AORUS 15-X9-RT4BD Review - Quick Verdict
The AORUS 15-X9-RT4BD is a serious gaming laptop that ticks all the boxes. It comes with an i7 processor, 16 gigs of RAM, an RTX 2070 GPU, and a 512GB solid-state drive. The laptop is great for playing most of the recent games without any problems. If you’re looking for a solid gaming laptop with fewer compromises, then this laptop will fit the bill.
- Slim design with a lot of focus on cooling
- Lots of raw power making this laptop suitable for all kinds of users
- RTX 2070 is perfect for modern gaming
- Might be a little expensive for some
Author's Rating
The AORUS 15-X9-RT4BD is a new gaming laptop on the block that comes with the aim to impress gamers around the globe. We have to say that we’re a bit impressed with the hardware. The ‘All Intel Inside’ idea looks good as they become the first company to do this.
The price tag is pretty hefty, and even with the good hardware, the AORUS 15-X9-RT4BD has to give us really good reasons to prefer them over experienced gaming laptops from ASUS ROG, Acer, and MSI. So how good is this gaming laptop? How well does it perform? Let’s find that out in the full review below.
Design
The AORUS 15-X9-RT4BD comes with a slim metal chassis that is coated in black. We’re used to gaming laptops being heavy and clunky, but this one here changes things a bit. The lid is slimmer to a point you actually feel if this is durable enough.
Heat dissipation is one of the most important things in a gaming laptop, and AORUS has done a good job here. We have vents for letting heat out on the sides and also on the back side as well. At the bottom, you’ll find a big vent that spreads across half the laptop. This vent is also for hot air disposal but also gives us a glimpse of the heating pipes and the fans.
There are two fans, six heat pipes, and nine vents in total.
With dimensions of 14.2 x 9.7 x 1 inches, the laptop weighs about 5.29 pounds. This makes this laptop portable as it weighs a lot lesser than other laptops in the same category. You can slide this inside your backpack and take this one out for a trip without a heavy feeling.
Keyboard and Touchpad
The keyboard we have in the AORUS 15-X9-RT4BD model is a full keyboard that includes a dedicated number pad. The keys are decent and come with enough travel. We have multi-color backlighting on the keyboard which you can customize to your style.
The touchpad here is a Windows precision touchpad. It is smooth to touch and swipe making it a pleasure to use. We’ve seen big companies get the touchpad totally wrong. Fortunately, Gigabyte doesn’t make the same mistake.
AORUS 15-X9-RT4BD Specs
The display on the AORUS 15-X9-RT4BD is one of the most compelling features of this laptop. We have a 15.6″ LED-backlit display that comes with a full HD resolution. What makes this display even better is the refresh rate of 144Hz. Being a gaming laptop, this one comes with a refresh rate that most laptops don’t have. Thus, the laptop offers a more fluid gaming experience.
We also have an IPS panel and not a TN or a VA panel. It is good to see that Gigabyte hasn’t cheaped out on the display. With an IPS panel, you get a lot of good things. One of those is an excellent viewing angle. You get the same picture on the screen from any corner of the room. It is perfect for catching a movie with a group of friends.
One thing that deserves mention is the thin bezel surrounding the display. They have made the bezels smaller but not so small where you’ve to move the webcam to some other place. With this size, the webcam is where it should be. You also get an immersive experience, thanks to the smaller bezels.
As the screen comes with an anti-reflective coating, you won’t see a lot of reflections even in well-lit environments. This is great if you go outdoors a lot or visit places that are too bright.
Raw Power
How powerful is the AORUS 15-X9-RT4BD?
The laptop comes with an Intel Core i7 8750 processor. This is a hexa-core processor with a standard clock speed fo 2.21GHz and can boost up to a maximum of 4.1GHz. On paper, this is one of the best processors you can get on the market right now. The processor scores a whopping 12477 on the CPUMark benchmark tests which is brilliant.
For day to day work, this processor works like a charm. In fact, the processor is made for heavy lifting. Be it video editing, running virtual machines, or any other application that is resource hungry, they all will run fine with this processor.
We do feel that Gigabyte missed the opportunity to place an i9 processor as the heat dissipation in this laptop is insanely good.
In the memory department, we have 16 gigs of DDR4 RAM from Samsung that are fast and efficient. You can multitask your heart out without any restrictions. We do feel that they should’ve gone with 32 gigs, but this is not that bad, to be honest.
Storage and Battery Life
We have an M.2 NVMe PCIe 512GB solid-state drive from Intel and a 2TB hard drive disk for storage. The solid-state drive takes care of the performance. It boots up the operating system in seconds, launches apps in a jiffy, and even does reading and writing files a lot faster. While 512GB is adequate, the 2TB hard drive gives you all the space you’d ever want.
You get Windows 10 pre-installed in the SSD so that you can get a complete Windows experience from the get-go. The AORUS 15-X9-RT4BD is also one of the first laptops to comes with built-in Microsoft Azure AI support.
With the help of machine learning, the user preference data is analyzed to determine the best possible CPU and GPU wattage settings in order to get the most optimal gaming performance.
Like any gaming laptop, the AORUS 15-X9-RT4BD falters when it comes to battery life. You can get around 3 to 4 hours of battery life when playing games. With light usage, you can get more, but it is always better to have a power outlet nearby, especially when gaming.
AORUS 15-X9-RT4BD Gaming Performance
Being a gaming laptop, you would expect this one to top the charts when it comes to gaming. Let’s see how it performs.
The AORUS 15-X9-RT4BD comes with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 graphics card. The GPU has a dedicated video memory of 8GB which is of the GDDR6 type. On paper, this is a solid graphics card, but how good is it when it comes to running games?
The following are some high-end games and their frame rates when ran with high settings.
- Just Cause 4 - 97 FPS
- Darksiders III - 172 FPS
- Battlefield V - 106 FPS
- Call of Duty Black Ops - 135 FPS
- Assasin's Creed Odyssey - 84 FPS
- Forza Horizon 4 - 112 FPS
- Far Cry 5 - 105 FPS
These frame rates should give you a good idea about how good this graphics card when it comes to playing the most recent games. We’re sure that we missed some famous titles. One thing we can say is that this GPU will stay relevant for years to come. That means you have a laptop that is future-proof for gaming.
Connectivity
There is a horde of connectivity options on the AORUS 15-X9-RT4BD. We have an Ethernet port, a USB 3.0 port, a USB type C port, a micro SD card slot, and a security lock port on the left side.
On the right side, we have a couple of USB 3.0 ports. On the back, we find an HDMI port, and also a display port as well.
The laptop comes with support for 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth 4.1 as well. If you’re looking to remove wires from your computer table, these wireless standards will come in handy.
Bottomline
The AORUS 15-X9-RT4BD is a solid gaming laptop. It comes with a lot of power in the form of an Intel Core i7 processor and 16 gigs of Samsung RAM. The RTX 2070 is an excellent graphics card that runs all the recent games without any hiccups. If you’re looking for a gaming laptop that is priced fairly and can stay relevant for a few years to come, then this is a good choice.