 The first thing I did after seeing this notebook at PAX was fire an email over to Gigabyte asking for them to send me one. It is no great secret how much I love the Razer Blade 14 and small powerful gaming machines in general, and I was floored by how much hardware Gigabyte packed into the new Aorus X3. But after my experience with the Brics gaming and its impressive looking specs that were spoiled by thermal throttling, I told myself not to get too excited until I'd actually seen it perform. So here we go. Welcome to my review of the Aorus X3 from Gigabyte. Corsair Gaming RGB keyboards feature precision Cherry MX RGB keyswitches for 16.8 million color per key backlighting for virtually unlimited customization. Click now to learn more. The first hint that this device has some serious horsepower under the hood is the included massive 180 watt power brick. I wish they'd include something a little bit more elegant like what Razer does, but while you will have to carry it, it's not the thing you'll actually be spending your time interacting with. So let's move on to the good stuff. The exterior of the X3 is as beautiful as the first notebook Gigabyte released under the Aorus brand, the X7. On the top cover, we find their Bird of Prey logo on an otherwise just plain sexy matte black anodized aluminum finish. Then on the bottom, we find two as expected somewhat tinny stereo speakers that for as empty as they sound, at least go reasonably loud without distortion, rubber feet to keep the device in place, lots of vents to hopefully keep things cool and Torx screws that can be opened up to reveal the actually stunningly upgradeable interior for a gaming rig that while not as thin as the Razer Blade 14 is actually lighter at only 1.8 kilograms. To complement the Core i7 4710HQ quad core, you get 8 gigs of DDR3 with two slots total for a maximum of 16 gigs of RAM. You get a GTX 870M with an overkill, 6 gigs of GDDR5 VRAM and two M.2 slots, each supporting up to 512 gig SSDs and capable of being configured in RAID. Gigabyte keeps this up and they may just make the X3 my next laptop. Back to the outside, we'll start at the left where we find a Kensington lock, a mini display port port with support for 4K, HDMI, a USB 2 port, headphone and microphone jacks and an air intake. On the front are indicator LEDs for Bluetooth wireless drive activity, low battery and power. And then on the right there's more ventilation and SD card reader, two USB 3 ports and the power button. Finally moving around to the back, we are greeted by power in two very large cooling vents, jam packed full of heat sink fins to leverage as much of the total thickness of the notebook as possible. And what's this? A hardline LAN port? Now we're talking. I mean sure it's a killer LAN port rather than an Intel based one, but damn it, it's an RJ45 connector. So I'm gonna give big kudos to Gigabyte for including this when the X3's thin and light competitors rely solely on wireless. In fact, I think the I.O. on this notebook is the best balanced I've ever seen from a gamer's perspective. I mean how many gamers use 4-pole single jack headsets, Razer? Gigabyte includes dedicated headphone and mic jacks. Also, why do all ultrabooks consider SD card slots optional? This is super handy. And then finally, I personally like having a single USB 2 port these days. They offer better compatibility, especially outside of the OS, and it's not like devices like mice are gonna be bottlenecked by USB 2 anyway. So gold star Gigabyte for the I.O. Now let's crack this baby open. There's that screen. I can't believe I made it this far and failed to mention. The 13.9 inch display on this notebook is a 3K one. Yeah, 3200 by 1800, 60 Hertz, matte finish, EXO panel, boom. It delivers stunning contrast, acceptable enough backlight lead that Gigabyte had the Cajonis to ship the notebook with a black desktop background by default, and viewing angles that are strongly reminiscent of the Razer Blade 14. So not as good as IPS, but a heck of a lot better than TN. And with very good motion blur characteristics to boot. One thing that's missing though, and it's the first thing to really give me pause about this notebook so far, is touch. Some people won't care, and good for them, but this is Linus Tech Tips, and you can tell me how touch is stupid when you've got your own YouTube channel with Blackjack and Hookers. I've gotten used to touch, and particularly on Windows 8, going back to not having it is quite an adjustment for me. I also didn't find the robustness of the hinge mechanism particularly awe-inspiring, but this has become a common complaint of late with screens getting so thin. And on that somewhat complainy note, let's head into the mixed bag that is the keyboard and touchpad. The keyboard's white backlight is strong, or less strong, or off, if you prefer, and the layout is mostly pretty good, with long shifts, backspaces, etc. Five programmable G-keys with five cyclable profiles and support for text input, mouse input, and macros, and only the gimpy for no apparent reason arrow keys for me to really complain about. But typing on it didn't feel good in spite of the pretty nice, slightly slick feel to the top of the keycaps. The keys have a fairly decent travel distance, but they're just kind of mushy without satisfying tactile feedback, and they didn't sound good, you know? Like, they sound kind of rattly. Which leads us to the trackpad. Not rattly, great build quality, tracks like a dream, as long as my hands are dry and oil-free, completely. If either of those two conditions are not met, the glossy surface turns into a smeary, greasy mess very quickly. I would have preferred if Gigabyte had gone with a frosted glass rather than a glossy one. But Linus, you might say, I won't spend all my time typing on this thing, and I'm going to plug in a mouse or a controller to play my games anyway. So how well does it play games? Great question, and the answer is very well. At 1080p, or usually 1600x900 for an even divider, I didn't have the display scaling issues that I observed on the Lenovo Y50, and I was able to crank up details far more than I expected. So with that resolution out of the way and doing a great job, I decided for the lulz to take some modern games and dial them into what I felt were playable settings at the native resolution of 3200x1800. And was amazed to discover that apart from not thermal throttling, I maxed out around 85 degrees on the GPU and a little over 90 on the CPU Intumrator, I was able to achieve 45 to 55-ish FPS across the board without cranking everything down to low, and while maintaining reasonable temperatures on the outside of the laptop itself too. Of particular note is that Gigabyte avoided putting heat generating components directly under the gaming zone on the keyboard, so sweaty palm syndrome was a non-issue with this notebook. It should be noted however that it did this by cranking up the fans fairly aggressively. This is not a quiet gaming notebook, and it has a fairly high-pitched whine to the fan noise. My last comment on gaming performance is regarding battery life. As we've come to expect, even with battery boost, frame rates tank as soon as you pull the plug, but the X3 at least managed a fairly acceptable battery life, in my sort of stare at the fire in crisis one test. So while it's not revolutionary, it at least holds its own against other similar sized notebooks. Although I'd like to see someone cram this kind of power into a smaller area within a larger notebook, strap a huge battery to it, and see what we end up with there. Alright, so up until now I've focused really only on gaming, but what about daily use? Well, that's where things get a little bit hairy again. I have very mixed feelings about 4K, even on desktop sized displays, due to poor scaling in Windows, that causes me to have to choose between either impossibly small UI elements, or blurry text in applications that don't scale properly, and this is still very much a problem. The reality is though, that unless 3K and 4K hardware starts showing up, these issues won't get addressed. So I'm glad someone is taking the first step, and I'm sure folks who invest in an X3 will be patting themselves on the back, when all these issues are behind us, and they're enjoying their super crisp looking display, but it is something that they're going to have to deal with for now. Speaking of dealing with for now, shopping at the local grocery store for your razors. Something that you shouldn't have to do, fighting with someone to undo the lock and key, and bring it out for you, and then you go to the counter and pay for it. Why do you have to deal with all that crap? Dollar Shave Club is the much faster, much easier, and less expensive way to shop for razors monthly. Basically, all you do is sign up for the club, and they will ship you your razors once a month for just a few bucks. They also have other high quality bathroom supplies, including their One Wipe Charlies, which are peppermint scented butt wipes for men, always makes me a little uncomfortable talking about those. Razors is easy though, you know, razors, everyone uses. Actually, razors are kind of gross too, because you've got all this like other people's used hair on them, which is why you shouldn't share razors, which is why everyone should have their own subscription to Dollar Shave Club. You can also get their Dr. Carver Shave Butter, which goes on clear, so you can see what you're doing, and I think that's pretty much all I have to say about that. Thanks Dollar Shave Club for supporting Linus Tech Tips, and for that matter, small content producers like us everywhere. It's great to see companies that care about supporting smaller guys, as opposed to blowing all their money on developing razors with, you know, vibrating handles. Yes, thank you Dollar Shave Club, because without you, small content creators like me wouldn't have all these piles of SD cards to use whenever, you know, they need to record things, and their camera people don't bother to put any of them into the actual camera, so we run out in the middle. Anyway, the point is, Dollar Shave Club, go to DollarShaveClub.com slash Linus to start shaving time and shaving money, and to support Linus Tech Tips, so we can have more SD cards that we don't use. Guys, thanks for watching. Like this video if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it, leave a comment letting me know if your feelings are more complicated than this or this, check out the link in the video description to support us, there's of course the Dollar Shave Club link, there's also a link to where you can buy a cool t-shirt like this one, give us a monthly contribution or change your Amazon bookmark to one with our affiliate code, so we get a small kickback whenever you buy piles of SD cards that you don't use.