Gigabyte Aero 15 Oled 1660 Ti

Laptop Magazine Verdict

The Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED boasts a supercolorful 4K display, a comfortable keyboard and solid operation packed into a sleek design.

Pros

+
Sleek aluminum design
+
4K OLED brandish
+
Comfy keyboard
+
Solid overall operation and graphics

Cons

-
Bottom-bezel webcam
-
Underwhelming AI (again)

OLED panels are creeping their manner into more and more laptops, and they especially shine on gaming laptops like the Gigabyte Aero xv OLED. For $2,499, the Aero 15 offers an excellent 4K OLED panel, a supercomfortable keyboard and solid functioning to boot, all packed into a sleek aluminum chassis. However, the performance heave information technology gets from Gigabyte'south implementation of the Microsoft Azure AI is once more underwhelming, and no one deserves a lesser-bezel webcam. But despite its flaws, the Aero xv OLED is i of the best gaming laptops and best 4K laptops on the marketplace for folks willing to pay a premium.

Price and Configuration Options

I tested the $two,499 model of the Aero 15, which comes outfitted with an Intel Core i7-9750H processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q GPU with 8GB of VRAM, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD and a 4K Samsung AMOLED panel.

The base model costs $i,699 and drops you to a GTX 1660 Ti GPU, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. Meanwhile, the break-the-bank version runs for $3,999 and comes with a Core i9-9980HK CPU, an RTX 2080 GPU, 64GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD.

If you lot're looking for something a little cheaper, consider a gaming laptop nether $1,000, or peruse our gaming laptop buying guide.

Design

The new Aero 15 swaps out the elementary carbon-cobweb arrow for a brushed-aluminum design that resembles a bow releasing an arrow toward the hinge. And instead of the Gigabyte logo hovering overhead against the matte-black hood, there's an Aero logo, which is neat, considering it gives the Aero fifteen an identity of its own. On the hinge, there's a steel, engraved Aero logo and just above it are two white LEDs that are shining on it, which is reminiscent of the Washington Monument at dark. It'southward unique, merely unnecessary.

All the real goodies are on the inside. First, there's the lovely per-key RGB-lit keyboard, a fingerprint sensor embedded in the touchpad and a sleek, triangle-patterned air vent merely above the keyboard. The bezels on the display are pleasantly narrow, merely unfortunately, the webcam is located on the hinge at the lesser. However, Gigabyte did include a privacy shutter, which is nice, because hackers won't go to sneak a look at your nostrils.

At 4.9 pounds and 14 10 nine.8 x 0.8 inches, the Aero 15 is still slim and light for a 15-inch gaming laptop, and so information technology should fit in about fifteen-inch laptop bags. The Alienware m15 OLED (4.eight pounds, 14.9 ten 9.nine ten 0.7 inches), the Razer Blade 15 (4.7 pounds, 14 ten 9.iii x 0.7 inches) and the Lenovo Legion Y740 (v pounds, 14.2 x ten.5 x 0.9 inches) are roughly in the same range.

Ports

This sleek machine still boasts a decent number of ports.

On the left, there's an HDMI 2.0 port, one USB Blazon-C/DP 1.4 port, 1 USB three.1 port, a headphone jack and an RJ45 Ethernet port.

The right holds room for the power jack, an SD card slot, i Thunderbolt 3 port and two USB 3.1 ports. If you need additional ports, consider getting a USB Blazon-C hub or a docking station.

Display

The Aero 15's 15.6-inch, 3840 ten 2160 Samsung AMOLED panel is vivaciously bright and feverishly colorful. You won't need a gaming monitor to accompany this bad boy.

In the trailer for Motherless Brooklyn, Bobby Cannavale's red tie popped with colour. When a shadow loomed in the dark around the Borough Bridge Authority, there was nevertheless a good corporeality of detail in windows off to the side. And when the M1911 saturday on a java table, the grip looked particularly abrupt on the Aero 15'due south screen.

The Aero 15'southward 15.half-dozen-inch, 3840 x 2160 Samsung AMOLED panel is vivaciously bright and feverishly colorful.

In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the neon sign for La Casa Mexicana was incredibly vibrant. When I took a tour through the jungle, even the darkest corners were fleshed out with visible leaves and branches. The panel was abrupt plenty to show off the threading on the cyberspace that a baddie was wearing over his head only 5 feet from me.

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According to our colorimeter, the Aero 15's OLED panel covers a broad 200% of the sRGB color gamut, toppling the premium gaming laptop average (144%) too as the Razer Bract 15 (149%) and the Legion Y740 (112%). However, the Alienware m15'southward OLED console is still male monarch, covering 265% of the sRGB.

At 357 nits, the Aero 15's OLED panel crushed the 306-nit category average. The Razer Blade 15 (262 nits) and the Legion Y740 (267 nits) didn't break 300 nits, just the Alienware m15's OLED screen in one case again excelled, at 376 nits of brightness.

Keyboard and Touchpad

Typing on the Aero 15's deep-travel keys felt oh-so-satisfying as I blasted my manner through a typing test with ease.

I nailed eighty words per infinitesimal on the 10fastfingers.com typing test, which is way over my lxx-wpm average. The keys traveled at a solid i.6 millimeters, landing within our preferred 1.5- to 2.0-mm range, and they required a meaty 71 grams of force to actuate.

Like the previous model, the keyboard features per-cardinal RGB lighting, which can be controlled via the Gigabyte Control Heart's Fusion tab. The app features furnishings like Wave, Breathing and Raindrop. You also have the option to assign each key a specific color.

The 4.1 x 2.7-inch touchpad is soft and comfortable to apply, but some of its real estate is cutting off because of the embedded fingerprint reader. Windows 10 gestures worked well, such every bit 3-finger tabbing and 2-finger scrolling. But, fifty-fifty if the touchpad didn't have a fingerprint reader, you lot'd probably want to choice upwardly a gaming mouse.

Audio

The Aero 15'south lesser-firing speakers are decently loud but don't provide enough bass to make the deeper beats come to life. I blasted Sum 41's "The Hell Song," and the opening electric guitar riff sounded a little shallow. I didn't observe a significant trouble until more of the percussion came in. It was hard to dissever the instruments, and eventually, the song was overwhelmed past the vocals and everything in the background sounded similar noise.

In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the higher-pitched tones, like the chirping birds and husky frogs, overwhelmed more of import sounds like depression-toned footsteps. When I knocked out a baddie with my bow, the thud sounded muted because there wasn't enough bass bankroll it. Despite that, Lara'southward phonation sounded clear and crisp when she spoke.

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The arrangement comes with the Nahimic sound software, which features 4 presettings: Music, Movie, Communication and Gaming. Within those tabs are settings for the bass, treble, voices and environs sound. Despite all of my tinkering, I couldn't observe a sound that was merely right for either music or gaming. Y'all'll want a pair of headphones or calculator speakers when gaming on this thing.

Gaming, Graphics and VR

Underneath the hood of this beastie is an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q GPU with 8GB of VRAM. It tore through Eye-earth: Shadow of State of war at 36 frames per 2d on 4K at Ultra settings as I sliced and diced my way through a horde of orcs.

On the Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark (Highest, 1080p), the Aero 15 OLED hit a solid 60 fps, which is nearly on par with the premium gaming laptop average (62 fps). The RTX 2070 GPUs in the Alienware m15 (40 fps) and the Legion Y740 (55 fps) weren't about as fast. Still, at 4K, the Aero xv OLED hit xx fps, which is short of the category average (22 fps) and the Alienware m15 (21 fps).

The Aero 15 tore through Middle-world: Shadow of State of war at 36 frames per 2nd on 4K at Ultra settings as I sliced and diced my way through a horde of orcs.

The Aero fifteen OLED averaged 97 fps on the Hitman benchmark (Ultra, 1080p), missing the triple-digit mark and dropping short of the 108-fps premium gaming laptop boilerplate. It did crush the Razer Blade 15 (96 fps) and the Legion Y740 (96 fps), but was so surpassed by the Alienware m15 (102 fps). On the 4K benchmark, the Aero 15 OLED matched the Alienware m15, at 48 fps, merely both were under the category average (54 fps).

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On the Grand Theft Machine V criterion (Very Loftier, 1080p), the Aero 15 OLED nailed 81 fps, surpassing the average premium gaming laptop (77 fps), the Alienware m15 (76 fps), the Razer Blade 15 (76 fps) and the Legion Y740 (67 fps). At 4K, the Aero 15 OLED averaged 24 fps, losing out to the Alienware m15 by a single frame (25 fps) and falling below the category average (29 fps).

The Aero xv OLED scored 79 fps on the Shadow of War benchmark (Ultra, 1080p), which is a decent style from the premium gaming laptop average (95 fps). It likewise couldn't become past the Alienware m15 (83 fps), the Razer Blade fifteen (91 fps) and the Legion Y740 (87 fps). Meanwhile, the Aero 15 OLED performed similarly on the 4K criterion, striking 36 fps, which got beat by the category average (42 fps) and the Alienware m15 (38 fps).

Microsoft Azure AI

Like the Aero 15 Archetype, the Aero 15 OLED boasts the power of Microsoft's Azure AI. Merely again, it's not all that impressive confronting competitors that don't have an AI backing it. Gigabyte's Gaming+ and Professional+ software connects to Microsoft's Azure AI to automatically optimize your performance by adjusting the power distribution of the CPU and GPU, based on the data it collects on the specific app or game that's running.

Nosotros ran benchmarks with the AI both off and on in its iii separate modes in guild to exam the deviation in performance. AI Edge Learning doesn't connect to the deject but tin can suit performance based on the data it's already collected. AI Azure Download connects fully to the cloud, but doesn't share your settings, so the Azure AI cannot collect data. Finally, AI Azure Download and Upload connect to the cloud to download settings besides as upload your data.

Hither are our results:

For the about role, Microsoft's Azure AI increased performance in each game, simply it was incredibly inconsistent.

On the Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark, the Aero 15 OLED went from 52 fps to 60 fps at 1080p; and 17 fps to twenty fps at 4K, going from off to AI Azure Download and Upload.

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Meanwhile, the Aero 15 OLED did better on the AI Edge Learning setting for the Hitman criterion, jumping from 95 fps to 97 fps (1080p) and 44 fps to 48 fps (4K).

It was a similar situation on the M Theft Automobile V benchmark, where setting it to AI Edge Learning pushed the organisation from 70 fps to 81 fps (1080p) and 21 fps to 24 fps (4K).

However, on the Shadow of State of war benchmark, the Aero fifteen OLED capped at 79 frames per 2d on all of the tests except the AI Azure Download and Upload, where it striking 77 fps. The but noticeable jump was on the 4K examination, when it went from 34 fps (off) to 36 fps (AI Edge Learning).

Using the power of the Microsoft Azure AI is more of a gimmick than anything else. All it does is suit operation automatically for you lot, but it's nothing that y'all tin't do on your own through the Gigabyte Control Center.

Operation

Powered past an Intel Core i7-9750H processor and 16GB of RAM, the Aero xv blasted through everything I threw at it, from 40 Google Chrome tabs and five 1080p YouTube videos to running Shadow of the Tomb Raider in the background of everything I did.

On the Geekbench 4.1 overall functioning exam, the Aero fifteen scored 22,258. While that's below the average premium gaming laptop (24,122), information technology was inside range of the Cadre i7-8750H processors in the Alienware m15 (22,027), Razer Blade fifteen (22,379) and Legion Y740 (21,629).

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The Aero 15 transcoded a 4K video to 1080p in x minutes and 53 seconds on our HandBrake benchmark, which is slower than the 9:29 category average. It did beat the Razer Blade 15'due south time, which was 12:53, but it couldn't get by the Alienware m15 (9:10) or the Legion Y740 (ix:23).

Gigabyte'south 512GB SSD copied four.97GB of information in 10.5 seconds, translating to 485 megabytes per second, which is curt of the premium gaming laptop boilerplate (762 MBps). Information technology was faster than the Alienware m15'due south 500GB SSD (462 MBps), only it couldn't beat the Legion Y740's 256GB SSD (566 MBps) or the Razer Blade 15'southward 512GB SSD (636 MBps).

Battery Life

The Aero xv OLED'south battery life is significantly shorter than its predecessor's, but it's still groovy. After continuously surfing the web over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness, the Aero 15's battery lasted 3 hours and 38 minutes, surpassing the 3:18 premium gaming laptop average. Information technology also beat the Legion Y740 (2:sixteen) only still couldn't last as long as the Alienware m15 (3:51) or the Razer Blade 15 (five:02). If you're looking for a longer-lasting laptop, it'll probably be hard to find ane that tin can competently run games.

Webcam

This 720p shooter is bad not merely because information technology has a bottom angle but also considering it takes crappy shots. My face and hair were so blotchy that I couldn't make out a single, sharply divers border. The worst office is that the camera is on the swivel, non the display, and so you can't fifty-fifty adjust the angle if you wanted to.

To exist fair, it produced decently colorful shots: Link'due south tunic on my shirt was appropriately green. Yet, the calorie-free from the window backside me completely blew out the surrounding wall. You should definitely pick up an external webcam if you lot're getting this laptop.

Heat

While the Aero xv OLED gets a little hot nether the hood, the chassis isn't scalding hot while yous're gaming, so a lap desk-bound isn't absolutely necessary. Afterward playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider for xv minutes, the underside hit 111 degrees Fahrenheit, which is above our 95-degree comfort threshold. The middle of the keyboard and touchpad hit 94 and 83 degrees, respectively. The hottest it got was simply to a higher place the center of the underside, clocking in at 137 degrees.

On our normal heat test, the Aero 15 OLED'southward underside reached 96 degrees after streaming a 15-minute 1080p video. The eye of the keyboard got 84 degrees and the touchpad hitting 78 degrees.

Software and Warranty

The Aero fifteen is relatively scant on software. In that location's the Gigabyte Control Center, which features several tabs with benign settings. These include the Smart Dashboard tab (monitor and change performance speed), the Manager tab (display, bombardment and Wi-Fi settings), the Fusion tab (keyboard lighting) and the Device Setting tab (fan control).

You likewise get the Killer Control Eye app, which lets you prioritize your bandwidth. The Windows ten bloatware includes such games as Candy Crush Saga, Candy Crush Friends and Microsoft Solitaire.

The Aero 15 comes with a one-year express warranty.

Bottom Line

The Gigabyte Aero xv OLED is a solid performer with a gorgeous OLED panel, information technology's comfy to blazon on and information technology's all wrapped in a sleek, 0.8-inch bundle. However, its apply of the Microsoft Azure AI could have been utilized better, and the bottom-bezel webcam isn't helping anyone.

For $2,779, you lot can get the Alienware m15, which boasts an even more than colorful panel, longer bombardment life and a webcam that's located where information technology'southward supposed to be (on tiptop).

However, the Gigabyte Aero fifteen OLED still holds its ain amongst the best gaming laptops, due to its solid power and stunning display.

Credit: Laptop Mag

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Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED Specs

Bluetooth	Bluetooth 5.0
Brand	Gigabyte
CPU	Intel Cadre i7-9750H processor
Brandish Size	xv.half dozen
Graphics Carte	Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q GPU
Hard Drive Size	512GB
Hard Drive Blazon	SSD
Highest Available Resolution	3840 ten 2160
Native Resolution	3840 x 2160
Operating System	Windows 10 Dwelling
RAM	16GB
RAM Upgradable to	32GB
Size	fourteen x ix.8 x 0.8 inches
Touchpad Size	four.i x 2.7-inch
Video Memory	8GB
Warranty/Back up	1-twelvemonth limited warranty
Weight	four.85 pounds
Wi-Fi	802.xi ax
Wi-Fi Model	Killer Wi-Fi 6 AX1650

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Rami Tabari is an Editor for Laptop Mag. He reviews every shape and form of a laptop equally well as all sorts of cool tech. You lot tin can notice him sitting at his desk surrounded past a hoarder'due south dream of laptops, and when he navigates his way out to civilization, you can catch him watching really bad anime or playing some kind of painfully difficult game. He's the best at every game and he but doesn't lose. That's why yous'll occasionally catch his byline attached to the latest Souls-similar challenge.