When Adata announced its foray into the gaming PC category last December, I was no longer excited. At the time, my expectation was that Adata would bring a value-driven mindset to the gaming PC arena, starting with its recently announced XPG Xenia gaming laptop. However, its price was much lower than I had expected.

To be fair, the pricing is not as bad as the launch video Adata released a few weeks ago. However, this is a crowded and competitive field that Adata has stepped into. The timing of this announcement means that Adata will be competing with a new batch of aggressively priced gaming laptops like the Asus TUF Gaming A15, built around AMD's latest generation (Zen 2) Ryzen 4000 mobile series. More on these later.

The XPG Xenia comes in two models, one with a GeForce GTX 1660 Ti GPU for $1,699.99 and the other with a GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q GPU for $2,199.99 (both MSRP). Other specifications are the same, with the following hardware and features:

A selection of desirable hardware from top to bottom, with fast refresh rates, large amounts of RAM, fast storage drives, and the latest wireless standards. And if the mechanical keyboard is comfortable to type on (I have yet to be impressed by a laptop keyboard), even better.

Both models officially go on retail sale today, with the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti model going for $1,698 and the RTX 2060 Max-Q model for $2,198. They are also listed on Newegg and Amazon as marketplaces (via Adorama).

I had hoped that the retail and street prices would be lower than what Adorama was showing a few weeks ago before they were actually available to order. I was wrong.

If you are willing to pay in the neighborhood of $1,700, there are better things out there than the GTX 1660 Ti. For example, MSI's GE65 Raider combines the same Core i7 9750H processor with an RTX 2060 GPU, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD for $1,699 on Newegg and $1,599 after rebate. half the RAM and storage but faster GPU and ray tracing support; you can also find RTX 2060 laptops for as low as $999.

MSI seems to have the best deal, with a GL75 Leopard with Core i7-10750H, RTX 2070, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD + 1TB HDD for $1,499 at Newegg. [At this price point, you can get a laptop with RTX 2070 Super or RTX 2070 Max-Q for about that much.

In conclusion, I am a little disappointed, though only in the pricing. Perhaps it will be on sale now or deeper into the Black Friday or Cyber Monday sale season with more attractive discounts.