This is the best gaming laptop I’ve tested so far in 2020!
It uses the same Tongfang chassis as the Eluktronics Mech-15 G3 and XMG Neo 15.
This is the Infinity W5, as sold in Australia and New Zealand markets, so let’s find out
what makes this machine so impressive.
My unit has an 8 core Intel i7-10875H processor, Nvidia RTX 2070 Super graphics, and that’s
full power, no Max-Q here, 32gb of memory in dual channel, a 15.6” 1080p 240Hz screen,
and a 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD.
It’s got gigabit ethernet, WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5, but there are a few different configurations
available.
XMG also sent me the same chassis with same specs, so I’ve got 2 to look at.
The top lid is a matte black aluminium alloy, and the interior is the same, overall build
quality feels excellent and there are no sharp corners or edges anywhere.
The weight is listed at 2.1kg, though mine was closer to 2.2kg.
With the 230w power brick and cables for charging the total rises to more than 3kg or 6.75lb.
The dimensions are quite good for a 15 inch gaming laptop with this level of hardware
inside, it’s not too thick, and this smaller footprint allows for 8mm thin screen bezels
on the sides.
The 15.6” 1080p 240Hz screen has a matte finish and viewing angles looked fine.
We have the option of using optimus, or swapping to integrated or discrete graphics only through
the BIOS, but there’s no G-Sync here.
Here are the screen response time results for the 1080p 240Hz screen in my unit.
You can check the link in the description for an explanation on what all of these numbers
mean, but basically the average grey to grey response time is around 5ms.
I’ve tested the screen with the Spyder 5, and got 97% of sRGB, 71% of NTSC, 76% of AdobeRGB
and 75% of DCI-P3.
At 100% brightness I measured the panel at 294 nits in the center with a 710:1 contrast
ratio, so quite good results overall, contrast aside.
Backlight bleed wasn’t too bad, there were some patchy spots in my unit but I didn’t
notice this while viewing darker content, but this will vary between laptops and panels.
There was some screen flex when intentionally pushing it which seems to be due to the thinner
lid despite the metallic build, but this was never an issue and overall the lid and hinges
felt quite sturdy.
It opened up easily with one finger, demonstrating a somewhat even weight distribution, no issues
using it on my lap.
As a result of the thinner bezels, the 720p camera is found below the screen.
It’s got infrared for Windows hello support, but you have to tilt the screen back for it
to actually see you.
So we’ve got the nose cam down the bottom which can be adjusted by tilting the screen
back to get yourself in frame.
Here’s what typing on the keyboard sounds like, and this is what it sounds like if we
set the fan to max speed, so you can still hear me ok over the fan.
The mechanical keyboard has per key RGB backlighting which illuminates all keys and secondary key
functions.
It also has project aurora support, so there’s a lot of customization that can be done.
Brightness can be adjusted between 4 levels or turned off with the F6 and F7 keys, or
through the software.
The keyboard looks a little cramped, but the buttons aren’t small and I had no problems
using it.
It felt great to type with and has 2mm key travel, but due to it being mechanical it
was on the louder side to type on, here’s how it sounds.
There’s a power button above the keyboard to the right, as well as another button to
swap between the three performance modes.
There’s also what appears to be an air vent up the back, at first I thought it might be
speakers but I couldn’t hear any sounds with my ear next to it.
Keyboard flex was quite minimal when intentionally pushing down hard, it felt very sturdy compared
to most other laptops.
The glass precision touchpad clicks down anywhere, feels very smooth to the touch, and for the
most part works great.
If you lightly tap it it seems to move and make a noise without actually being the full
click, I noticed it occasionally in both my units but didn't see it as a deal breaker
personally.
You can double tap the top left corner to quickly disable it, and doing so will turn
on a light to let you know it’s off.
Fingerprints show up easily on the matte black interior and lid, but as a smooth surface
they’re fairly easy to clean with a microfiber cloth.
On the left from the back there’s a kensington lock slot, air exhaust vent, USB 3.1 Gen2
Type-A port, and separate 3.5mm mic and headphone jacks.
On the right from the front there’s a full size SD card slot, two USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-A
ports and another air exhaust vent.
The back has a couple of air exhaust vents towards the corners as well as the rest of
the I/O, which from left to right includes a Type-C Thunderbolt 3 port, HDMI 2.0 output,
gigabit ethernet and power input.
I confirmed that both the HDMI and Type-C ports connect directly to the Nvidia graphics,
the laptop cannot be charged over Type-C however.
In order to actually use the ethernet port though, I had to lift up the back of the machine
as I wasn’t able to push the tab down with the cable with the laptop on the desk.
There’s a light bar on the front which can be customized through the software or turned
off.
Underneath there are heaps of air intake vents at the back, much nicer to see after the recent
ASUS TUF testing.
Getting inside involves taking out 11 phillips head screws of the same size, the panel basically
came right off so it’s very easy to get inside.
Inside we’ve got the two NVMe M.2 slots towards the left in the middle, two memory
slots in the center, WiFi 6 card to the right, and battery down the bottom.
Heatpipes also appear to cover VRM which is nice to see.
Here’s what that bottom panel looks like, so there is a piece of metal that acts as
a heatsink for the two M.2 slots.
The speakers are found on the left and right towards the front, and I thought they sounded
pretty good for a laptop, above average with some bass and still clear at higher volumes,
which can get quite loud when maxed out, and the latencymon results were looking decent
too.
This laptop is powered by a 6-cell 94Wh battery.
I’ve tested with the screen brightness at 50%, background apps disabled and RGB lighting
off.
The result while playing the witcher 3 was one of the best so far, however the frame
rate was 22 FPS and not hitting the default 30 FPS cap, so that may explain why.
Outside of gaming in the YouTube playback test it was possible to get an hour with Optimus
enabled.
As we’ve got the option of changing the GPU in use in the BIOS, I’ve retested the
YouTube playback test in the available modes.
We’re able to boost battery life in the iGPU only mode, as it’s not possible for
any calls to go out to the Nvidia graphics, while using the Nvidia GPU only resulted in
much worse battery life.
I don’t normally test how long it takes to charge, but I did notice that this laptop
seemed to take a long time, after 3 hours it was only 80% charged.
Next let’s get into the thermal testing.
The Gaming Center software lets you select between different performance modes, which
from lowest to highest are office mode, game mode, and turbo mode in the Infinity unit,
while XMG label them as balanced, enthusiast and overboost so this will vary.
Unlike many other 10th gen laptops, undervolting works fine and can also be controlled in the
BIOS, though neither of my units had undervolting or overclocking done by default, but that
could easily change with updates.
Thermals were tested with a 21 degree Celsius ambient room temperature.
Idle results down the bottom were looking fine.
Worst case stress tests were done with the Aida64 CPU stress test with CPU only checked
and the Heaven benchmark at max settings at the same time, and gaming was tested with
Watch Dogs 2 as I find it to use a good combination of processor and graphics.
The CPU would thermal throttle at 90 degrees celsius which was happening any time turbo
mode was engaged, and personally I prefer having a limit like this rather than just
letting it run up to say 100 like other machines, especially when performance is still good.
No GPU thermal throttling was ever observed.
These are the clock speeds in the same tests.
The GPU doesn’t really change outside of office mode as no overclocking is done with
the different modes in the Infinity W5 version of this chassis, but the CPU performance can
vary a fair bit depending on the mode selected.
Undervolting was able to improve performance from turbo mode as CPU thermal throttling
was the limit in these tests, and this is why the cooling pad further helped.
Remember I’ve got the 8 core processor here, so 4GHz over all 8 cores in both heavy stress
test or gaming workloads sounds pretty reasonable to me given the 90 degree cap.
Regardless of which mode was used, the RTX 2070 Super had no issues running up to its
115w limit.
CPU power is limited to 25 watts in office mode, then in game mode PL1 raises to 120
watts, however in game mode the thermal throttle cap of the processor seems to be set to 85
degrees which is what prevents this going further.
The CPU package power then runs around 45 watts in turbo mode before being able to boost
to 55 watts with the cooling pad in use, as that 90 degree thermal throttle cap is the
main limitation.
Again just to be clear, I don’t have an issue with this, the performance is still
up there and the cap prevents the machine getting too hot.
Here’s how an actual game performs with these different modes in use, so even office
mode was able to perform pretty well.
This is more of a GPU heavy test, and if you recall office mode could still run the GPU
at 115 watts.
We’re able to get a little boost by undervolting the processor and overclocking the GPU too.
In a CPU only stress test, office mode still has a 25 watt power limit, however the laptop
is way quieter when the GPU is inactive.
At all other modes the processor is able to use far more power with the GPU idle, it’s
good to see that it’s not capped low.
This results in the 4.2GHz all core turbo boost speed being hit in this heavy CPU stress
test once we apply the undervolt, again keep in mind this is over 8 cores, so it’s harder
to reach these speeds compared to say the 6 core 10750H configuration.
When the GPU is idle the CPU also doesn’t seem to have that 90 degree cap anymore, as
it was able to run up to 95 degrees here.
As for the external temperatures where you’ll actually be putting your hands, at idle it
was in the mid 30s in the center.
With the stress tests running in the lowest office mode the middle gets to the mid 40s
now.
Stepping up to game mode and the temperatures are just a little cooler, then turbo mode
was about the same.
Check out the cool left and right sides of the keyboard, these felt extremely cool to
the touch and the wrist rest was fine too, the middle just felt a bit warm, so great
results, but let’s have a listen to how loud the fans get.
The fan was just audible at idle, with the stress tests going in the same office mode
this increases.
Game mode and turbo mode were about the same, and they were the same as manually setting
the fan to max speed, so in this worst case CPU plus GPU load the fans are going as fast
as they can anyway, but again it’s worth noting that in a CPU only workload the fan
noise was much lower.
Now my infinity model came with stock paste, while the same chassis from XMG came with
liquid metal.
The tongfang chassis comes with either option, but XMG will be offering liquid metal with
their Neo 15 by default.
Interestingly the liquid metal configuration was a couple of degrees warmer on the GPU,
however it was clocking a bit better on both CPU and GPU as a result, but either way in
these tests I didn’t see too much change.
Next let’s find out just how well this configuration actually performs in games.
I’ve tested with turbo enabled and optimus disabled for best results.
In Battlefield 5 I’ve got this machine highlighted in red.
It’s giving me one of the best results compared to other high end laptops, only the far thicker
and much more expensive desktop replacements like the MSI GT76 with much higher wattage
GPUs are able to beat it.
The 1% low performance was also very good, likely as a result of the 8 core processor
which was also performing well.
These are the results from Far Cry 5 with ultra settings in the built in benchmark.
The W5 is still up there, though the Triton 500 with 2080 Max-Q was a little ahead in
this one, regardless still one of the best results out of all gaming laptops I’ve tested
so far, the 2070 Super Max-P looks pretty good.
These are the results from Shadow of the Tomb raider with the built in benchmark at highest
settings.
Again the results are very high, the GS66 was 1 FPS ahead this time, though this and
the Triton 500 all allow you to disable Optimus which is why I think we’re seeing this higher
tier of performance compared to others.
If you’re after more gaming benchmarks check the card in the top right corner or link in
the description where I’ve tested 20 games in total on this machine.
Overall the gaming performance was excellent, and this is a result of the combination of
2070 Super at full 115w power limit, 8 core processor and the option of disabling optimus
through BIOS.
I’d expect the Eluktronics or XMG configurations to possibly do better, I believe they customize
them a bit better in terms of overclocking and undervolting by default, at the moment
I think XMG are still evaluating undervolting, plus I don’t know if my machine has an equivalent
of Eluktroboost, my guess is on no.
I measured the power draw from the wall in the two units I have in a GPU only load and
didn’t see increased power draw when going into the highest modes, but I don’t think
Eluktroboost really goes beyond 115w anyway.
Now for the benchmarking tools, I’ve tested Heaven, Valley, and Superposition from Unigine,
as well as Firestrike, Timespy and Port Royal from 3DMark, just pause the video if you want
a detailed look at these results.
I’ve used Adobe Premiere to export one of my laptop review videos at 4K, and the W5
was the fastest machine I’ve tested in some time.
I’ve also tested Premiere but with the Puget systems benchmark which also accounts for
things like live playback rather than just export times, and again the W5 with these
specs was a chart topper.
It was also at the top in Adobe Photoshop, though it was only a little ahead of the MSI
WS66 with Quadro 3000 and weaker processor.
Davinci Resolve was also getting the best result I’ve seen so far, so this hardware
is definitely offering killer performance for content creators.
I’ve also tested SPECviewperf which tests out various professional 3D workloads.
I’ve used the OpenVR benchmark to test the HTC Vive Cosmos Elite, and the W5 was behind
the 2080 max-q in the m15 R2 in this test, though still one of the best results I’ve
tested so far, so no issues running VR games with this hardware.
I’ve used Crystal Disk Mark to test the storage.
The 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD was doing quite well, but this will vary by region based on what
storage is being used.
The SD card slot was on the slower side, but far better than not having one at all, even
if the card sticks out quite a lot when inserted.
At the time of recording, in the US the Mech-15 G3 which is the same chassis starts at $2000
USD.
Here in Australia we’re looking at about $3700 AUD for these specs in the Infinity
W5, but there are also cheaper and more expensive options, you can find examples linked in the
description.
With all of that in mind let’s conclude by summarising the good and bad aspects of
the Infinity W5 gaming laptop, aka XMG Neo 15, aka Eluktronics Mech-15 G3.
Overall I am extremely impressed with what this machine is able to offer.
In short, the build quality feels great, there are high levels of performance available for
the size of the machine, the exterior of the machine is mostly very cool and only a little
warm at worst.
There are some nice features, like the option of disabling optimus, Thunderbolt, SD card
slot, mechanical keyboard, and a larger battery.
The screen was decent for a gaming laptop, fair colour gamut and good response time compared
to others.
Issues to note include the subtle touchpad movement, and the nosecam was a little awkward
when trying to use face unlock, but those are pretty minor when everything else is looking
so good, which is why this is the best gaming laptop I’ve tested so far in 2020.
Let me know what you thought about the Infinity W5 gaming laptop down in the comments, and
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