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With a recent price reduction, the Gigabyte Aorus 15 XE4 has proved well worth looking at. Now retailing at £1750, this laptop packs in a lot of hardware for the money, including Intel's i7-12700H, the RTX 3070 Ti Laptop GPU, 16GB DDR4 and a 1TB NVMe SSD.
When it comes to gaming, it certainly delivers – frame rates are strong across the board, and while you won't hit 60FPS in every title at 1440p with maximum image quality settings, there's no denying the mobile horsepower on offer here.
The 1440p screen is a great addition, too. Many other machines with a 3070 Ti around this price point use 1080p panels, but I personally think QHD screens are a real step up in the notebook form-factor. It also helps that Gigabyte is using a high quality IPS-type panel, offering decent contrast but a very high degree of colour accuracy, with an average deltaE below 1.0.
Factoring in the decent build quality, responsive trackpad and understated aesthetics, the Aorus 15 is overall a good gaming laptop. It could be very good, were it not for a few ‘quirky' design choices on Gigabyte's end.
The first of these is the removal of the Mux switch, which does hurt gaming performance in some games – as we have shown on the previous page. The Mux switch is something that was present on Gigabyte's last-gen gaming laptops, so I am not sure why it is missing here.
Additionally, the port selection is quite disappointing for a gaming laptop of this calibre. Just a single USB Type-A connector could make life complicated for a lot of people, and while it's good to have two Type-C ports (one of which is even Thunderbolt 4), no one wants to spend £1750 on a gaming laptop to carry around a USB dongle just to get more Type-A ports. There's no SD-card reader either.
Lastly, the keyboard could also be improved. I don't like the single-height enter key – even though we tested a UK model – and the keys do feel a bit squashed with the numpad thrown in on the side. Most bizarre though, is that the secondary functions are not illuminated by the keyboard's lighting, despite having per-key RGB, and that makes it almost impossible to adjust things like screen brightness and volume in darker environments.
On the whole, the Aorus 15 is certainly worth a look at the £1750 asking price. If we were reviewing it at the original £2199 asking price, those criticisms mentioned above would be a lot harder to take. Now, however, Gigabyte has dropped the price to £1749 and we can't deny the bang-for-buck on offer with £450 shaved off the price tag. There is still room for improvement, but with great gaming performance and a quality screen, you could do a lot worse for the money.
You can buy the Gigabyte Aorus 15 XE14 for £1749.95 from Overclockers UK HERE.
Pros
- 12700H and 3070 Ti is a potent combination.
- Lovely 1440p display.
- Fairly sleek design.
- Smooth trackpad.
- Recent price cut makes it more attractive.
Cons
- Lack of Mux switch can hurt gaming performance using the laptop's screen.
- Just one Type-A port and no SD-card reader.
- Keyboard layout isn't ideal.
KitGuru says: There are a few odd design choices which we think could be improved, but at its new retail price the Aorus 15 is well worth buying.
