Gigabyte Aorus 16X review
Gaming laptops aren't a new phenomenon but manufacturers keep finding new ways to make them slightly annoying. It's remarkable, really, the amount of time and energy that's poured into making things a bit worse. In the case of the Gigabyte Aorus 16X this maxim has been applied to the keyboard: specifically the QWERASD keys. In the version sent to us for review, they are see-through with a white letter on top, while the rest of the keyboard is black with a lit keycap. This means the backlight—which is the usual pulsing RGB rainbow—makes the letterforms on top much trickier to see.
This may not be a big deal, as touch typists and those who play games with the keys will rely on muscle memory to find the key. But if you ever look down to see which key you're about to press then the letter can be hard to see. Conversely, if you turn the backlight off, it becomes clearer. Lit-up WASD keys aren't a novel idea, but the implementation of them here is distinctly questionable.
Elsewhere, you'll find the kind of laptop that's great to play games on. With a 14th-gen i7 CPU and an RTX 4070 GPU, it's well set up for high detail levels and frame rates at the 165Hz display's 2560x1600 native resolution. It's bright too, with my colorimeter showing the supposedly 400-nit screen putting out 573 of the head-itching brightness units at its peak.
There's a bit of typical gaming laptop design in the 'Team up, fight on' slogan printed right under where your hand rests when typing, the plethora of vents, and the way it lights up the Aorus word mark onto your desktop from the rear of the chassis in the same way some cars project their manufacturer's logo on the ground. It's kinda nice, while simultaneously being the sort of thing you'll turn off immediately.
CPU: Intel Core i7-14650HX
GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 (140W)
RAM: 32GB
Storage: 1TB SSD
Screen: 16in 2560x1600 IPS, 165Hz
Connectivity: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, 1x USB4/Thunderbolt 4, 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C, 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A,
