I find it exciting that a new brand of laptops is entering the gaming market. For now, the space is a bit crowded, sure, but it can be refreshing to review something new. In my experience, there’s usually some feature or some combination of hardware I haven’t seen before, or the thermals are as nice as my grandmother’s minestrone soup, not too hot, but right. Adata’s XPG XPG gaming laptop, the first video game laptop the company has ever manufactured, checks many of the right boxes. It was originally released in April 2020, quite a while ago, but I’m glad I was able to spend some time with it. It’s an almost perfect gaming laptop that I wouldn’t mind having, but I hope it can maintain the same quality consistency in the case of thermals if Adata chooses to release an updated version with a newer processor ( which I hope so)!).
It’s a solid machine with everything you’d expect from a company that makes SSDs, DRAMs, CPU coolers, peripherals and more. Adata knows the play space. It’s well versed with the overly familiar balance of packing a platform with the right specifications at a reasonable price while keeping the PC cool, and the XPG Xenia shows off Adata’s experience in these areas. Although some components are state-of-the-art or will soon be state-of-the-art thanks to all laptop adsis about to overcome the course of the CES, XPG Xenia is still worth a solid look.
This gaming laptop is equipped with an Intel Core i7-9750H, Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti GPU, 32GB DDR4 2666 MHz DRAM and a 1TB PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD. The IPS FHD display is 15.6 inches with a refresh rate of 144Hz and a 72% NTSC color gamut. This range of colors is, for the most part, average for laptops for games under $ 2,000, but the 85% screen and body ratio makes this laptop a perfect fit for the rest of the world. Stylish-looking laptops that are stealth gaming machines.
Battery life is longer than the average of a gaming laptop, almost six hours. Battery life is no more than ten hours since Adata announced, but battery life will always vary depending on the programs you are running, the brightness of the screen, and the amount of RGB you have activated. The XPG Xenia’s battery life is actually longer than other more expensive gaming laptops we’ve tested before, such as the Acer Predator Triton 500 (3 hours and 20 minutes), Razer Blade Pro 17 (3 hours 36 minutes), and the Asus Strix Scar G15 (4 hours 45 minutes). It arrives a few minutes from the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 and the Acer Nitro 5.
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The overall design is subtle and professional, which is certainly nice for gamers who want to use their laptops for both work and play. Pre-pandemic, I would always feel weird taking my three-year-old laptop to a coffee shop to work so that the sharp lines engraved on the lid stood out completely, not to mention that the screen frames were thick and awkward looking. It looked aggressive, so it’s good to see more suitable and mature gaming laptop manufacturing companies these days.
While the plastic keys feel a little thin, the low-profile mechanical keyboard is wonderful for typing. My fingers seemed to adapt naturally to the layout and the click of the keys was quietly nice. There’s also a slight highlight at the action point, so those of you who prefer the silent and touch keys may like it as much as I do. The XPG Xenia got it perfectly. RGB lighting is also key, so if you want to highlight WASD or other commonly used keys while highlighting games, you can.
This gaming laptop is also an amazing source, thanks to the 32 GB of DRAM and the freshness that Xenia has with all its components, which I will get a little. In our gaming benchmarks, it definitely stood out against many other higher-spec laptops we’ve tested: laptops with an Intel i9-10885H and an RTX 2070 Max-Q or an AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS and an RTX 2060 Max -Q, for example, with an average: 87 frames per second at an ultra 1080p intensity Far Cry 5; 63 fps enabled Total War: Warhammer II; 79 fps enabled Shadow of the Tomb Raider; and 42 fps enabled Metro Exodus.
Even compared to the Acer Nitro 5, which has the same CPU but an RTX 2060 and 16 GB of memory, the Xenia XPG got the same number of frames in all the same games. It was even faster than the Nitro 5 which represented a 3D image in Blender, about 11 minutes and 30 seconds compared to about 13 minutes, and transcoded a 4K video at 1080p in handbrake, faster. about 11 minutes to 12 minutes and 30 seconds.
But here comes the warning and it’s not Adata’s fault: Intel decided to discontinue its 300 series chipset, which includes the QMS380 laptop chipset. The Intel Core i7-9750H of the XPG Xenia uses this chipset. As of now, you can still get devices with compatible motherboard, but July of this year is the last chance for anyone to place orders for anything that needs a 300 series Adata chipset could make the its final orders then, so it has stocks of this model until the end of 2021, but after that it has to use 10th (or 11th generation) Intel CPUs, which worries me about thermal needs.
Almost every 10th generation Intel laptop I tested over the last year has run hotter than anyone concerned about the longevity of their machine should be comfortable, especially with the i7 and i9. Maximum CPU temperatures exceeded 90 degrees Celsius (over 194 degrees Fahrenheit), often reaching a few degrees of Intel’s maximum temperature of 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit). higher in certain areas around or above the keyboard.
But the 9th generation chips work a lot better and Adata’s XPG cooling solution for Xenia Xenia is one of the best I’ve seen on a gaming laptop, even with the coolest 9th generation chip running. The maximum temperatures of the Xenia only reached 80 (Celsius) compared to the 90 of the Nitro 5. Average temperatures remained in the mid-60s, which is the perfect place for a CPU to load.
The skin time remained between the 1930s and 1940s, except for a spot located above the keyboard that warmed up to 48 degrees Celsius. I could feel the air from the fans spinning on the keyboard, which kept my hands (well, my left fingers) nice and fresh as I played. There are also more air vents on the sides, bottom and back of the laptop, so this thing is well ventilated.
Of course, the fans had 747 strong takeoffs as the laptop was in Turbo mode while doing these tests, but I was very happy to see much colder temperatures that I didn’t care so much about. In balanced mode, there was not much difference with respect to temperatures and there was a small drop in frame rate, about 2-3 frames. The fans were also a little calmer, but not much.
That’s all to say that Adata might have a good chance to tame Intel’s 10th generation chip thermals, but if you’re looking for a good 1080p gaming laptop now and have a little more to burn, the Xenia XPG is a serious problem. consider. Yes, there are new laptops around the corner and there are laptops with newer parts. Yes, the 300 series chipset is already up and running. But for $ 1,250 as it is currently priced on the Adata site? Yes, this is a good price for a professional looking, well-specified gaming laptop.
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- Good performance, works surprisingly great
- Strong fans
- Okay, battery life
- The normal price is high compared to similar gaming laptops, but it is on sale from the publication of this review for a more reasonable price.
- Lots of ports, weighs just over four pounds