Gigabyte Aero 14

[Ireheart]

Looks like overclockers will be stocking the new model which has the updated 7th Gen processor, if they keep updating Aero like this it's a sure investment in-terms of quality for them to keep making revisions. Just wish they would make the screen g-sync and make the ssd 1tb

 

[Atom80]

@Atom80 : dad my Aero 14 for a couple of hours now... poking into bits of it.

On another note Atom, I'm going to downgrade to Windows 7 - I'm under the impression I need the Windows 10 Pro product key to do so when I have to phone MS support. Cannot find any sign of a product key on the machine or in the packaging. Can you advise as to where I might find it ?

TIA

Hi caballist, sorry, missed this post - have you sorted out what you needed or do we need to support you with an answer?

Regards,

Gigabyte UK NB Team

 

[Atom80]

Looks like overclockers will be stocking the new model which has the updated 7th Gen processor, if they keep updating Aero like this it's a sure investment in-terms of quality for them to keep making revisions. Just wish they would make the screen g-sync and make the ssd 1tb

Hi Ireheart,

For sure this product is here to stay and will continue to evolve and develop over the months ahead. We are looking into different specs and maybe increasing the SSD size, and have "requested" looking into G-sync.

Thanks for you feedback,

Regards,

Gigabyte UK NB Team

 

[Atom80]

What's the reason for no 2nd m2 slot?

Hi Tanker,

From memory of training received in November, we believe we had to forfeit one of the M.2 bays because the new gen GPU and CPUs required a re-engineering of the cooling system and therefore took up space. (confirmed this with HQ, so not relying on sketchy memory re-call!)

We are looking into increasing the SSD size although for most 512GB is sufficient for this type of machine. Always nice to have options though.

Regards,

Gigabyte UK NB Team.

 

[terley]

I've got the 970m version. Incredible laptop, amazing build quality and lightning fast.. Slightly miffed they brought out the 1060 version so quickly after.. but honestly its not like i want to game on my laptop anyway.. I have a pretty solid gaming rig for that.

Also, OCUK didnt give me any haribo with mine

 

[Atom80]

I've got the 970m version. Incredible laptop, amazing build quality and lightning fast.. Slightly miffed they brought out the 1060 version so quickly after.. but honestly its not like i want to game on my laptop anyway.. I have a pretty solid gaming rig for that.

Also, OCUK didnt give me any haribo with mine

Hi terley,

Thanks for your feedback..... the GTX970 version was our first version and we got this to market only a short time before 10 series launched, so we knew there was some risk, however the product sold through well even when 10 series was out there.

Glad you are enjoying the AERO experience and feel the quality and speed.

We will feedback to OcUK about the lack of HARIBO ! What was your order number when you purchased the AERO unit?

Regards,

Gigabyte UK NB Team

 

[Ireheart]

Hi Ireheart,

For sure this product is here to stay and will continue to evolve and develop over the months ahead. We are looking into different specs and maybe increasing the SSD size, and have "requested" looking into G-sync.

Thanks for you feedback,

Regards,

Gigabyte UK NB Team

Great news, i will keep my eye open for such a model, 1TB SSD is a huge selling point, especially to match razers more expensive version of the blade

 

[RocketBoots]

Hi Guys, I'm seriously considering the Aero 14 (Kaby Lake) but I've yet to find any detailed reviews for it. I'd like to hear what owners have to say about it.

Crucially I have 3 questions.

1) What is the contrast ratio of the screen? The one review I have seen mentions brightness and sharpness are very good, but darker colours merge together. It does not go into specific detail about how bad this is. I'll be using it for illustration work, so it's important that what looks like a solid block of colour is just that, and not a bunch of dark tones which become visible on a better display such as an iMac.

2) What is the typical battery life for a light workload - writing, browsing the web, and streaming a podcast or two? The only review I've seen mentions under 6 hours, which isn't terrible, but is significantly shorter than the advertised 9 - 10 hours.

3) How loud do the fans get when working? My typical workload consists of half a dozen tabs in Edge open for references images and Gmail, Skype, Photoshop, and Illustrator. I doubt anyone will have exactly this use case, but if you think you have one that would be similarly demanding I'd like to hear what the fans are like. I work in a fairly quiet office and don't want to distract my co-workers. My previous laptop was a 2008 MacBook Pro which sounded like a little hairdryer when under load.

Cheers!

 

[Atom80]

Hi Guys, I'm seriously considering the Aero 14 (Kaby Lake) but I've yet to find any detailed reviews for it. I'd like to hear what owners have to say about it.

Crucially I have 3 questions.

1) What is the contrast ratio of the screen? The one review I have seen mentions brightness and sharpness are very good, but darker colours merge together. It does not go into specific detail about how bad this is. I'll be using it for illustration work, so it's important that what looks like a solid block of colour is just that, and not a bunch of dark tones which become visible on a better display such as an iMac.

2) What is the typical battery life for a light workload - writing, browsing the web, and streaming a podcast or two? The only review I've seen mentions under 6 hours, which isn't terrible, but is significantly shorter than the advertised 9 - 10 hours.

3) How loud do the fans get when working? My typical workload consists of half a dozen tabs in Edge open for references images and Gmail, Skype, Photoshop, and Illustrator. I doubt anyone will have exactly this use case, but if you think you have one that would be similarly demanding I'd like to hear what the fans are like. I work in a fairly quiet office and don't want to distract my co-workers. My previous laptop was a 2008 MacBook Pro which sounded like a little hairdryer when under load.

Cheers!

Good morning RocketBoots!

There will be a full review conducted by HEXUS that we expect to be published this week, once its live we will advise....

Thanks for your interest,

Regards,

Gigabyte UK NB Team

 

[Atom80]

Hi Guys, I'm seriously considering the Aero 14 (Kaby Lake) but I've yet to find any detailed reviews for it. I'd like to hear what owners have to say about it.

Hi RocketBoots,,,,

Review for AERO 14 with kabylake cpu is now live on HEXUS site....where it collected a "RECOMMENDED AWARD"



Hope reading through that helps with your purchasing decision.

If you have any further questions please let us know.

Regards,

Gigabyte UK NB Team

 

[MiSJAH]

Oooops, wrong thread. (This is NOT the AORUS owners thread!)

 

[RocketBoots]

Hi Guys, I'm seriously considering the Aero 14 (Kaby Lake) but I've yet to find any detailed reviews for it. I'd like to hear what owners have to say about it.

Hi RocketBoots,,,,

Review for AERO 14 with kabylake cpu is now live on HEXUS site....where it collected a "RECOMMENDED AWARD"



Hope reading through that helps with your purchasing decision.

If you have any further questions please let us know.

Regards,

Gigabyte UK NB Team

Hi Atom, thanks! After reading the review it seems I'll need to rule out the Aero 14. Unfortunately while the display is bright and has a high resolution, it suffers from very poor colour accuracy, and a low contrast ratio of 560:1 - not ideal for a product costing £1800 in my opinion.

Dell are offering me the New XPS 15 for £300 less, with almost identical specs aside from the GFX Card (which makes no difference to my day to day work), and a 1080p display, which may be lower resolution but has a better 1200:1 contrast ratio and apparently matches the Aero 14's display in all other regards. That's a very long winded way of saying cheaper devices have better displays, and resolution isn't everything

Do you know if other display options will be available?

Thanks again!

 

[RocketBoots]

Oops, posted twice by mistake.

 

[Atom80]

Hi RocketBoots,

The review content has been feedback to our product management team who are conducting tests as we don't feel they are in line with our expectations, the review sample has also been shipped back to HQ for verification and further testing. Panels are not 100% consistent and can vary (within quality tolerances of course) from one machine to the next.

We have had very positive feedback on the screen clarity and colour accuracy on previous generations, and the screen is the same, so a bit of a mystery - but we will look into it.

There are a lot of variants with screen and its an area that is very difficult to get "perfect" for all user scenarios. Glossy screens can help colour intensity, but then this isn't going to give the best experience for gaming and viewing angles in general, so compromises come into play, ie the matte finish (or a glossy finish for that matter) on these screens can affect the colour reproduction accuracy. We value end user feedback, and media input and these comments are taken on board and form future product strategy and specifications.

Thanks for your interest anyway,

Gigabyte UK NB Team

 

[terley]

Hi Atom, thanks! After reading the review it seems I'll need to rule out the Aero 14. Unfortunately while the display is bright and has a high resolution, it suffers from very poor colour accuracy, and a low contrast ratio of 560:1 - not ideal for a product costing £1800 in my opinion.

Dell are offering me the New XPS 15 for £300 less, with almost identical specs aside from the GFX Card (which makes no difference to my day to day work), and a 1080p display, which may be lower resolution but has a better 1200:1 contrast ratio and apparently matches the Aero 14's display in all other regards. That's a very long winded way of saying cheaper devices have better displays, and resolution isn't everything

Do you know if other display options will be available?

Thanks again!

Gotta be honest though, the battery life on my Aero 14 vs my friends XPS 15 is just a huge delta, still love my Aero 14.. just annoyed that if i waited a month or two i would've got a 1060 with it -_-

 

[RocketBoots]

Atom - I'm keen to find out if this review isn't representative since the Aero 14 meets my requirements in all other regards. Tech Radar also has a review up - it does mention the screen, but it doesn't go into as much detail as Hexus.

Terley - such is technology! I've been without a laptop for a long time, so I'd originally saved up for a new MacBook but Apple have lost the plot with it design wise, not to mention the price. As for the XPS, it seems the screens on the new ones have an issue with ghosting even when watching video (I thought that was a thing of the past). So my search continues..

 

[Atom80]

Atom - I'm keen to find out if this review isn't representative since the Aero 14 meets my requirements in all other regards. Tech Radar also has a review up - it does mention the screen, but it doesn't go into as much detail as Hexus.

Terley - such is technology! I've been without a laptop for a long time, so I'd originally saved up for a new MacBook but Apple have lost the plot with it design wise, not to mention the price. As for the XPS, it seems the screens on the new ones have an issue with ghosting even when watching video (I thought that was a thing of the past). So my search continues..

Gotta be honest though, the battery life on my Aero 14 vs my friends XPS 15 is just a huge delta, still love my Aero 14.. just annoyed that if i waited a month or two i would've got a 1060 with it -_-

Hi RocketBoots,

Maybe Terley can give you some feedback on the screen and also there are other owners on the forum who have purchased for professional purposes, rather than straight Gaming, so maybe they can advise, share their experiences..

Regards,

Gigabyte UK NB Team

 

[terley]

Screen
The screen is excellent, bright and ultra sharp, very little to no glare with the matte display, viewing angles are fantastic and the 1440p display even being on a 14" is very useful for productivity. Colour accuracy for me has proven solid, as it has for my brother who is a professional animator.

Battery
One word, Perfect. It lasts an entire day of use with internet/word processing/programming and photo editing.. At times i have tested with all power settings on eco and brightness turned right down i've had over 15 hours out of the thing.. no idea how the battery is so good on such a small device.

Portability
I have a simple backpack i put mine in for university (computer science student), its very light and i hardly notice the additional 1.8kg, as the battery is so good, i very rarely need to take the charger with me.

Build quality
Even after using the device for the last few months i am blown away by the build quality, there was initially a report of screen wobble.. this is fallacious as the screen has remained solid for me. The aluminium body is smooth and lovely to the touch, the product feels ultra premium.

Speed
I used the laptop as a desktop replacement for roughly 5 months until i built my current gtx 1080 i7 6700k build, it didnt falter at any point, kept up with all of my normal activities i would do on my desktop. Only gripe is window scaling due is default set to 175% due to the 14" display, if plugged in to a monitor is can cause some annoying scaling issues without a restart.. This isnt the fault of gigabyte, but rather windows.

Gaming
The i7 6700hq and GTX 970m can handle almost all modern games at decent settings. I only had to turn down settings on some games, but in general it was a solid gaming device that performs better than any ps4/xbox one.. here is a quick video i recorded playing overwatch maxed out at 1080p, apologies for recording with vsync, but it does hover around 90-110fps with vsync off as you can see the temp is also acceptable:

Another slight gripe is the laptop can become a bit noisy, and when not under full load it can have a bit of an inconsistent fan curve that sounds a bit like revving up then down repeated. I decided to pick up a laptop stand for gaming just to reduce the temperatures a bit more to reduce noise that can get a bit loud (not horrible) when gaming, but it is expected when receiving such power from a thin and light device.


Keyboard
Once you have gotten used to the keyboard, you will love it.. the only trade off is no num-pad, a bit annoying for programming but in general it is a great experience, i prefer typing reports/essays/minutes from meetings etc on aero keyboard compared to most others i've used in past. The macro keys along the right hand side have proved pretty useless for me but its mainly because i never use macro keys.. ever.

Also the trackpad is amazing..

 

[Atom80]

Screen
The screen is excellent, bright and ultra sharp, very little to no glare with the matte display, viewing angles are fantastic and the 1440p display even being on a 14" is very useful for productivity. Colour accuracy for me has proven solid, as it has for my brother who is a professional animator.

Battery
One word, Perfect. It lasts an entire day of use with internet/word processing/programming and photo editing.. At times i have tested with all power settings on eco and brightness turned right down i've had over 15 hours out of the thing.. no idea how the battery is so good on such a small device.

Portability
I have a simple backpack i put mine in for university (computer science student), its very light and i hardly notice the additional 1.8kg, as the battery is so good, i very rarely need to take the charger with me.

Build quality
Even after using the device for the last few months i am blown away by the build quality, there was initially a report of screen wobble.. this is fallacious as the screen has remained solid for me. The aluminium body is smooth and lovely to the touch, the product feels ultra premium.

Speed
I used the laptop as a desktop replacement for roughly 5 months until i built my current gtx 1080 i7 6700k build, it didnt falter at any point, kept up with all of my normal activities i would do on my desktop. Only gripe is window scaling due is default set to 175% due to the 14" display, if plugged in to a monitor is can cause some annoying scaling issues without a restart.. This isnt the fault of gigabyte, but rather windows.

Gaming
The i7 6700hq and GTX 970m can handle almost all modern games at decent settings. I only had to turn down settings on some games, but in general it was a solid gaming device that performs better than any ps4/xbox one.. here is a quick video i recorded playing overwatch maxed out at 1080p, apologies for recording with vsync, but it does hover around 90-110fps with vsync off as you can see the temp is also acceptable:

Another slight gripe is the laptop can become a bit noisy, and when not under full load it can have a bit of an inconsistent fan curve that sounds a bit like revving up then down repeated. I decided to pick up a laptop stand for gaming just to reduce the temperatures a bit more to reduce noise that can get a bit loud (not horrible) when gaming, but it is expected when receiving such power from a thin and light device.


Keyboard
Once you have gotten used to the keyboard, you will love it.. the only trade off is no num-pad, a bit annoying for programming but in general it is a great experience, i prefer typing reports/essays/minutes from meetings etc on aero keyboard compared to most others i've used in past. The macro keys along the right hand side have proved pretty useless for me but its mainly because i never use macro keys.. ever.

Also the trackpad is amazing..

Hi Terley - really appreciate you posting this feedback, good for all to see.

Thanks Again,

Gigabyte UK NB Team

 

[bluebird]

Just about to order this but 2 concerns if anyone can comment:

1. Has anyone calibrated this screen to see if the colour accuracy can be improved? This will be used for photoshop and images.
2. Is the M.2 easily accessible in order to replace it with a 1Tb unit?

Do wish it had a fingerprint reader as this is used by me as an everyday security device

Thanks,

Mike