GigabyteAERO 15X - 15.6” FHD 144hz Notebook - (Black) (Intel Core i7-8750H, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD, 8 GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Graphics, Windows 10)

As a student, at first, I was very hesitant to buy this laptop, greatly due to the high price point. However, after consolidation with my friends we all collectively decided that it was simply a great investment. I picked the GTX 1070 model with 512gb SSD and 8th gen i7 for around £1800. At first it might seem like way above and beyond most people's price range. But you shouldn't think of it as a simple one time payment. I can guarantee that this laptop will last you at least 3-5 solid years, depending on your usability. Dividing that would roughly get you £400-500 a year.As far as the specs go, this is simply the best of the best for this price point. I play games such as R6 Siege, Witcher 3 and Skyrim (obviously). All the games run easily on ultra settings at 144hz, admittedly you wont get above 100 fps on Ultra in Witcher 3, however the game still looks better than it ever did! Along with that the screen is very colour accurate and relatively bright, although i wouldn't recommend taking it outside. As a physics student the laptop also easily handles all of my 3D simulations of particle interactions.The battery isn't comparable to the ones of ultrabooks, however it is still above and beyond all other competitors, only closely followed by the razer blade. You should definitely bring a charge to class but it has no problem running 5-8 hrs off it's battery.The design is probably the highlight of the laptop. For the punch that it packs the laptop is incredibly slim and ergonomic, there is no wasted space, there are no screaming red and black colours and the metal chassis make it very durable.The laptop is very easy to upgrade, GIGABYTE even provide you with a heat pad for an additional SSD, they also only use a single 16 GB ram stick which means that upgrading to 32GB is super easy and saves you buying an entire new set of ram.The keyboard is great, but does need some getting used as the layout is slightly different to that of the majority of other laptops. The key travel distance is solid and gives a satisfying sensation when pressing. One draw back, the space bar is little loud, but you quickly get used to it. The material used is very susceptible to smudges which could be slightly annoying.Overall an outstanding machine which guarantees handling almost anything you throw at it with ease. It is simple really good and I would really recommend buying this for a longer period of time rather than upgrading twice.

Finally bought this laptop after several weeks/months of deliberating and weighing it up against the Razer Blade 15 and the ASUS Zephyrus M. I decided to go for the Aero 15X due to the excellent battery life, slim bezels, numpad which I need for work, and per-key RGB.My overall impression of the Aero 15X is overwhelmingly positive. The keyboard feels great and is an order of magnitude better than any other laptop keyboard I've used, one thing to note - as another reviewer pointed out - is that the keyboard is just slightly narrower than a regular keyboard which I got used to pretty quickly. It's a price worth paying for having a numpad on such a small chassis. The per-key RGB is also really nice to look at, although the software for changing it seems a little clunky.The screen is also great and a huge step up from my old laptop. I do notice some backlight bleed along the bottom, particularly towards the left corner, but only in low light conditions and it doesn't really bother me. The lack of bezels also makes it look slick and modern. The build quality is excellent, coming from a laptop with a plastic chassis to this really feels like a step up in quality. It manages to feel fairly sturdy despite how lightweight it is. The machine edges can feel a little sharp on my wrists but I expect I'll get used to this in time. My only gripe about the chassis is that it is a real fingerprint magnet and polishing them off is a bit of a chore.The battery life is excellent, making it through an hour or so of Prime Video last night, a morning of work, a two hour IT training course and half an hour of gaming at lunch with 1h25m (25%) still left when it was put away. Truly incredible for a machine with components like this. The trackpad feels great and is nice and responsive and easy to use, although a driver update is required before it will function properly.The upgradeability is also excellent, I have added a 500GB SSD to the m.2 slot without any issues in respect of the hardware (see below) and the spare RAM slot is also easily accessible should I wish to add another stick.I've made the switch from console gaming to this laptop and it has been able to handle everything I've thrown at it so far with ease. I haven't tested any AAA titles out yet (need to wait until payday to afford one after a purchase like this and I own most of the ones I want on ps4 and am unwilling to buy another copy for PC) but I expect excellent performance when I do. I downloaded Subnautica, a game I have been pining after for months, and it looks absolutely incredible on the screen and runs smooth as silk. I have the fans cranked up to max when playing and the laptop chassis barely heats up (I forgot to look at internal temps before writing this review). The fans are tremendously loud when maxed out but they seem to do a great job. I would expect it to get hotter when playing a more demanding game.The only complaint I really have with this laptop is the lacklustre software. It would be great to see other manufacturers adopting Razer's "no bloatware" approach but removing bloatware didn't take too long. I was able to open it up and add another SSD to the m.2 slot with minimal difficulty, but have been unable to set it as my boot drive as yet because the option to press F12 to open the BIOS menu when booting the machine has disappeared after a Windows update. The Gigabyte Smart Manager is downright awful. It looks terrible and doesn't seem to work properly. This laptop will spend the majority of the time plugged in and I have no wish to burn out the battery so I have tried multiple times to change the battery mode in Smart Manager to Quality or Custom so the battery will stop charging at 60%. However, every time I quit my game and check, it has reverted to Standard mode and the battery is at 100% being overcharged. I can see no way to make this setting permenant. This laptop is a significant headache to set up out of the box and seemed to be running very slow and with a lot of software issues, but a massive windows update seems to have solved all problems other than those associated with Smart Manager. Be prepared for it to be as slow as a week in the jail until all updates have been installed.If Gigabyte fix the issues with Smart Manager (making it better to look at wouldn't hurt either) I will update my review to 5 stars. This laptop is at a premium pricepoint and has premium hardware and it really should have the premium software to match.