Gigabyte announces new Aero 15

I've read about Gigabyte/Aorus laptops merely having aluminum panels over a plastic chassis. This gives the look of aluminum, but structurally combines all the faults of both aluminum and plastic. Do you know if that's the case here, and the aluminum is just for show?

 

Yeah he said the chassis and panels are aluminium the only plastic is the parts you'd come in contact with because it's cooler to touch compared to metal.

Somebody who's stripped the machine down would be able to tell though I'm sure.

 

Fantastic news indeed, and it pretty much sums up my suspicions behind this whole ordeal all along - as well as my thoughts surrounding the screen, I had a feeling all along that they are using only the Innolux screen.

Any further update from YoYoTech your end at all? I imagine that they are waiting on the new stock themselves that should come in this week. I'm still waiting to hear more news from Scan on the matter with regards to my pre-order.

OcUK confirmed to me today that at this stage, stock will take 2-4 weeks to arrive with them.

Liam.

 

Yeah I spoke with Steve Clark who's the UK country manager at Gigabyte. Yoyotech should get stock by end of the week at the latest. Wednesday at the earliest. He liaises with Scan he said they'll receive stock at a similar time but most likely next week as they wouldn't want to get hopes up.

 

Sounds rather hopeful, and tally's up with Scan's ETA on the other coloured variants that are expected to come in stock on the 22nd. Still... Another full week on the cards with being without a laptop!

Liam.

 

Looks like Newegg has them back in stock in all three colors.

Still keeping my pre-order from @GenTechPC

 

Same...i opted for the CLU. Hoping it comes out alright

 

I switched to CLU as well. Doesn't seem to be any drawback since I'm assured it will still be covered under warranty.

 

Hardware Unboxed has published the review for Aero 15.

 

Nice review. Makes a change in some way when compared to the other reviews where you don't really get a good opportunity to have a close up of the unit as they are too busy flipping the camera from left to right, up and down.

One other thing that has sprung to mind with other laptops reviews at the moment is that a lot of them test gaming capability with the likes of Overwatch - why oh why do they use this game to test gaming & performance integrity? It's not exactly the most intensive of games out there...

Liam.

 

Have just got notification that I've received my laptop at home! I'm at work though

5 hours of waiting to go... lol

 

Oh my, you are one lucky man I bet the anticipation is crippling at the moment. Please post up pictures if you can tonight Still no news from Scan my end with regards to the new stock, it's looking highly likely that they will get stock on my model, as well as the Green & Orange variants on Monday.

Liam.

 

Heads up for all in the UK - Scan now have the black Aero 15 in stock as of writing. Fingers crossed my pre-order is processed for shipping this afternoon

Edit - just got on the live chat to them to enquire if I can upgrade my shipping to Saturday delivery... looks like I will be receiving it tomorrow and also at no extra cost as well! Can't wait...

Edit 2 - OcUK has got a couple of them in stock as well of the same variant.

Liam.

 

Here is the written version:

http://www.techspot.com/review/1399-gigabyte-aero-15/

 

Nice least they can do for keeping you waiting for so long as well. Truly hope this is all it's cracked up to be! (It will)

 

Me too ... And then a fun packed weekend to follow consisting of putting it through it's paces, along with copying all my data over from the backup drive as well lol.

Liam.

 

Ordered a black version from Newegg... Received the bright orange.

Otherwise, it's a pretty great little unit. The mouse pad is the worst part so far.

 

Only powered up the machine to have a quick go but from initial thoughts its very very nice! much better build quality than expected. I'd say it's pretty solid. Hinge isn't as tough as the XPS 15 but I don't see this machine posing any issues. Screen is great! had to change scaling to 100% (default is 125% out of the box). Very very quiet but even when fans ramp up no where as noisy as the XPS 15 on moderate load. I'll play around with this properly tomorrow but having watched so many reviews now over the last three weeks it literally is as they say. It's an impressive machine...

 

Thanks for the quick write-up. Could you let us know if you see any ghosting issues with the screen while gaming? It does have a slightly disappointing response rate, but from what I understand not as bad as the FHD XPS15.

 

My Aero 15 is out for delivery this morning & should be with me within the next few hours

Liam.

 

same same. I'm very sataisfied with the build quality. It's slightly bigger than what i replaced which is a 13 ultrabook from Asus but the power and battery life more than makes up for it.

 

It's landed...

More photos to follow later when I've had more time to have a play.

Liam.

 

Cool let me know what you think. I've just installed a few applications. Haven't bothered with a clean wipe as there isn't that much bloatware as some are making it out to be!

 

Initial first impressions of it for me so far... One heck of an excellent bit of kit! Funny enough it's slightly smaller than what I expected when I first saw it in the box and for a split second I thought it actually may of been the Aero 14 packed in there! ...Super quick upon first boot and literally setup within the space of a few minutes, I've currently got the fans set to silent and the unit itself is absolutely quiet.

Very nicely packaged in it's box and upon closer inspection the build quality is superb, not one blemish or any production flaws what so ever. More testing is needed but no backlight bleed is present with the screen from what I can tell.

Out of the box as well the battery came pre-charged to around 60% - and only took around 30 minutes to achieve the full 100%. HWINFO reveals a full spec 94240mWh full charge capacity.

The screen itself is of high quality and exceeds my expectations with never using an Innolux panel before (Though HWINFO reveals it as a Chi Mei?). It's not quite as bright as the XPS 15 when set to 100% but for me this panel at 100% is still more than bright enough for me, I'll most likely have it set to 80% during normal operation. The colour production with the screen so far is outstanding as well. After a few hours of testing out the laptop, I'd say that the clarity of the panel itself is on par with the Sharp FHD that is in the XPS 15. Response times and general operation when gaming is to be looked into very soon...

Being that Gigabyte have marketed these as being Pantone calibrated - I can confirm that a Pantone programme / calibration tool is pre-loaded on the laptop and the profile automatically kicks in when you reach the desktop after startup.

A quick check up in device manager also reveals the same LITE-ON SSD that is featured in the XPS 15 as well - the CX2 I believe, which in turn reveals 2500MB read & 1300MB write speeds with Crystal Disk Mark.

However the keyboard for me will take some getting used to, I'm having to type slow again for a bit with being used to the XPS 15's keyboard mostly as of recently. Originally when starting this reply on this thread, admittedly I used my phone to type it out on as for me I was making so many typing errors with this new keyboard... however a couple of hours later, it feels easier to get used to and to minimise typing errors.

The thing that stands out the most with this keyboard in general is that you really have to press the keys harder in comparison to other laptops - the Dell XPS 15 in particular has a very square and somewhat of a smaller keyboard, and the keys themselves feel very soft to press. However a plus with this keyboard in a way is that it could actually be that one step closer to a gaming keyboard with the harder & longer key presses...

The touchpad surprisingly for me feels very good and responsive, as well as smooth - despite some of the reviews.

One big plus with this laptop and the same goes for all Gigabyte laptops in general as well - Gigabyte Smart Update. This simple bit of software is fantastic, very easy to update all the drivers & pre-loaded software all in one go and with ease. Other laptops manufacturers out there should implement the a similar feature to this! It just saves all the hassle & time to track down all the laptops drivers / software via the internet otherwise.

Pre-loaded software - Besides Smart Update, the laptop does come with a bit of bloat but most of it can be classed as somewhat useful. I think the only thing I will not use is the Game Stream / Xsplit stuff and the like.

As @agent_pires has also pointed out - I also feel that a clean wipe in this instance is not needed, as Gigabyte's own software is very useful in my opinion and if I'm not mistaken it is also required in order for components such as the battery to operate optimally. Anything else you don't want that comes pre-loaded can simply be removed via add / remove programs.

After audio tests I did end up removing the latest Realtek driver that Gigabyte's Smart Update downloaded and installed the latest one directly from the Realtek site. The reason for this and in my opinion, the supplied Dolby Digital software that Gigabyte use with their driver is absolutely terrible with little to no manual adjustment at all (I'm very much into my music and very particular on equaliser sound).

Using Gigabyte's own Realtek drivers disables the ability to use the equaliser controls in the Realtek Audio Manager in favour of the supplied Dolby Digital software. However when using the latest Realtek driver directly from their website, you regain the ability to use Realtek's own equaliser controls once again.

The only slight niggle with the laptop that I have experienced up to now is now and then I do appear to be suffering from micro stutters here and there, however - this is a known problem with Windows 10 in general and and especially with Pascal laptops in particular. Though I wouldn't say it gets in the way too much or spoils the overall experience. I like to think that when I'm ready to go ahead with downloading Creators Update, it will fix the problem as it seems to help others who suffer from the same problems.

Battery - after the first initial full charge and then use the laptop when on battery, I have managed to achieve a battery life of 5 1/2 hours, this is with the display set to 80% brightness. I will be carrying out further tests as time goes on.

More is to come - I will update this post as I go along. Up to now, very pleased indeed

Google drive link to some photos I have taken of the laptop up to now, also don't be alarmed of what appears to be marks / smudges on and around the body - this is how it was straight out of the box due to the condensation build up on the aluminium body while in transit, now it's been used for a bit it's all fully evaporated

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B5wpxvH6zjJATUFmRnFDdGNXSms

Liam.

 

Just to advise that I've updated my post as per the above, complete with a link to my Google drive containing some photos

Liam.

 

You should check out Equalizer APO, I'm sure you'll love it. Have been using it for two years and it is much better than the Realtek equalizer.

 

How are you finding thermals? Mines idling around 34-40C (I'm running this on a laptop stand) Also HWINFO isn't showing me any stats for the GPU so couldn't see how hot that was getting.

 

Mine is also idling at around the 40c mark, and that is with the laptop sat directly on my wooden table.

Funny you should mention about the NVidia GPU not showing up in HWINFO - as it's not showing up for me either. Perhaps there is something Gigabyte have implemented that prevents it from being displayed properly within Windows, as when in Windows the Intel graphics GPU is mostly used.

Liam.

 

I think at this point i'm going to hold off any tinkering or dicking around with the machine (repasting etc) until I see iunlocks guide. Out of the box i'm impressed by the noise profiles and thermals considering it's all stock. Was just saying to the guys on discord chat that now I have it it's all anti climax because I've watched to death all the other reviews so much and it's as expected lol no surprises now. It's just a great machine. No drama here at all haha. Guess I should be grateful *touchwood nothing else comes to surprise me* considering the annoyance I had with the XPS that this just works out of the box. Exactly as I wanted !!

 

Yeah those are my thoughts entirely too as well mate, even though I had some brand new Thermal Grizzly Kyronaut sat the ready for when this laptop was going to arrive but like you say - out of the box cooling & thermal levels have proved to be somewhat exceptional, I'm amazed as well that with the laptop's fan profile set to silent, I've only ever heard the fans spin up a couple of times and that was when undergoing Windows updates.

Oh yeah - how are you finding your battery life so far? Up to now I've been using the laptop for over 5 hours and I'm currently down to 20%, the brightness has been set to 80% throughout.

Edit - just loading up HWMonitor again now to check something else and I've now got the NVidia GPU showing in there strangely enough, and it appears to be idling away at 45c.

Liam.

 

Ha glad to hear you're on the same thinking as me. Haven't given the lappy a run on battery yet only had it running on mains this whole time but good to know you've got such long battery life on that high brightness I've only been using it at max 50%. You should sign up on the NPR discord channel. Lots of decent chat going on there for the Aero and other machines.

 

You only see the 1060 show up in HWINFO if it is running. It doesn't show when its off (i.e. using the integrated graphics via Optimus).

 

I opened Capture One and left it at the intro prompt GPU idling at 38C. Only got Edge and Discord open at the moment so not stressing the laptop at all.

 

Fair play, your GPU temp is probably lower than mine as my house is like a furnace at the best of times at the moment - the Mrs tends to ramp the heating up to compensate to keep her and our little one warm lol!

On another subject, I've signed up to discord but I've no idea how to join in on the chat you're talking about?

Liam.

 

Try this invite https://discord.gg/beR9Z4G

 

Anyone planning/feel a need to undervolt their Aero 15?

 

I always undervolt everything.

 

What voltage are you putting this one to? I've heard a little over -110 mV

 

Can you guys list websites that are selling it and have it in stock?

 

In the USA, I believe Newegg has an exclusive until tomorrow, May 22nd(?). Newegg currently has stock in all three colors.

Pre-orders are up at @GenTechPC, HIDevolution, Xoticpc, Amazon, NCIX and probably others. We're hoping at least some of these have stock this week or next week.

 

-115mv for cpu and -80for igpu

 

Thanks! Do you use XTU or Throttlestop? Haven't undervolted a laptop before so just curious on what people prefer

 

TS. I don't like that XTU sometimes works and sometimes doesn't but it makes my OCD go nuts

 

Looks lie you can get IC Diamond or Coollab for free at GenTech. Which you prefer? Which will last longest?

 

What type of RAM comes with the Aero 15? Can we get the timings? (With CPU Z)

I, without knowing any better, bought an extra ram card with a CAS of 14... I believe that I can get it to work with the existing ram in duel channel somehow. I'm guessing that the ram that the Aero comes with is either CAS 15 or 16. I'm sure that I will find out one way or another, sooner or later.

I'm expecting the laptop to arrive either today or tomorrow! I'm so ready to get started setting up the machine. It will easily be more powerful than the desktop computer that I'm using right now. Is the desktop just going to collect dust? I find that a little bit unsettling when considering all of the work and money that I have put into it. Maybe in 5 years I can upgrade it to keep up with the latest games, that is if I even still care enough about games at that point to make it worth it.

Edit:

The RAM is likely Kingston, and through the process of elimination, I have found that it's likely CAS 17. And if true, this would be a little unfortunate, but I'm doubtful that the difference will affect performance in a meaningful way. I will test... and update if I'm wrong.

 

Hey guys, just read the whole post here -- very helpful topic! I will be using this thread for future information about this laptop.

There is only one thing stopping me now from buying this from Newegg.ca before it runs out of stock -- extended warranty. Newegg is the only store in Canada that sells this laptop right now, we don't even have the black ones yet.

I am coming from a Macbook pro 15 laptop 2013. I bought their extended warranty for a total of 3 years warranty. I know the warranty I paid for also includes customer service and more. The warranty just expired this March. From this experience, I am leaning towards not buying the extended warranty. But I also put in the factor of the belief that Macbook pro's are more sturdier and seem to have long-lasting material than most laptops. I also made sure no severe accidents happened to it. But when I purchase this Aero 15, I will be making sure to take care of it more by cooling pad and undervolting as you guys have described here. I'm also interested in repasting that have been discovered here. Additionally, GIGABYTE already offers 2 year warranty initially. So do I really need the newegg extended warranty? From my decision the last time I bought something like this, I bought it just to have 'a peace of mind'.

I'm leaning towards buying because from my experience, absolutely nothing happened to my MBPro. I did not use the warranty, and this laptop is still very much alive IMO. Just the battery and SSD seems to have worn out a lot. Also, I did not take out my laptop very often. Just kept inside the house as a substitute for a desktop. If I do take it out, I know to take care of it, and it will mostly be for school.

I hope you guys help me, thank you!

 

Except there will always be that ONE time where you do really need that extended warranty....

 

Depends on a lot of things. Newegg doesn't fulfill the warranty, they only sell it. Either way, it's a third party warranty. If it's not an extended warranty provided directly by the manufacturer, you have to trust that the company will actually be reasonable in servicing claims and that it will still be in business in a few years to do so. Also, you have to check the terms, like is there a deductible? Are there exclusions? Is there a limit on the number or cost of repairs? And of course, it depends on the price of the warranty, too. If it's $400, you could pocket the money and that could cover a moderate repair if you ever have an issue.

Also, you may have extended warranty coverage similar to a third party warranty that is provided free by your credit card company. Some will add 1 or 2 years, others will double the standard manufacturer's warranty. Worth checking! Extended warranties are basically insurance and are often bad bets for many products. That said, gaming laptops run hot and if they are used heavily, they are probably not so bad of a bet to add an extra year or two of coverage... I'm going with the credit card extension included on my Costco/Citibank Visa, it adds 2 years to the standard 2-year Gigabyte warranty.

 

Success! I installed the Kingston Hyper X 2400 CL 14 alongside the Kingston 2400 CL 17 and it works! Somehow. In CPU-Z it's showing a CL of 15. I don't know how that's possible. The timings are as shown: 15, 15, 15, 35. Perhaps it's underclocking the CL14 card and overclocking the CL 17, and balancing out at 15? Or is it just that the readings are off? Anyways. I'm just glad that it works at all, the increased performance is a plus!

I successfully undervolted the CPU to -0.120 V and the graphics to -0.080 V. No crashes yet. I dare not try to push it lower.

The Aero is awesome!

 

I got one this week and having played with it, I think I'll keep it. It is nice hardware, with some issues that keep it from being truly great.

System was bough in the US and came with 1x 16GB stick of Kingston RAM, one slot free, and a Transcend MTS800 SSD. Not sure if they use a multitude of different SSDs or if they gave different ones out for review copies. Either way it is a reasonably competent SATA SSD. Doesn't get the 1GB+ speeds you see in some reviews (and does not claim to). Everything else is as spec'd on the site. As others have noted system ships with a fair amount of crap, but it can be removed without issue. Some is pretty funny though, like PowerDVD on a system with no optical drive.

The screen is quite nice, it is ChiMei's take on IPS technology. Good viewing angles and all that jazz. However something to note is the colour accuracy is coming via software calibration in the Gigabyte SmartManager. You can actually see the screen change when it loads. So same kind of thing you could achieve with an i1 Display Pro. It's nice, but it doesn't hold in games since they overwrite the videocard LUT for their own gamma settings. You only get the calibration on the desktop, a problem with all software monitor calibration.

They keyboard is nice and the people who claimed it is "typewriter loud" must be used to using a touchscreen in an anechoic chamber. It is less noisy than my Kinesys Freestyle 2, itself a pretty quiet keyboard. Activation force seems reasonable. The ghosting issues are present and I've not been able to update the keyboard's firmware. When I click on the gear Fusion says it will do an update, but then just closes when I click ok. So far it hasn't caused me any grief since I haven't used any ghosted combinations, but it is present. The keyboard does seem to remember backlight settings, independent of Fusion being on the system so it'll stay how you like even during reinstall.

To me the trackpad is fine, but then my Sager didn't have a great trackpad. I don't find any real issues with it and the stock drivers. I may try out the hacked ones mentioned at some point, but it actually seems to track fine, the gestures I've used work, and the surface is nice and smooth.

There is input lag when certain things display and it does seem to be related to switchable graphics as when the nVidia driver isn't present they don't happen. Annoying but not really problematic. We all need to pester nVidia about it as it looks like it is their issue to fix, not Gigabyte's. You can fix the UAC one by changing the UAC setting one step down so that it doesn't show the popup on the secure desktop but uses the regular one.

Performance is good and right in line with what the components would suggest. All my benchmarks match what you find online for the various bits so it looks like the thermal solution does its job and keeps everything operating cool enough that it doesn't throttle, at least no more than other laptops with similar CPUs/GPUs.

The GTX1060 is fast as hell, things I've tested run great on it. It is amazing the kind of performance you can get in a laptop. So long as you play at 1080 and are ok with maybe backing off on the visuals a little, you aren't going to find anything, even the latest stuff, that is a problem. I've noticed no graphics issues or hitches or anything in game using it, just on the desktop when you aren't.

The Intel 630 is actually pretty competent too. If you have something low intensity like Torchlight 2 and tell it to use the integrated GPU (you do it in the nVidia control panel) it'll run quite well and use less power. It makes gaming on battery feasible, though still not with great life. It's not an amazing card by any means, but it does ok for how low power it is and there's plenty out there that will do just fine on it. Do note it suffers from only 1 RAM channel and getting a 2nd RAM stick will help it a lot.

Battery life is in line with what they claim, if you reconfigure the system. For whatever reason out of the box it runs in high performance mode all the time, even on battery. That keeps the CPU running at max frequency. While it is still pretty efficient, it drains more power than needed and you won't see 8 hours, even doing low intensity stuff. Turn that to balanced and battery goes up a good bit when just browsing the net and such.


Overall I like it, I just wish it didn't have the minor issues. The keyboard and graphics hitching are annoying. Not dealbreakers, as I said I'm keeping mine, but it does keep it from being truly great in my opinion.