The AORUS 16X (2024) Review

The AORUS 16X (2024) has a sleek & aesthetic that stands out, well-built with a mix of metal and plastic, giving it a solid and premium feel. However, certain aspects of software optimization and thermal management leave room for improvements, particularly for gamers and content creators.

Design/Build/Ports

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The AORUS 16X (2024) line brings a nice, clean look with the deep blueish-grey finish, a particular highlight and with the metal and plastic chassis, the build quality feels durable. The three-sided air exhaust setup, but the side ones, unfortunately, push the ports toward the front of the laptop, making it a little awkward for the first time to plug & unplug devices.

On the left (rear to front): power input, Ethernet, HDMI 2.1, USB-A 3.2 (10 Gbps), and Thunderbolt 4 (with 100W power delivery).

On the right: USB-A 3.2 (10 Gbps), USB-C 3.2 (with DisplayPort), microSD card reader, and a combo audio jack. The laptop has a MUX switch and if you set it to the dGPU, it performs insanely better especially helpful when gaming or using GPU-heavy editing tools.

Screen/Keyboard/Touchpad/Speakers:

With 2560x1600 resolution and a 165 Hz refresh rate with G-Sync and Advanced Optimus, the screen is great for the hardware but packing an RTX 4070 GPU I expected a higher refresh rate Display. Well having a 100% sRGB, Pantone® Validated, TÜV Rheinland-certified, Dolby Vision®, NVIDIA® Advanced Optimus, G-SYNC certified display, it’s more than sufficient for gaming & editing as a Gaming Journalist I tried both gaming & editing on this laptop and it felt like a breeze.

Keyboard feel is serviceable, Key travel is sufficient, but the bottom out sensation is rather mushy. Backlighting is separated into zones rather than per-key and also the non-clicky feel of the keys, which is disappointing given the somewhat premium pricing. There’s also light on the back that projects the AORUS logo, which I find pretty tacky.

There’s no numpad but a row of dedicated home, end, page up, and page down keys on the right side. I appreciate having them. Would’ve liked to see the AORUS badge double as a power button, another design refinement worth considering.

Speaking of the trackpad, the finish is very smooth making it very easy manipulate and accurately move the pointer, it’s off-center from the keyboard, it needs to have excellent palm rejection, and for the most part it’s true.

The speakers are just amazing, loud and bassy. With the Dolby Atmos® and Dolby Access making the experience even greater. But the bass can occasionally overpower vocals, which might not appeal to audiophiles.

Software/Performance/Battery Life

This is the area where the AORUS 16X could see the most improvement. It starts with the Gigabyte Control Center, the main software hub for the laptop. It can be unintuitive and cluttered with features like stable diffusion image generation, while interesting, may be unnecessary for many users. Tasks like the Display refresh rate switching when running on battery power or power profile and more are completely reliant on the Control Center software. Other gaming laptops like the Asus ROG offers simple keyboard shortcuts to do these things without needing to touch the software. A future update allowing easier access (e.g. via system tray right-click) would enhance usability.

Gaming performance is strong with the right setup.I tested Marvel rivals at 2560x1600 ultra settings but with no ray tracing or upscaling. First of all, with the Wifi 7 card in it, I never felt like I was lagging behind my friends. Now talking about performance, In the maxed-out “gaming” power profile, I saw minimum and average frame rates of 41 and 74, respectively. Both fans at spinning at 3700 & 3500 rpm, their high-pitched nature made it seem like they were much louder than other laptops. Dropping to the “power saving silence” option there wasn’t much change in the fps. While it’s playable in the power-saver mode, you’re leaving quite a bit of performance on the table, which kind of defeats the purpose. 

On the editing part it’s a beast too but after setting it up for it, I am using Premiere Pro and After Effects as my editing software, and after editing on full resolution preview & rendering a whole 1hr podcast, I never felt like it was lagging behind. But talking about after-effects it was a different story as working on 3-4 layer was quite hard as the system ran noticeably hotter and fans ramped up aggressively, occasionally impacting timeline responsiveness.

Thermals and fan acoustics are a major consideration. High fan RPMs (up to 5300) and a high-pitched tone made the noise stand out more than on similarly specced laptops. While it’s understandable that compact high-performance systems need strong cooling, some competitors manage fan noise more effectively.

For everyday use, as long as you keep it in the power saver mode , the laptop generally stays quiet, though the fans will spin up from time to time. Battery life is anywhere from 4-5 hours of web surfing, office, and video streaming with the display at 30 percent brightness and the refresh rate at 60 Hz. Sometime it lags even while opening a video when unplugged and having difficulty opening normal task software.
The left USB-C port allows for charging at up to 100W so for light use or for topping off the battery so you won’t need to bring the stock 240W adapter with you if you don’t need the laptop’s full power.

Verdict

The AORUS 16X has excellent hardware, and a gorgeous display, and delivers strong gaming and editing performance when properly tuned. However, fan noise under load and a less-than-intuitive software experience take away from its full potential.

If Gigabyte can refine the Control Center experience and improve thermal acoustics in future updates, the AORUS 16X would be a compelling choice for power users. As it stands, unless found at a discount, there are other options on the market that deliver a more refined user experience out of the box.

Review by: FARAZ AHMAD KHAN, INTERN, INDIA TODAY GAMING