Gigabyte Aorus X9
When Gigabyte, a Taiwan-based gaming hardware company, says it's launching a premium brand, you tend to listen. It's not that its current range of gaming laptops aren't premium -- from the prosumer Aeros to the sort-of-budget Sabre range, Gigabyte laptops don't mess around. But the Aorus range is slightly different.
It takes things even further, a passion project for Gigabyte designers to entice the super high-end, money-is-no-object buyers among you. Gigabyte first showed of the Aorus X9, the king of the Aorus range, at CES 2017 as a prototype, but the hands-on model on display at Computex 2017 came with the announcement you'd be able to buy it later this year.
KEY FEATURES
Starting with design, it’s clear that Aorus has thrown everything – including the kitchen sinksports car-bonnet styling when closed, and spaceship appeal when it’s open.
The area above the keyboard is dominated by fan vents, but sitting between them is a – at this laptop. The 17.3-inch machine features some incredible details, with an almost series of LED lights that indicate the current performance or temperature levels of your machine for quick, at-a-glance diagnostics. Gimmicky, sure. Cool? Most definitely. There are RGB lights on the front edges and on the rear vents, too.
The keyboard itself uses mechanical switches. Granted, they’re not proper desktop switches, but in a laptop “just” 30mm tall this remains impressive. They’re probably my favourite laptop-specific mechanical switches, with 2.5mm of travel and a super-responsive, clicky feel.
The hardcore gamers among you will have spotted that there are no gaming shortcut macro keys. It’s curious that there wasn’t the space on a laptop of this size. Each key is individually backlit with RGB LEDs, and you can customise every LED on the entire laptop to do your bidding.
Although no weight figure was provided for the X9, from picking it up I’d hazard a guess that it weighs in the region of 3.5kg, if not a little more.
The screen will be available in a couple of different specifications: either opt for a 120Hz IPS panel with a 2560 x 1440-pixel resolution, or go for a high-end, Ultra HD panel that can cover 100% of the Adobe RGB colour gamut for the ultra Aorus includes not one, but two Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070s in the Aorus X9. This setup nets a claimed 30% greater performance than an individual GTX 1080. At a cost, of course. If you do choose the UHD screen, this laptop will play any game at that resolution with easeimate in screen tech.
There's no word on price yet, but given Gigabyte's regular range, I'd expect something around $2,500 (around AU$3,370, £1,950).
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