Verdict
The Gigabyte Aorus 17H is n’t perfect , but no other laptop for this sort of money can fly the coop game at the same in high spirits frame rates thanks to a potent GPU , ace - fast display and surprisingly miserable asking price .
Pros
Cons
Key Features
Introduction
quick and cheap . That ’s what I desire from a play laptop computer . And by fast , I do n’t mean theoretically fast , I mean visually fast . Having a fire - breathing GPU that can scat a game at 300 + fps is wasted if you only have a165Hz display . That ’s what the Aorus 17H is designed to do .
With anNvidia RTX 4080 GPU , a 360Hz display , and a Leontyne Price rag of only a lilliputian above £ 2,000 , no other laptop come closely to offering this stage of specification for so little money .
Of course , getting the price down can sometimes lead in unacceptable compromise elsewhere in a product , so has Gigabyte managed to game the Aorus 17H into the Goldilocks zone for powerful large - blind gaming laptop computer ?
Design and Keyboard
Gigabyte ’s Aorus machine have traditionally been chunky contraband angulate thing , and the 2023 Aorus 17H is no elision . Unlike the more expensive metal Aorus 17X , the 17H is a largely plastic amour , but it is none the worse for that and sense upstanding and fixed with little flex to be feel in the lid unless you twist around it brutally .
bet on laptops with 17.3 - in projection screen are never little or wanton affair , but at 398 x 258 x 30 mm and 2.7Kg it ’s noticeably shallower and lighter than theAsus ROG Strix Scar 17 .
The keyboard is a schematic chiclet affair with very little in the room of intent optimization for gamers other than Fn shortcuts to exchange the fan speed and “ AI Boost ” execution manager , but it ’s impressively solid and features per - key RGB lighting . There is one bizarre feature to it , though .
The backlight only illuminates the primary graphic on each keycap , so the icons relating to any Shift or Fn functions are leave altogether dark . This makes do undertaking like change the intensity , the show luminosity , or the fan upper in low brightness a hit - and - misfire affair unless you could hark back which FN key do what .
yield the amount of liberal space hem in it , the 120 x 75 millimetre trackpad could and should be large , but it works faithfully , and the click - action is absolutely weight , positivist and quiet .
All the I / O ports are on the incline of the Aorus H17 , and they are all place towards the front of the chassis , which means you ’ll have to tolerate a lot of cables and dongles stick out of the laptop computer where you ’d commonly put your shiner .
There is a decent selection , though : On the left field , there is a 2.5 G RJ-45 LAN port , HDMI 2.1 and MiniDisplayPort 1.4video outputs and a USB - A 3.2 Gen 1 data port , while on the right , there ’s aThunderbolt 4and a second USB - A 3.2 Gen 1 port , a 3.5 mm audio recording jack and the DC - in socket . That last would be better gather aside at the back .
I ’m not sure what the reasoning behind the Mini DP port is ; a second Thunderbolt 4 or even a DP Type - C port would surely have been more versatile , and while the Thunderbolt port is credited as supporting PD charging , it did n’t want to spiel glob with my 65W courser though to be bonny Gigabyte send word you only use a charger rat at 86W or above .
find the immoral venire off the Aorus 17H is the study or moments , as it should be with any serious gambling laptop computer . Once inwardly , you could easily access both SODIMM RAM mounts and the two 2280 PCIe 4 SSD bay laurel . The shelling look like it will come out without undue dramatic event , and there ’s nothing to prevent you from blowing away debris from the two devotee .
Inside the shipping carton , you ’ll find a heavy styrofoam inlay that protects the Aorus while in transportation system but does petty for the environs because it ’s not that easy to reprocess .
Display and Sound
The Aorus H17 use a Sharp - made 1,920 x 1,080 IPS display with a pixel density of 127dpi . That ’s not a peculiarly high turn for a £ 2,000 laptop , but it is the unavoidable side issue of a Full HD 17.3 - in panel . compare to a 2,560 x 1,440 17.3 - inch screen with 170dpi , you could observe some pixelation with the raw heart when you calculate carefully .
However , while most QHD panels max out at 240Hz , the Aorus 17 ’s screen can freshen up at 360Hz , which can make quite a difference if you play eSports title of respect likeApex LegendsorValorant , where every msec counts . The Aorus H17 ’s screen also delivers for those of us who are not quite as punishing - Congress of Racial Equality because motion treatment is superb across the board , with about no ghosting or smearing in evidence .
The show has the basics well cover : Peak brightness is honest at 351 nit , and there ’s plenty of colour on hand with97.9 % sRGB gamut coverage(the figures forDCI - P3and Adobe RGB came in at 72.3 % and 69.9 % , respectively ) . The contrast proportion was a solid 1214:1 , while the Delta E colour truth against the sRGB profile was a very telling 1.36 .
There has been some confusion regarding the Aorus 17H featuring Nvidia ’s Advanced Optimus and G - Sync applied science . My revue sample distribution had neither , just atraditional MUX switchthat requires a reboot to enlist or disengage . In my opinion , the absence of adaptative sync is not that big of an issue on a laptop with a 360Hz display and a powerful GPU . The only clip I acknowledge any screen tearing was when I pegged games to 60fps to count for it by choice .
The pair of 2.5W stereophonic system speakers rather let the side down . Not only are they not particularly flashy , break 75.1dB(A ) as measured against a pinkish dissonance beginning , but the sound is somewhat strident and could do with more bass to bear out minutes . They do a decent enough job for gaming , but listening to music on the Aorus 17H is a rather boring experience .
The 720p webcam is a lacklustre affair , dull , grainy and colourless , but it supportsWindows Hello IR facial recognition , so I ’ll forgive the two - bobtail image quality .
Performance
Like most laptops built around the 150W TGP RTX 4080 GPU , the Aorus 17H can easily handle even the most demanding games . This review model offered the aforementioned GPU , Intel Core i7 - 13700H CPU , 1 TB SSD and 16 GB RAM . Running at the highest preferences but without irradiation trace , the Aorus 17H averaged 114.2fps inCyberpunk 2077and 101fps inReturnal , while theMetro ExodusEnhanced Edition bench mark ran at 64.1fps with beam tracing set to extreme .
practiced though those Triple - A slews are , it ’s in eSports that the Aorus 17H really shines . With all the detail configurations at gamy , Apex Legends ran at 240fps , but a speedy fiddle in the graphics soon boosted that to the 300fps upper limit . Overwatch 2 , meanwhile , ran at a ordered 360fps from the get - go .
CPU performance is rather less impressive because the i7 - 13700 CPU inside the Aorus 17H is the 14 - core heat content version rather than the 16 - gist HX found in the Medion Erazer Deputy P50 , which has two spare Performance core group . The PCMark 10 score of 7,365 is still high enough to put the Aorus 17H into the top quintile of laptops .
The Aorus 17H does all this without much fuss . you could certainly hear the fans when they are run at full speed , but 54.2dB(A ) is at the small end of what you could expect from a powerful gaming laptop , and the keyboard deck never once got above 32 ° C , even after sustain accent trial . The area around the side vents memorialize a top temperature of 50 ° C , point that the chill system was doing its job expeditiously .
The 1 TB SSD is my review machine , one of Gigabyte ’s own make , had its running shoes on returning sequential read and write f number of 7,018MBs and 4,955MB / s , respectively , which is everlasting for shunt large game around .
Software
The Gigabyte Control Panel provide comprehensive memory access to the Aorus 17H ’s performance setting , including manual buff command , as well as the likes of the MUX switch and keyboard backlight director . It ’s a rather clunky and ugly small-arm of software , though , and unlikely to keep the designers of Asus ’s Armory Crate or Acer ’s Nitro Sense CPs awake at night .
DTSprovides two audio ascendancy control board ( Sound Unbound and Ultra :X ) , and there is a Dolby Atmos app , but you involve to cough up £ 14.24 to reach the headphones ’ functionality . That ’s it for non - Microsoft computer software . There is n’t even a teasing anti - virus suite beleaguer me to take up a subscription though I ca n’t vouch that a previous reviewer had n’t deleted it after one too many daddy - ups pushed them over the edge .
Battery Life
You ca n’t fit a higher - electrical capacity battery in a laptop computer than 99Wh . you may , but theUS administration wo n’t let you take it on a plane . Running the PCMark 10 Office stamp battery exam , the Aorus 17H ran for almost five and three - after part hours , which is good for a barnstorming gaming laptop . Use it cautiously , and you may eke out 6 hours from a charge .
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Should you buy it?
The Aorus 17H excels at game like Apex Legends , Valorant and Overwatch 2 when the 360Hz refresh charge per unit give you an edge in the heat of battle . Even really demanding treble - A games like Metro Exodus and Cyberpunk 2077 outpouring at over 60fps , and you ca n’t realistically take for more from a laptop computer .
The combination of a 17.3 - inch video display and a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 is never going to be a recipe for a top-notch - sharp presentation , so the Aorus 17H ’s screen just is not as crisp as the same - size of it 2,560 x 1,440 panel fitted to the Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 .
Final Thoughts
The Aorus 17H know exactly why it ’s been put on this earth : to flirt FullHD games as fast as possible while still being reasonably price . It ’s an ambition the Aorus 17H fulfils to a golf tee , so if you want a laptop for serious eSports , this is undoubtedly where you should spend your money .
As for rival , you’re able to get an Alienware m18 with a 470Hz refresh rate but go for the RTX 4080 good example , and you will be pass £ 2,729 and have an even lower ( 125dpi ) pixel density thanks to the 1,920 x 1,200 18 - in dialog box . TheStrix Scar 17 from Asus ROGfeatures a QHD display , an RTX 4090 GPU and AMD ’s late Dragon Range CPU and can play games at QHD as tight as the Aorus 17H can play them at FullHD , but it is considerably more expensive , and the display top out at just 240Hz .
The Aorus 17H would be more rounded packaged if the speakers were better and if it had Advanced Optimus , but the former is well remedied with a headset , something most serious gamers will affect as de rigueur , while the latter only add a little operational convenience and would presumptively involve the spare price of an Nvidia licence .
Trusted Score
How we test
Every laptop we brush up run low through a series of uniform checks designed to gauge key thing , include build quality , performance , screen quality and electric battery life-time .
These include stately semisynthetic benchmarks and written tests , plus a series of literal - world check-out procedure , such as how well it runs pop apps .
FAQs
Yes , but it ’s a traditional multiplexer switch that is actuate from the Gigabtye mastery panel and requires a reboot of Windows to change on or off . It does not feature Nvidia ’s machinelike MUX switching system of rules Advanced Optimus .
No . Aorus is basically the premium brand from Gigabyte and is reserved for its high spec and , thus , more expensive laptop computer , background and part .
Test Data
Full Specs
