This is one of the best gaming laptops that I’ve covered in a while. It’s the Xenia 15 from XPG,
which is also a Tongfang laptop, which has also been designed by
Intel.. Let’s start out with an explanation on how all of
these companies combine their powers together in order to make this machine.
Basically Tongfang is the ODM, or original design manufacturer
and they physically manufacture this laptop. Intel is involved in
the design process and they provide things like the software and BIOS.
This laptop is Intel’s NUC X15, think of it like a base platform.
It’s available with i5 or i7 11th gen processors, and Nvidia RTX 3060 or 3070 graphics options.
So basically think of it as a barebones laptop with just the CPU and GPU.
Then XPG is ADATA’s gaming brand, and essentially they are reselling that laptop. They’re including
things like ADATA branded memory, SSD, and slapping an XPG sticker on the lid.
Other companies like Eluktronics in the US, or XMG in Europe could also resell
this machine but under their own branding. There might be some differences in things
like the logo and the storage and memory used, but at its core it’s the same laptop.
The last time Intel and Tongfang got together like this we had the QC7,
which ended up getting sold as the MAG-15 from Eluktronics a couple of years ago
and that was quite a popular model. This is basically the newer updated version of that.
The configuration I’ve got has an 8 core Intel i7-11800H processor,
full powered Nvidia RTX 3070 graphics, 32 gigs of ADATA memory and a 1TB PCIe 4
NVMe SSD, also from ADATA, with a 15.6” 1440p 165Hz screen.
Build quality of this machine feels great. It’s got a magnesium alloy finish with an
all black design, and all surfaces, edges and corners felt smooth.
There’s only very minor flex to the keyboard even when pushing hard,
it’s very solid. There’s some flex to the lid despite the metal exterior as it’s fairly thin.
The screen wobbled a little when typing aggressively, but it wasn’t too bad.
The laptop alone weighs less than 2kg or about 4.3lb, then 2.6kg
or 5.8lb with the 230 watt power brick and cables.
It’s not too heavy considering the specs inside, it’s relatively thin and quite portable.
The Xenia 15 has a 15.6” 1440p 165Hz screen. Unfortunately there’s no MUX switch,
but it does have adaptive sync. The color gamut was alright for a gaming laptop,
contrast was pretty average, and the brightness was around 350 nits,
so a little more than the 300 or so that most regular gaming laptops typically have.
We’re looking at about a 7ms average grey-to-grey response time. There’s a
link in the description if you need an explanation on these numbers.
It’s not quite the 6.06ms needed for all transitions to occur within the refresh
window, but it’s also ahead of some other 165Hz panels that I’ve tested,
though not as good as some others that make use of overdrive modes.
I’ve also measured the total system latency, which is the amount of time between a mouse click and a
gun shot fired in CS:GO. It’s a middle of the pack result, but closer to some of the faster laptops.
There was pretty much no backlight bleed in my unit,
I never noticed the extremely subtle spots, but this will vary between laptops.
There’s a 720p camera above the screen in the middle,
and it does have IR for Windows Hello face unlock, which worked fine.
This is what the camera and microphone look and sound like,
this is what it sounds like while typing on the keyboard, so the screen does wobble
a little bit there, and this is what it sounds like if I set the fan to full speed,
so it’s not doing a great job of isolating my voice over the fan noise.
The optical mechanical keyboard has per-key RGB backlighting.
All keys and secondary functions are illuminated and there are two levels of
brightness adjustment available. There’s also a button next to that to disable the touchpad,
or you can double tap the top left corner to do the same, if the light is on the touchpad is off.
The keyboard was great to type on, I really liked the mechanical keys,
but mechanical does mean they’re louder than most other options.
The keyboard lighting is controlled through the Intel NUC Software Studio,
which is the control panel for the laptop. There are a few built in effects and you can
set the timeout period for the lighting to turn off to different values while plugged into power
or while on battery. You can also control the light bar lighting here too, again with different
colors or off when on battery power, and that light bar runs along the front in the middle.
The power button is separate from the keyboard, and the button next to it is
a shortcut to swap between the three performance modes, more on them soon.
There’s no traditional numpad, so the touchpad is in the center,
but you can press the numlock key and change the letter keys on the right into a numpad.
The glass precision touchpad wasn’t loose at all and felt great to click and use,
nothing to complain about.
From the back the left has a Kensington lock,
an air exhaust vent, a USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A port and a 3.5mm audio combo jack.
The right has a full size SD card slot,
two more USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A ports and there’s an air exhaust on this side too.
The rest is on the back, between the two air vents at the corners from left to right we’ve got
a Type-C Thunderbolt 4 port, HDMI 2.1 output, 2.5 gigabit ethernet and the power input on the right.
Unfortunately the Type-C port does not offer Type-C charging, but it does offer DisplayPort
1.4a support and both that along with the HDMI port connect directly to the Nvidia RTX
3070 graphics, and this bypasses the integrated graphics and optimus, so it should be possible
to get a speed boost in games by connecting an external screen, and I’ll test this a bit later.
Along with the light bar, the front has a little indentation in the middle to help get
your finger in to open the lid, and the screen goes the full 180 degrees back for sharing.
The lid has the XPG logo on the side, it appears to just be a shiny sticker, so I’d imagine it’s
relatively straightforward to remove if you want the clean all blacked out design instead.
Underneath appears to have plenty of air vents towards the back, and if we check
where light shines through we can see that none of them are blocked off or anything like that.
Getting inside requires unscrewing 10 Phillips head screws, but none of them
actually come out of the panel which I thought was cool so you can’t lose them.
Inside we’ve got the battery down the front, two M.2 slots above on the left,
two memory slots near the center, and Wi-Fi 6 card to the right of that.
The Wi-Fi performance was alright, but on the lower side for a modern Intel card.
Given Intel was involved with it I was surprised that it wasn’t the latest 6e,
but I suppose that’s a relatively cheap upgrade if you want it in future.
The memory is from ADATA, which makes sense given XPG is their gaming brand,
and they’re using decent x8 stuff rather than the x16 memory we’ve seen in a lot of laptops
this year. The marketing material provided to me by XPG notes dual rank memory, though mine
was single rank according to HWInfo, so not sure if that’s because I have an early unit.
The two speakers are found underneath on the left and right sides towards the front. I didn’t think
they sounded great, average to below average, kind of muffled sounding though there wasn’t
any palm rest vibration even at full volume, and the latencymon results were looking decent.
The Xenia 15 has a 93Wh battery inside, and it was lasting for 6 hours 45 minutes in the
YouTube playback test. Not a terrible result, it’s just that a lot of Ryzen
options I’ve tested lately are able to offer plenty more, as we can see they’re
dominating the top of the graph, and we’re getting close to 2 hours running a game.
The Intel NUC Software Studio, also lets us control the battery charge
limit down to a 50% charge level, which should help improve battery longevity.
Let’s check out thermals next. We’ve got 3 heat pipes shared between the CPU and GPU,
two fans for cooling, and liquid metal applied to the CPU. No GPU overclocking was done by default
The Intel NUC Software Studio can be used to change performance modes in the
performance tuning section. From lowest to highest these are battery saver, balanced,
and performance. You can customize the power and fan modes for each of these,
but I’ve left them default, and you can also have different settings
for when running on battery power. On the right there’s this benchmark mode option,
which seems to be the only way to max out the fan, and this boosts the GPU power limit too.
The idle results down the bottom were on the warmer side, but it felt cool to the touch so not
a big deal. I’ve run stress tests with both the CPU and GPU loaded up to represent a worst case,
as well as playing an actual game, with the CPU shown by the blue bars and GPU in the green bars.
This laptop seems to have a CPU thermal throttle cap of 89 degrees Celsius, as it didn’t go above
this no matter what. Technically this means we’re thermal throttling in many of these tests,
but it also means we’re not getting super hot, a tradeoff that I’m fine with, as the
performance is still great. That said, Nvidia’s thermal throttle limit is 87 degrees Celsius,
so the stress test in benchmark mode was hitting this, but the cooling pad that I test with,
linked in the description below the video, was able to help out and remove that.
These are the clock speeds during these same tests. I found it interesting
that the GPU speed in battery saver mode was higher than balanced mode,
I’m guessing it lowers in order to boost the CPU higher in balanced mode. We’re able to
hit 4GHz plus over all 8 cores in some of these tests, so a great result for an Intel
gaming laptop considering it’s not possible for it to pass 90 degrees Celsius. Based
on the older QC7 from a couple of years ago, Intel is probably responsible for this limit.
The GPU was peaking at 120 watts with the CPU also under load, but the average ended up being
a little below this in these long term tests. The GPU power limit in this particular game was lower
even though I was testing at 1440p here, based on my experience testing on higher powered machines
it seems that this game just doesn’t need more GPU power, so a GPU heavy game would definitely
boost higher than the 100 watts or so listed here. The processor was often running near
60 watts in these combined CPU plus GPU tests, which is quite impressive for an
Intel machine that can’t surpass 90 degrees Celsius, the liquid metal must be helping.
Technically the Nvidia control panel in this laptop specifies that the 3070 can boost up to
145 watts, which is the highest I’ve ever seen. With a GPU only stress test and the
CPU idle I found that it would run around 125 to 130 watts. It spiked at 135 watts at one point,
but I never actually saw 145 so your mileage may vary and you might not necessarily see 145.
Here’s how a game actually performs with the different performance modes. The lowest battery
saver mode was stuttering constantly, so it’s not really for gaming, but the other three modes were
offering great results. Benchmark mode performs the best, which is why I don’t really like the
name of it, I feel like some people might not use it for best performance when gaming because
they think it’s got something to do with benchmarking, but really it’s just a name.
Here’s how CPU only performance looks in Cinebench R23, so the GPU is idle now. It’s
not the best result I’ve recorded for an i7-11800H, but it’s close, only a little
behind XMG’s Neo 15, a slightly larger Tongfang chassis with a lot of similarities to this one.
It moves up a few positions relative to the same selection of laptops when running on
battery power. This is the best result from an Intel laptop I’ve ever recorded
in this test when running on battery, most others drop to the bottom half of the graph.
At idle it was only a little warmer than most others right in the center, but still relatively
cool to the touch overall. With the stress tests going the wrist rest is a little warm
and the middle was warm but not uncomfortable. In the higher balanced mode it’s similar, the
power limits of the CPU and GPU are higher now, but the fans increase to compensate. Performance
mode was a little warmer in the center, but the left and right were still ice cold, and then with
benchmark mode enabled, so max fan, it was very similar - let’s have a listen to the fan noise.
The fans were quiet but definitely still audible at idle, despite the warmer internal
temps noted earlier. The fan wasn’t any different between performance mode and
benchmark mode in my testing, as the stress test was enough to max the fan out anyway,
but enabling benchmark is still beneficial as it boosts the maximum GPU power limit.
Now let’s find out how well XPG’s Xenia 15 compares against other gaming laptops in games.
All testing was done with benchmark mode enabled for best results.
Cyberpunk 2077 was tested the same on all laptops, and I’ve got XPG machine highlighted in red. It’s
doing very well for a gaming laptop with RTX 3070 graphics considering there’s no MUX switch,
it’s basically right in line with the XMG Neo 15, another Tongfang machine but that
one has a MUX switch. The combination of x8 memory combined with the highest powered 3070
I’ve ever had must be doing the trick, not to mention the fact that Intel generally
beats Ryzen when it comes to gaming. I’ve tested the higher 1440p resolution too,
as this laptop also has a 1440p screen. Now there are quite a few other 3070 machines ahead of it,
granted it’s still ahead of some other 3080 laptops that have lower
power limits. There’s less data here because I just get fewer laptops with 1440p screens.
Red Dead Redemption 2 was tested with the game’s benchmark, and this time
the XPG laptop is lower compared to a number of other 3070 laptops. I’m not exactly sure why,
could be the lack of MUX switch partially, as all those other laptops ahead of it do
have that option, but it’s only a few frames ahead of the lower powered Omen
15. It’s also behind a number of other 3070 laptops at the higher 1440p resolution too,
though still beating the ASUS M16 with a higher tier processor but lower power limited 3070.
Control was tested running through the same part of the game on all laptops,
and the XPG laptop was doing pretty well in this one. Yeah it’s not the best 3070 result
as all the other 3070 laptops ahead of it have a MUX switch, but it’s still ahead of the RX
6800M in the Strix G15 just below it, as well as the 3080 graphics in the popular Zephyrus G15.
1440p is going a bit better in this game compared to the last one, it’s only slightly behind those
other laptops that have a MUX switch. This game is quite GPU heavy, so the lack of MUX switch
probably matters less here. I’d say the higher power limit of the 3070 is what’s helping out.
As mentioned earlier, we can bypass optimus and get a speed boost in many games by connecting an
external screen. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider this was giving us a fairly big
17% boost to average FPS, so that just goes to show what’s possible.
Here are the 3DMark results for those that find them useful, now for some creator tests.
Adobe Premiere was tested with the Puget Systems benchmark,
and the XPG laptop was doing very well. Intel 11th gen results are dominating
the top section of the graph, so that’s clearly what’s offering the above average
score here. All of the laptops scoring higher have higher tier i9 processors.
Adobe Photoshop depends more on CPU performance, and as we’ve seen the
i7 in this laptop has a fairly high power limit and great single threaded performance,
so again the best i7 result I’ve now got, only being beaten by i9 plus 3080 configurations.
DaVinci resolve is more GPU heavy, but our full powered 3070 is able to do
extremely well here. Again it’s only beaten by higher tier i9 laptops.
I’ve also tested SPECviewperf which tests out various professional 3D workloads.
The 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD was doing extremely well. It’s a PCIe 4 drive from ADATA,
and that’s supported by Intel 11th gen, so good to see them making use of it. Intel 11th
gen offers 20 lanes of PCIe 4, 4 lanes are used by this primary SSD slot and the other
16 by the RTX 3070 graphics, therefore the 2nd M.2 slot must be slower PCIe 3,
and the second one supports both NVMe and SATA while the primary slot is NVMe only.
The SD card slot was pretty average, not super fast but acceptable, though
the card sticks out quite a bit rather than sitting snugly inside the machine.
The BIOS in this laptop was exceptional, and that’s something Intel is bringing to the table.
There are plenty of useful items that you can change and customize through here, compared to
most other gaming laptops which just have the bare minimum - excluding MSI and their epic advanced
BIOS of course. There’s even undervolting support available through here, something that wasn’t
possible through software in Windows with XTU. It’s also got TPM 2.0 support for windows 11.
In order to boot my Ubuntu 21 Live CD to test Linux support I first had to disable fast boot
in order to enable USB booting, otherwise the USB stick didn’t appear in the F10 boot
menu. Once I could boot Linux, the keyboard, Wi-Fi, ethernet, speakers and camera worked,
but the touchpad did not, I had to use a USB mouse instead. The keyboard
shortcuts to change performance mode, adjust volume, screen or key brightness all worked,
so almost a perfect experience out of the box except for the touchpad.
Let’s discuss pricing and availability next. This will of course change over time,
so refer to those links in the description below for updates.
At the time of recording, the laptop is available for pre-order at $2500 USD,
but I’ve been told there may be a promotional price of $2300.
We can see that Intel’s price for the bare bones unit, so I guess no RAM,
storage and possibly Wi-Fi it’s $1630 USD or so, though that’s in quantities of 1000
so it’s not going to be something you or me will be able to purchase.
So is the XPG Xenia 15 worth considering? Let’s
recap both the good and the bad to help you decide if it’s worth it.
Overall I think the build quality of this laptop is great, it just feels excellent.
The I/O is great as well. There’s Thunderbolt 4, 2.5 gigabit ethernet, USB 3.2 Gen2,
no slower Gen1, and an SD card slot, though Type-C charging would have been icing on the cake.
I thought the mechanical keyboard and touchpad were excellent too,
and the 1440p 165Hz screen was decent with ok color gamut, brightness and response time.
Unfortunately there’s no MUX switch but gaming performance was still quite good due to the
higher CPU and GPU power limits, and Tongfang do produce a thicker chassis with that feature
if you’re after it. Just look for either the Neo 15 at XMG or Mech-15 G3 from Eluktronics.
Generally higher power limits equals higher temperatures, but that wasn’t the case here.
Perhaps thanks to the liquid metal. The laptop has a cap in place to prevent it getting too hot,
but even with the limit performance was still great, especially in creator workloads.
Fan control would have been nice to have, but at least you can boost it
to max in benchmark mode. Battery life was decent, for an Intel laptop anyway,
and performance on battery was the best I’ve ever seen from any Intel laptop.
All things considered, there’s just not too much to complain about. I think this
is a pretty great gaming laptop that I can easily recommend. It’s got a lot to offer,
but the price is on the higher side compared to other options, though this is for the XPG
version. I have no idea what the price will be like from other companies like
Eluktronics in the future. Hopefully it’s better, but that’s yet to be seen.
Check out this video next to see how the Intel i7-11800H processor in this laptop
compares against AMD’s Ryzen 7 5800H in games, or this one to find out if it’s worth paying
more money to get the RTX 3070 graphics compared to the cheaper RTX 3060. Make
sure you’re subscribed for future gaming laptop reviews like this one and come and join me in the
community in Discord and get behind the scenes videos by supporting the channel on Patreon.