Thin Gigabyte AERO 16 OLED laptop review: Efficient RTX 4070 for gamers and creatives

[Redaktion]

Using a slightly modified design, new connections and new hardware grounded in an Intel Gen 13 and a Nvidia RTX 4070, the Aero 16 OLED seeks to win over gamers and creators alike. We put the laptop through its paces to find out what the case change and hardware upgrades bring to the table.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Thin-Gigabyte-AERO-16-OLED-laptop-review-Efficient-RTX-4070-for-gamers-and-creatives.700616.0.html

[NikoB]

Absolutely idiotic laptop in every way.
It is impossible to play modern games on it at 4k with a miserable 4070 (why not 4090 for such a price? Mobile 4090 costs about 900-1000 euros per chip, maximum, because it is 1.5 times weaker than the desktop one). Color resolution when lowering the resolution to 1920x1080 will not match it. For some reason, the screen frequency is limited to 60Hz, although the panel response is very fast and it is really 240Hz+.

Monstrous PWM at 60Hz and a disgusting contrast ratio of only 12000:1 (you don't get high-frequency PWM nor 1000000:1 contrast, as is usually the case with such terrible flicker), which immediately excludes normal HDR support, i.e. HDR here is 100% fake.

The author - to put in the pluses the shameful support of HDR600 is ridiculous against the background that the panels are AMOLED. This is a pure 100% minus. There should be either support for full HDR, or the complete absence of flicker at a contrast ratio of about 6000-8000:1. But there is NOTHING.

We're watching the terrible new AMOLED panels come onto the market, where greedy capitalists, in pursuit of profits, lowered the contrast ratio from 1000000:1 and still left flickering! This is a terrible "upgrade" of screens in 2023!

A senseless overpayment for i9, except perhaps for the speed of L1..L3 caches (but this is what NB stubbornly does not show in reviews, although one screenshot from AIDA64 with a memory and cache benchmark is enough, and not the cut that is given in text form), which works here a little better than last year's i7 12th.

Wild noise of the cooling system even at rest.

Well, in the end - a laptop with such a keyboard is 100% not suitable for games. And for efficient work in office applications, as well as coding. Neither this nor that.

The question is who is its target audience? Experience-bored madmen who don't care what to spend 3000 euros a monthly net salary in Europe?

[splus]

I don't know why the manufacturers put OLED displays on laptops?? They have TERRIBLE, eyesight-destroying PWM and a huge power draw which results in much lower battery life. Just switch to MicroLED or just give us a good IPS.

[LL]

Good that Gigabyte now have a product for artists and creatives. Still need to improve. Blender one of the most used 3D applications have numpad default shortcuts for example. This laptop don't so when a Blender artist will choose a laptop this one will get a less value here.

13900H only matter for simulations and the vanishing CPU rendering. All applications and most render engines are going GPU (except Corona and a few others). The fact that they have the 13700H option is good.  Even a lesser version should be available.

RTX4070  21 sec in Classroom is ok for what i have seen but it is still a disappointment. But here the fault is Nvidia not laptop manufacturers.
This GPU rendering situation means that often  artists will use the GPU and the CPU is mostly idle. For example i only remember my 5800H in multicore being at 100% when in Unreal Engine shader caching. So typically rare.

The ideal artist laptop should have this power capabilities:

-CPU bottleneck is often the single core performance, so being able to push/overclock just the single core is good. There are a lot of stuff that is still single core.

- when GPU is at 100% doing rendering often the CPU is at low power, so being able to push the GPU to maximum boost and remain there is also good.

- multitasking, possibility to restrict power to a certain application - GPU and /or CPU - to make possible to continue work with laptop in another application or in another instance of an application.
For example i am GPU rendering a Blender scene, while i am modelling/texturing another Blender scene. 

- When making video presentations for clients, it is important that the laptop is able to remain silent.

-Visual quality is very important and good that laptop manufacturers are being attentive of that.

[kenarp]

I have no preference to OLED solutions on laptops and personally believe IPS with DC dimming backlight is ideal. But I want to clarify that the 60hz of PWM frequency at the high brightness might not be that bad as it sounds. One important factor for PWM is the modulation amplitude, which basically means the greater the amplitude is, the more harm will be caused by the flicker. In terms of this Gigabyte model, when the brightness is higher than 50% according to the article, although the PWM is at a lower 60hz, its modulation amplitude is also comparably low. Rather than a cycle of on-off-on, the PWM at higher brightness works more like 100% - 75% - 100%(brightness), not as perfect as DC dimming, but kinda acceptable considering the trade offs between OLED's advantages and flicker.

What we really should be cautious about is the OLED's flicker at lower brightness. As we can see from that figure, the modulation amplitude is much greater, the duty cycle is lower, which means the flicker index - currently the most accurate parameter to judge the harm brought by light flicker, is much higher, although the PWM frequency is slightly higher at 240hz which doesn't help. The manufacturers really should take this into consideration or it'll keep OLED laptops away from many consumers' willing list due to the harmful flicker.

And there are actually some potential solutions to the flicker at lower brightness, e.g. much higher frequency like 1500hz or up can effectively reduce the flicker index, which has already been achieved in some Android OLED phones. Hope the laptop manufacturers can also make some progress on it in the near future.

[kkk]

Absolutely idiotic laptop in every way.
It is impossible to play modern games on it at 4k with a miserable 4070 (why not 4090 for such a price? Mobile 4090 costs about 900-1000 euros per chip, maximum, because it is 1.5 times weaker than the desktop one). Color resolution when lowering the resolution to 1920x1080 will not match it. For some reason, the screen frequency is limited to 60Hz, although the panel response is very fast and it is really 240Hz+.

Monstrous PWM at 60Hz and a disgusting contrast ratio of only 12000:1 (you don't get high-frequency PWM nor 1000000:1 contrast, as is usually the case with such terrible flicker), which immediately excludes normal HDR support, i.e. HDR here is 100% fake.

The author - to put in the pluses the shameful support of HDR600 is ridiculous against the background that the panels are AMOLED. This is a pure 100% minus. There should be either support for full HDR, or the complete absence of flicker at a contrast ratio of about 6000-8000:1. But there is NOTHING.

We're watching the terrible new AMOLED panels come onto the market, where greedy capitalists, in pursuit of profits, lowered the contrast ratio from 1000000:1 and still left flickering! This is a terrible "upgrade" of screens in 2023!

A senseless overpayment for i9, except perhaps for the speed of L1..L3 caches (but this is what NB stubbornly does not show in reviews, although one screenshot from AIDA64 with a memory and cache benchmark is enough, and not the cut that is given in text form), which works here a little better than last year's i7 12th.

Wild noise of the cooling system even at rest.

Well, in the end - a laptop with such a keyboard is 100% not suitable for games. And for efficient work in office applications, as well as coding. Neither this nor that.

The question is who is its target audience? Experience-bored madmen who don't care what to spend 3000 euros a monthly net salary in Europe?

I'm sorry but you clearly do not understand many things about laptops and screens in general. Your opinion is questionable immediately once you complain about 'gaming'. You want a gaming laptop? Get the Aorus. Not everyone who needs a GPU is a gamer.

Pricing of mobile GPUs have nothing to do with performance compared to desktop chips, but alas that is not the main point here. Also funny that the complaint about the GPU is contrasted by the ridicule of the i9 chip. No consistency here either.

Seems you completely fell for OLED marketing 1 million to 1 contrast - a completely meaningless value. The contrast on this OLED is clearly measured with active pixels, not against a turned off pixel. And it is clearly magnitude higher than IPS, as expected and completely reasonable. You should really look into contrast ratios and how they are calculated on OLED displays for marketing purposes (million to one is not meaningful because it compares to black).

PWM is dumb. People who supposedly suffer from this should have their eyeballs explode during the CRT days. Of course it is easier to blame OLED rather than them staring at a screen all day for their headaches.

The keyboard is amazing. Full size arrow keys for professionals.

I just wish the audience of NBC would improve, no wonder the laptop market has all kinds of number focused gimmicks rather than quality input devices when a lot of the feedback is based on misguided logic such as here.

[NikoB]

I'm sorry but you clearly do not understand many things about laptops and screens in general. Your opinion is questionable immediately once you complain about 'gaming'. You want a gaming laptop? Get the Aorus. Not everyone who needs a GPU is a gamer.

Pricing of mobile GPUs have nothing to do with performance compared to desktop chips, but alas that is not the main point here. Also funny that the complaint about the GPU is contrasted by the ridicule of the i9 chip. No consistency here either.

Seems you completely fell for OLED marketing 1 million to 1 contrast - a completely meaningless value. The contrast on this OLED is clearly measured with active pixels, not against a turned off pixel. And it is clearly magnitude higher than IPS, as expected and completely reasonable. You should really look into contrast ratios and how they are calculated on OLED displays for marketing purposes (million to one is not meaningful because it compares to black).

PWM is dumb. People who supposedly suffer from this should have their eyeballs explode during the CRT days. Of course it is easier to blame OLED rather than them staring at a screen all day for their headaches.

The keyboard is amazing. Full size arrow keys for professionals.

I just wish the audience of NBC would improve, no wonder the laptop market has all kinds of number focused gimmicks rather than quality input devices when a lot of the feedback is based on misguided logic such as here.

You just need to re-read what I wrote here at least 1 year in advance to understand how primitive your attack is.
Maybe you are a marketer from Gigabyte? Then my condolences to you - this model sucks and will not be sold.

[buyer]

i wish, then in a year there will  be good deals, like on 3070ti aero :P

[Neenyah]

The very first thing I do with every single review before even reading anything is hit Ctrl+F and search for PWM.

And here we have it in 60 Hz, on a 60 Hz screen...

...in a 3000€ laptop!! 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 Gigabyte, more like Clownbyte. Disgusting.

[S.Yu]

This review, and the previous revelation regarding the actual TGP of mobile 4070-4090 seems to suggest the Blade 18 is a hulking piece of good for nothing, that huge spaces that can be used for a mechanical, full sized keyboard is entirely wasted, since they're not needed for cooling.
So the notion that the Blade 17 needs to be thicker to let the GPU perform is an illusion...or somebody needs to come up with a hack to unlock the full potential of the GPUs?

I don't know why the manufacturers put OLED displays on laptops?? They have TERRIBLE, eyesight-destroying PWM and a huge power draw which results in much lower battery life. Just switch to MicroLED or just give us a good IPS.

MicroLED is hardly available anywhere, currently only Sony provides true MicroLED at an unacceptably low density in large hot and thick modules--niche cases through and through and unfortunately loses to Samsung's MiniLED modules for the same application.
As for MiniLED, I'd say availability at these sizes. TV manufacturers namely TCL are really keen on taking up MiniLED, but mobile panels have yet to catch up, I've only seen Razer provide MiniLED panels in top tier specs...and iPPs but Apple's generally an outlier.

[mitchellmarsh820]

The Aero 16 OLED's revamped design and upgraded hardware, featuring Intel Gen 13 and Nvidia RTX 4070, make it an enticing option for gamers and developers. As a student, I'd love to explore its potential for graphics-intensive projects. Plus, with the convenience of Online Dissertation Help Near Me, this laptop could be a game-changer for research and productivity.

[andree23]

You've rightly pointed out a potential concern with OLED displays at lower brightness levels, where higher flicker indices could be an issue for user comfort and eye health. Suggesting higher PWM shell shockers frequencies as a potential solution aligns with efforts in some mobile devices to address similar concerns.