Gigabyte Tech Tour 2013 lands in London

Gigabyte is one of the oldest and most famous technology brands, with a huge fan base and reputation for challenging at the top end of the market for mainboards, graphic cards etc.

With multiple new sexy product lines launching, Gigabyte HQ sent a team of presenters over to tell the world what is in store from Gigabyte for 2013.

On a warm spring evening, KitGuru made its way down to the Sanderson Hotel in Central London. Once the production centre for one of the world's leading wallpaper brands, it is now of the world's snazziest hotels and, for one evening, home to Gigabyte’s top tech representatives.

Each of the various products on show will have its own launch into the market – this event was more about showing the breadth of what Gigabyte has to offer in the coming months.

So what was on show?

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Well, for starters, there was ‘Brix' – claiming to be the world's first ‘full tower power micro PC'. It follows the standards that Intel has developed for tiny PCs (think 4×4) and can pack a full Core i7 punch into a unit that's about as wide/long as your average smartphone (although a little deeper). It is expected to launch by the start of May – and KitGuru will be waiting to see Haswell versions on show at Computex.

Keen to assault all of your senses, Gigabyte had the Brix sitting close by the worlds first 3.0 USB desktop speakers. Why USB 3?  Well the increased power delivery along the cable means that you can drive louder sound at the woofing/tweeting end. Apparently. We were given a quick demo, from the back of the large presentation room and we have to say that the audio level was impressive.

Next we spotted a pair of fully-loaded 15” and 17” Gigabyte Notebooks. Ben Berraondo from nVidia spent time on stage explaining how his organisation had worked alongside Gigabyte to produce a high-spec graphics engine to compliment a mobile 1080p screen.

As well as fantastic visuals, did we mention that there’s an inbuilt 5.1 speaker setup. Yep, that's right, Gigabyte's notebook engineers have managed to integrate a subwoofer into the chassis. Nice.

KitGuru hopes that Gigabyte's new ideas will be driven into the market with a sustained effort. These are some good ideas and should be opened to a wider audience – but the notebook market is tough enough to put anyone off.

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Despite all of the cool products, for KitGuru, the highlight of the evening happened when Gigabyte’s Marketing Guru, Eva Chang, swooped in and gave us the scoop on her company’s latest mouse, the Aivia Neon.

We say it's just a mouse, but that's like saying that Jennifer Lawrence is just a woman.

This is actually a Touch-Charging, Air-Presenting, Remote-Control-Substituting Mini Mega Mouse.

It does the whole wireless, playing games thing. It has an integrated laser, which allows you to do all the clever pointing stuff in important meetings. You can switch to ‘air mouse' mode and control presentations/HTPCs etc at the touch of a button and – very cleverly – it has 2 ‘charging contact points' which allow you to put the mouse next to the USB receiver on your laptop and get a 3 hour charge in just 10 minutes. Very cool.

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Last, but by no means least, we got ear to ear with Gigabyte's futuristic, lightweight headphones branded Fly.

At just 79 grams, with a stylish design, they are pretty Fly for an IT guy. They look something like a prop from the move Fifth Element – and we love Fifth Element. Again, this product comes kitted with what you’d expect from high quality trending headphones selling in today's market, such as background noise cancelling and consistent all round audio quality. However, Gigabyte have exceeded this territory adding minimalistic simplicity and ingenuity to their designs. We even prefer Fly headphones to market-favourite brands like ‘Skull-Candy’. When Gigabyte's Eva says that her Fly headphones are ‘sophisticated, lightweight and incredibly comfortable' – sh ain't wrong.

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KitGuru says: This was an unexpected and, overall, positive event from a company that does not spend much time with the UK press.  Gigabyte have not just piqued our curiosity, it also has our attention for something more than mainboards. It was nice to see an array of affordable technology presented so well. Most of the products are patented/innovative designs and – when wearable – extremely comfortable. Each product also had a nice ‘forward looking' aspect in terms of design and functionality. Can't wait to grill some of this stuff in the KitGuru Lab.

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