Gaming notebooks do not tend to generate positive feedback in our reviews, as many reader feel the sacrifices to fit a powerful machine into a slim chassis are just too much of a compromise. BGA processors have negative connotations surrounding them, in some cases fair criticism but there is obviously a market for these machines as companies are producing and selling them. The Tech Report takes a peek at Gigabyte's Aorus X3 Plus v5, a 14" 3200×1800 IPS laptop powered by a Core i7-6700HQ and GeForce GTX 970M, a 512GB Samsung NVMe SSD and 16GB o fDDR4-2133. They loved the machine apart from the fact that the 970M just can't drive the panel at native resolutions when playing a demanding game and perhaps a lower resolution would have been preferable; which would bring a different set of negative comments.
The Lagavulin allegory which starts out the review is apropos, if you like something enough, you will find a way to afford it. That said, if you consider $90 as the high end of Scotch your tastebuds have some nice surprises in store; your bank account not so much.
"Aorus' X3 Plus v5 laptop packs eight threads of Skylake pro cessing power and a GeForce GTX 970M graphics card into a 14" chassis. We put the X3 Plus v5 to the test to see whether it ushers in a new era of portable computing power."
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no TB3 connection? no
no TB3 connection? no thanks. Seriously, if I was considering getting a laptop, it would have to have eGPU compatibility.
Perfect travel laptop for
Perfect travel laptop for those who prefer a small, lightweight laptop that can keep up in most respects with their home machine – not limited to just games, having enough power and RAM under the hood is a pleasure in any software you may use, like video editing, audio editing, Photoshop, CAD etc…
I suppose buyers of this laptop already have a solid gaming capable machine at the house, but want a decent computer for longer trips. I often travel some place for an entire year, so this type of machine is excellent to have along, without crowding out the other gear I need to take.
I have a Razer Blade at the moment, but due to some major deficiencies (keyboard lettering is only painted on and coming off from heavy typing, back-light died after 6 months, Macbook cooling insufficient for this machine, lacking num-pad overlay, which is crucial for many games, Fails to recognize charge state of the battery, various other driver issues, like the trackpad won’t disable itself when you plug in a mouse, even a Razer mouse etc etc), I will buy an Aorus X3 as soon as the GTX-1070 GPU becomes available on it.