Aorus 16X ASG Laptop Review (2024)

Gigabyte has designed the Aorus 16X ASG to be a premium-but-affordable gaming laptop that will also suit creators with its generative-Ai chops. It exhibits some interesting design flourishes and technology choices, so how far up your shopping list should this 16-inch beast be?

Aorus 16X ASG Specs

Features, Ergonomics and Design

The good news is that the black-based Aorus 16X looks how a quality gaming laptop should look. While the glossy geometric stripes and encouraging slogans (Team Up Fight On(!)) won’t be for everyone, they’re subtle and understated and are secondary to the iridescent Aorus monikers and lid logos plus the RGB keyboard and the logo that’s literally projected onto the desk behind the laptop.

If you turn all the lighting off, it could almost hide in a stuffy office, although you’ll struggle to explain the translucent QWERASD keys.

Opening it up reveals the 16-inch, 165Hz, high-resolution, 2,560 x 1,600, IPS display with its matte finish to banish distracting reflections. The Windows Desktop is crisp and clear and colours are generally vibrant, making multimedia look good. They’re a step behind the quality afforded by OLED and mini-LED screens, though.

Dolby Vision and Windows HDR are present and this keeps both colourful and monochromatic gradients smooth and the contrast impressive, even if the true blacks and light blooms on superior screens can’t be replicated. The latter facet isn’t helped by the screen not being the brightest, but I’m nit-picking.

The 165Hz refresh rate combines with a fast pixel-response time to keep fast-moving objects impressively blur free. There are faster gaming laptop screens on the market, but only competitive FPS players will gripe. G-Sync is also present to prevent image tearing.

Above the screen is a Full HD webcam which does well at fending off grain in low light. The microphone array can capture adequate audio, but it’s not quite at the level that I’ve seen with some rivals. It also supports Windows Hello login.

The touch-type keyboard is accurate and comfortable to use for extended sessions of gaming and typing. There are full-sized arrow keys but, despite the width, no number pad which might disappoint the likes of RTS and MOBA gamers.

The trackpad is large smooth and accurate and has good, soft, clicky actuations.

Meanwhile, the quad-speaker array gets loud and provides impressively punchy bass. That said, fidelity isn’t perfect. There’s good performance at both the top and bottom end but it’s a little too hollow in the mid-range to call it a perfect, well-rounded sound.

Nonetheless, the flaws are all very minor and the Aorus 16X ASG is very good to interact with.

Connectivity

The 17X packs in the ports…

Inside there’s Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. That’s an impressive collection of the latest and greatest connectivity ports.

Features, Ergonomics and Design Score: 3.5 / 5

Performance

Inside Aorus’ 16X ASG is a 1.6 – 5.8GHz Intel Core i9-14900HX processor with 8 Performance cores and 16 Efficiency cores which operate across 32 threads. It’s worth noting that this is a ‘Raptor Lake’ processor which has higher power consumption for raw speed (the GPU can draw a maximum 140-Watts) instead of an NPU for Ai.

Aorus nonetheless says that the 16X is an Ai-optimised PC but it bases that on the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 GPU’s Ai-processing prowess and, for a change, this isn’t just an idle claim. The 16X comes with a Stable Diffusion app for Ai image generation and it works better than many premium alternatives on the market.

The CPU and GPU are backed up by 32GB of quick, DDR5-5600 RAM and two 1TB NVMe hard drives, so I was hoping for high performance.

In the general-computing PCMark 10 benchmark, which tests all aspects of a laptop, the 16X scored a very quick 8,581. (Score: 4.3 / 5)

In the Cinebench CPU rendering benchmarks, it managed 4,549 in the rapid R15 test and 26,326 in the longer R23 test which is also very quick. (Score: 4.1 / 5)

In the difficult, 3DMark, ray-tracing game benchmarks, the Aorus 16x ASG scored 3,022 (average 30.2fps) in Speed Way and 7,758 (35.9fps) in Port Royal. Consequently, it should be able to play the latest and greatest games but you’ll likely need to drop the resolution and detail settings to keep things smooth.

In the Time Spy and Fire Strike Extreme tests, which ape AAA, mainstream gaming titles, the 16X managed 13,370 (average 78.2fps) and 13,949 (average 64.6fps) which shows it can play such games with minimal fuss.

In the easier, 3DMark Night Raid test, the Aorus scored 72,258 which is an average framerate of 632fps – so there will be no issues with playing casual and competitive games, smoothly.

I also ran our UL Procyon benchmarks. We’re in early days with these but I’ll come back and analyse the scores at a later date:

Procyon Microsoft Office Test: 7,549
Procyon Adobe Photoshop Test: 6,777
Procyon Adobe Premier Test: 26,287

Cooling comes via Gigabyte’s Windforce Infinity technologies which include twin, high-powered 12V fans and ‘3D VortX’ air channeling that passes through the keyboard. There’s also unspecified ‘Icy Touch’ technology to keep the keyboard and palm wrest from getting too warm.

I found the Aorus 16X made a mild whoosh most of the time, while switching it into Turbo mode transformed this into a significant, loud whoosh. In Gaming Mode the fan ramped up and down according to the complexity on screen. Despite being a little noisier than some rivals, it always stayed impressively cool, even when under sustained load. Indeed, in our 30-minute Cinebench stability test, the 16X actually scored higher than in the 10-minute test, illustrating that there’s no thermal throttling present.

In Silent mode, the 16X gets very quiet with just a very minor whoosh appearing when it’s under load.

3D Performance Score: 3.5 / 5

Portability and Battery Life

The Aorus 16X weighs 2.34KG which is acceptable for a stacked, 16-inch gaming laptop. The power supply and cables add another 709g, mind.

The max-sized battery ran our PCMark 10 Modern Office Battery benchmark for an impressive 9 hours which is a full day out of the office.

Build quality is generally good and it should survive life on the road. However, it’s worth noting that the hinge is a little wobbly and the screen does flex more than I’d like when a twisting force is applied. Portability and Battery Life Score: 2.3 / 5

Price and Value

Aorus’ 16X ASG costs $2,999 which makes it very good value. If you’re quick, you can buy it for $2,879 which puts it within a whisker of being our Number 1 Best Laptop.

You can buy other variants with lesser Core i7-14650HX processors for less. There’s also a 16X AKG variant, which has an Nvidia RTX 4060 GPU, that can also save you some money.

All in all, though, while it’s not cheap, the 16X is a very good value gaming laptop and many rivals are far more expensive.

Price: 2.7 / 5

Value: 4.3 / 5

Overall

The Aorus 16X ASG has really got it where it counts. There are more luxurious models on the market, but you can pay through the nose for those and still get similar (or worse) performance and features. The 16X looks good, is good to interact with, is reasonably portable, has excellent connectivity and this lack of weak points means it will be our Number 2 Best Laptop when we update our group test results. It’s a great buy.

Overall: 4.9 / 5

Last Updated on July 30, 2024 by Nick Ross