Manufacturer:
 GIGABYTE
Model:
 Aero 15X v8-BK4
CPU:
Intel Core i7-8750H
GPU:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070
RAM:
16GB DDR4 2600
Storage:
512GB M.2 SSD
Battery Life:
8-10 Hours, 3-5 Gaming


The Goods
Sleek and slim aluminium design; Strong gaming performance; Very long battery life; Small screen bezel; 144Hz 1080p screen; Plenty of ports

The Bads

Nose-cam placement; Poor OS optimization; Quiet speakers; Lacklustre trackpad performance

The Finals
The Gigabyte Aero 15X is an absolutely beautiful machine, and packs enough power to max out virtually every single game on the market, but its speaker quality and trackpad performance really holds it back from the perfection that it strives to achieve.

Score:
9.0


The Review Rundown

Look, this laptop is damn near perfect, but damn near perfect isn’t perfect. There are some key faults with the Aero 15X, with one of them being the keys themselves. The right shift key does not properly light up, which creates a sort of imbalance with the overall pristine RGB experience.

And then there’s the biggest hardware fault of all: the trackpad. The trackpad on the Aero 15X is truly quite horrendous, and is in no way capable of playing games. Hell, navigating through various websites and programs can at times be a chore, with misclicks and poor tracking all around. If you get this laptop, and I highly suggest that you do, you absolutely must use an external mouse if you are to have an optimal browsing or gaming experience.

Now, when it comes to the actual operating system and software experience, you will find yourself pulling out more hair than Hagrid has on his head, due to the poorly optimized version of Windows 10 that Gigabyte images onto every laptop sold. Things so basic as navigating between two windows can cause your entire computer to hang for seconds at a time, slowing down your overall experience greatly. It’s worth noting, however, that this did not affect the gaming performance at all, and once you had a game running, it ran smoothly with zero frame rate drops to speak of.

You’ll definitely want to install a fresh version of Windows onto the Aero 15X.

So when it comes down to it, should you buy the Aero 15X for your own personal (or professional) needs? Well, yes. You should. This laptop performs at the same level as a high end gaming desktop, and could very well become a true desktop replacement for almost every single need. The screen has enough colour accuracy and depth to appeal to graphic design professionals, thanks to its X-Rite Pantone certification. The graphical horsepower of the GTX 1070 Max-Q is more than powerful enough to play nearly every single video game at maximum settings, while still managing to achieve an acceptable frame rate of 60 frames or higher. You’ll also easily breeze through every application thanks to its Intel i7 8750H processor and 16GB of fast DDR4 RAM.

Honestly, this machine is an absolute beast, and you should definitely buy it, even with its comparatively minor hardware and software issues mentioned above.

Disclaimer: this review isn’t intended to be super in-depth, and is more of a generalized rundown of my thoughts pertaining to the reviewed product. If you have specific questions regarding the product, feel free to make your request down below in the comments.