Gigabyte’s refreshed Aorus 15G for 2021 has a subtle, all-black design that takes a page from the company’s more svelte Aero lineup of creator-focused laptops. It’s a nice upgrade, but there aren’t many other changes from last year’s model, for better or worse. It offers the same wide variety of ports (including the all-too-rare full-size SD card reader), and impressively, Gigabyte fit an excellent 15.6-inch display into a 14-inch wide chassis. But at the same time, the keyboard is cramped and the nostril webcam is awkward to use. There are some other swings and misses, but it nails what it’s really focused on: gaming. The bump up to Nvidia’s RTX 3070 graphics chip inside is the biggest change, and it helps this thin-and-light gaming laptop run most games beyond 60 frames per second, crossing the bar for reliably smooth gameplay.

The Gigabyte Aorus 15P YD absolutely nails the 'gaming' aspect of being a gaming laptop, but a few design choices make the machine feel questionably outdated. If you want something that can play anything you throw at it then look no further, but consider buying a few peripherals to compliment it.

Thanks to the built-in Intel Core i7-11800H, the system performance of the Aorus 15P YD increases significantly.

With the AORUS 15P YD, Gigabyte indeed delivers an excellent gaming notebook, which once again significantly outperforms its direct predecessor thanks to the used Intel Core i7-11800H from the Tiger-Lake series. Together with the Nvidia GeForce RTX3080, the laptop is up to even the most demanding modern games. The graphics card, which is highly configured with 130 W TGP, ensures a better performance in benchmark tests as well as in practical gaming use compared to other notebooks.

GIGABYTE AORUS 15G XC Nvidia's RTX 3070 gets to strut its stuff in this balanced gaming machine that focuses on what matters most, not what simply looks the best.