Buy an unlocked Intel 4th gen Core i7 or Core i5 processor and get a free copy of
Rome 2: Total War. Click now to learn more. Welcome to my unboxing of
something a little bit on the different side. Well, I'm not really unboxing it.
It's here in the boxes here. They've already been unified, but anyway. This
is the Aoris X7, which is one of the
most interesting gaming notebooks that I've ever had the pleasure of checking
out. So, let's start with the general specs. It's got a Haswell 4th gen Core
i7 4700HQ. That's a quad core that's
clocked at 2.4 GHz nominal and up to 3.4
GHz with a single core running at maximum boost. It has 16 gigs of RAM and
is configurable with up to 32 gigs of
RAM. So, it has four slots. It has dual
GTX 765M 2 gig graphics cards and a 17.3
in LCD display. So, that's 1080p. It's 8
millisecond response time, LED back lit, all that good stuff. For storage, it has
two 128 gig MSA SSDs running in RAID
zero and a 1 TB 5400 RPM drive. So, that
is a 2 and 12 in standard drive. So, that's up to three storage devices. It
uses wireless 802.11 AC and it has
Killer branded gigabit onboard LAN.
There we go. So, that has their um prioritization engine and all that good
stuff. And then finally, it has a 73.26 WH lithium polymer battery.
Fascinating Linus, you might say. That's an awful lot of specs, but they're not
that amazing. Well, they are a little bit amazing when you consider that they
are crammed into a 22.9 mm thick
chassis. So, that's only marginally thicker than the P34G that I liked so
much. And it's actually quite similar to the GS70 from MSI. It's 2.9 kg, making
it lighter than your standard gaming notebook, but not super light due to the
sheer size of it and the all aluminum
construction. It's got uh okay, well, I guess we'll do like a bit of a port tour
here. So, on the left hand side, it's got the aforementioned gigabit Ethernet,
HDMI, a first HDMI port, VGA, one USB
3.0 port, and headphone and microphone ports. You've also got a speaker grill
here on the lefthand side. On the front, you've got a whole lot of nothing. Then
on the right hand side, you find another speaker grill, an SD card reader, two
more USB 3.0 ports for a total of three,
another HDMI out, and DisplayPort out.
So, that's kind of cool. Moving around to the back, we catch a glimpse of one
ventilation hole. We've got another ventilation hole, two more USB 2.0
ports, power in, and that pretty much
rounds it out. On the top and the bottom, you will, as normal on a
notebook, not find a whole lot of IO. Now, the speakers, they're using Aurora
Aurorus, I don't even know how to pronounce it, Aoris Plus branding. So,
there are two two watt speakers in the front and then there are actually two
woofers on the bottom. It in practice sounds much better than most notebooks,
but of course, here are these speaker ports on the bottom. They're not going
to blow your socks off or eliminate the need for a proper desktop speaker system
by any stretch of the imagination. And in fact, there's one thing that I would
have liked to see changed in the audio implementation, and that's maybe put the
speakers up here instead so that they're somewhat pointed at my ears. I found
that if I had my head like on the same plane as the bottom of the notebook,
that was where the best listening experience could be had. The touchpad is
a little bit unique. So, we can make our way to the inside here. And that is that
it is a glass touch pad. It is completely smooth, which actually would
have bothered me not that long ago. I'm I'm used to it now because of
smartphones and I think I'd still prefer a frosted glass touchpad, but it tracks
well and that's the most important thing and it doesn't actually bother me. It's
a bit of a fingerprint magnet, but not as bad as I necessarily would have
thought. The keyboard is automatically backlit, although you can manually
override it with function space, so you can have off, 50% or 100%. And it is a
chicklet keyboard, which is not necessarily my favorite, but as far as
chicklet keyboards go, it's about as good as it gets. There is absolutely no
flex to the entire keyboard area at all.
Again, due to the metal construction of the notebook. So, in spite of its size,
really, really impressed there. It's also got some other cool features. So, your full complement of keys, including
properly laid out arrow keys, a full number pad, all the function hotkeys
that you could possibly want, and finally da programmable macro keys. So,
there's a color-coded G up at the top here, and you can use the included
utility to program any number of different functionalities to each of the
five keys. And then you have five different profiles for all of the five
keys combined for a total of 25 functions. Not least, but definitely
last is the fact that the keyboard also supports anti- ghosting. So, you're not
going to have any accidental random triggering of random keys, even in a
gaming scenario. Oh, actually, no. The true last thing is that it does have a
Windows key lock, but that's actually done in software as opposed to being
done in hardware, which is a little bit of an unusual thing for me to see. Now,
of course, you go, "Okay, well, it's super slim. It's an SLI gaming notebook,
but come on, Linus. What are the temperatures like?" Honestly, I am
incredibly impressed. At idle, we
weren't able to measure temperatures that were above, you know, like normal
skin temperature. The thing barely felt warm to the touch, only around 22° max.
And it was actually quite quiet. I mean, there my mic is here. The exhaust fan's
right here. It's very, very quiet at idle. Under load, yeah, the fans do
start to ramp up a little bit. You can actually control them manually. you can
set it up to go, okay, well, no, I want 40% fan speed max. And there's a couple
different things you can do in the software, but under load, it did get a little bit um louder, but what it didn't
get was much warmer. Even though this room is only about 18°, so it is a
little bit on the cold side, it is still very impressive to see a dual graphics
card gaming notebook deliver temperatures under
27°, even directly above where the GPU
heat pipes are. or not is partly due, well probably entirely due to their
unique cooling setup on this thing. So there are two fans here and here at the
back. You can actually see the intake grills here. And then rather than having
restrictive exhausts like you would find on most notebooks, there are two full
sets of exhausts for each of the fans. And you can feel the heat really coming
out of them. The fans are very effectively cooling it to the point
where it doesn't get noticeably warm. And this was the hottest spot I could
find up here on the keyboard itself toward especially towards the bottom.
It's just barely warm to the touch. So that's really really impressive and
probably probably the coolest thing about this notebook, so to speak. All
right, so who's the competition for a product like this? I'm going to fire up
Crisis. Actually, maybe I'll give you guys some idea of what it sounds like
under load here. So we'll go ahead and There you go. Can it run Crisis? Yes,
absolutely. that is maxed out crisis at 1080p uh running at about 75 frames per
second in a fairly non-demanding environment. But don't worry, that'll give you a very playable experience. And
that is of course those speakers that are quite loud. Uh there you go. Anyway,
so who's the competition for a gaming notebook like this? The obvious ones are
going to be the Razer Blade Pro and the MSI GS70. Now, the Blade Pro has an
offset touchpad that drove me absolutely crazy. And regardless how of how awesome
the display on it might be, that is a dealbreaker for me. The GS70 is a much
more interesting option to me personally and is actually quite comparable to this
one. It offers similar storage options, fewer memory slots, however, only two
memory slots, but it is in a slightly slimmer form factor. The big difference
between the Aoris and the GS70 is on the
GPU side. This guy contains two GTX 765
2 gig graphics cards whereas the GS70 contains only one. So I would go as far
as to say based on the ID of this overall, that is to say the industrial
design and the performance. I haven't seen pricing yet though. So guys, you
can check out the link and once this thing is actually available somewhere that'll be live. I would say if you're
looking for the ultimate thin and relatively light gaming or workstation
notebook for maximum bragging rights, this actually might just be it. Thank
you for checking out this unboxing and overview of the Aoris X7. Like the video
if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it. Leave a comment and let us
know how you feel about thin and light gaming notebooks versus regular gaming
notebooks, which tend to be very uh brick-like in their overall form factor.
In fact, I have one here that I can just grab and hold up for comparison. I mean,
here's a more a more classic gaming notebook side by side with the Aoris X7.
Do you would you consider a gaming notebook if they were all slim like
this? Would love to know your thoughts. And as always guys, don't forget to
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