First impression:
With the risk of sounding like a fanboy, I love this laptop. The OLED screen beautiful to look at. The colour accuracy makes color grading an absolute dream and not to mention being able to see an accurate representation of your footage during the edit.
OLED panels are slowly creeping in and becoming more readily available across different laptop brands and they especially stand out on laptops that are built for gaming. BUT as it so happens gaming laptops, like the Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED, make the perfect editing machines.
At the current price point the Aero 15 offers an excellent 4k OLED panel, a super comfortable keyboard that looks pretty awesome in the studio as well as amazingly solid performance to boot and packaged up in a super sleek looking aluminum chassis. To sum it all up The Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED sits at a very competitive price point and in our opinion is one of the best bang for buck video editing laptops on the market.
What we tested:
We tested the more spec’d out model of the Aero 15, which comes outfitted with an Intel Core i7-9750H processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q GPU with 8GB of VRAM, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD and a 4K Samsung AMOLED panel.
There is a base model and a next level break the bank model that you can read about over on the Gigabyte website.
The look and feel:
As you can see the Aero 15 looks…well for lack of a better word, AWESOME.
Now I understand that a multi-color flashing keyboard and glowing logos might not be everyone’s cup of tea but having this laptop sitting in my dark editing suite just adds a nice little accent of color and I love it.
As you put the laptop on the desk you can immediately feel the solid build construction, the hinges are solid and firm but still allow you to open the laptop with one hand. Which is a weird but handy feature when you are run and gunning with camera in hand.
The aluminium chassis is solid and I would not feel scared about taking this unit out in the field.
All the good stuff is on the inside. First, there’s the awesome per-key RGB-lit keyboard, a fingerprint sensor embedded in the touchpad and a sleek, triangle-patterned air vent just above the keyboard. The bezels on the display are nice and narrow which is a very nice feature for editors.
At just over 2kg and 35.5cm x 24.8 x 2cm the Aero 15 is super slim and light for a powerful 15 inch laptop. It should fit in most 15 inch laptop compartments in camera bags and backpacks.
Ports:
As filmmakers we have so many things that need to be plugged in whether it is to charge something or to log footage. This laptop has plenty…
On the left, there’s an HDMI 2.0 port, one USB Type-C/DP 1.4 port, one USB 3.1 port, a headphone jack and an RJ45 Ethernet port.
The right holds room for the power jack, an SD card slot, one Thunderbolt 3 port and two USB 3.1 ports. If you need additional ports, consider getting a USB Type-C hub or a docking station.
Under the hood:
Powered by an Intel Core i7-9750H processor and 16GB of RAM, the Aero 15 ate everything up I threw at it.
Editing 4k footage was an absolute pleasure in Premiere Pro and did not experience any lag issues. The Aero 15 exported and transcoded a 4K video to 1080p in under 10 mins. Which is about the average. It was the actual timeline editing experience that I found fantastic. The Gigabyte 512GB SSD copied 9GB of footage in 19 seconds which is impressive.
Battery:
While this isn’t the most important thing for filmmaker or editors its still worth a mention as it can save your rear end. Come on we have all done it. You rock up to a shoot where there is a super tight turnaround. You shoot your footage, pull out your laptop and log your footage. Just as you set up to start cutting… boom you realize you forgot your power cable. You panic and you only 70% battery left. What do you do?? Well, you editing like your hands are on fire and get it done…anyway, I digress.
The Aero 15 OLED’s battery life is pretty good, after vigorous editing without the power plugged and the screen at full brightness I managed 3 hours and 35min from a full charge.
Final Thoughts:
The Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED is a serious contender and a rock-solid performer. The beautiful OLED screen is a pleasure to edit on. It’s comfortable to type on and the exterior design is very impressive. It’s light, slim and doesn’t get hot. At this price point, the Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED stands up and holds its own amongst the best editing laptops on the market due to its solid engine room and beautiful OLED screen.
Rating 9/10
