an easy recommendation for anyone looking for a great gaming laptop, that won't drain your bank.

As gamer and 3D modeler, I spend a lot of time sitting at a desktop, and while I was looking for a good mobile solution for doing both of these tasks, I had some doubts about the capabilities of Gigabyte's machine here, and while it's less powerful than what I use at my desk, it turned out to be plenty capable of handling both work and play on the go. Given the laptop is entirely marketed as a "gaming" laptop, I'll focus primarily on my experience using it as such. Setup is quick and simple, and pretty similar to any modern windows machine. I was surprised at the lack of bloatware present to get rid of. Most of what I did wind up removing is just personal preference (CoPilot, begone!) and not stuff that bogs down the system. The GiMate app is generally unobtrusive and is a good way to get the latest updates, so that got to stick around. It also controls things like the keyboard lighting. I'm not much for all the RGB customization, so I just set it to a color I liked and that was pretty much the end of my setup journey. Make sure you check your screen refresh rate and adjust it. By default, it was running at 60hz instead of 165, and there's a massive difference between the two. With 16gb of RAM and 8gb of VRAM, this machine isn't winning any speed records, but it is plenty powerful enough to run every game I threw at it at maxed or nearly maxed settings with good framerates. This is partly due to the 1920x1200 screen. Not exactly high resolution, but plenty good enough for a 16" screen. I have an older laptop running a 2560x1440 screen on a RX 6800M GPU and it's almost impossible to tell the difference, detail-wise. Build quality is decent enough. The shell is fully plastic, but it doesn't feel flimsy. Cooling seems to be excellent, and even in cases of extreme CPU load, generally kept it from throttling, though it did occasionally hit as high as the 100c max. The CPU is designed to boost until it hits thermal limits though, so that's sort of expected. While gaming, temps were pretty solid at around 70c for both CPU and GPU in a 22c (72f) ambient environment. I tested out a variety of the newest games I have. Unfortunately, the screen doesn't seem to have g-sync compatibility, so I turned on v-sync and I capped the gaming refresh rate at 161fps in nVidia control panel to prevent tearing. I did use DLSS if it was available. In general, this seemed to double framerates. I did not enable ray-tracing. Hell is Us Great performance, 120-150fps in combat. Black Myth: Wukong Decent - this game has frametime issues no matter what hardware you're running, but it was as smooth as it usually gets at 70-90fps. God of War: Ragnarok Great performance, basically capped framerate at 161fps - clearly could have gone higher, no apparent stuttering anywhere. Sniper Elite 5 Again, great performance, 130-150fps in combat areas with a lot of stuff going on. Stellar Blade Like God of War, easily hit 160fps in combat. Great performance. I'm incredibly impressed that the laptop runs this well for gaming. Honestly I'd have been happy to see it hitting 90fps in most titles, and it easily exceeds that. As far as my 3D modeling chores go, 16gb of ram is the primary limitation, and it did bog things down a bit, though it was still very usable. Thankfully, the machine is configured using a single 16gb chip instead of two 8gb ones. This does hurt performance (very) slightly, but it makes things much less painful for your wallet if you want to upgrade to 32gb, which I did, which made the machine much more capable for that specific sort of task. Otherwise, it was running great on 16gb and I'd probably have kept it that way. Overall, I think Gigabyte did a great job providing a machine that performs great without cutting too many corners or sacrificing much in the way of quality and features. I'd definitely recommend it for anyone looking for a solid mobile gaming experience.