- This is the Aorus 15G gaming laptop.
And well, yes! It has
the brand new Intel 10th generation chips,
as well as the RTX 2070 Super graphics.
What I'm really excited about is what possibly could be
the greatest keyboard ever put on a gaming laptop.
Really the highlight here is absolutely
this custom OMRON mechanical keyboard.
And of course, gaming PCs have been taking advantage
of mechanical keyboards for very long time.
However, this is the very first time
that I've actually seen a mechanical keyboard in a laptop.
And it is something special.
With 2.5 millimeters of key travel.
While it is not quite as deep of a throw
as what you would get with a standard mechanical keyboard,
you get all of that tactile feel.
So there's sort of a progressive click down
and then you actually hear the spring compress
and you do get the keystroke.
It means that not only do the keys pop up faster,
but well I mean, come on.
If you ever used a mechanical keyboard,
you know the advantages.
To take a closer look,
I decided to pop off a key
and give you a little bit of an inside look at what
the key switch looks like.
All I can confirm is there is a little spring as well as,
of course, a little plastic mechanism as well as something
to kinda give you a nice clear RGB look.
But the downside is, is that...
I broke the switch.
So if you would like to confirm,
that your laptop has a mechanical switch,
I would recommend, don't touch it.
Don't try to take out the key cap, it's fine.
Of course, there's more to this laptop than just
the excellent mechanical keyboard.
As this is the very first laptop I've had in the studio with
the brand new 10th generation Intel Core H processors.
Now in Intel parlance H series means
that this is their sort of,
high end gaming laptop variety SKUs.
And it's a little different.
So unlike 10th generation on something like the XPS 13
that I daily every day,
which is a much lower wattage part.
This is actually a continuation of
the 9th generation which means
that it is similar, I suppose.
It is very, very similar because it's still based on
that older Skylake architecture.
Now running it through benchmarks, it is a clear step up.
And this is the first time they brought
eight cores to an i7,
which means that this is actually roughly on par
with last generation's Core i9.
What is not is a major step forward.
And it really does need to be a major step forward,
because when you look at it side by side with
the Zephyrus G14, which I've recently done a video on,
which of course is powered by
the brand new Ryzen Mobile 4000 series.
It's not a particularly fair fight.
Now when you put these two side by side,
while of course they do compete in different weight classes,
this is a thinner 14 inch laptop
versus a much thicker 15 inch design.
But one of the most important things here
is just to see how far the AMD has pushed the envelope on
the Zen side of things.
So if I fire up Cinebench on both laptops,
what you'll see is that while yes,
Intel does have a single thread advantage.
They can push up to 4.7 gigahertz.
Pretty much sustained on this design.
When you load up both systems
with a very heavy eight core workload,
what you'll find is that right now
the Aorus is sitting at...
I did it again!
With my Windows fixed, which you can see.
This guy sits at around 3.4 gigahertz on all eight cores
with a quite loud fan,
because it needs a lot of power to hit that.
Whereas this guy is chilling at 3.7 gigahertz
with no stress.
A lot of that does come down to the fact
that AMD are of course using
a more advanced seven nanometer process on
the Zephyrus as well as well specifically with
the 4000 series of Ryzen.
And there's also the fact that this Ryzen 4000 series
is taking advantage of the Zen 2 core.
Which not to get too far into nerd town,
but it's simply a higher performing core right?
The IPC is much much more powerful than
the Skylake base of the 10th generation Core H processor.
With all that being said, this is a step up.
It is certainly a more powerful laptop
and has certainly a more powerful 10th Gen chip
than we had last time around.
And if it was in a vacuum, it would be great.
Unfortunately, it's not in a vacuum and AMD
is absolutely caught up in a big way.
Feel free to check out my video on the Zephyrus,
if you wanna know more about it.
But this really does put things into perspective.
It is very, very fast.
However even 10th Gen isn't
the only brand new thing with this Gigabyte laptop.
As we also have
the brand new NVIDIA RTX Super graphics on board.
And specifically, this is taking advantage of
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070
Super Max-Q graphics,
which I feel like
NVIDIA took a page outta Samsung's book on that one.
But essentially, this is a super version of
the current RTX 2070 cards.
But the main thing to keep in mind is
that just with the original launch of
the RTX series for laptops,
you can't just look at the label right?
Just because this has a 2070 Super Max-Q,
it doesn't mean that you have
a guaranteed level of performance.
Cause it could be running at 85, 115 watts
or anywhere in the middle.
And of course this is nothing revolutionary, right?
I mean, obviously you need solid cooling
and a good system to support the chips that you have inside.
However with these RTX chips, and of course,
the super being even more powerful,
it means that you're going to expect
to see pretty wide variances
and the performance of one 2070 Super laptop over another.
Now all that being said,
Aorus have actually done a very good job with this system.
As the 2070 Super inside actually boosts to,
at least in benchmarks,
above 2080 Max-Q spec.
Which technically it shouldn't,
but I believe this is probably running on
the higher end of that TDP.
Regardless though,
it's just one of those things where yes,
the super chips are more powerful,
but it's not a huge difference.
But you should really pay attention
to each individual laptop.
Don't just look at it and say,
"Oh, it has the same i7 and 2070 inside.
When the actual results
and the actual performance may be very different.
Also, a side note about
the Aorus specific tuning with this laptop.
They're taking advantage of the Microsoft Azure Cloud AI,
which to be completely honest with you,
I don't know exactly how much
the cloud component of this really makes a difference.
However, if you right click
on this little gaming and professional icon here
and turn on the learning,
you actually see a significant performance boost.
Now essentially what this is doing,
is this is dynamically adjusting not at
the power but also the cooling,
between your CPU and your GPU.
So for example, if you're not maximizing your processor,
then actually it may allocate a little bit of
that juice over to your graphics card, or vice versa.
And while it doesn't make a huge difference on
the processor performance,
I've actually seen a pretty noticeable gain in
the graphics by turning that on.
And it has the side benefit of giving you
the ability to not really have to worry about switching in
and out of like different power modes,
like going up to performance or battery saving or whatever,
as it should pretty much handle everything by itself.
And that's actually ultimately very important.
Because if for example,
I turn the fan up to the maximum mode,
you can hear that it is incredibly, incredibly loud.
Like so loud to the point where,
yes, this technically should be faster.
But when you actually turn on the AI mode,
the fan runs slower and it's more powerful.
I'm turning that off. That's just obscenely loud.
Of course there's a whole lot more to talk about what
the Aorus besides just the spec inside,
as it has a really solid 240 hertz panel.
However that's just become like,
'Oh yeah, you know gaming laptops with 240 hertz'.
And of course it's a 15.6 inch display,
and it is 1080p.
What you're getting here,
is honestly a fairly well calibrated display.
So they are really proud of the fact
that not only is it Pantone Validated,
but each individual laptop is color calibrated at
the factory.
So of course for the 240 hertz display,
I have to try to actually game at that resolution.
So we're going to give CS GO a try,
which is of course running at full max out 1080p settings.
We could lower it a little bit if we want.
Right now we're getting 170 FPS.
Oh that is very smooth.
One of the things about
these super high refresh rate displays,
is not only just the fact
that they run at a high frame rate,
but oftentimes they have very low latency
and they have very little ghosting, right?
So as I move back and forth,
obviously you can't see this because it's YouTube video,
but it looks very clear and smooth.
Okay, well, I die the same.
Of course.
Yeah, we're staying pretty consistent at 183 FPS.
Let me actually turn some settings down a little bit
and see if I can get us to a locked 240.
I'm gonna stay with pretty much
everything turned down at 1080p.
Oh!
Okay.
By turning all my settings down,
I just crashed my game.
Cool!
That, that's fine.
I'm not...
I will say it's actually kinda hard to hit 240.
I guess maybe I could turn the resolution down.
But the thing is, I have 180 frames per second.
So I don't really care.
This is a really nice gaming experience though.
It is so smooth.
And that mechanical keyboard really does add to
the experience, right?
I mean, obviously with a gaming laptop,
you never really expect to have like
the greatest experience in the world with a keyboard
and oftentimes you may even plug in
a mechanical keyboard yourself.
But having that built in,
actually does make a big difference.
Next up, we have a modern game which is truly cutting edge
and demanding on all hardware.
And that is F1 2019.
I'm a liar.
That's actually not that difficult to run,
but you know what it is?
It's this game I've been playing a lot lately.
So I'm gonna try it here.
I wanna see how close I can get to 240.
So it should be a surprise to no one
that this is also a game which really can take advantage of
that super high refresh rate display.
I might lock the brakes up a little bit
but importantly the thing what we're seeing here
is 125, 130 frames per second.
And mind you this is like ultra settings at 1080p, right?
Like I could certainly get more frames if I wanted to,
but I don't really need to.
What I do need is something which is not a controller
to drive right now
cause I feel like I have no consistency whatsoever here.
Woow! No! No! No!
(laugh)
Gigabyte and Aorus are very proud of
the design of this laptop,
which is all new for this generation.
And I'll give them some credit.
It is actually a quite nice looking design.
I particularly appreciate the aluminum.
However there are some,
well certainly some trade offs.
So with this larger design,
comes a fairly large selection of ports,
which is absolutely a good thing.
So not only do we have
the ability to support up to three 4k displays,
using HDMI, Mini DisplayPort and Thunderbolt 3.
And side note, I always like to see Thunderbolt 3
on any laptop.
But in specifically something like this,
is it actually can be used
as a fairly creator focused system.
You have the SSDs you have the RAM,
you have the display which to be fair,
even though it's color calibrate,
isn't super high resolution.
But I mean, you even have things
like an SD card slot which is really nice.
The downside here though really certainly is just in
the actual size of the system.
15 inch laptops are fine,
but I am definitely someone who really values
something which is nice and portable.
I don't wanna have to carry around something
which is super big, thick and heavy all day long.
It's what she said.
But the Aorus does a good job of sort of,
straddling the middle.
It's also what she...
The Aorus does have a good blend of features though,
including a fingerprint sensor built in,
as well as a tiny webcam with a cover.
Now I like the idea of a webcam cover built in,
but I don't like is the positioning of this one.
So if the webcam was in a normal place.
This is where I would be looking.
Instead, this is where the webcam is,
right in front of the keyboard.
So while yes, this certainly is better
than the complete lack of a webcam on the Zephyrus G14,
but beyond that, I mean,
yeah, I like being able to just close this little flap,
open it up and protect my privacy I guess.
I just...
Look man, I'll take a slightly larger bezel on the top.
If it means that I don't have to look up my nose
every time I'm on the webcam.
I absolutely love this mechanical keyboard.
Once you go mechanical, it is very hard to go back.
And now that I've experienced mechanical laptop keyboards,
it is going to be really, really tough
to get used to anything else.
Beyond that, though, the Aorus 15G is a solid package.
Those RTX super graphics are a nice step forward.
And while, the Intel 10th Gen chips are better,
I still would like to see more there.
I feel like we're in a very interesting time where there's
some legitimate competition in the gaming laptop space,
which is something we haven't really seen in quite a while.
So I'm curious, would you buy a mechanical keyboard
in your next gaming laptop?
Let me know in the comments below.
Absolutely make sure to subscribe for more videos like this.
And until next time, I'm going to continue to try to fix
the key that I broke.
That was unfortunate.