 When we last looked at the Gigabyte Aero 15, we concluded that it was the perfect thin gaming laptop because... Well, at the time, it was pretty much the only thin gaming laptop that didn't make a bunch of other stupid compromises in the name of just raw performance. But, since then, the field has opened up a fair bit with Razer refreshing the Blade, Alienware bringing out the M15, and Asus continually refining their Zephyrus lineup. So then, Gigabyte's response to all this mounting pressure? AI. AI? AI laptop? What even is AI laptop? Just keep reading, it's down there. Just go. Oh, we get to that later? Yeah. No, okay. So then, AI laptop. Can a feature that we called the worst demo at CES 2019 possibly make the Aero 15 X9 stand out from the crowd? And failing that, is the overall design still solid at least? With GlassWire, you can instantly see your current and past network activity, detect malware, and block badly behaving apps on your PC or Android device. Use offer code LINUS and get 25% off GlassWire at the link below. Looking at the Aero 15, the overall design is reminiscent of the gaming laptops of several years ago. Which I guess makes sense, since it hasn't gotten a chassis update for about two years. With that said, I can't really complain about the ID from an objective standpoint. The screen bezels are super narrow, the chassis is nice and rigid, and the design is reasonably understated. So it won't give away how much raw gaming performance is inside, if you worry about that sort of thing in your board meetings. Sticking with a more traditional design also means more traditional I.O. Quite literally, more of it. Along the sides, we find loads of USB type A's, an HDMI port, and even a full-sized SD card reader, so you can go dongle free if you want. Then, they also threw in Thunderbolt 3, if you're more of a dongle-embracer. So, that's all pretty normal so far. But where the Aero 15 is exceptional is under the hood. Ours comes equipped with an Intel Core i9-8950HK, yes, that's the overclockable one, and an Nvidia RTX 2070 Max-Q, meaning that it packs considerably more punch than I would expect, and even in most cases recommend, in a chassis this slim. Like, we have seen much thicker laptops than this fail to cool this CPU adequately. And as for how Gigabyte fares?... Although the Aero does have a better showing than the MacBook Pro, it only narrowly edges out the Core i7s in its competition in most tasks, and occasionally even gets straight-up beaten, all while hitting the thermal limits of the chip. So what this basically means is you should buy the i7 model to get similar performance for less monies. It might not sound as sexy and exciting, but it will still be incredibly competent at video editing, gaming, and really whatever you want to throw at it. As for the RTX 2070 Max-Q, well, since this is our first laptop with one of these, we can't say exactly how it'll compare to other RTX 2070 Max-Qs, but what we can say is that it performs pretty darn well. Expect to be getting lots of frames in your games, with anything but the heaviest AAA titles with RTX enabled being capable of hitting the 144Hz refresh rate of the built-in display, many of them even on Ultra settings. Perhaps more impressively is the fact that our Aero 15X9 managed to do this while maintaining a sort of high, but still very reasonable noise level. Okay then, what about the apparent star of the show? AI. Can that make the Core i9 cool through machine learning sorcery, or give our mere RTX 2070 the graphical performance of a Titan? No. Actually, everything we've shown you guys so far has been with AI enabled, and unfortunately, contrary to the claims that Gigabyte was making back at CES, it does not give you any extra performance. But that doesn't mean that it's pure BS either. See, the AI will optimize the system based on what tasks you're currently performing, so if it sees that you're playing a game, it will optimize for GPU performance and up the fans. During a render, it will optimize for CPU, and then when you're just working on a Word document, it will optimize for low acoustics, and so on and so forth. Now, all of these modes are available on basically every gaming or professional laptop on the market, but according to Gigabyte anyway, 80% of users never bother changing the modes, which basically means that having AI enabled is not going to be giving you 120% performance. It just also means that you'll be getting your 100%-ish performance at a lower power level and or noise envelope without ever having to think about optimizing any settings. So then, now that our expectations have been adjusted, those really were some outlandish claims they were making at the show, it is much more clear to me how this technology can deliver a very real benefit to the average user. And the good news kind of keeps rolling here. Gigabyte really hit the nail on the head with the display. Its 144Hz refresh rate makes it excellent for gaming, and its Pantone color calibration makes it even suitable for prosumer-level photo or video work. The only other thing that I might want, I guess, is G-Sync for the hardcore gamers, but for the eagle-eyed among you who are bothered by the pedestrian 1080p resolution, you can simply go for the 4K 60Hz panel if you prefer. It too comes Pantone certified. Where Gigabyte misses the nail, however, and goes straight for the thumb is the webcam. Thanks to its spectacular placement below the screen, you're enjoying just a tremendous view of my nose hairs. And making matters worse, I lied. There's nothing spectacular about any of it. The image quality is unexceptional at best, and it doesn't support Windows Hello. It's just not spectacular at all. And I know I'm harping on this a bit here, but holy crap, stop doing this. There are plenty of other solutions. The trackpad is alright though. It's glass topped, doesn't flex over much, it's a decent size, and it uses the Windows Precision drivers, which checks all the boxes for me, putting it shockingly in like, second place for gaming laptop trackpads that we've looked at recently. Not bad, just don't screw it up, and it's all good. What isn't quite as good though is the keyboard. It's only fine. The force required to press the keys is a little high, despite the switches having no real tactile bump. The key stabilization could be better, and the smaller right shift key is a little bit awkward to hit. Honestly though, it was probably a minus material a couple years ago, but nowadays it's just a B+, since this is another area where the competition has really stepped up their game. Another area the competition has caught up is in the battery life department. With Alienware and Razer now boasting large capacity batteries, the 94 watt-hour unit in the Aero 15X9 isn't quite as impressive anymore. But, given that 94 watt-hours is getting very close to the limit to what you can carry on to a plane, there really wasn't a ton of room for upward mobility for Gigabyte here, and the around 6 hours that you get is still darn impressive. Honestly, it only gets beaten by laptops that have sacrificed performance, making this a very potent machine for people that need both power and potency on the go. As for upgradability, opening up the Aero 15 we get easy access to both RAM and storage, along with that massive battery, which is pretty much all we can really hope for in a laptop like this, so full marks there. And all that means the Aero 15 is sitting in pretty good shape here, standing up to basically every test we could think to throw at it, even if it didn't blow me away at any point. Which leads us perfectly into the conclusion. If money was no object, honestly, I would take either the Razer Blade 15 or Alienware M15 over this. But, unfortunately for all of us, money is a thing. And this is where the Aero 15X9 really flexes, with our recommended config coming in at $150 less than the Alienware M15 and $250 less than the Razer Blade, with double the storage to boot, it's really hard not to get behind the awesome versatility of this unit from Gigabyte. So thanks to Joan for sponsoring this video. 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