I mentioned in December 2019 that I was excited to learn that Adata was entering the gaming PC and monitor space and hoped that it would demonstrate its cost-effectiveness in the storage space. That remains to be seen, but I have details to share about its first gaming laptop, the XPG Xenia, and I remain cautiously optimistic.

That's despite an obnoxious launch video; Adata's XPG Global channel on YouTube posted a nearly 16-minute video under the guise of "breaking news." Just below his name, he is listed as a "technical and game analyst."

"It's very simple. This is a relatively new brand, and we're entering a very competitive field with Razer, MSI, Lenovo, and many others," Lan says.

To reinforce his completely realistic stance, he points to several IDC charts that predict "significantly limited" growth in the gaming laptop market and asks whether Adata is "arrogant or just plain stupid." Further, Lan predicts that "XPG will be a failed, sad, sad spectacle."

To get a full sense of the folly of Adata's reverse psychology marketing, you really have to see this car crash for yourself. Here it is:

But there are actually some interesting aspects. Adata is firmly established in the memory and storage space and is trying to carry that momentum into the laptop space, and after an awkward elbow bump between XPG's product director Luca Di Fiore and Ran (now is not the time to touch hands, so instead of a handshake instead), after which Fiore explained that he uses memory chips sorted into RAM.

"We cut our own wafers and select the best of the Samsung die to make Xenia memory modules," Fiore said.

"This is a very specific process, and very few vendors are willing to do this kind of work today."

He is essentially talking about binning. Memory manufacturers typically test, screen, and select the best performing chips for their high-end products. In this case, Xenia comes standard with 32GB (2x16GB) of DDR4-2666. This is not surprisingly fast, although it is paired with an Intel processor, which is less susceptible to faster RAM than AMD systems. [SSDs are fast, rated up to 3,500 MB/sec sequential read and up to 3,000 MB/sec write. We also like that the Xenia comes standard with 1TB of SSD storage.

The only concern is the price. Adata has not yet announced a suggested retail price, saying only that the Xenia will first be available in the U.S., Mexico, and Taiwan, followed by other markets in Q3. However, our friends at Anandtech say the initial retail price is $1,699 for the GTX 1660 Ti configuration and $2,199 for the RTX 2070 Max-Q model. In fact, Adorama sells them at those prices.

Whether other retailers will do so remains to be seen. Because the prospect of the previous generation's components being priced at current generation prices sucks the excitement out of me.