The original designer’s laptop gets an OLED upgrade
Gigabyte’s Aero 15 XA is among the first notebooks we’ve seen to use an AMOLED screen, and although our expectations have been high, the 15.6-inch 4K screen turned out to be better than we might have imagined.
The organic light emitting diode (OLEDs) display technology has been widely accessible smartphones for nearly a decade and has also spent the last few years transforming the house cinema space by especially giving panels the capability to present accurate black. OLED has a number of features that makes it perhaps even better suited to graphic design and video work — and gaming, of course. The contrast implies that colors seem richer, which is excellent for entertainment purposes like watching movies and playing games, Along with getting surprisingly speedy response levels.
Backing this up new display is a set of components that are capable of powering demanding forcing games at frame rates that show off exactly what the display is really capable of image and video editing apps and, on your downtime. And all this comes packed in a pleasant, discretely-designed ultraportable package.
Price
The Aero 15 OLED comes in a variety of configurations at different price points — the version we tested came with an Intel Core i7-9750H CPU, 16GB of RAM and a Nvidia RTX 2070 GPU and around the road costs around $2,499 (Number 2,299, AU$3,799).
Stepping up to an Intel Core i9-9980HK processor will put you back an extra $500 (#600, AU$600), or rather you can keep the i7, double the RAM to 32GB, double click the PCIe SSD storage into 1TB and bulge the GPU into an RTX 2080 for $3,299 (Number 3,399, AU$4,799).
The latter two configurations are at the upped end of this spectrum, but if you’re happy to pare back the graphics performance you can actually nab the Aero 15 OLED for as little as $1,899 (Number 1,899 AU$2,999) when configured with a GTX 1660Ti.
The Aero 15 OLED is up against devices like the latest Razer Blade 15 and MSI’s GS65 Stealth in terms of specs, despite that shiny new Samsung OLED display it’s really surprisingly excellent value against these powerful opponents.
Design
Like its predecessor, this Aero 15 looks unmistakably on the outside , however alongside that OLED upgrade, a number of elements have been reworked, with this 2019 version featuring a new metal top-shell design, a keyboard surround and a tweaked exhaust layout. Each component has been enhanced in some way, although the total arrangement has goodwill.
The Aero 15 OLED includes two square hinges which replace its own predecessor’s bar hinge. The below-screen webcam that used to sit on that broad hinge has been transferred down into the bottom half of the unit — it now just looks like a very small pinhole and sits on a slender raised platform behind the keyboard, and there is a fresh cooling vent just ahead.
The keyboard keys feel responsive and nice, the trackpad is eloquent, and there is a fingerprint reader and webcam shutter to exude the privacy awake. As with its predecessors the apparatus offers a complete sized RGB keyboard with number pad that forces the computer keyboard to extend from edge to edge.
Though the Aero 15 OLED is fractionally thicker than its predecessors, it still manages to come in at 0.78-inches (2cm) thick, using an envelope of 14 x 9.8in ( 35.6 x 25cm), which is very compact for a notebook with fully-fledged gaming GPU. And while 4.4lbs (2kg) could be notably heavier than the lightest ultrabooks, it is not a specific weight to carry that around in a back pack, especially considering how much processing power is on offer here.
Screen
The 15.6-inch Samsung AMOLED panel that’s employed in the Aero 15 OLED includes a 3,840 x 2,160 pixel resolution and can be wrapped by one of the thinnest bezels available. Gigabyte is one of the few vendors eager to endure the complaints regarding the below-screen webcam so as to get 3mm bezels on the three sides that are upper of the display.
We have seen plenty of 4K LED displays before, and some of them do appear impressive, but there’s a distinct vibrancy about the OLED screen of the Aero 15 that we have never seen any high performance laptop. Whether you’re editing Ultra HD video in 4K res that are native or concealed in the depths of a tunnel in Metro: Exodus, it is hard not to be impressed by the intense colours of the X-Rite Pantone calibrated display.
The panel was licensed as VESA DisplayHDR 400, so it could achieve a design-friendly 100 percent DCI-P3 colour gamut and meets newer independent HDR specifications which have been tailored specifically for computer monitors. The VESA DisplayHDR 400 standard means that this panel may reproduce an HDR colour palate, and is your entry-level grade. That is not bright enough to be eligible for TV HDR certifications (which generally demand a display to reach 1,000 nits minimal peak brightness) but using monitor’s generally aimed toward up-close, private use, they do not need to get as smart to have the ability to generate HDR images.
Gigabyte’s very clear this is a notebook that is mostly aimed at designers, but it is still a laptop that capable of pumping the frames out if you want. Nevertheless, while one of the coolest things about OLED technology is its low latency, the Aero 15 OLED’s screen runs at a max of 60Hz, so if you’re a gamer looking for an ultra-fast competitive screen you are going to need to look elsewhere.
On this front, Dell did recently announce an Alienware 120Hz 4K OLED gaming headset at CES this year, but there are rumors that this design might never actually see the light of day, simply because it costs too much to become commercially viable.
Additionally, even in the event that you opt for the Aero 15 OLED with a GeForce RTX 2080 GPU, you’d struggle to get much more than 60fps in 4K resolution on ultra quality settings, so there is no actual demand for high refresh 4K OLED on a notebook just yet.
Some online publications have highlighted that the Samsung AMOLED panel found within this unit does have consistency issues — though that finding comes in laptops. When brightness is set using factory color configurations gigabyte is quite explicit concerning the Aero 15 OLED’s color accuracy. That is something designers’ will definitely have to keep in mind when performing color-dependent design work, where they will have to avoid utilizing auto-brightness (or manually altering the brightness settings) or deviating in the X-Rite Pantone color profile.
