Hands-on with Gigabyte Aero 14: An ultrabook for gamers

Gigabyte took the wraps off a new ultra-slim gaming laptop at Computex this year. The Aero 14 is at most 19.9 mm thick and weighs under 2 kg. It's powered by a 6th. gen Intel Core i7 Skylake processor, up to 32 GB of DDR4 RAM, and either a GeForce GTX 970M or 965M GPU. The 14-inch QHD IPS display can be extended out to two 4K monitors with HDMI 2.0 and mini DisplayPort with a 60 Hz refresh rate. You can get two PCIe 3.0 SSDs in there for storage, plus Gigabyte claims up to 10 hours of usage out of the 92.24 Wh battery.

There's a refreshing lack of red LEDs at play here. Color options vary from vibrant to subdued, while a carbon fiber accent gives it just enough rakish modernity. So much of the gaming laptop space has been dominated by impractically huge products, so it's nice to see another manufacturer hopping in and following the lead of Razer in the slim gaming PC space. Obviously there's going to be a tradeoff with portability and horsepower, minimizing that tradeoff is a great dream to chase.

Pricing and availability hasn't been announced yet. Is the the Gigabyte Aero 14 for you? Let us know in the comments!

Simon Sage