Schenker XMG Neo 15 gaming laptop in review - RTX 3080 with 165W TGP ensures high scores

Apart from the plastic base plate, the casing is mostly made of matte black aluminum with a relatively smooth surface texture. The material is very susceptible to fingerprints, but they can be quickly removed with a cloth. The construction gives an extremely stable impression and almost does not yield under pressure and in the torsion test. The workmanship also offers no reason for criticism and thanks to the subtle design, the laptop also fits into a professional environment. The laptop can be opened with one hand, but there is no notch on the front that would make this easier.

With a thickness of 26 mm, the Neo 15 M21 is not one of the thinnest 15-inchers, but the footprint is quite compact. The weight of 2.2 kg (~4.85 lb) is in the midfield.

The highlights of the connectivity include the Thunderbolt 4 port, which cannot be used for charging here, an HDMI 2.1 port and a 2.5 Gb/s LAN port. In contrast to the desktop versions, mobile RTX-3000 GPUs do not necessarily support the latest HDMI standard and the associated HDCP 2.3 encryption. The ports are distributed on three sides. Placing two USB-A ports on the right side is an unusual decision, especially for a gaming laptop, since connected devices would take up space that would otherwise be available for mouse movements. At the same time, this fact may make the Neo 15 more attractive to left-handed users. A relatively unusual advantage is the separate microphone and headphone ports.

The performance of the SD card reader in combination with our reference card AV Pro microSD 128 GB V60 is comparable to that of the Predecessor, almost identical. Since the Aorus 15P YD achieves about twice as high transfer speeds and the Razer Blade 15 pro model achieves a lead of 153% in the JPG copy test, the installed card reader is rather one of the slower models. However, it supports normal-sized SD cards.

Intel's WLAN module AX201 offers WLAN 6 and Bluetooth 5 support. In the WLAN test, it achieves peak values for both reception and transmission in comparison, which are between 30 and 40% higher than the average values of the AX201. Although it is already equipped with the WLAN-6E chip AX210, the successor of the AX201, the Razer Blade 15 pro model cannot keep up here.

The Neo 15 comes with TPM 2.0 and a Kensington Lock as security features.

In addition to the laptop itself and the charger, the scope of delivery includes a manual and a driver CD or a driver USB stick. In the online shop of the manufacturer, for example, replacement batteries and power supplies can be purchased.

The warranty period is 2 years. Once the configuration page has been enabled, it should be possible to extend the warranty up to 3 years with optional quick repair service.

Our test device is the Intel version of the XMG Neo 15, which accordingly comes with an Intel Core i7-11800H. In addition, there are two DDR4 3200 MHz RAM modules with a capacity of up to 64 GB (here: 2x 16 GB), a mobile Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 and a 1 TB NVMe SSD. While the Core-i7-11800H CPU is used in all configurations, we assume that other storage solutions for the two M.2-2280 PCIe slots (1x PCIe 3.0 x4, 1x PCIe 4.0 x4) will be available in the configurator later. Thus, the Schenker XMG Neo 15 is well equipped for demanding scenarios like gaming.

The manufacturer relies on the Intel Core i7-11800H, an 8-core CPU with 16 threads, whose power consumption can be freely set from 10-120 W via the pre-installed Control Center software. Since the Tiger Lake H CPU is manufactured in a 10 nm process, it is faster and more efficient than the processors from Intel's 10th processor generation. In the Cinebench R15 loop test, the CPU goes head-to-head with the AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX, which it can even win in the end with a narrow lead of about 5%. Although there are laptops that achieve slightly better results with the Ryzen 9 5900HX than the Asus ROG Strix G15, this is an impressive result, which shows that the Intel model can definitely stand up to the AMD competition. The XMG Neo 15 also achieves mostly top scores in the application benchmarks.

In battery mode, the CPU performance in the Cinebench R15 multi-thread test is on average about 50% lower than in mains operation.

Our test device and the new Aorus 15P YD, which is equipped with the same Tiger Lake processor, also perform very well in the system performance benchmarks. On the other hand, the Alienware m15 R4 wins the PCMark Productivity Test. In practice, the work speed is very high and programs start almost immediately.

Our model uses the Samsung 980 Pro NVMe SSD as the system drive. This is a very powerful PCIe 4.0 drive that achieves excellent results overall in the test. Apart from the Samsung PM9A1 in the Aorus 15P YD, which also already uses PCIe 4.0, our test device beats all other comparison devices with a mostly clear lead. However, the transfer rates of the two other laptops we tested with the 1 TB version of the 980 Pro are on average about 15% higher.

More information and benchmark comparisons can be found in our Hard disk and SSD table.

The Schenker XMG Neo 15 comes with the mobile Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 with 16 GB of video memory. Its TDP can be set to 120-165 watts via the Control Center software. Alternatively, the Neo 15 can also be configured with an RTX 3060 (130 W) or an RTX 3070 (140 W). The RTX 3080 shows off its enormous performance with numerous top scores in our review unit and only does not take first place in the older Cloud Gate benchmark. The advantage probably partly stems from the directly adjustable TDP of the GPU, but it also shows that the cooling solution is up to the task. The graphics performance is severely limited in battery mode and the manual consumption settings are not available then, either.

Analogous to the synthetic performance, the gaming performance is also extremely high. Nevertheless, the Alienware m15 R4 still manages to outperform our test device on some graphics settings. Overall, the GPU performance is high enough to smoothly render even the latest games in the native WQHD resolution with high or maximum details. The mobile RTX 3080 does not seem to be significantly limited in its performance by the 15-inch format and unfolds its performance in practice without any problems.