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.

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.

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!

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.

There are a lot of great things about this laptop and the weakness that holds it back. Pros - Great performance with 140w 4050 - Good build quality - Solid keyboard - Highly customizable RGB keyboard - Ports on back is convenient Cons - Screen is dim and has poor color accuracy If it wasn’t for the screen I would have kept the laptop as it’s a great performer as has excellent BQ at its price point. If you are planning to dock it to a monitor it’s definitely a good option or if you aren’t picky about the screen.

I have been using the Gigabyte Aorus for several days now and it has quickly become my go to machine for so many tasks, not just gaming. The build quality is solid and it is very comfortable to use. I have been able to get some work done, and also have some fun gaming breaks using the same machine. So convenient and just makes sense for me to have one less device to carry around all the time. For gaming this laptop is excellent, I have enjoyed many hours of Call of Duty and Fortnite and have had no issues running either. The fans do kick up quite a bit when you are gaming, but that is to be expected from any laptop. I get solid frame rates for a portable device and the screen looks very nice as well, with very little glare even in a sunny room. The sound is good for what it is, but tame your expectations as this is not a super high end laptop with over the top speakers. Most people including myself game with a headset most of the time anyway so this really isn't a big selling point for a gaming laptop anyway in my opinion. The battery life is great unless you are gaming, but for that I always keep it plugged in anyway. Watching movies is excellent and the screen is easy on the eyes for long viewing sessions. Ports galore, you have room to plug in whatever you need including a full size HDMI port which is very nice! The finishing touch is the RGB Keyboard and RGB light bar on the laptop, beautiful! Do not hesitate, this is a great value for the price!

The Gigabyte AROUS 15.6 FHD gaming laptop out of the box is very impressive. It has an excellent and sturdy build. I was very impressed with the placement of the HDMI, power plug port, video ports, and ethernet on the back of the laptop. It makes for a beneficial placement on your desk and pairing it with a larger monitor. It also has very impressive backlighting under the monitor, which is fantastic, not to mention the impressive 15.6 1920 x 1080 display with exceptional clarity. Which is also Rheinland certified. Gigabyte has also packed the video G-Force rtx40 series and the video G-Force RTX 4050 laptop GPU 6 GDDR6. I played a first-person shooter with no lag or disappointment. You have plenty of room for your favorite games with DDR5 4800 8GB*1 (8GB) storage and 512GB Storage (Gen4 M.2 SSD). It also has lovely audio specs with DTS:X Ultra Audio Technology, Built-in Microphone, and 2x 2W Speakers. I am a gamer, but this laptop is excellent for everyday tasks and web entertainment. The Battery life last all day with constant use.

The shipping box arrived on my my door. I was super excited to open the box. For the size, it's not terribly heavy in weight for a gaming machine. The build is sturdy. I like that the display hinge isn't at the back of the frame. It feels stronger this way. I thought the 8GB would make it a bit light on RAM. You can add an additional 8GB if you need to. I think I'll need to. This is not enough RAM to handle most games nowadays. It did make a difference when I was playing games. The sound quality is great for laptop speakers. It's good for streaming video and games, however if you want to listen to music, they may not be the best for that. The 512 SSD is decent unless you play a lot of different games with a heavy footprint. As I'm typing this review, the entire screen flickers. It's not a regular interval and I am not running anything that may tax the resources. I'll be checking for updates again but I ran them right out of the box. The trackpad is tough to left click. Tapping it works fine, but if you are looking for the click and actually clicking the left corner, it's a tough press. Other than gaming, the productivity of the laptop is smooth. The more things open, the more ram you'll need so might want to upgrade before really going crazy on the multitasking. I think it's a decent starter gaming laptop that could have used a few more bells and whistles like more RAM and larger SSD. I hope to get the flicker taken care of with my next round of updates.