We may have been too generous with the looks of our work laptops. A thick and heavy laptop geared toward a large, high-color gamut display and a powerful cooling solution could have been accepted as a matter of course. You can’t help it. It’s for work.
If you don’t like that, you can pick up a pretty laptop. A nice laptop for moderate work. But it’s ‘moderately’ anyway. It’s not good enough for a professional work laptop. So what about a pretty professional work laptop? A lightweight professional work laptop? Gigabyte Aero 16 can be a clear answer to that question.
A day with Gigabyte Aero 16
The laptop to be introduced this time is the GIGABYTE AERO 16 BSF OLED i9 (GIGABYTE Aero 16 BSF OLED i9, Aero 16 BSF OLED i9). It’s been a while since I’ve seen Aero, and I’m quite happy with it. Unlike AORUS, a man’s gaming laptop, Aero has its own design philosophy and is completely different. In general, it resembles the design of an ultra-light laptop and has a sophisticated and delicate appearance.
Also, when a new product is launched, the range of change is wide. For example, the AERO 16 XE5 OLED eliminates the USB Type-A terminal and has only three Type-C terminals and provides a genuine hub. It’s a radical change.
Seeing how nice the laptop looks, I suddenly wanted to take it home. let’s go to my house So I went home with the Aero 16 BSF i9. I took the laptop without the adapter, but it didn’t feel particularly heavy. As will be explained later, the measured weight was less than the official weight. This is worth carrying around.
The next morning I left the house with the Aero 16 BSF i9. When I turn on my laptop outdoors early in the morning, I can see the screen well. The panel is a 4K OLED HDR panel, and it is very bright with a maximum of 600 nits.
I went into the cafe. Features of this Aero 16 BSF i9. The design came out quite well. It seems more appropriate to describe it as beautiful rather than cute. At least when I go into a cafe and work, I don’t have anything to be ashamed of or do. It’s a professional laptop, but it doesn’t feel like a familiar work laptop at all.
I took it to the observatory and tried it. He spent time leisurely watching videos and listening to music. To put it simply, I didn’t really work and just played with it. He was also great for playing with. The display bezel is thin, so immersion is good.
I mentioned earlier that it is a 4K OLED HDR panel, but the color gamut is also very high. DCI-P3 100%. With 4K UHD resolution, maximum brightness of 600 nits, and DCI-P3 100% color gamut, there is nothing to point out for watching videos. Laptops with conditions such as FHD resolution, maximum brightness of 250 nits, and color gamut of 62.5%, which are often seen, have many regrets about dark and watery colors, but the Aero 16 BSF i9 implements realistic colors without that.
It is not for gaming, but the refresh rate is 60Hz, but the response speed is 0.2ms, so it has been certified that there is no afterimage and no light blur, so the sharpness is high. Screen uniformity is also over 95%, and DeltaE<1 (if it is less than 1, the color displayed on the screen is similar to the actual color), X-Rite Pantone color correction has been performed. The display is close to perfect. The bezel is thin and there is no area where even the corners are not visible. After returning to the office, connecting the adapter and activating HDR (VESA DisplayHDR600), it was confirmed that the color expression was further improved.
The sound is composed of stereo speakers 2W x 2 and supports DTS:X ultra sound field effect. If you apply a sound field effect while watching a video, the sound is adjusted to make it easier to hear.
The keyboard is backlit, and it is light and clear when typing. The right shift size is a bit small, but I had no problem getting used to it. The touchpad is very large and comfortable to use, and it is stable to use with your hand on the palm rest.
The battery is built-in lithium polymer 88Whrs. By activating the battery saving mode at 88% remaining battery, I was able to use it for 6 hours and 45 minutes. When connected to a 100W charger, it was confirmed that PD charging is also supported.
After carrying it around for a day, it was not much different from the feeling of using an ultra-light laptop. Assuming you didn’t bring an adapter, it’s as simple as an ultra-light laptop even though it’s a professional laptop. The panels are top-notch as well. In other words, it is the best among existing laptops for content viewing. When you need to work, you just plug in the adapter. First impression was pretty good.
white aero 16
First of all, I know the display is fine. Other than that, how about this aero? This aero has changed a lot. for the better. Aero 16 BSF OLED i9 dyed white. In the previous AERO 16 XE5 OLED, the keyboard and touchpad were black, but this time they are all white. To be precise, it’s the Twilight Silver color.
The previous AERO 16 XE5 OLED was also pretty, but to be honest, this one is much prettier. A mixture of aluminum and platinum colors gives it a luxurious feel. Of course, the essence is a work laptop, but looking at the exterior, it seems to have absorbed the advantages of an ultra-light laptop.
First of all, the AERO logo on the top panel sparkles according to the viewing angle. The aluminum housing is neat with a matte texture. The surface is smudge- and fingerprint-resistant, making it easy to care for. It is resistant to abrasion and corrosion through anodizing treatment and 11 oxidation and coloring processes. There is a metal nameplate with the AERO logo on the hinge, and even with this detail, you can see that Gigabyte has put a lot of effort into this Aero 16 BSF OLED i9.
The touchpad is a glass touchpad with a soft texture and high touch sensitivity. It is clean with a waterproof and anti-fingerprint coating. It is especially nice that it is unified with the housing color. The black color isn’t bad either, but it’s a bit more luxurious to have it in the same color as the housing. If you look closely at the touchpad, the AERO logo is also included, which is easy to see.
Looking at the official specifications, the weight is 2.1kg, the thickness is 20mm, the bezel is 3mm, and the color is described as Twilight Silver. I checked it myself. It weighs 1.9 kg. Surprisingly, it is lighter than the official weight. It weighs only 2.6kg with an adapter. In addition, the Aero 16 BSF OLED i9 supports PD charging, so depending on the situation, you can carry only the main body.
The bezel was measured mainly on the inner bezel. The side bezel is particularly thin, confirmed to be 2.25mm. The top is 6.4mm and the bottom is 10.43mm. Compared to other manufacturers’ work laptops, it is very thin.
The port configuration is amazing. Previously, it was mentioned that the AERO 16 XE5 OLED eliminates the USB Type-A terminal and has only three Type-C terminals and provides a genuine hub. It’s not that bad, but there were likes and dislikes. The Aero 16 BSF OLED i9 found a good solution by accepting such consumer opinions. Three Type-C ports on the side (Thunderbolt 4 x2, USB 3.2 Gen2 x1) and audio port remain the same. In addition, a microSD card reader was added to the side.
And there is no hub this time. Instead, ports were added on the back. HDMI 2.1, USB 3.2 Gen 1 (Type-A), charging port. Thanks to this, there are no regrets coming out this time. Also, this HDMI 2.1 is a thing. HDMI 2.0, which had an existing bandwidth of 18 Gbps, has increased the maximum bandwidth to 48 Gbps. It can output up to 8K 120Hz. It can also output up to three 4K videos.
Unlike this guy’s size, he’s strong
Aero 16 BSF OLED i9 with a fairly light and beautiful design for a professional laptop. Light and beautiful usually comes at the expense of performance. But the Aero 16 BSF OLED i9 doesn’t sacrifice performance. Instead of sacrificing, it was equipped with a monstrous performance product.
The processor built into the Aero 16 BSF OLED i9 is a Core i9-13900H. It supports 14 cores, 20 threads (6 P cores, 8 E cores), 24 MB smart cache, and up to 5.4 GHz. Thanks to this, it is suitable for video work with a lot of effects, large-capacity photo merging, and 3D rendering.
Graphics card is GeForce RTX 4070. It has 4608 cuda cores, up to 2.2GHz, and 8GB of GDDR6. Performance alone is comparable to the RTX 3070 Ti laptop GPU. It’s also Nvidia Studio certified, making it suitable for work. You can install Nvidia Studio drivers, which are compatible with creative applications. In addition, apps such as Nvidia Broadcast were also available.
It’s a professional laptop, so it’s not meant for gaming, but there’s nothing you can’t do to enjoy it. Above all, because it is an RTX 40 series, you can use DLSS 3. DLSS 3 significantly increases the average frame rate when gaming. In addition, a MUX switch can be applied. You can disable Intel built-in graphics and use only the high-performance RTX 4070. This allows you to bypass the Nvidia Optimus feature, further improving performance.
The memory is not an on-board type. There are also two DDR5 SO-DIMM slots. The existing installed memory is also DDR5 32GB (16GB x2, 4800MHz), so there is no shortage, but if there is a shortage, it can be expanded later.
During the test, the ‘Turbo’ mode was applied in the Gigabyte Control Center before proceeding. However, during the noise test, it was measured in the basic state, not in turbo mode. For reference, in the GIGABYTE Control Center, you can set various settings such as AI boost, eye protection, and mux switch on/off.
crystal disk mark
PugetBench for Davinci Resolve 0.93.1
The Aero 16 BSF OLED i9 applies the advantages of an ultra-light laptop to a professional laptop. It is easy to carry and can be charged with PD. In addition, the design is beautiful, so there is nothing to be ashamed of anywhere. However, there is a decisive difference from the existing ultra-light laptop. It’s a decent professional laptop.
The display is 4K UHD OLED, which is the best for work, and the performance was also able to properly use the Core i9-13900H and RTX 4070 after adjusting the Ai option in the Gigabyte Control Center. Thanks to this, it showed good performance in various tasks such as video editing and rendering. In addition, it is not a gaming laptop, but it has good specifications, so if you apply DLSS3, you can enjoy games at high resolution. It is a good laptop with many advantages.