Last year’s Aero 15-X9 was one of the best gaming laptops you can get for content creation. It was a very powerful system in very small package. now, this year gigabyte has upgraded it with the latest Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 20 Series graphics cards. Aero 15-X9 is Available with RTX 2070 Max-Q and Aero 15-Y9 is Available with RTX 2080 Max-Q.
In comparison, RTX 2080 Max-Q is almost 30% better in graphical power than last generation’s GTX 1070 Max-Q. So if you playing games, you are going to get incredible performance out of the RTX 2080 Max-Q.
3DMARK FIRE STRIKE COMPARISON
RTX 2080Max-Q vs GTX 1080 Max-Q vs GTX 1070 Max-Q
AERO 15 Y9 Gaming Performance
i9-8950HK + RTX 2080 Max -Q(Ultra)
| 1080p | 4k | |
| Doom | 138 fps | 61 fps |
| PUBG | 92 fps | 48 fps |
| Battlefield V | 112 fps | 53 fps |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider | 82 fps | 43 fps |
| Witcher 3 | 81 fps | 42 fps |
One of the biggest issues with thin & light gaming laptops is the poor thermals. But that’s not an issue for the Aero 15. There is something about the way they built the Aero 15 that allows a ton of airflow to go through and it will give you excellent thermal results. Of course, fans going to get very louder in the process. But it’s not something that will bother lots of people as long as the laptop is giving a good performance. And now days pretty much any gaming laptop going to have louder fan noise to keep those high-end components cool.
One of the best things about Aero 15 is the Screen. It has a 4k display as well as a 1080p option with 144Hz. The 1080p screen looks really good already and the 4k panel is just awesome. if you’re doing video or photo work regularly 4k display is highly recommend. If you’re playing games though go with a 1080p display 144 Hertz screen. It just looks a little choppy on a 4k display because of the lower refresh rate. so depending on what you do you’re gonna have to choose between the screens.
AERO 15 (RTX 20 Series) FULL SPECS
Another amazing thing about this device is the SD card reader. It has UHS-II SD Card Reader which is super fast. The regular SD card reader will cap out at like 90 megabytes per second, this thing has about triple more speed compared to that. If you frequently use footage from an SD card for video work or photo work, this thing’s nice.
There’s also a good selection of the ports on Aero 15. There are 3x USB-A ports and 2x USB-C one on each side. You also have an Ethernet jack on the left which is nice. the AC adapters port is on the right side.
The trackpad on this device has been improved. Previously it used to run Elan drivers now its a Microsoft certified Windows precision touchpad. The internals of this laptop is also easy to get into. This is still one of the very few thin and light gaming laptops that supports two NVme drives.
Aero 15 has a standard-looking 230w AC adapter. It also has a huge
94Wh battery. With the 4k panel screen at 215 nits, you will get five-and-a-half hours battery life. On a 1080p screen, you’re gonna get significantly better battery life, around seven and a half hours.
The Aero 15 is running this new feature that they’re calling AI integration with Microsoft Azure. The way it works is that the laptop can speak to the Microsoft Azure database and figure out what applications you’re using. Then it’ll adjust your CPU and GPU usage depending on that application. In the test with an early version of this software, gaming performance was just the same on most of the games. But when it came to software like Adobe Premiere there is a noticeable difference in render time. To render around a 7-minute long video clip it took around 8 minutes 15 seconds with Ai turned on. And 8 minutes 40 seconds with Ai turned off. This is not something very impressive right now but it will definitely get better in the future.
Aero 15 has a keyboard that is quite difficult to get used to. The layout is fine but mechanically the keys feel a little stiff and kind of flat. Visually it looks amazing but you are going to have a hard time typing super fast on it. This is not that big of a problem as lots of players prefer to use external gaming keyboards and mice for their gaming laptops.
Speaking of the design of Aero 15 Y9 is an average-looking gaming laptop. It’s not an ugly looking laptop but, other thin and light gaming laptops with similar price and performance have a better-looking design. As long as Razer laptops are out there, it’s going to look very unattractive to you. But this is for people who actually care about the design because not everyone does. Some people just want raw performance out of their gaming laptops.
Another bad thing about Aero 15 is the speakers. these speakers are quite poor. They package it with software to tweak around with the sound but it’s a very flat sounding speaker and relatively quiet. Again this is something that’s not going to affect everybody some people don’t care about the speakers at all but if you do these aren’t great. Keep in mind you can always use good gaming headsets and it’s pretty much necessary nowadays for gamers.
Now pricing on the Aero 15 isn’t cheap. It’s gonna start at 2,400$ for the 2070 max-q model. it’s expensive but that’s kind of the price you have to pay for top of line tools in professional content creation.
AERO 15 (RTX 20 Series) Check Prices
Okay, so the Aero 15 this year has fantastic hardware for gamers, awesome hardware for creatives.that 4k panel, in particular, is something special. the thermal performance on this thing is just surprising. this thing’s running i9-8950HK with RTX 2080 Max-Q and still just rock-solid performance with great temperatures.
