Gigabyte’s new Aero 15 laptops put gaming power in a slim package

Gigabyte has a new laptop, the Aero 15, and like the Razer Blade or Acer Predator Triton 700, it follows the recent trend of superpowered, ultrathin laptops that are equally at ease as a day-to-day work laptop or high-end gaming machine.

I was able to spend a few minutes with the Aero 15 in person, and it makes a good first impression. The 15.6-inch screen is bright and clear (although still a disappointing 1080p for now; a 4K version is planned for later this year), and the incredibly small bezels on the top and sides of the display are a nice touch. That said, the case is a little thicker and blockier than some of its sleeker competitors, but it still seemed easy enough to carry around. Performance-wise, it’s more or less what you’d expect from a Kaby Lake i7 and Nvidia GTX 1060: that is to say, good, with the ability to run VR with no issues.

When it comes to the rest of the specs, the Aero 15 holds its own compared to other high-end laptops: a USB-C Thunderbolt 3 port, two M.2 PCIe SSD slots, 16GB of RAM, and an LED keyboard. Gigabyte claims the Aero 15 gets up to 10 hours of battery life off a charge, at least for non-gaming activities.

The Aero 15 is available today in three colors (green, black, and a very bright orange) for $1,899.