Schenker XMG Neo 17 M22 in review: High performance gaming laptop with a mechanical Cherry MX keyboard

The Schenker XMG Neo 17 is a 17-inch gaming laptop with a low weight that falls significantly below 3 kg (~6.61 lbs). Despite this, Schenker uses high-quality materials resulting in a good rigidity of both the base unit and the lid.

Below the hood there is a brand-new Ryzen 9 6900HX with a power budget of up to 80 watts. The modern octa-core processor is well suited to all multi-thread workloads. However, Intel has the upper hand over AMD with the Core i9-12900HX SoC consistently performing better. Nonetheless, the Schenker XMG Neo 17 performs well in our review overall, which can at least partially be attributed to the good cooling solution. The large heatpipe construction is effective enough to allow the system to maintain its full performance potential even while under a continuous load. Additionally, the XMG Neo 17 can optionally connected to the XMG Oasis. The external watercooler further reduces the core temperatures as well as the noise level, which was almost a non-issue in our testing, anyway. The Neo 17 uses the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti laptop GPU with the maximum performance potential thanks to a TGP of up to 175 watts as its graphics solution. All current titles run without any issues. Furthermore, users can rest easy, knowing they have 16 GB of VRAM, which should be future proof for at least a little while longer.

The display comes in the user-friendly 16:10 form factor and shines with low color deviations. On top of that, our measurements from the installed panel match the manufacturer's claims regarding the brightness and color space coverage.

Overall, we are impressed with Schenker's offering, which received a "very good" score in our review. There are some small drawbacks, however. Although the integrated keyboard is the first of its kind to feature mechanical Cherry MX switches in an XMG Neo 17, the manufacturer does not use mechanical switches for all keys. We took note of this issue in our review, while acknowledging that it partially stems from technical reasons. The biggest disadvantage may be the missing Thunderbolt 4 port. More details can be found in our in-depth review of the Schenker XMG Neo 17 M22.