It's been a big year for gaming laptops (opens in new tab), with AMD announcing its Ryzen 6000 series mobile CPUs, Intel launching Alder Lake for the market, and Nvidia adding RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3070 Ti to its existing mobile GPU lineup. Given that the situation was already quite healthy in the notebook segment, these latest releases give notebook makers many options when it comes to assembling powerful machines.

For the new Aorus 17 XE4, Gigabyte has decided to use Intel's Alder Lake alongside some of Nvidia's more sensible new offerings. Specifically, the Intel Core i7 12700H and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti. This is a solid combination that can put up strong numbers in both gaming and more serious applications without spending much money at all.

The Intel Core i7 12700H is not a top-end chip, but it still has plenty of cores and high clock speeds: a total of 14 cores, consisting of six performance cores and eight efficient cores, providing a total of 20 threads for Windows. The performance cores can turbo up to 4.7 GHz and the efficient cores up to 3.5 GHz. Speedy.

As for the GPU, the RTX 3070 Ti is an impressive slice of the latest silicon that can hit ridiculous numbers at native 1080p on this screen; the RTX 3070 Ti on the Aorus 17 is 130W, more powerful than other manufacturers' RTX 3080s. It's not just about how fast a GPU is or how many CUDA cores it has, it's about how much power the GPU can muster for itself. And 130W is far more power than many laptops can manage. This is especially true of thin, lightweight machines that look great but don't have the cooling to handle such a powerful GPU.

The Aorus 17 is a clever thin and light laptop. The base is separated from the thickest part of the chassis at the front edge, so that when you are using it, it gives the illusion that it is thinner than it actually is. Importantly, this is thick enough to accommodate a proper cooling system, most likely capable of cooling the aforementioned CPU and GPU.

However, there is one styling mishap that is of concern. While this is clearly a gaming machine, its thickness makes it unassuming with a clean aesthetic. Especially if you turn loose the default RGB light show on the keyboard. But that squishy power button doesn't belong on a child's toy, not on a machine that costs $2,000.

Other specifications are mostly as expected, with a fast 1TB NVMe SSD to keep things moving and 16GB of RAM as standard. Given the value and performance proposition of the new memory standard, it's a prudent choice, but looking down at the spec list, we can't help but feel that we're missing out on the latest and greatest, even though we can't really tell the difference.

Before we move on to the important performance issues, let us emphasize the spaciousness and responsiveness of the keyboard. There is a full numeric keypad, but it does not border the main keyboard, which can feel uncomfortable at times. Still, the keyboard is generally comfortable to type on and is well suited for gaming needs. The touchpad is also spacious, but not particularly useful with regard to gaming. As ever, if you're serious about gaming on the go, you'll want a decent mouse.

The final important piece of the portable gaming puzzle is the 360Hz 1080p display, which here squeezes a relatively huge 17.3-inch panel into the 15-inch chassis Gigabyte suggests. While the physics are problematic for this proposal, the thin top and side bezels provide a good screen-to-laptop ratio, and the laptop itself is slightly smaller than a traditional 17" gaming laptop. In other words, it is bigger, to put it bluntly, but it could be bigger.

Now we're talking performance, and this is where the Gigabyte Aorus 17 XE4 shines the most. It may not be the fastest machine we've ever seen, nor the thinnest, nor the quietest. But for the money, it balances all of these things and focuses on what really matters to most gamers: performance. This machine outperforms more expensive laptops.

The 130W Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is the key factor here, but the fact that Gigabyte combined it with a Core i7 chip rather than the much more expensive Core i9 pays dividends in terms of cost performance. Either way, it delivers smooth frame rates for any game: 76 fps with RTX Pretty on for Metro Exodus, 117 fps for Horizon Zero Dawn, and up to 180 fps for F1 2020.

One could argue that the RTX 3070 Ti is overkill for 1080p displays, but that would be forgetting the 360Hz refresh rate. This machine is likely to deliver frame rates close to this refresh rate, and if you enjoy playing Apex Legends, Valorant, or CS:GO games, you will frankly hit ridiculous frame rates (300fps on Apex is fairly easy to achieve (300 fps can be achieved quite easily with Apex).

The one drawback is that pushing this laptop hard can hurt your ears; the Aorus 17 XE4 can get annoyingly loud during use, and the headset is not as loud as it should be. So much so that I would either reach for the headset while gaming or turn up the volume to try to drown out the sound of the "Windforce Infinity Cooling System". At least there is an option to play in silence mode, and if you prefer a quieter life, there is still plenty of power if you tackle the game's settings screen.

Needless to say, £1,999 ($2,099) is a lot of money to drop on any laptop, even one with this much gaming power. It is somewhat disappointing that such a large sum of money can no longer buy top-of-the-line components, but putting all the top-of-the-line kit into a laptop seldom really pays off, and heat limitations often keep such dream machines in place. Basically, if you pay more than this, you are entering the realm of increasing yield.

The real question you need to ask yourself is whether you want your game to be a little more portable."

I admit that I myself prefer something more modest, but these 13" and 14" laptops game like this machine can Often far more versatile, even if they don't pack a punch. Still, if you're looking for a serious desktop PC alternative, there's a lot to like about this product. Especially when it comes to actual gaming. It's just too bad it's so loud.

.