This 2023 Gigabyte Aero 16 OLED (starts at $1,999; $2,199 as tested) had the honor of being the first laptop in our office outfitted with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 mobile graphics chip. That fresh GPU came paired with an Intel 13th Gen Core i9-13900H processor, 32GB of memory, and a 1TB solid-state drive. Designed for content creators, with a bit of gaming capability in its back pocket, the Aero 16 proved more than capable in our benchmark tests, and we were dazzled by the clarity of its 16:10 4K OLED screen. While less powerful than our most frame-rate-busting gaming laptops, the Aero 16 OLED kept up with (and often outpaced) leading creator laptops. Features like that color-rich display, a comfortable keyboard, and an increasingly rare MicroSD card reader make the Aero 16 OLED well worth considering. However, short battery life keeps it from dethroning the Dell XPS 15, our current Editors' Choice pick for content creation laptops.
A Fresh, Clean, and Cool Package
Judging by its recent Aero models, Gigabyte knows how to make an attractive laptop. The aluminum finish on the Aero 16 is cool to the touch and wraps around the entirety of the 0.87-by-13.9-by-10.1-inch (HWD) chassis. At around 4.2 pounds, it's not the lightest machine I've ever held, but it balances the weight well on all sides for a 16-incher and doesn't feel cumbersome in a backpack. The top lid has an iridescent Aero logo that glows white when the laptop is in use, a fun touch.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Open the lid, and you’re greeted by the 16:10 4K OLED screen and a keyboard without a number pad. That omission may bother the business-oriented, but it should matter less for the content creators the laptop is marketed toward.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Our review configuration is Gigabyte's higher-end model, which features a Core i9-13900H and GeForce RTX 4070, $2,199 at most retailers. (A more affordable model knocks the CPU and GPU down a peg to the Core i7-13700H and RTX 4060, respectively, for $1,999.) The 4K OLED screen will please users looking to make some vibrant art, though the peak 60Hz refresh rate will put off gamers. While 60Hz prevails among OLED panels in 2023, it's not fast enough for many online competitive gamers. Bear that in mind if you're thinking of the Aero 16 as a dual-use esports/gaming station.
The keyboard is a scissor-switch chiclet keyboard that you’d commonly find on a laptop of this caliber, and it produces little to no flex, thanks to the aluminum frame. All of the keys are a standard size that average fingers should have no trouble finding by feel alone, as proven by a Monkeytype test, which reported my speed and accuracy at a slightly above-average 63 words per minute at 98% accuracy.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Gigabyte's keyboard is surrounded on three sides by speaker grilles and a large glass touchpad. The speakers are loud and clear, and they even hide a light sensor underneath, near the middle of the top speaker grille. This sensor is part of a feature Gigabyte calls AI EyeCare; it detects environmental lighting to adjust screen brightness as appropriate.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)In terms of ports, the Aero 16 OLED has a MicroSD card reader on the left side, seldom seen these days; a 3.5mm headset jack and a USB 10Gbps Type-C port are alongside. Along the back edge is a barrel-plug port for the included 240-watt charger, plus an HDMI 2.1 output and a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)The laptop's right side hosts a pair of Thunderbolt 4 (40Gbps) ports; both support DisplayPort output for additional external displays.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Those extra display connections are helpful, but the latest Aero's 16-inch 4K OLED display should be plenty on its own. The benefits of an OLED screen are clear here, with color-rich images and deep contrast levels. The webcam on the laptop is a 1080p unit with support for Windows Hello facial recognition. The 1080p is a step up from many standard cams and more than adequate for video meetings.
(Credit: Gigabyte)The Gigabyte Control Center app comes pre-installed, a desktop utility that monitors and allows you to manage different aspects of the system. The utility lays a "dark theme" skin onto the normal Windows setting prompts. The effect doesn't change the way adjusting screen brightness, speaker volume, or other settings works; it's just cosmetic. The Control Center works with other Gigabyte products, like the Gigabyte M27Q X, and it can automatically update those accessories.
Testing the 2023 Gigabyte Aero 16 OLED: A Surprising Performance Leader
Gigabyte's Aero 16 OLED is a powerful machine with a focus on content creation. With that in mind, we sought out worthy adversaries designed for creative professionals (plus a gaming laptop or two), coming back with four laptops with similar use cases, and close in size.
On this list are two Editors' Choice award winners, the Dell XPS 17 (9730) and the Dell XPS 15 (9530), each running on a GeForce RTX 4070 GPU and the same Intel Core i7-13700H CPU. For the last two comparisons, we have the Lenovo Legion Slim 5 Gen 8 (a similarly sized, Editors' Choice-award-winning gaming laptop) and the Samsung Galaxy Book3 Ultra (another creator laptop).
Productivity and Content Creation Tests
We run the same general productivity benchmarks across both mobile and desktop systems. Our first test is UL's PCMark 10, which simulates a variety of real-world productivity and office workflows to measure overall system performance. It also includes a storage subtest for the primary drive.
Our other three benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Geekbench 5.4 Pro from Primate Labs simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better).
Finally, we run PugetBench for Photoshop by workstation maker Puget Systems, which uses the Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe's famous image editor to rate a PC's performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It's an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.
Despite some heavy hitters in play, the Aero 16 OLED made a name for itself. It ranked second or first place in most of our CPU-focused tests, hanging with the Lenovo Legion Slim 5 Gen 8 and Dell XPS 17—with the more comparable XPS 15 often behind.
The Aero's first-place scores in HandBrake and Cinebench are especially notable, where the Aero 16 OLED took considerable leads over of the Dell XPS 15, its closest competition as a creator laptop. That Intel Core i9 inside the Aero outmatched its Core i7-bound competition, which is also impressive given its cheaper price than some high-end competitors, like both XPS systems here.
Graphics Tests
We use two programs to test simulated gaming and graphics rendering performance, 3DMark and GFXBench. 3DMark has two DirectX 12 benchmarks: Night Raid, and the more demanding Time Spy. Meanwhile, GFXBench has its Car Chase and Aztec Ruins subtests, which test OpenGL performance and run the tests offscreen to account for different display resolutions.
Our graphics tests were harder to call than the productivity tests. The Lenovo laptop's RTX 4060 GPU draws up to 125W (the peak recommended TGP is 115W). That's versus the Aero 16's implementation of the RTX 4070, working with just 115W of peak TGP (also this chip's suggested top TGP, per Nvidia). That enabled the "lesser" GPU in the Lenovo to compete with the RTX 4070 in the Aero. The RTX 4070 chips in the two Dell XPS machines are both capped much lower on TGP than the Aero's RTX 4070 is, and that is reflected in the scores for both GFX Bench tests and the Time Spy test.
The one outlier is the Aero's Night Raid score, which was down in the 30,000s with the Dell XPS units, and beaten decisively by the Legion Slim. This test comprises elements of CPU calculation and GPU power, so we couldn't quite unbake from the cake why the Aero performed so poorly here, but it was consistent with the mid-30,000s score we saw when we first tested the Aero 16 at the time of the RTX 4070's mobile launch.
At any rate, the Aero 16 display's low refresh rate will be more of a limiting factor for gamers than its standard-issue GPU. Just don't expect gaming performance that's comparable with most gaming laptops containing the same GPU in name only. They're likely tuned to draw more power than normal, thanks to enhanced cooling, and therefore push faster frame rates and more detail.
Battery and Display Tests
To test a laptop's battery life, we play a 24-hour loop of a 720p video file at 50% brightness and 100% volume. We shut off Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting, and then let the video play until the system hibernates. When we plug the laptop back in, we record the time the video file stopped as our battery life result.
We also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and software to measure the display's color coverage. The sensor, in addition, lets us test brightness in nits (candelas per square meter) at the laptop's 50% and max brightness settings.
Battery longevity is a massive concern for the portable market, but the Gigabyte Aero 16 OLED didn't impress much in this regard. Compared with something like the Galaxy Book’s nearly 18-hour result, the Aero 16's battery life isn’t that impressive. However, compared with the Legion Slim and its 6-hour limit, you can definitely do worse than 8 hours, which is also as long as an average workday.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)To the naked eye, the Aero 16's OLED display is beautiful, with its inky blacks and vibrant color spectrum, and was on par with the AMOLED screen in the Galaxy Book3 Ultra. The Aero 16's screen fell short of the IPS panels in both Dell laptops in terms of brightness, which is understandable since OLEDs lack large-scale backlighting like IPS screens have. If you're in need of a super-bright display, consider this when you're deciding among different panel types.
Verdict: Flying High With the Aero
Topping most of our benchmark-test charts against some higher-end and pricier competitors, especially in CPU-centric trials, the Gigabyte Aero 16 OLED's power, value, and build quality surprised us. The vibrant screen and varied I/O will be appreciated by anyone, but they're particularly useful for creative professionals working with color-dependent media. We're sure the Gigabyte Aero 16 OLED will impress you as much as it impressed us, but, if battery power is something that is a concern (and in an around-4-pound laptop, it should be), the latest Dell XPS 15 will cover that gap for you and do much more.
