Well Computex 2019 has come to an end and today is my last day in Taipei before I fly
back to Australia, so I thought I’d wrap up by going through the laptops I saw at the
show and covering off what I’m most interested in.
Let's start out with the more budget friendly entry level options that were announced. As
Nvidia only recently launched the 16 series for laptops we're only just now getting options
like the 1650 and 1660 Ti available for laptops, so this allows companies the option of making
lower to mid range products that don't have the RTX tax.
To start off we had Dell's refreshed G3 gaming laptop, and I must admit it looked much nicer
when compared with the older model. It's got a slimmer design, but as we all know less
space typically means less cooling, so it will be interesting to see how it goes when
combined with the new Intel 9th gen CPUs. The G3 also has the option of 144Hz screen
now as well, and of course the all important RGB keyboard. It starts at $799 USD for the
lowest end specs, but yeah great to see new entry level options becoming available.
The next budget laptops I looked at were the new Aorus 5 and Aorus 7. I had quite a few
comments on that video talking about how these don't really match with the Aorus brand, which
in the past couple of generations seems to have been a more premium brand, with higher
end gaming laptops like the X5, X7 and X9. Personally I don't mind seeing these lower
tier options becoming available, to me the Aorus brand is for their gaming products,
and I think it's better to have entry level options available than not. If you don't like
them, don't buy them, but they're there for those who aren't looking to spend a lot of
money.
After that I looked at Acer's refreshed Nitro 5 and new Nitro 7 gaming laptops, people seemed
torn on these, I think many are just a bit tired of the same black and red gamery design,
but then again at the same time some people really like it, so comes down to personal
preference at the end. I think they've made some nice improvements here over what was
already a pretty popular budget gaming laptop with fair specs.
Not only are there better specs available now, such as the Intel 9th gen CPUs and GTX
1660 Ti graphics, but the chunky looking screen has been upgraded with a slimmer design, and
the cooling appears to have been improved a little with more air exhausts on the back.
Personally I would have liked to have seen AMD and Nvidia combinations, as I think the
AMD Ryzen 7 3750H CPU is only paired with the RX 560X, which from my testing was a little
above the GTX 1050. It would have been good to see an AMD CPU with Nvidia graphics like
we're starting to see from ASUS.
I think that's pretty much all I had a look at in terms of gaming laptops on the more
budget friendly side, so let's continue on with some other interesting models from the
show.
The Acer Helios 300 has been a crowd favourite in the past, I think because it's been offering
GTX 1060 level performance for around the $1000 USD mark, so a good price to performance
option. The new Helios 300 has some very nice improvements, including of course the latest
9th gen CPUs and RTX graphics, but also finally a slimmer design and no more black and red
like the Nitro series. It's instead gone to the black and blue, matching the rest of the
Predator lineup, maybe I'm just getting sick of red, but I do prefer this look, and I hope
they still price the new model quite well once it's fully released.
MSI had their new GE65 Raider on display, which again looked alright, to be honest MSI
have quite a few different models available that are pretty similar, and it was hard to
really differentiate this one just by looking at it on the show floor, so I'll need to wait
til I have it for testing to get a better idea of what it's offering.
The Alienware m15 and m17 seem to be offering some nice improvements over the older models,
they're using the same 'legend' design that the beastly 51m announced earlier in the year
at CES uses, which makes sense as all the products will share similar design elements.
I admit I personally like the lighting on the back, but stuff like that will of course
always be personal preference. Dell say they have completely redesigned these machines,
along with the cooling, so it will be very interesting to see how they hold up under
my usual suite of tests once I get my hands on them. I'm hopeful, but also going in with
a healthy dose of skepticism based on what we've seen from Dells slash Alienwares recent
gaming laptops.
The new Gigabyte Aero 15 was easily my personal favourite at the show, as you may know I used
the Aero 15x and it seems to have a lot of nice improvements over the older models. While
not strictly a gaming laptop, given it can be specced out to RTX 2080 Max-Q graphics
with an i9 it's certainly got the chops for gaming if you so desire. To me it's a great
jack of all trades laptop, it does a lot of things well and I can live with the few negatives.
The new model has improved cooling with more air intakes and exhausts, and Gigabyte has
even noted they're using thermal grizzly hydronaut thermal paste now, so it will be very interesting
to see how the new model stacks up with the older ones.
ASUS had quite a few models on show that were recently announced, including the new Strix
G, Hero III and Scar III gaming laptops. The Hero III and Scar III don't look too different
compared to the two versions, or even compared against each other, same overall design, there
are some changes, and we get 9th gen CPUs now, but yeah nothing too groundbreaking here.
They have a little part on the back to help improve cooling, which I guess allows them
to keep the screen with thinner bezels while having the bottom section larger for improved
thermals.
I'm more interested in the new Zephyrus laptops, as this has typically been a more premium
brand, and they now have more budget friendly options like the GA502 with AMD Ryzen 7 3750H
and Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti graphics, an interesting combination. The GU502 with the Intel CPU
and Nvidia graphics looks quite interesting too, but I'm most interested in getting my
hands on the new GX502. It's got the traditional ASUS lift up design to improve thermals, has
G-Sync, is available with RTX 2070 graphics, and that's not Max-Q, and also has the option
of the new 1080p 240Hz IGZO screen, 4K 60Hz OLED screen, or 4K 120Hz screen, though not
sure what technology that's based on yet. Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about
the TUF series, I just didn’t spend much time looking at it here at the show because
I’ve got it back home for testing, so I’ll have more videos coming soon.
Getting into the higher end was the Acer Helios 700, while definitely out of the range of
most people I think it's always interesting to see new designs like this enter the market.
While you may not buy one, for all we know this sort of keyboard pull out design to improve
thermals could make its way into smaller machines in the future. Even if you don't personally
like it, I think it's great to see companies like this trying new things to improve their
products, and clearly something needs to be done to keep thermals in check while Intel
keeps on adding more and more cores while sticking at 14nm.
The craziest for sure was MSI's GT76 Titan, ever since my review of the older GT75 Titan
I've had quite a few people asking when the new model would be coming, well here it is.
This is definitely a flagship product and not for everyone, they're almost kind of just
flexing with it when it comes down to it. It's got the desktop i9-9900K CPU with all
8 cores overclocked to 5GHz, an RTX 2080, and up to 128GB of RAM, pretty insane for
a laptop, or I guess musclebook as they're are calling them these days. I wouldn't personally
want this one on my lap, however at the same time I did touch the base of the machine while
it had been running a game for hours and it was cool to the touch, the cooling solution
looks equally as crazy and it will be very interesting to test out in the future, if
anything just for fun.
There was also the Aorus 17, the replacement for the Aorus X9, which was there as a prototype
machine and while not finalized looked pretty good, a nice throwback to the previous X9
in terms of design, and it will be interesting to see how turns out when it’s ready.
I also saw the replacement to the Clevo P775TM laptop, that's another with i9-9900K that
I've previously reviewed. I was told that it's been redesigned for the new 10th gen
CPUs that aren't out yet, and I wasn't allowed to film it, but I can say it looks awesome.
While not strictly a gaming laptop I did also see the ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo, which has the
dual screens. It's available with an Intel i9 CPU and RTX 2060 graphics, so could be
used comfortably for gaming if you wanted. I think the design is more practical than
the dual screen laptop HP was recently showing off as it extends the whole width of the top
display, so yeah could be interesting for things like playing a game on the top screen
and having a chat like discord or even streaming programs open underneath, again even if you're
not currently interested I like seeing these sorts of innovation that push the industry
forward.
Let me know which laptops you want me to review first down in the comments, and which of the
new models at Computex were of most interest to you? I look forward to seeing what you
guys think, but for now I've got to start my journey back home to Australia, where I've
got tons of laptops to finish testing, so if you're new to the channel make sure you
get subscribed for my upcoming detailed reviews.