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00:00Okay, we got it. We're good.
00:07Hey, how's it going guys? This is Dave2D, and this is the Aero 14 from Gigabyte.
00:12So, it's been updated with the GTX 1060.
00:14It's a relatively affordable, thin and light, yet powerful gaming laptop.
00:19And I say relatively affordable because a lot of gaming laptops in this kind of form factor are significantly more expensive.
00:25This starts at $1600, give or take a little bit. Let's take a look.
00:29These come in several colors. This one's orange with a faux carbon fiber finish, but they do have a more muted black version.
00:36The build quality is good. It uses a lot of aluminum, but there are some plastic components, so the screen has a little bit of flex to it.
00:43It is engineered well, and the overall finish and durability is quite good.
00:47In terms of ports, there are a couple of display outputs and a bunch of USB options, including a USB-C, but this isn't a Thunderbolt 3 port.
00:55There's also an SD card reader and an audio jack.
00:58The speakers are down-firing. I don't love that.
01:01They're loud, and the upper frequencies are surprisingly clean, but it lacks bass, even for a laptop speaker.
01:07The bottom panel opens up easily. You can see the speakers on the side here.
01:11It has upgradable RAM. This unit came with 16 gigs, but I did notice one thing.
01:15There's a sticker on this device that says 8 gigs, or what looks like there should be 8 gigs, but it came with 16,
01:21so I'm not sure if this review unit was a mistake, or if there are some 8 gig configurations available that would be cheaper.
01:27I'm not sure, but this one has 16.
01:29There's one drive bay. The previous version with the 970M had two drive bays, but this time there's only one.
01:36The stock drive they've included is a 256 gig SATA stick, so the speeds are pretty mediocre.
01:41It is easy to upgrade it to an NVMe, though.
01:44The battery is down here. It's a 94 watt-hour battery, which is actually huge for a thin 14-inch laptop.
01:50You'll get around 7 hours of battery life with screen at around 250 nits.
01:54This is with regular use, and if you're playing games, it'll be around 2 hours, which is actually surprisingly long.
01:58Most gaming laptops are significantly less than that.
02:01The backlit keys have a good layout.
02:03So, at first, I found it to be a little springy. I mean, it needs a lot of pressure to get the keys down,
02:08but it has good travel, and once you get used to it, it's a really nice keyboard to type on, and it's great for games.
02:13The macro keys on the side are spaced a little further out, so I never misclick them.
02:17Overall, it's a good keyboard.
02:20The trackpad uses Elan drivers, so the size is good, and the surface texture is really nice.
02:25The button mechanism feels good, too, but the tracking is just not up to par.
02:29It's not very good with precision tracking.
02:31Like, when you move your fingertips really lightly to fine-tune your position, it doesn't detect it properly.
02:36Now, I almost always use a mouse, so this kind of stuff doesn't affect me too much,
02:40but if you're someone who needs a perfect trackpad, this is probably not the machine for you.
02:45The display is a 1440p panel. It's not a touchscreen.
02:48Contrast and viewing angles are great, but even after calibration and playing around with the software,
02:53color accuracy was never perfect.
02:55Overall, the screen is good. I was just hoping for it to be a bit more color accurate.
02:59The webcam looks like this. It's a pretty standard 720p image.
03:02Now, performance on this machine is excellent.
03:05The 6700HQ and the GTX 1060 are excellent for 1080p gaming.
03:10You can easily play some lighter titles at the native 1440p, but I always prefer playing in 1080p.
03:16Light and moderately demanding games will easily break 60 frames per second on ultra graphics at 1080p.
03:22It's only heavier titles that you'll need to drop graphics quality down to maintain 60 frames per second,
03:27but if you want to see more benchmarks of other games for this CPU and GPU combination,
03:31there's a link below in the description.
03:33Thermals are comfortable in the keyboard area.
03:36Fan noise on idle is audible, but it's still pretty quiet.
03:39When it's under load, though, it gets loud. You're going to need headphones.
03:42The performance on this machine is really good, and the heat is managed well.
03:45There's no thermal throttling.
03:47The trade-off, though, is fan noise, but honestly, I'd way rather see this than a quiet system with throttled CPU speeds.
03:53The 150W AC adapter is relatively compact.
03:57It has a USB pass-through for charging up a phone or something,
04:00but on a device with four USB ports, I don't know how necessary this is.
04:04It is a nice touch, though.
04:06So, with the Aero 14, you're getting an aluminum chassis with good build quality and several colors to choose from,
04:12a 1440p screen that's great for games and has decent color accuracy.
04:16The keyboard is really nice to type on and has macro keys.
04:19The trackpad, I'm not a big fan of.
04:21Inside, the Skylake i7 and the GTX 1060 deliver good performance and are very well-cooled,
04:27but fan noise can get loud when it's under load.
04:30The RAM and the SSD are easy to access for upgrades,
04:33and the 94Wh battery is a beast.
04:35It'll last you seven hours of regular use.
04:37So, I really like this machine.
04:39They took a high-performance system, built it into a thin and light chassis,
04:43and they charge a reasonable price for it.
04:45What's not to like about that, right?
04:47The touchpad and the screen color accuracy aren't perfect,
04:50but if those are things that you don't care too much about,
04:52fantastic machine, highly recommend it.
04:55Thumbs if you liked this video, subs if you loved it.
04:57It's been nice. I'll see you guys next time.
05:03Thanks for watching.