Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED XC laptop review: 4K OLED and the corresponding performance

The Aero's case is visually very appealing. The subtle, relatively slim aluminum chassis is only decorated with the Aero logo and some glossy black stripes. Together with the sturdy case, this creates a thoroughly high-quality impression. The build quality is good, and there are no uneven gaps; only the webcam cover under the screen looks a bit cheap.

The lid has a recessed section, allowing it to be opened with one hand without any problems, which proved to be very useful in practice. Compared to the predecessor, there were no changes in the Aero 15 XC in this regard.

Compared to the competition, the Aero 15 OLED XC is quite compact. In addition to the small footprint, it's also one of the slimmest laptops. Only the ThinkPad X1 Extreme and the HP Envy 15 are even thinner and also a good bit lighter at only 1.7 kg and 2 kg, respectively.

The ports are distributed across the left and right sides of the laptop with sufficient spacing between them. The Thunderbolt 3 port, which you have to do without in many of the currently popular AMD-based models, is a particularly positive feature. In addition to the integrated DisplayPort in the Thunderbolt 3 port, you also get a separate Mini DisplayPort, so that theoretically, up to three external displays (2x DisplayPort, 1x HDMI) can be connected.

The Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED XC has a built-in card reader that can accommodate regular-sized SD cards. In a class comparison, it achieves very good transfer rates with our UHS II reference memory card, the 64 GB Toshiba Exceria Pro SDXC. However, the card reader of last year's Aero 15 OLED XB was still a bit faster in this respect.

The wireless features Bluetooth 5.1 and WLAN 6 are provided by Intel's AX200 WLAN module. While the transmission rates meet our expectations for sending data, the Asus Zephyrus Duo 15 SE, for example, achieves an approximately 25% higher rate for receiving data with the same WLAN module.

The Aero 15 is equipped with a fingerprint scanner that is integrated into the touchpad and supports firmware-based TPM via Intel PTT.

In addition to the device itself and the power adapter, a fabric sleeve, and a thermal pad for an M.2 SSD are included.

Opening the case requires unscrewing 12 hex cap screws, two of which are covered with stickers. This procedure is outdated, unnecessarily complicates the maintenance process, and possibly unsettles users who want to replace simple things like the SSD or RAM.

Gigabyte offers users a warranty period of two years. Warranty extension options require online registration of the respective product.

The built-in glossy AMOLED panel has a resolution of 3840x2160 pixels (4K) and features a Pantone X Rite certification. The numerous rich colors of Gigabyte's cleverly chosen background image come into their own as a result and quickly show that the display of content on the 15.6-inch screen is the main focus here. Therefore, no other display options are available within the series.

The display is optimally equipped for media playback. The OLED display also has an HDR400 certification, which acknowledges its higher-quality reproduction of image areas with different brightness levels. Unfortunately, PWM is used for brightness control (as is common with OLED displays), which can be a problem for users who are sensitive to this. That being said, this is an excellent panel with a brightness distribution of 95% and a brightness level that is around 450 cd/m² according to our independent measurements. The OLED display doesn't suffer from screen bleeding due to the underlying technology.

The Aero 15 OLED XC is equipped with an Intel Core i7-10870H, a laptop version of the GeForce RTX 3070, and an NVMe SSD. This is accompanied by 32 GB of DDR4-3200 RAM in dual-channel mode. As a result, it offers enough performance for common office tasks, multimedia applications, and a little more, so that there are plenty of resources for video and image-editing on the go. The two sibling models, the Aero 15 OLED YC and KC, respectively, only differ in terms of the graphics card: The former is equipped with a 105-watt laptop GeForce RTX 3080 and the latter with a 105-watt laptop GeForce RTX 3060.

However, for many application scenarios, the model that we have with us as well as the smaller KC model already offer enough graphics performance like we will see below.

The processor used here is the Core i7-10870H, an octa-core CPU from Intel's Comet Lake generation. If you look closely, you'll notice that the predecessor was actually equipped with the faster Core i7-10875H. The reason for using the weaker CPU, which only loses 100 MHz of base clock speed, is the significantly better efficiency in production. Although little changes for end users (the performance differences are usually within 5-8%), the differences in the production of the processors are quite substantial.

You don't have to worry about the processor's performance in either case, since it's at a very high level. However, the benchmarks also suggest that AMD's Ryzen 5000 CPUs are currently ahead in terms of raw performance and especially in multi-thread scenarios. Compared with other laptops that are equipped with the same CPU or with the Core i7-10875H, our review sample lags behind its rivals by a maximum of 7% in the Cinebench benchmarks depending on the case.

Based on our Cinebench R15 test, performance is limited by approximately 30% on battery power.

In the PCMark benchmarks, the result varies depending on the load scenario. While the PCMark 10 overall score is sufficient for a place just below the top spot, the Aero 15 OLED XC ends up in last place in the Essentials test, for example. The large differences between the results can possibly be explained by an aggressive energy management. Subjectively, the laptop's speed doesn't give any reason for criticism, since all actions are executed at lightning speed.

In the drive tests, the Aero 15 OLED tends to perform slightly worse than the competition. Overall, however, only the ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 is considerably faster with its PM981 RAID configuration; in addition, the access times are pleasingly low here. The storage solution of the HP Envy 15 consistently achieves lower rates than the remaining comparison devices.

More information and benchmark comparisons can be found in our HDD/SSD Benchmarks article.

Gaming performance is excellent thanks to the GeForce RTX 3070 laptop GPU. As you can see from the frame rates, most modern games are also playable in the full 4K resolution. For a multimedia laptop, the graphics performance is already way above average. Therefore, a great gaming experience in games that don't require a high display refresh rate is a nice bonus.

Although frame rates drop slightly over time and aren't quite as consistent as with some competitors in our test with The Witcher 3, during which the character isn't moved for the entire period, we don't notice any major frame drops or fluctuations.