AORUS 15G Review: A Classy Successor

Earlier back in March, we had the chance to take a look at AORUS Gaming laptops and we kicked it off with their AORUS 15. In all honestly, it wasn’t quite the great laptop as it did have some drawbacks to it. But fast forwarding to April, the announced the new AORUS 15G which we had the chance to take a look at. That said, now that its here at the VesperLab, we are putting it for a good test and here’s our final verdict on the laptop. 

Look and Feel 

1/7

As we mentioned in our first impression article, the laptop has gotten revamped from the ground up and it a good thing as the previous design was too dated and what was going was more disappointment than ever. The 15G on the other hand has a nicer design that you’d love if you are into those retro looking machines although Gigabyte claims that the laptop has more of the “Racecar” design which in all honesty, I don’t see it much – maybe for the back air vents and when you open the laptop up, there are these dotted finish on top of the keyboard.  

If you want to know on the look and finish, you can click here to read more about it. 

Display 

Unlike the AERO 15 we reviewed not too long ago, the AORUS 15G doesn’t get an OLED Panel as its aimed towards gamers mostly. So, on the 15G, you get a 15.6” Full HD Display with a 240Hz Refresh rate to go along with it. For the most part, this display is going to satisfy every gamer’s needs with its super smooth refresh rates and the almost borderless design is quite alright – the bezels are relatively thin except for a thick chin at the bottom which touts the AORUS logo and the Pantone Xrite sticker. If you do plan to get some editing work done on this particular display, it shouldn’t offer any sort of issue as the Pantone certification is an added touch to have. Games on the display look great and watching shows from Netflix or Prime Video is quite good to be frank.  

Brightness control on the other hand with this laptop is a little interesting and weird so to speak because if you were to slide all the way to zero the screen just blacks out. Which begs the question, how in the name of god if the OSD Sidekick crashes and you are not able to increase the brightness. That very thought was a little haunting but seriously AORUS, no body needs that unnecessary heart attack.  

Specification and Performance 

In terms of specification, this laptop is definitely a powerhouse as it has everything you can ask for.  

• Intel 10th Generation Core i7 Processor-10875H 
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX2070 Super with 8GB GDDR6 
• 512GB PCIe NVMe SSD Gen 3×4 Based 
• 16GB DDR4 RAM (can be upgraded) 

From that specification, you should know that this is quite the capable gaming machine and you can do some good AAA titles at home. That said, we performed the benchmark on this laptop to give an idea on how well it performs.

In CPU centric tasks, like Cinebench R20, the laptop hit a score of 474 points in single core and 3219 points in multicore performance. In blender, it was able to render the whole image in about 4:39 minutes and its quite good. For the most part, the performance with the Intel processor on this laptop is just as what you expect. Its good but being an Asian, I am going to say it could be better given a U series processor from their competitor (or should we call imitators too?) is giving a run for its money with better performance. That said Intel has a lot of catchup to do but for now the laptop with the 10th Gen Intel Processor performs quite okay.  

In CrystalDiskMark, the laptop scored a sequential read speed of 2212MB/s and write speed of 1529MB/s, respectively. So, you are getting a good enough and reliable SSD to accompany your experience. But chances are, if you plan to game a lot more and need more storage, chances are, you will have to pickup a new SSD while you are at it because 512GB isn’t going to cut it. We benchmarked the laptop with other applications like PCMARK, 3DMARK which you can find below and a graph on how it performed in game titles as well.  

Ports wise, the laptop boasts a good selection – with 3x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, mDP 1.4, a USB-C Thunderbolt 3, an ethernet port, HDMI, Headphone/microphone combo jack and a full size SD Card which is a complete sight for sore eyes.  

Both the RAM and M.2 SSD slots are upgradable and there’s no complication in the area. If you do plan to add another M.2 storage on top of the existing one, you can because there’s an extra slot for you to take advantage of the SSD. For the most part, if you do plan to game heavily – the 512GB SSDisn’tt enough for sure. And do take note, if you do plan to upgrade it yourself, you will need a Torx Screwdriver to do so.

Battery Life 

Being a gaming laptop and expecting it to last for a long while is tough. But if you were to tone the laptop down to battery saver mode and use it outside purely for work – and productivity tasks – the laptop will be able to last for about 7 hours at most and that was the result we got during our test. But if you plan to game, this laptop will not stand a chance after an hour mark, so better pick what you’d want to do with your laptop carefully while you are on the move.  

Keyboard, Trackpad and Speakers 

I have a lot to say about the keyboard because the AORUS 15G ditched their chiclet style keyboard for a… wait for it, Mechanical Keyboard and it comes with Blue Switches made by OMRON. I am a fan of Blue switches and the idea of including the said keyboard into the laptop is kind of nice but in reality, it isn’t. The laptop boasts a full-size keyboard with absolutely no proper space to specifically differentiate the number pad and the keyboard itself. On top of that the crammed layout gives a very underwhelming experience which most of the time took a while to get used to hitting the right keys as my hand alignment to the keyboard had to change then and there. AORUS could have included a keyboard without the Number Pad and that would have still been an alright experience. Don’t forget, Blue switches are an acquired taste and a lot of users who prefer silent switches won’t be happy with this one.  

The trackpad is average sized and overall, it works well with being able to perform multi Windows Gesture at ease and comes with a fingerprint sensor on the top right corner for Windows Hello security recognition.  

Did the speaker improve from the previous AORUS 15? It did, slightly with a better staging and clarity but still lacks the oomph factor to tackle things.  

Conclusion 

The AORUS 15G is here to correct the mistakes it did with its previous lineup and it sure did – with a traditional look, good performance and experience but it requires a little more tinkering to get there – like the keyboard needs improvement and a little nitty gritty part of the laptop as well. But if you do plan to get the AORUS 15G, it’s a unique experience. In fact, I personally like this laptop for improving literally everything from its predecessor, and just for that we are giving the AORUS 15G a Silver Award. 

Special thanks to AORUS Malaysia for sending us this laptop for making this review happen.