Aorus Master 18 gaming laptop review: The RTX 5090 takes its toll

The Aorus Master 18 presents itself as a superlative high-end laptop: Its four case fans alone speak for themselves. No wonder, as the Core Ultra 9 275HX and the GeForce RTX 5090 want or need to be cooled accordingly—but the 18-inch device does get quite loud under load. Four SO-DIMM banks and three M.2 slots (our test device has 2x 32 GB DDR5-5600 RAM and two 2 TB SSDs) aren't bad even for a desktop replacement and attempt to at least halfway justify its exorbitant price of over $5,000.

Its case and input devices appear good to very good, and its connectivity options are particularly plentiful and modern thanks to Thunderbolt 5. Its 16:10-format mini LED panel with a resolution of 2,560 x 1,600 pixels, a 240 Hz refresh rate and Pantone validation cuts a fine figure for the most part, even in SDR mode. The manufacturer could make some improvements, not least when it comes to its idle consumption, tuning of the system profiles and continuous SSD performance. If you don't have a problem with its high price as well as its noise development in 3D mode, then the Aorus Master 18 is an extremely powerful companion for games and other 3D applications.

Please note: You can find our video test of the RTX 5080 version of the Master 18 at the end of the article.

The Aorus Master 18 AM8H is currently available for $5,994.99 from Amazon.

Gigabyte has limited itself to plastic for the 18-inch laptop's sturdy case, which isn't necessarily immediately noticeable. Its build quality is good but not perfect (the A-cover, for example, could be built a little better). Fans of extravagant lighting can look forward to a bright LED strip on the front and an RGB keyboard. The display's maximum opening angle isn't quite as generous: Just under 120° is pretty meagre. On the other hand, the tight hinges hold the lid adequately in position.

With a weight of 3.4 kilograms, the Master 18 is comparable to the 18-inch competitor device from Asus. The Strix Scar 18 that we recently tested, which also contains an RTX 5090, comes in at around 3.3 kilograms. Its dimensions are also similar.

Ports

With regard to its connections, the Gigabyte laptop really comes up trumps. Two Thunderbolt ports (one v4 and one v5) with DisplayPort and Power Delivery functionality leave nothing else to be desired. There are also three classic USB-A ports that work according to the 3.2 Gen2 standard. The package is rounded off by an audio jack, an HDMI 2.1 output and a fully-fledged SD card reader. A 2.5 GBit LAN port handles wired networking.

The installed card reader is of the faster variety and managed around 200 MB/s when reading our reference card sequentially—a respectable result.

A Wi-Fi 7 chip from Intel (model BE200) is responsible for wireless connections and achieved good to very good results during our range test.

The device's 2 MP webcam produces solid images without being terribly impressive. There is still room for improvement in terms of its image sharpness and color accuracy. Gigabyte has spared itself a privacy cover. In return, the manufacturer's software offers various privacy features (see screenshots below).

The laptop comes with a bulky 400-watt power supply unit weighing more than 1 kilogram.

You can loosen the base plate after removing 13 Torx screws (caution: the case base has wires for the lighting on the front). Upgrade options are made possible by an empty M.2 slot and two free RAM banks. A positive: The laptop's cooling system uses vapor-chamber technology.

Some of its packaging uses polypropylene—the manufacturer could do better in this respect.

The device is covered by a standard 12-month warranty in the United States.

With a size of 13.4 x 9 centimeters, the touchpad is more than big enough for an 18-inch device. As expected, its smooth surface ensures good gliding qualities. Its gesture support also works just fine. The click areas along the lower edge seem a little rickety (both acoustically and haptically), but trigger reliably.

Like its 18-inch counterpart from Asus, the Master 18 has a mini LED panel that features a passable, albeit not outstanding, pixel density of 2,560 x 1,600 pixels.

Our test configuration of the Master 18 is in the absolute high-end range. 24 CPU cores, 24 GB VRAM, 64 GB RAM and 4-TB SSD capacity should provide enough reserves for the coming years.

The Core Ultra 9 275HX from the Arrow Lake series is equipped with 8 performance cores and 16 efficiency cores, and can access 90 watts (PL1) and 120 watts (PL2) using the balanced profile. If you consider all CPU benchmarks together, its performance is similar to the old Core i9-14900HX. Very good: In our Cinebench loop, its results remained very stable, which speaks in favor of its cooling system.

The laptop's system performance doesn't yet appear to be fully developed. It's a known problem, for example, that opening programs on laptops with graphics switching leads to short freezes. However, these freezes are above average in length and frequency on the Master 18, which may be due to its graphics driver, as the 18-inch device sometimes struggled with black screens when playing games during our test. The latter seems to occur more frequently with Nvidia's Blackwell generation.