Gigabyte Aero 14

What is the Gigabyte Aero 14?

The Gigabyte Aero 14 is an understated 14-inch gaming and multimedia laptop that brings full desktop gaming performance in a package that weighs less than 2kg. But its real trick is that it’s the first gaming laptop we’ve seen to offer near all-day battery life.

It takes on the slightly cheaper and lighter MSI GS43 and the high-end Razer Blade, but in many ways it comes out on top.

Gigabyte Aero 14 – Design and build

The Aero 14 received a mixed reception from the TrustedReviews team. Some though it ugly and old-fashioned, while I personally quite like the matte black design – although the orange and carbon-fibre trim looks like a bit of an afterthought.

It isn’t put together of premium materials; the shell is made from plastic rather than metal – which you’ll find on the similarly specified Razer Blade – and there are clear gaps between the panels of plastic.

Impressively, the screen folds completely flat, so finding the perfect angle to suit you shouldn’t be an issue. On the downside, the screen has a fairly chunky bezel, which serves to give this machine a slightly dated look. But at this price, a few compromises are to be expected. For those after a better build, the Razer Blade and Dell XPS 15 should meet your needs.

Despite the lack of metal, the laptop feels seriously solid and dense, which isn’t surprising when you consider how much has been squeezed into this chassis. There’s very little flex from the wrist-rest and keyboard, and the screen doesn’t bend easily, either.

The Aero 14 weighs in at 1.89kg, about the same as the Razer Blade. It’s 2mm thicker at 19.9mm, but I had no problems carrying it around in my bag for days out working from cafes and going to meetings.

You get a full complement of the ports you know and love: three USB 3 ports, a USB 3.1 port (no ThunderBolt 3 compatibility), a mini-DisplayPort connector and an HDMI 2 port. There’s also an SD card reader and a locking port. However, there’s no Gigabit Ethernet, which is a little disappointing, but there is at least fast and reliable 802.11ac Wi-Fi.

There aren’t any major concerns with the design and build of the Aero 14, although past experience has found that Gigabyte laptops built in this way do tend to start looking a little worn after less than a year of use.

Gigabyte Aero 14 – Keyboard and Touchpad

Since this is a laptop designed to be used on the move as well as stationed in a gaming den, keyboard and touchpad performance is more important than on much larger gaming laptops. It’s therefore a relief that both are perfectly fine, if not anything special.

The keyboard has an extremely firm action; you’ll need to put more force into each key press than is usual. I really like this, although it takes some getting used to – I began my time with the Aero 14 missing quite a few keystrokes.

The keyboard is backlit by plain white LEDs, so there’s no chance you’ll accidentally enable an eye-searing keyboard-based RGB fireworks display.

However, there is one drawback with the model I was sent: it’s a US-style keyboard layout, so the Enter key is half-height and the “£” key has been replaced by the “$” symbol. If you set your Windows 10 language to UK English this won’t be an issue, but it’s a minor annoyance.

To the left of the keyboard is a column of five macro keys. Each key can have up to five different functions, and you cycle through these using the “G” key at the top. The “G” key lights up in five colours, which correspond to the set of macros you’re using.

Gigabyte’s macro software is functional but ugly – and very fiddly. But it at least gets the job done. If you don’t like or want the coloured LED “G” key, simply hold it down for a few seconds until it switches off.

The touchpad is an integrated affair with no separate physical buttons. It’s fine, but it isn’t Microsoft Precision-certified, so you don’t get that immediate, perfectly weighted feel that you get on other laptops.

The biggest problem I found was how it responds to very slow and precise movements: it responds only after your finger has moved a couple of millimetres. Those upgrading from older laptops may not even notice this, but as someone who’s been spoiled by MacBook and Microsoft Precision touchpads for the past few years, it’s a minor bugbear.

Gigabyte Aero 14 – Screen, Webcam and Audio

The screen on the Aero 14 offers a fine balance of resolution and quality, with a high-resolution 2,560 x 1,440 panel that looks excellent under scrutiny. Windows tends to over-aggressively scale these higher resolutions, but I found it comfortable to work at 125% scaling, which left room for two windows side-by-side while still keeping text legible.

With so many pixels, this is a super-sharp display. But it doesn’t end there: it’s also lovely and bright, peaking at an impressive 306 nits. That’s super-bright, and excellent if you find yourself working outdoors. Otherwise, drop the brightness a few notches to make things comfortable.

Colour coverage is excellent and beats the Razer Blade. It manages an impressive 93.5% sRGB coverage, which is great for casual photographers, with most colours served very well. It isn’t going to be suitable for people who work with colour at a professional level, but you could hook up your Aero to a high-quality external monitor if you so desire.

Surprisingly, the speakers are perfectly fine. While I wouldn’t want to play sound-critical games through them, I was happy enough to play music and watch Netflix. There’s stereo separation and a reasonably well-balanced sound, and they can get up to a pretty high volumes too.
 

The webcam and microphone are both below average. The camera can’t handle subjects that are even slightly backlit, while the microphone records low-quality sound that definitely isn’t anywhere near the quality you’d want for streaming your gameplay commentaries or chatting with teammates. You’ll definitely want a gaming headset.

Gigabyte Aero 14 – Performance

Equipped with a quad-core Intel Core i7-6700HQ from the Skylake generation, in the processing department this is a powerful piece of kit.

The 6700HQ comes with Hyper-Threading, which allows processor-intensive applications to make better use of the four cores, effectively turning them into eight threads. This helps in tasks such as video rendering and photo processing, as does the generous 16GB of 2,133MHz RAM (upgradable up to 32GB).

This performance shone through in the Geekbench 4 benchmark, in which the Aero 14 scored 4,229 and 12,903 in the single-core and multi-core tests respectively.

Despite having the same processor as the 15-inch MacBook Pro and the Skylake-powered Razer Blade, the Aero beat both of them by a narrow margin.

This model gets a blazing fast 512GB PCIe SSD that topped out at 1,790MB/s read speeds in the CrystalDiskMark benchmark. A mix of capacity and speed makes this the ideal storage drive for this laptop.

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card on board the Aero is close to identical to its desktop sibling, and performs similarly as well. Loaded with 6GB of GDDR5 memory, this chip is capable of powering the latest games at Full HD resolution at High settings without breaking too much of a sweat.

The Aero 14 put in a similar performance to the Razer Blade, beating it in the Rise of the Tomb Raider benchmark with an average frame rate of 68.9fps at the highest graphical settings with FXAA switched on, and it managed 90.8fps in Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. Whether you want to up the resolution to the screen’s native 1440p will be down to personal taste, but I found the extra performance from Full HD was worth it over the slightly higher fidelity but lower frame rates of a higher resolution.

That’s the long way of saying that this is a powerful machine, especially considering its sub-2kg weight. You’ll get similar performance from other compact gaming machines such as the MSI GS43 VR, which weighs in at just 1.6kg, but that machine is hot, loud and has a smaller battery.

As you’d expect, the only area of potential complaint for some people will be fan noise. At full pelt the fans are pretty loud, although not as bad as some high-spec, thin and light Aorus machines. The Aero 14 is about equal with the Razer Blade in this respect, and the speakers are more than loud enough to drown it out.

There’s a very slight whine when idling, but it’s audible only in a dead silent room. The fans don’t kick up any fuss until you push the PC hard, which is great news.

Heat-wise, the bottom of the Aero does become fairly toasty when gaming, which isn’t surprising. I’d suggest gaming with it on some sort of lap tray to help with airflow – and to keep your knees cool.

I measured peak CPU temperatures during the Tomb Raider benchmark at 80°C and GPU temperatures of 74°C. These are within safe limits, although my testing was conducted in a room with an ambient temperature of around 18oC; warmer homes will see higher internal temperatures, especially during long gaming sessions where the CPU and GPU actually affect room temperature.

The Aero 14 is now available with the latest 7th-gen “Kaby Lake” processors and slightly faster 2,400MHz memory for around £100 more. While I haven’t tested this model, Kaby Lake will generally offer higher clock speeds and the faster memory will also help things along. As I haven’t seen one, I can’t say how, if at all, this more powerful processor will affect fan noise.

Gigabyte Aero 14 – Battery

The ace up the Aero 14’s sleeve is battery life. Despite being relatively thin, light and monstrously powerful, Gigabyte has packed a huge 94Wh battery into the chassis. It’s very much a brute-force way of solving battery life problems – but it has absolutely worked.

The laptop managed 8hrs 20mins in our very light Powermark battery benchmark, and in regular use I found I could get between six and seven hours.

An hour of Netflix viewing consumed 14% of its capacity, pointing to a little over seven hours of non-stop streaming. If you edit photos and videos on this device, expect substantially less; and you’ll manage a couple of hours of gaming away from a wall socket.

Should I buy the Gigabyte Aero 14?

The Gigabyte Aero 14 is a seriously impressive piece of kit. It lacks the premium build of some of its rivals – including the MSI GS43 VR and Razer Blade – but it makes up for that with great performance, an excellent screen and class-leading battery life. All in a package that weighs less than 2kg.

For many gamers, the Aero is the ultimate on-the-go laptop. There’s very little not to like considering the price; it’s well worth your cash.

Verdict

A thin and light gaming laptop that doesn’t cost the earth – that’s worth celebrating.

THE END I NEED COMMENT