The Infinity X5 gaming laptop uses the tongfang chassis like many others, so let’s find
out how this 15 inch model performs with latest specs in this detailed review.
The Infinity laptop brand started up last year, and they’re currently selling in Australia
and New Zealand, though the information should still apply to the same models sold around
the world by other companies.
Starting with the specs my unit has an Intel i7-9750H CPU, Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti graphics,
16gb of memory running in dual channel, a 15.6” 1080p 144Hz screen and 512GB M.2 PCIe
SSD. There’s a gigabit ethernet port, 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth 5. There are quite a few
options available though, you can find examples and updated pricing linked in the description.
The lid of the laptop is matte black metal, while the interior is also black but with
a rubberised finish. All edges and corners were smooth and overall it felt quite well
built.
The weight of the laptop is listed at 1.9kg, and mine was a little under this without a
2.5” drive installed. With the 180 watt power brick and cables for charging the total
weight rises to over 2.4kg.
The dimensions of the laptop are 35.9cm in width, 23.6cm in depth, and under 2cm in height,
so on the thinner side, and this results in thinner 7mm screen bezels based on my own
measurements.
The 15.6” 144Hz 1080p IPS-level screen looks quite good, all viewing angles were fine though
there was no G-Sync available here. The screen seems to use PWM to control brightness, however
my camera could only detect this at lower brightness levels.
I’ve measured the current colour gamut of the screen using the Spyder 5 Pro, and my
results returned 97% of sRGB and 73% of AdobeRGB. At 100% brightness I measured the panel at
315 nits in the center, and with a 860:1 contrast ratio, so around average for a good gaming
laptop panel.
There was pretty much no backlight bleed, some extremely minor imperfections but nothing
actually noticeable during normal use, but this will vary between laptops and panels.
There was only a little screen flex, the metal lid seemed quite sturdy despite being on the
thinner side, which was aided by the hinges being out towards the far corners.
I couldn’t quite open it up with one finger, it was a little heavier towards the back,
though no problems using it on my lap.
Due to the thin bezels the 720p camera is found underneath the screen.
The camera doesn’t look that good as it’s down the bottom so it’s more of a chest
cam. The microphone sounds ok and when you type your fingers kind of get in the way of
the camera a bit. If you want to be in the frame you’ve got to push the screen right
back so it’s not very practical, and if you max the fan speed out this is what it
sounds like, so it does actually do an ok job of isolating my voice, you can still kind
of hear me but the fan noise is a bit annoying so it’s not really removing it.
The membrane keyboard in my unit has four zones of RGB backlighting, has four levels
of brightness available, or can be turned off if you prefer, and even all secondary
key functions get lit up. Overall I really liked typing with the keyboard, here’s how
it sounds to give you an idea of what to expect.
There was a little keyboard flex, but overall it was quite sturdy and this wasn’t a problem
while using the machine normally.
Next to the power button is a button that lets you swap between the different performance
modes available, just like the software, with status LEDs found behind here which are also
viewable with the lid closed.
The touchpad has precision drivers, was very smooth to the touch, and can be disabled by
simply double tapping the top left corner which could be useful in games if you’re
using a mouse anyway. It’s got all the usual gestures, clicks down anywhere and worked
well.
Fingerprints didn’t show up too easily on the black interior which appears to have a
very subtle glitter or something in it, despite it being some sort of rubberised material
they were easy to clean.
On the left from the back there’s a Kensington lock, air exhaust vent, gigabit ethernet port,
USB 2.0 Type-A port, bit odd for a 2019 machine, and 3.5mm microphone and headphone jacks.
On the right there’s a full size SD card slot, two USB 3.1 Type-A ports, and air exhaust
vent.
On the back there are more air exhaust vents towards the corners, then from left to right
there are two Mini DisplayPort outputs, HDMI output, USB 3.1 Type-C port and the power
input, no mention of Thunderbolt support here though. There’s nothing on the front, just
plastic from the bottom panel.
On the matte black metal lid there’s just the Infinity logo in the center.
Underneath there’s some nice room for air vents towards the back, thick rubber feet
to help raise it up a little and reduce movement, and speakers towards the front left and right
corners. The speakers sound ok and got loud enough, nothing special, a bit tinny with
no real bass. Here’s what we’re looking at with volume at maximum and music playing,
and the latencymon results were looking good.
The bottom panel can be removed by taking out 11 screws with a Phillips head screwdriver.
Once inside from left to right we’ve got two M.2 slots, single 2.5 inch drive bay,
two memory slots, battery and WiFi card.
Powering the laptop is a smaller 3 cell 46.7 Watt hour battery, and with a full charge
and just watching YouTube videos with the screen on half brightness, keyboard lighting
off and background apps disabled, I was able to use it for just 2 hours and 5 minutes,
a very poor result for this test. The Intel integrated graphics were in use during this
test, due to Nvidia Optimus.
While playing the Witcher 3 with medium settings and Nvidia’s battery boost set to 30 FPS
the battery lasted for 1 hour and 17 minutes, however the battery didn’t seem capable
of providing enough power, as the game was running at 17 FPS the entire time rather than
the usual constant 30. At 13% remaining, or after the first hour and 4 minutes, this lowered
further to 4 FPS and was no longer usable, so overall the battery wasn’t great, you’ll
definitely want to stay plugged in where possible. I did notice some battery drain during my
testing while plugged in, however it seemed to stop at around 94% and not result in performance
loss which is pretty standard.
Thermal testing was completed with an ambient room temperature of 21 degrees Celsius, so
expect different temperatures in different environments. Out of the box the CPU also
came with a -0.05v undervolt, so that’s the stock setting, where I’ve noted UV on
the graph that’s my additional undervolt to -0.15v.
At the bottom of the graph, at idle the temperatures were actually quite warm.
The gaming tests in the upper half were done with Watch Dogs 2, as I find it to use a good
combination of CPU and GPU. The stress tests represent a worst case scenario, and were
done by running the Aida64 CPU stress test with the stress CPU only option checked and
the Heaven GPU benchmark at max settings at the same time in order to fully load the system.
Starting with the stress tests, I was seeing thermal throttling on the CPU at 95 degrees
Celsius, which was happening in most cases. The software on the machine lets us swap between
game mode and turbo mode, and while turbo mode looks cooler, as we’ll see in the next
graph it’s not performing as well. The additional undervolt and cooling pad wasn’t enough
to remove thermal throttling on the CPU, though it does help reduce the GPU temperature, which
was actually thermal throttling under turbo mode, as it seems to redirect power from the
CPU to GPU. While gaming the temperatures looked fine, but that’s due to severe power
limit throttling, which we’ll see soon.
These are the average clock speeds for the same tests just shown. With the stress tests
we can see that Turbo mode has lower CPU clock speeds but higher GPU clock speeds, honestly
I’m not exactly sure how this was working, at least the latest version of hardware info
did not detect the power increase, and no overclocking was being done as part of turbo
mode. Undervolting the CPU raises the clock speed as this helps reduce the thermal throttling,
while the cooling pad provided a further boost, again as this was addressing the thermal limitations,
though even in this best case scenario the full 4GHz all core turbo speed of the i7-9750H
CPU was not hit. Again the CPU clock speeds from the gaming tests were quite low, due
to power limits that we’ll look at next. It’s worth remembering that at stock the
CPU already has a -0.05v undervolt applied, so even with this default tweak the results
are lower than I expected.
These are the average TDP values reported by hardware info in these same tests for both
the CPU and GPU under these combined workloads. In almost all tests the green bar is at the
80 watt limit for the GTX 1660 Ti, however I actually saw a lower result with turbo mode
enabled, because as mentioned enabling turbo mode made it thermal throttle at 86 degrees
Celsius. Otherwise in terms of CPU performance, with the stress tests at stock we’re not
passing 36 watts due to the thermal throttling taking place. As the cooling pad helped reduce
thermal throttling by increasing air flow, we saw higher CPU clock speeds and as a result
higher power levels being hit, despite the same temperatures, so although still running
hot it is performing better like this. Interestingly while actually playing a game, whether in
game mode or turbo mode, the CPU TDP was not passing 30 watts under this combined load.
It would go up to 60 watts in CPU only load, but while actually playing a game it was significantly
lower. For comparison, most laptops I test run at 45 watts on the CPU while gaming by
default, so this is definitely on the lower side, and we’ll see how it affects games
soon, but I’m already expecting lower 1% low performance as a result, and lower FPS
at lower settings when the machine is more CPU bound.
As for some of that CPU only performance, here are the results from Cinebench. Single
core scores are looking fine, but a bit low for multicore prior to undervolting, as thermal
throttling was being hit in this CPU only workload, however additional undervolting
gets us to about what I’d expect from the 9750H.
As for the external temperatures where you’ll actually be putting your hands, at idle it
was warmer than the usual 30 degrees I see with most other machines, a result of the
higher than average idle temperatures noted earlier. While gaming it gets to the low 50s
in the center and the keys were quite warm to the touch, then just a little hotter with
the stress tests, and hot right up the back granted you shouldn’t be touching there
often unless using the profile change button next to the power button.
As for the fan noise produced by the laptop I’ll let you have a listen to some of these
tests.
At idle the fan was quiet but definitely audible, though at times it would completely shut off.
Otherwise while under stress test or gaming, I found the fan speed would max out anyway
under the workloads I tested, it was the same at stock as manually setting it to maximum.
Overall the machine ran hot despite the out of the box stock undervolt on the CPU. Regardless
of workload tested the fans were already running at maximum speed, and while gaming the CPU
TDP was considerably lower at 30 watts. I suspect you could probably boost that by using
a custom BIOS though, as there are quite a few available out there for these Tongfang
based units.
Next let’s take a look at some gaming benchmarks, I’ve tested these games with game mode enabled
rather than turbo, because as discussed I was seeing better performance.
Battlefield 5 was tested in campaign mode, and even with ultra settings it was playing
alright here, easily above the 60 FPS sweet spot even at ultra settings, however the 1%
low performance was noticeably lower compared to other laptops with same specs I’ve recently
tested, as you’ll see soon.
Apex Legends was tested with either all settings at maximum, or all settings at the lowest
possible values as it doesn’t have predefined setting presets. Max settings still played
fine with above 80 FPS, though we could boost average FPS by 44% with minimum settings.
Far Cry New Dawn was tested with the built in benchmark, and the results were ok, though
again a bit lower than other machines with similar specs tested, but still performing
fine.
The Division 2 was also tested with the built in benchmark, and this is only the third time
I’ve tested this game, and compared to Lenovo Y540 with same specs that I recently tested
the averages are similar however interestingly the 1% low performance was a fair bit better.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested with the built in benchmark, and again mixed results,
actually pretty good for these specs at max settings, as we’ll see later in the comparisons,
but once more lower performance at lower setting levels due to the CPU performance.
CS:GO was tested with the Ulletical FPS benchmark, and this test always results in high frame
rates on modern hardware, not too different from most other machines tested with this
CPU.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was tested with the built in benchmark, and the results were
quite similar to the Lenovo Y540 with same specs that I recently tested at high settings
and above, though lower results at lower settings, again indicative of the lower CPU performance
noted earlier.
Dota 2 was tested in the middle lane with an average amount of action going on, and
the results were good, hitting 200 FPS averages at low settings with not really much difference
to 1% low, it played perfectly fine with maximum settings.
Rainbow Six Siege was tested with the built in benchmark, and in this test the results
were actually extremely close at most setting levels compared to the Y540 with same specs,
so seemingly fair results.
The Witcher 3 was tested with hairworks disabled, and played well even with ultra settings,
no issues here at all, decent results.
To get some context let’s see how it compares with some other gaming laptops, use this information
as a rough guide only, as tests were done at different times with different drivers.
Here are the results from Far Cry 5 using the built in benchmark at ultra settings,
with the Infinity laptop shown in red. It’s stacking up pretty well here, very similar
results to the Lenovo Y540 with same specs, while both were actually slightly ahead of
the two 2060 machines tested.
In Shadow of the Tomb Raider with the built in benchmark at highest settings the Infinity
laptop was performing alright. Generally I find this test to mask CPU issues, so I presume
it’s more GPU intensive, and the 1660 Ti is actually scoring close to both of the RTX
2060 machines I’ve got here.
In Battlefield 5 with ultra settings we’re seeing ok averages, only just below the Lenovo
Y540 with same specs, however the 1% low performance was a fair bit lower here due to the lower
CPU performance covered earlier in the thermal testing.
Overall the gaming performance was alright, the 1660 Ti is a good sweet spot for gaming
in my opinion, though we did see lower performance in some games due to the lower CPU performance
covered earlier, but in most cases that’s just numbers on a graph, I found the games
themselves to play well even at higher settings, mostly because we start becoming more GPU
bound and the 1660 Ti can take over.
Now for the benchmarking tools, I’ve tested Heaven, Valley, and Superposition from Unigine,
as well as Firestrike, Timespy, Port Royal and VRMark from 3DMark, just pause the video
if you want a detailed look at these results.
As we saw earlier we’ve got the option of overclocking and undervolting the CPU further
to increase performance, so let’s see how these changes actually help in gaming.
Far Cry 5 was tested at ultra settings with the built in benchmark at 1080p. There was
a 5% improvement to average FPS with the custom settings in place, most of this would be due
to the CPU undervolt, as this would allow for more performance within the strict power
limits that were observed while running games.
I’ve used Crystal Disk Mark to test the storage, and my 512GB M.2 PCIe SSD was performing
fairly, interestingly better writes than reads which is uncommon. The SD card slot wasn’t
going too well with a V90 card, though I still prefer having it than not at all.
For updated pricing check the links in the description, as prices will change over time.
At the time of recording in Australia this model is going for $2000 AUD. For my international
viewers, without our tax and converting the price that’s under $1250 USD, but you’ve
also got to factor in that we typically pay more here too, I can’t see anywhere in Amazon
selling this chassis at the moment.
Compared to many other options from larger brands here in Australia, that’s not too
bad, however at the same time you can get the same specs in a 15 inch Clevo unit for
around $100 AUD less, granted it is currently on sale, though based on my own testing I
did find the thermals to perform a fair bit better.
So what do you guys think about the Infinity X5-9G6-88, apart from the long name? Let’s
conclude with the good and the bad. Overall the laptop itself seems decent, it’s a Tongfang
chassis and built pretty well, the materials feel good and build quality is fair. The keyboard
was great to type with and touchpad worked well. The screen was decent in terms of colour
gamut and brightness while still being 144Hz, however the flickering associated with PWM
may be an issue for some, however bleed was extremely minor.
While under combined CPU and GPU load I was seeing high temperatures despite the out of
the box undervolt on the CPU, whereby the CPU would thermal throttle, or the GPU would
thermal throttle in turbo mode, possibly due to the machine being on the smaller and thinner
side, though that is a worst case test. While gaming the CPU power limit seemed to be capped
quite harshly to 30 watts, and while that could possibly be raised with some other BIOS
out there, I think it’s important for me to review the machine in the way it came to
me which should represent how most people would buy it. This resulted in some dips in
performance in a few games, noted by the 1% lows, however at higher setting levels the
1660 Ti was still able to do the heavy lifting resulting in decent game performance in terms
of average FPS.
The battery was on the smaller side and seemed a little weak, as the games I were testing
weren’t able to hit the standard 30 FPS cap of Nvidia battery boost, so I’d want
to stick to being plugged in while gaming if possible for better performance, and the
battery life overall was just not very good. I’m not sure if an upgrade is possible,
I know other 15 inch tongfang machines support this if you’re willing to take out the 2.5
inch drive bay but there’s not much information on this exact model.
It was good to see that this unit came with dual channel memory, unlike the Infinity S7
I previously reviewed with single channel. I still can’t see this specified when buying
though, so I’m not sure which configuration you would actually get.
Let me know what you guys thought about the Infinity X5 gaming laptop down in the comments,
and if you’re new to the channel get subscribed for future tech videos like this one.