Gigabyte Aorus X3 Plus R7 Gaming Notebook Review

Gigabyte Aorus X3 Plus R7 Gaming on a full-sized desktop PC is amazing, but it's not always practical or suited to every person or situation. Many of us need to travel with our systems. Of course, some people just prefer a more compact solution or like being able to game on the same device in any room of their house. Gaming laptops are a great way to solve many problems like this, and the latest from Aorus looks set to be one of the best solutions out there. The X3 Plus R7 comes equipped with a blazing fast GTX 1060 graphics card and the well-proven Intel Core i7-7700HQ processor. With this combo, it's able to drive its stunning QHD 2560 x 1440 display in the latest games, deliver improved productivity and more. Features NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1060 GDDR5 6GB 7th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-7700HQ Processor 13.9" QHD 2560x1440 Wide Viewing Angle Anti-Glare Display LCD M.2 PCIe Gen3x4: 2000MB/s USB 3.1 Type-C: 10Gbps / 5V 3A DDR4: 2400MHz up to 32GB HDMI 2.0: True 4K at 60Hz Compact & Powerful: Slim AC Adapter with Charger 25 Individual sets of active Macros XSplit Gamecaster + Broadcaster: Professional Streaming Software Slim and Light By using an aluminum chassis construction, this notebook just 0.9 inches thick, it feel light, and look stylish. Of course, looks aren't everything, how does this system perform? Let's move on and take a closer look at what is on offer. NVIDIA GeForce® GTX 1060: The Ultimate Performance The new NVIDIA GeForce GTX 10 series GPU features the latest Pascal™ architecture, breaking the limits of laptop performance. The new GPU delivers not only the ultimate performance and efficiency, ut also easily provides an immersive Virtual Reality (VR) experience and smooth high-res gameplay. Hardcore gamers can now possess over-the-top performance on the mobile platform with crystal clear, captivating motion graphics, and jaw-dropping visuals. 7th Gen Intel Core i7 Processor: Here Comes the New Generation of Performance With the latest “Kaby Lake” architecture, the 7th Generation Intel Core™ i7 Processor outperforms its predecessor in every aspect, added with HEVC10b and VP9 decoding for outstanding 4K capabilities and extra extended mobility. Experience seamless next generation performance. QHD Resolution: Astonishing Level of Detail AORUS is never afraid to explore new horizons.X3 Plus boasts a QHD display with 2560 x 1440 resolution providing stunning and breathtaking picture quality that pushes gaming experience to a new level. The extraordinary high luminance, 400 cd/m2, proves excellent clarity and readability even outdoors! A Closer Look As we've already stated, this is a pretty compact gaming notebook, and it certainly shows. The ergonomics are nothing short of remarkable given the specifications. It's nice and slim, it's small enough to fit in pretty much any kind of notebook bag and light enough for travel. There's a nice angular shape to it too, with a small-ish Aorus logo on the back. Tucked into the front edge, a bunch of pin hole LED lights for the main indicators. Down the right side, the front air intake on the corner, followed by the SD card slot, a pair of USB 3.0 ports, and the master power switch. The left side has another ventilated section to draw in cool air. Behind that filter, there's a USB 3.0 port, HD audio jacks, USB 3.0, HDMI, and Mini-DP. Overall, there's fantastic connectivity for such a compact unit, you won't find Apple's courage here! Around the back, the mains power jack, as well as the ethernet jack. There are two large vents here too, allowing for hot air to be ejected away from the system. Given it's so thin, airflow is vital, but it looks like Aorus have got it taken care of. The base has four tough rubber feet, giving the notebook some extra airflow on the base where you'll find lots more ventilation cutouts. Under the lid Wow, such a tidy looking configuration a tightly packed keyboard. Obviously, it's a TKL design and ditches the numberpad, but it makes up with a bank of macro keys on the left. The keyboard is nicely laid out, with a large and clear font. Im not keen on the compact arrow keys, but they're still more than functional. The touch pad is quite big given the size of the notebook, making it very easy to control. Of course, gamers may still want to hook up a mouse, it's not ideal for gaming. Built-in Macro Keys This is a gaming notebook, so macro keys are more than welcome here. However, they're useful for a lot of tasks in the office. You can set blocks of text, or launch photoshop actions from macro keys, as well as macros needed to farm mobs in your favorite MMO. The keys are obviously low-profile, but they have a great action to them, and good spacing that makes them easy to type on. I do prefer to have a number pad, but on a system this compact, it obviously had to be sacrificed. The screen has a slim profile, as does the keyboard section. As you can see, the rear of the notebook is fatter, which helps allow for those bigger air vents to keep the CPU and GPU nice and cool. LED Lit Keyboard Despite the compact size, this system still packs a gorgeous 1440p display. This means the pixel density is pretty high, and as a result, the display looks super sharp and clear. That resolution bump is great for productivity and will help your games look even better. There's a good contrast ratio on this display too, with deep blacks and bright whites. Viewing angles are good too, and while the screen does catch some glare, it's nicely diffused and remains easy to read. Now to get some games fired up on this compact beast, and see what it can really do! Testing & Methodology To test each system or notebook, we want to stress every component of the system to check stability and performance, giving us an idea as to why those particular components were picked for this particular system. We use a wide variety of applications to gain a broad spectrum of results for comparing diverse aspects of system performance. Games Used All games are tested at both 1920 x 1080, 2560 x 1440 and 2160 x 3840 (4K). Please note that for systems which do not support a particular resolution, such as 1080p laptops, we will not test the higher resolutions on those devices. Rise of the Tomb Raider (Steam) DX12 Medium Preset Pure Hair Off Deus Ex (Steam) DX12 Medium Preset Ghost Recon: Wildlands (Uplay) Medium Preset Turf Effects Off Far Cry Primal (Uplay) Normal Preset Software Used 3DMark Fire Strike (download) FireStrike (1080p) Benchmark Unigine Superposition (download) 1080p Extreme Benchmark PCMark 10 Professional (download) Express Benchmark WPrime (download) 32M and 1024M CineBench R15 (download) CPU Multi CPU Single Handbrake (download) Custom MP4 to MKV 4K conversion (details below) AIDA64 Engineer (download) CPU-Z (download) HWMonitor (download) Handbrake To stress processors to their absolute limit and accurately judge their performance in video editing workloads, we transcode a 7.7GB compilation of gaming footage; this particular file is freely available from here. The captured footage is 22 minutes and 12 seconds long, it has a bit rate of 50.1 Mbps and it uses the Advanced Video Codec. Additionally, the video runs at a constant 30 frames-per-second and opts for a 3820 x 2140 (4K) resolution. Once loaded into Handbrake, we then transcode the 4K MP4 to an MKV file using the "normal" profile. Synthetic Benchmarks 3DMark Firestrike Straight away, the X3 is putting out great scores, running faster than the Samurai, which also sports the same GTX 1060. Of course, the GTX 1070 equipped P56XT from Gigabyte is a bit faster here, but that's to be expected. Unigine Superposition 1080p Extreme Again similar results, with the X3 sitting in the middle with a respectable score of 2259. PCMark 10 I'm starting to see a patern here. All these systems have the same i7 CPU, so they're scoring quite similar. However, factoring in memory speeds, storage and cooling all effect the overall performance. Either way, this is a rock solid score and tells us the X3 is going to be a great all-round day-to-day system. WPrime 32M and 1024M Interestingly, the GPU may be sitting in the middle of the charts, but the CPU put out our fastest WPrime scores. This tells me it's likely cooling the CPU a little better and able to maintain a higher clock speed for longer. Cinebench R15 Cinebench scores are all aobu the same here, with very little difference between any of the notebooks tested. Handbrake MP4 to MKV Conversion 4K Another competitive score for Handbrake. Sure, not many are going to use a gaming notebook to transcode 4K video files, but it'll get the job done if needed. Just be prepared for a noisy fan, as this is a very demanding workload for any system. Storage Write Equipped with blazing fast M.2 storage the X3 delivers incredible read and write performance. Your games will load very fast with this SSD installed. The only downside is that our model didn't come with an additional HDD to boost storage. Read Gaming Performance Deus Ex: Mankind Divided So now we get onto the really exciting stuff, gaming! This is the first system we've tested since we revised our testing methodology, so it's the only system that supported 1440p to date, so forgive us if it looks lonely in those tests. However, we expect the charts will fill up quickly enough. Straight away, we're hitting an average of over 60FPS in Deus Ex at 1080p, and 41FPS at 1440p. You could easily tweak some settings to get the 2K performance closer to 60fps. Rise of the Tomb Raider This CPU and GPU combination made easy work of Rise of the Tomb Raider. The average FPS was sitting gloriously above 60 even at 1440p. Ghost Recon: Wildlands Ghost Recon is not an easy game to run on any system, it's very demanding in terms of graphics. However, the X3 scored very well at both resolutions and came very close to 60FPS at 1440p. Far Cry Primal Finally, Far Cry Primal puts the GTX 1060 through its paces on the X3. Flawless 1080p performance, and a great score at 1440p too. Overall, not bad for such a compact gaming notebook! Power Consumption and Temperatures Temperatures Having such a compact notebook often means having a lot more heat build up. However, at just 77c at full load, it shows that Aorus has really invested in some great cooling here. It's easily the coolest notebook we've tested so far. CPU GPU GPU temperatures are pretty fantastic too, the GPU even runs cooler than the Samurai, which is definitely reassuring. Acoustics The cooling performance is fantastic, but it's certainly no louder than the other notebooks we've tested. In fact, they're all about the same. Final Thoughts Pricing Picking a powerful laptop isn't too hard. However, finding one that's also so compact, that still sports a QHD LED display often means paying a big premium. You won't find any bargains here, with the Aorus X3 Plus R7 clocking in at £1799.99. That is a lot of money, but given the overall hardware that is included, the performance, and the design, it's a sound investment for those seeking a powerful and compact gaming notebook. Overview It's simply amazing how far the gaming notebook market has developed in recent years. This system is incredibly light and slim given the hardware that it houses. To get this level of performance just two years ago would mean carrying something incredibly heavy and impractical. The X3 Plus R7 is sleek and stylish enough that you could carry it into the office, bundle it in your bag for a long-haul flight, or sit with it comfortably on your knee. Gaming Gaming is important to many of us these days. Sure, I love gaming on my desktop computer, but I also travel a lot. Being able to pick up a system with one hand that will play the latest games at 2560 x 1440 with competitive frame rates is amazing. Yes, it is a lot of money, but there's a big market for people that travel a lot and also want to enjoy the best PC gaming has to offer. Short of spending a lot more money on a bigger laptop with a GTX 1080 and a 4K display, you're not going to get much better than this. Home and Office A powerful gaming system is usually no slouch at anything else you throw at it. If you're doing some video editing, working on a few spreadsheets, mooching on reddit, or anything else that sounds like my typical work day, the X3 has all the power you need. Equipped with a powerful quad-core CPU, fast DDR4 memory, and an M.2 PCIe SSD, it's not going to slow your workflow down. The 1440p display is great for productivity too, allowing you to fit two documents side by side on the same display. Build Quality There's nothing to complain about here, and Aorus has picked great components in terms of hardware. They've backed that up with great cooling hardware, that helps keep temperatures nice and low, without causing excessive noise. Of course, this also means you can get high-end performance for longer without fear of over heating. The exterior chassis feels durable and doesn't flex, and gives the keyboard a grounded and sturdy feel while working or gaming. Pros Compact 13.9" design QHD display Amazing 1080p gaming performance Very good 1440p gaming performance Great for work and productivity Fast M.2 PCIe storage Surprisingly lightweight Slim PSU pack LED keyboard Good connectivity Cons None Neutral Only has two years warranty No second HDD for increased storage space "If you need to be mobile with your gaming system, the Aorus X3 Plus R7 is a premium quality choice. It'll deliver a level of gorgeous graphics, high resolutions, and smooth frame rates that you may not expect from such a compact system. Very impressive!"