Customer Ratings & Reviews

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

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.

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.

A very good performance. Although, the battery drains very fast. You'll habe to keep it plugged while playing. Also, the fan can get a nit loud at times, but it doesn't bother me much. Overall, it does the job.

This is an absolutely amazing machine. I needed a computer for my graphic design class and this hit the mark. Just wish it had a better battery life. But for low end gaming and design its awesome.

While this the first gaming laptop I have tested, I have used Gigabyte motherboards for PC builds in the past with great results. The first laptop I received had some issues, but Gigabyte support was quick to ship me a replacement, so my recommendation to you if you run into any issues to contact their support asap and they will do their best to help you. What's good? I don't think my CPU utilization has gone higher than 25% during my tests. All of the emulators I tested worked like a charm, no audio issues or screen glitches. USB 2.0 transfer speeds topped out at 42 mb/s and averaged 35 mb/s when transferring files. Likewise, USB 3.0 speeds averaged 70 mb/s and USB C 3.0 averaged 170 mb/s, making this by far the fastest device in my arsenal at the moment. Video quality was excellent. Resolution maxes out at 1080p, but the HDR and 144hz video refresh rate really help to keep images clear, crisp, and vibrant. What could be improved? Memory (amount and speed) and the GPU. Running Hot Wheels Unleased thru my xbox app maxed both of these items out at 90% , and only 20% CPU usage. I did put the cooling fans on turbo mode (in the Gigabyte control center) once I saw temps hit 55 Celsius while playing. Battery life also seems short...about 2 hours of playing a game or other intensive tasks took the battery down from 100% to under 40% in that short timeframe. Not a gamer? Well, just having word, windows explorer, and task manager also used up 80% of my memory. 8 GB is pretty low nowadays, so maybe wait until they ship a model with at least 16 GB, or prepare yourself to get an extra memory stick to increase your memory. Also, if you are a fan of overclocking, I didn't see an area to do that in the bios. But the low overall CPU usage means you may not ever need to overclock?