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In recent 2 years, GIGABYTE laptops mainly focused on two product lines.
AORUS launched earlier and is more famous as a series based on gaming design.
AREO is a thinner series designed for the needs of creators; these two series got their strong points.
AERO chassis design is closer to high-quality Ultrabook, equipped with high-end hardware SPECs.
The character of this article is the latest AERO 17 HDR, Let’s watch the guide video and get the information guide first.
https://youtu.be/dVIC-iR44zc

This new AERO 17 HDR XB equipped with Intel Core i7-10875H and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Super.
The outer box used the special English lettering of AERO with black and orange colors.


The full chassis body with CNC cutting technology, the A side also all be made with aluminum.
The central and upper area are matted design with anti-fingerprint treatment.
To make the A side more varied, the bottom area was V-shaped unfolding line design with brushing surface treatment.
17.3” dimension is 396(W) x 270(D) x 21.4(H) mm, weight from 2.5kg.
Actual weight is 2661g, AERO 17 HDR performs pretty well on high-end laptop ID design and balanced of weight ratio.


Open the AERO 17 HDR, the B side and C side placement overview.
The display hinge located at both sides of the chassis body, the maximum open angle of the display is around 120 degree.
The assembling quality is very solid. The A side could slowly close automatically when the open angle of the display is under 30 degree.


B side is the 17.3” AUO anti-glared display, 4K UHD IPS panel.
The three edges of the AERO 17 HDR display with 3mm ultrathin bezel, which is the thinnest bezel design on the overall notebook models.
There is a full range 3 side of frame rubber around to avoid causing damage when the screen closed to touch the C side.


B side screen-to-body ratio is up to 89% and matches the VESA Display HDR 400 standard.
It supports 100% Adobe RGB color gamut that brings more than 25% more details than sRGB colors of detail.
Each laptop display passed the color calibration of X-Rite Pantone from factory side.
Delta E <1 is very close to original color display, and achieve the most accurate color presents.


Except for the keyboard area, the C side are made by matte black aluminum material same as A side design.
The island-style keyboard with RGB Fusion 2.0 technology, and specialized in more fabulous full-color backlight.
GIGABYTE and Sunrex who is the world's largest keyboard supplier collaborated to make the keystroke feedback more solid
In terms of membrane keyboard, this is really good keystroke feedback by my personal experience.


There are HD webcam and microphone on the top of C side.
The face should not be taken too close to the chin with webcam because the surface is angled upward.
It supported face tracing technology, the smoothness was outstanding but the resolution still could be better.
It is a rarely design of webcam cover in other laptops, which can enhance the privacy for users.
The round power button just below the webcam, and the linear holes on both left and right side of the button are airflow vents for cooling.


The bottom of the C side is the touchpad, which offered accurate operation, and equipped with the fingerprint sensor on the upper left.
The left and right sides are stickers of hardware or feature lists, and one more sticker that emphasized this laptop was Made in Taiwan at the bottom-left corner.
The large and thicker sticker on the right which emphasized the hardware features of AERO 17 HDR, it easier to tear and no glue reside.


The right side of I/O port.
From left side, USB 3.2 Gen1 / Thunderbolt 3 (Type-C) / MINI DP 1.4 / HDMI 2.0/ power input/ vent.
Composed with Killer Ethernet E2600 LAN chip and Killer wireless Wi-Fi 6 AX1650 chip.
The AX1650 supports the latest 802.11AX, which is the WIFI 6 technology that allows a 2.4 Gbps transmission speed.


The left side of I/O port
From left side, vent. / RJ45 internet port / SD Card Reader (UHS-II) / USB 3.2 Gen 1
Earphone jack / microphone jack / USB 3.2 Gen 1
The UHS-II can be seen as a luxury high-speed SD Card Reader for laptops, which can run up to 300 MB/s.

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The D side design implements large and unique vents.
Both left and right sides are speakers. The battery (94.24wh) is built-in and non-detachable.
The high-end Intel 8C16T Core i7-10875H and NVIDIA RTX 2070 Super were both insert into the thin chassis.
How temperature varies during the burin-in test will be written in latter paragraph.


Here were listed all the included accessories.
Warranty card, user manual, power cord and 230W adapter. The adapter is not big and easier to carry.


The ID design style of AERO 17 HDR is quite similar to AERO 15 OLED.
The biggest difference is the I/O positions and the display size.
To me, the ID design of AERO is superior to other top-level ultrathin notebooks.
AERO provides top level 17’’ HDR and 15’’ OLED notebooks for display-oriented creators.
Here we compare the indoor display performance.
On the left side, we have the AORUS 7 equipped with LG IPS 144Hz (Tuned with Spyder)
On the right side, we have the AERO 17 HDR equipped with AUO 4K with HDR 400.
The AORUS 7 utilizes the same FHD display as AERO 17. The tuned display color is already pretty awesome.
However, the AERO 17 HDR delicately presents bright and dark area details under High-Dynamic Range.


The RGB backlit from keyboard looks impressive indoor.
Especially at a dark space, the RGB lightning will be most luminous.
Not to mention that users can adjust the lightning mode whenever you like.


GIGABYTE Control Center software.
The first page is Smart Dashboard.
Mainly for monitoring software systems, hardware usage, and hardware model names.
The AI interface located at the top-right side.
Through Microsoft Azure, cloud computing and machine learning could predict the program experience and user behaviors, and then dynamically adjust CPU and GPU power consumptions.
Optimizing hardware performance by AI can achieve a higher executing performance. Moreover, the new AI icon looks concise and stylish.


Manager page looks like mobile phone drop-down macro interface.
Mainly shows the function status and instant on/off.


The RGB Fusion 2.0 supports up to 16.77 million colors Per-Key RGB Backlit keyboard.
In addition, the keyboard supports 80 simultaneous key presses, and the Per-Key Macro keys function.
These functions can be turned off when you aren’t gaming. The outstanding keystroke feedback is very impressive.


Fan speed control with silent, normal, gaming mode, also with deep control mode.
User could depend on preference to set any fan speed at any temperature.


And lastly, this Smart Utilities item is about the hardware update information, system backup, product description, Q & A and other functions.
GIGABYTE Control Center interface is almost the same as AORUS Control Center.
Although the functions are already very abundance and the layout is easy to use, I hope AERO can have its own style of software layout


Nahimic 3D sound software
Recent years tested many MSI gaming notebook all used this software
The interface and function already revised many versions, comes with lots features.
Mainly apply 4 sound stages, with 3 type to make it richer sound effects.

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Microphone page got chat and conference mode, with 3 functions to adjust.


Below is AERO 17 HDR speaker sound experience, this part is subjective.
High frequency: Not too sharp, very rich detail and high quality of overall present.
Middle frequency: Overall clear and brilliant, human vocal is really nice.
Low frequency: Low frequency sound present pretty clean and not too turbid. But woofer of drum sound is slightly weak.
The AERO series are not positioned on gaming models, so ambience sound and heavy bass will be little cold in the sound effect.
The overall performance of the speaker is clear and quality has reached a high-end laptop level.

AERO 17 HDR depends on CPU and GPU combinations difference, there are i7-10875H and i9-10980HK 2 models.
The character of this article is the second high-level version: XB, which equipped with the latest 10 Gen. i7-10875 H-series processor.
It's Intel 8-core CPU with 14 nm technology and a base clock speed of 2.3 GHz, single core up to 5.1 GHz.
This is the first laptop equipped 8 cores and 16 threads of Core i7, TDP is 45W.
The following is the part of CPU performance testing, turn on AI function with all default settings.
The comparison model was AERO 15 OLED that launched last year, which equipped with i9-9980HK processor and RTX 2080 Max-Q graphics.
Compared to the CPU scores in the back parentheses which are Intel Core i9-9980HK 8C16T 2.4~5G results.

CINEBENCH R15
CPU => 1817 cb (1417 cb), increase about 28%
CPU(Single Core) => 212 cb (189 cb), increase about 12%


CINEBENCH R20.0
CPU => 3713 cb (3212 cb), increase about 16%
CPU(Single Core) => 502 cb (446 cb), increase about 12%


CPUZ 1.91.0
Single CPU => 549.4 (512.8), increase about 7.1%
8C16T multi CPU => 5113.3 (4070), increase about 25.6%
Fritz Chess Benchmark =>56.07 / 26914 (47.81 / 22948), increase about 17%


Geekbench 5
Single-Core Score => 1316
Multi-Core Score => 7876


FRYRENDER
Running Time => 2m 13s (2m 28s), increase about 11%
x265 Benchmark 2.1.0 => 55.49FPS (45.88FPS), increase about 21%


PCMARK10 => 6169 (5253), increase about 17%


The Intel 10th Gen of i7-10875H 8C16T clock speed is about 2.3~5.1GHz.
Compared with the top CPU of previous generation i9-9980HK 8C16T, the clock is about 2.4 ~ 5GHz.
The CPU performance of the above two in AERO 15 and 17-inch thin and light notebooks,
No matter in single-core or full-core performance both has significantly improved in the latest 10th Gen.
If the 17-inch 3.8 kg muscle laptop equipped with i9-9980HK would be much larger due to the bigger thermal module.
After comparison, that the i9-9980HK performance was similar to i7-10875H
In conclusion, we can understand that thin and similar type of laptop models, which equipped the 10 Gen. supporting the new boost clock technology.
Coupled with GIGABYTE's exclusive Azure AI software, the clock speed of single-core or full-core operation will have more power flexibility and higher performance.

DRAM performance test - DDR4 2933
AIDA64 Memory Read - 41026 MB/s


Intel 9th Gen Coffee Lake natively supported up to DDR4-2666 MHz memory.
This time, 10th Gen Comet Lake-H supported up to DDR4-2933 MHz memory.
AIDA64 Memory Read speed increased from DDR4 2666 to 2933 by about 10%
This laptop equipped with Micron DDR4 3200, It was a pity that the CPU didn’t support up to DDR4 3200.
Previously tested the 10th generation 10nm i7-1065G7 belongs to Ice Lake-U platform, up to 3733
After all, the laptop with DDR4 cannot overclock, I hope there is an Intel H series platform that supports up to DDR4 3200.

The AERO 17 HDR storage system was built-in two M.2 SSDs slots.
This one was installed with SAMSUNG M.2 PCIe 512G SSD.
SSD test part–CrystalDiskMark
Seq Read - 3201.63MB/s，Write - 2976.97MB/s
AS SSD Benchmark - 4680
Seq Read - 1983.16 MB/s，Write - 2437.77 MB/s
4K - 64Thrd Read - 1265.64 MB/s，Write - 2006.90 MB/s


SAMSUNG MZVLB512HBJQ is also known as PM981a.
This spec. of read speed up to 3500MB/s, write speed up to 2900MB/s
It has been tested that the max. 3230 and 1625MB/s of Intel 760P was only 2773 in AS SSD Benchmark.
In terms of PCIe Gen3 x4 SSD, PM981a is considered to be the top-performing SSD version.
However, it is difficult to reach the max. Bandwidth of the specification due to the laptop energy-saving technologies and not able to manual disable.

NVIDIA releases RTX Studio laptops for content creators, with Creator Ready Driver supported.
The new Gen of laptop high-end GPUs are RTX 2070 Super and RTX 2080 Super.
They both equipped with the NVIDIA new Max-Q design, and claimed that Max-Q brings more FPS per watt than before.
The following is the RTX 2070 Super (Max-Q) GDDR6 8GB 3D performance testing result.
The installed driver version is NVIDIA STUDIO DRIVER 442.23.
SPECviewperf 13
The resolution at 1080P test score.

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The resolution at 2160P test score.


Compared to the 1080P and 2160P (4K) resolution of SPECviewperf 13 score as below,
It can be seen that using 1080P resolution performance will improve a lot.

SPECworkstation 3.0
Resolution 3840 x 2160, GPU changed to RTX 2070 Super




Geekbench 5
OpenCL Score => 86188


If the creator's laptop uses 3D rendering software, it is often demand on OpenGL or CL performance.
The software as above mainly used to test the performance of OpenGL or CL. Some graphics software had well known before.
Then comes DirectX performance, which is the 3D technology that general games use.
The back parentheses which are AERO 15 OLED equipped i9-9980HK and RTX 2080 Max-Q comparison.

3DMARK Fire Strike => 18357 (17516)


FINAL FANTASY XIV ： Shadowbringers
1920 X 1080 HIGH=> 16895 (15948)


FAR CRY 5
Resolution 1920 x 1080, set 3D effect to very high
Built in benchmark tool – rendering frames 6345 (5878)


The three types of DirectX 3D test data above can be seen that the RTX 2070 Super score is higher.
And even SPECviewperf 13 and SPECworkstation 3.0 data are the same situation.
The new mobile version RTX 2070 Super performance will be higher than the previous RTX 2080 Max-Q.
In addition, the higher-end RTX 2080 Super, of course it would be stronger. And it is a 3D performance upgrade for thin and light laptops.
I also hope that in the future, NVIDIA’s updated official version driver will improve the performance of these two RTX Supers.

Burn-in Temp. test.
Ambient temperature at 21˚C, proceed Intel Core i7-10875H cooling test.
Fan speed set to normal speed, the CPU full speed up to about 4500~4600rpm.
Run the LinX 0.7.1 at full speed, 72~79˚C, maxima up to 80.


The fan was about 2600 ~ 2800 rpm during idle. In this state, the fan sound was too quiet to hear the fan sound.
The CPU full speed was up to about 3000~3200rpm, although the noise is increased but not loud.
Compared with other high-end gaming laptops were tested by several users, this is about below medium volume of fan noise.
The i7-10875H TDP specification is 45W, AERO 17 HDR cooling system could suppress higher TDP usage.
The clock of 8C16T burn-in state is about 2.9 ~ 3G, although LinX is very strict burning software for Intel CPU.
Compared to AERO 15 OLED with 8C16T i9-9980HK, was already has a very good heat dissipation capacity.
The 17” AERO with a larger cooling module, which directly makes the heat dissipation capacity and noise of fans performed better.

FurMark mainly for GPU RTX 2070 Super burn in test.
GPU 1035MHz / MEM 5500MHz, the GPU fan full speed up to about 4000~4200rpm.
Run FurMark got idle of 36˚C and full speed 68˚C.


With FurMark burn-in test, keyboard side around 28~38˚C, upper side 28~42˚C, left & right side vents 31~46˚C.
Back side vents 39~52˚C, D side air intake vent 33~52˚C.
The fan noise was a little bit increase during GPU full speed mode, although the noise close to mid-high frequency but the overall is not too loud.
In terms of high-loading environment, it was acceptable and not to make people felt uncomfortable.
You won’t hear much noise when both the loading environment and fan speed is low. In situations like web surfing, video watching and music.

On the battery life, Microsoft Azure AI set to “Battery Save Mode”.
Turn off the Wi-Fi link to internet and the Bluetooth to playback video at 1080P format with creen brightness 20%, it claimed up to 8 hours by official tests.

In real test, used Wi-Fi link to internet and playback YouTube video at DVD 480P format with 30% of brightness, after 1 hour with 87% left, after 2 hours with 74% left,
After 3 hours with 62% left, 5 hours with 34% left, and after 7 hours with 5% then shutdown automatically.
That means the battery life performance is excellent for long-term usage environment.

Summarized on GIGABYTE AERO 17 HDR
Key features and advantages:
1. Solid on chassis and assembling quality, it is significantly different from gaming laptops’ ID design.
2. AUO 4K HDR 400 panel, ultra-narrow bezel design on 3 sides and X-Rite Pantone display color certification.
3. Equipped with the 10th Gen. 8C16T i7-10875H or i9-10980HK to achieve the highest performance of Intel platform laptops.
4. Equipped with the latest NVIDIA RTX 2070 Super or 2080 Super graphics to achieve the highest 3D performance.
5. Rich functions of AORUS Control Center and Nahimic 3D sound software.
6. Support Microsoft Azure AI for dynamic adjust to get higher efficient and performance.
7. WINDFORCE Infinity cooling with dual 72 blades fans and 5 heatpipes to increase 30% heat dissipation.
8. The Per-key RGB backlit keyboard with membrane design and the keystroke feedback was very well.
9. Equipped with the Killer AX1650 Wi-Fi card which supported 802.11AX (WIFI 6) technology.
10. The webcam cover is heart touching, and the battery life above the standard by high-end hardware.

The points for future improvement listed.
1. WebCam got lower resolution and quality, hope it could be improved.
2. The sound quality of the speaker in the bass effect and sound field could be better.
3. It would be better if it could provide 4K OLED version like AERO 15


Performance Rating ★★★★★★★★★☆ 93/100
Material Rating ★★★★★★★★☆☆ 88/100
Specification Rating ★★★★★★★★★☆ 92/100
ID design Rating ★★★★★★★★★☆ 90/100
Cost Performance Rating ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ 77/100

There are HDR(4K) and non-HDR(FHD 144Hz) version of AERO 17, others are differentiated by CPU and GPU hardware.
The latest version of HDR equipped with Intel's 10th Gen. Core i7-10875H or i9-10980HK.
And this is the first time to equip the RTX 2070 Super and 2080 Super(Max-Q) graphics, the price is about USD$1999~4499
The GPU will also have three versions: RTX 2070 Max-Q, RTX 2060, GTX 1660Ti in the market.

They are non-HDR version on the market currently, which equipped with Intel's 9th Gen. Core i7-9750H.
And equipped with GTX 1660Ti, RTX 2060 and 2070 graphics, the price is about USD $1499~2199
The above 2 entry-level models look more valuable, AERO 17 series has two Gens. of product lines in multiple versions.
Consumers who are interested in AERO 17 can depend on their budget and needs to choose.
After the refresh, the AERO 17 HDR ID design maintains the same business design with solid chassis and excellent assembly quality.
The hardware inside also has different price options due to different levels, and performance can also replace gaming laptops of the same level.
It seems that the first wave of new applications is in the higher-priced AERO 17 HDR, and integrated the latest CPU and GPU to improve performance.
If the gaming laptop is similar to the price and hardware placement, the ID design of AERO 17 models are still more attractive.
If the AERO refreshed in the future, recommended to improve the Webcam quality and richer sound effect performance that will be more complete.
Above are my personal experience on the latest hardware performance and design of AERO 17 HDR XB. It is provided as a reference for you in need.
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