This is the gigabyte arrow 17 HDR. They’re gearing it not just to gamers but also for content creators and part of that is the HDR display. So the one we have has a 4k IPS 100% Adobe RGB display.
Overview
It’s matte IPS non-touch and it looks good looking there’s also a Samsung 4k OLED option though. We haven’t seen that one yet and for those of you who won’t that blows out the budget too much.
You’re not content creating so much as gaming. There is still the more affordable model with the 1080p display not cheap though. These are still pretty premium starting at $1799 for the non HDR version and are pretty well equipped models and right here starts at $2399 we’re gonna reviewing it now
So, this is the 2020 refresh with Intel 10th generation CPUs 45 watt though not just 45 watt for the base and on HDR model. So, there is an intel core i7 6 core processor that we’ve seen before.
That’s on thave which is an 8 core i7 CPU that kind of needs to see that and then there’s still a core I 9 option as well. So, that one you can go up to 65 watts. You can come in depends because that’s an HK overclockable CPU suite.
So, that’s a lot of performances and it’s still relatively thin and light less than an inch. This is 2 point 5 kilograms which is 5.5 pounds. So, it is lighter than a razor blade Pro 17 for example pricing for our model with an RTX 2070 Super Max Q.
The supers are the new GPU refresh of Nvidia and that one gets more expensive. We’re talking around 2700 dollars or so for $2399, So You can get it with the RTX 2060 and not this there’s no super edition there.
There is also an RTX 2080 Super Max Q so you know off of the pushin $3,000 and better on this if you want so for the premium price. What are you getting here you’re getting a lot of performance.
Now I reviewed arrows before like I said and they were pretty good but the looks stayed. I think people like them for this especially people who are buying these for content creation or take them to work. Then when you bring them home you have some phone games through home and work kind of are the same thing for some people now but anyway.
The looks have improved here definitely. it still isn’t you’re not gonna get that razor blade level of unibody metal kind of thing here. But it’s a good-looking machine and it feels pretty good, just not quite a razor blade but the razor blade Pro is still a lot more money.
We’re talking easily three thousand dollars and more with the blade. So, there’s that and the performance on this I am super impressed and the fan profile stood.
Now this is a shipping version. This is not pre-release and it’s been very stable. The noise level is just using it has a bunch of different presets you can go with it but it on the normal mode the fans are really pretty tame for a gaming slash mobile workstation kind of product
Here more along mobile workstation lines and not making a lot of noise even when you’re gaming. You don’t have to use headphones, there is a gaming profile if you really want to blast the fans.
So its core temperatures on this, which is always a better problem with gaming laptops. Particularly the thin and light ones. I’m really impressed by what they’ve done here. The performance that goes along with it.
Again with our eight core i7 the benchmarks on this excellent. The actual gaming experience really good frame rates and games set at highest to ultra settings even 4k for tomb raider.
We play that high and really very good. They are doing some throttling on the course for thermal temps to keep it lower than average.
You can tell Intel 10 generation CPU is 10% improvement at most over the previous generation but again the interesting thing here is you can get an 8 core i7 on this machine. You’ve got the core i9 option.
The thermals are on the core I9. I obviously can’t sabers. We don’t have that but we are working with an 8 core i7. I don’t expect a huge difference unless you get into something overclocking their core I 9.
Rest of the specs are pretty similar to the last generation. We have two RAM slots available in different configurations, typically the ones. We’re looking to have 16 gigs of DDR 4 ram 26 66 megahertz or faster.
If you go with that core I 9 option there are two slots so you can upgrade it to 32 or 64 gigs of ram. There are two m.2 SSD slots, one only that’s your boot SSD and the other slot is m dot 2.
It also supports 7 if you want to save money on your second drive. They’ll pay for an nvme drawing for a storage drive on the pre-built. Configurations have just one SSD so it’s up to you to add that second one.
We have killer Wi-Fi 6 onboard which is really an Intel chip instead of 1650 cards so that’s good with Bluetooth 5 onboard. The port situation is quite good especially for a relatively speaking infinite light laptop though.
We do have a big chassis to work with you so you have Thunderbolt 3, three USB ports, full-size SD card slots. It’s a fast SD card slot. We’ve got Gigabit killer and Ethernet on board as well. Hdmi 2.0 DisplayPort 1.4 so pretty much.
Anything you can ask for you’ve got in terms of connectivity here when it comes to graphics we have these good old chestnut the our TX 2060 on the lower end models in fact they’re even lower with the GTX 1660.
If you really like the machine and you’re usually a morphic content creation you don’t need super killer graphics. You’re not doing 3d content you’re doing Tunis content but anyway for the refresh we have our TX 2070 and 2080 super both of them max Q Edition.
So this is kind of like up one down one you know what I mean but in the end. It’s a little bit faster than the previous generation, the other plus would be the fact that the card can in theory support Nvidia Optimus and G Singh at the same time.
Display
We see a lot of gaming laptops. What’s your books these days sometimes going up to the allowable thermal maximum.Which is 100 degrees centigrade. So here it’s pretty much trying to keep it around 90 92 centigrade.
I’m actually okay with that because otherwise geeky types spend a lot of time managing our thermals and doing pro things and profiles and all that sort of thing. Because we want to ensure the longevity of our machine and not running at max temperatures constantly.
So they’re kind of doing that for us while giving really good frame rates really good performance and programs like Adobe Premiere. Sundown what doing here beyond I take away the next important thing again is that this fight we have that 4k IPS display with full Adobe RGB color gamut.
It’s calibrated and the factory Pantone calibrated and they make a big deal about that. Then they should because this is what the best calibrated displays. I’ve seen that color accuracy graphy.
You never see bars that tiny meaning that there’s very little deviance from perfect on that. It has high contrast relatively speaking for an IPS display. It’s just nice to look at and it’s fun for games too.
One thing that clearly this is more geared towards content creators rather than gaming because most people play games probably not very bright places. This one went 518 nits and brightness most of the time.
I didn’t use this laptop of about 40 percent brightness as a result. It’s that right so games do look really good on this. No kidding but for those of you who are doing a professional work for photography say for print where you need that wide gamut our magazines print magazines all of that sort of stuff. You’ve got what you need here in the built-in display. Which is nice you don’t have to hook up a monitor just to do colour proofing anymore.
Battery Life
But it’s up to the manufacturer to implement that in this case no we just get Nvidia Optimus switchable graphics but that does help with battery life and that’s another selling point for this machine.
It has a 94 watt hour battery which you don’t see very often in something that high capacity. Dell XPS 15 would be one of the few but this has a lot more house horse powering gaming laptop.
LAN not super common so immediately where’s do it but anyway if what does it means pretty good battery life. Unplug for those who need to use it for productivity on the go Photoshop whatever and as you’re doing obviously.
If you’re doing heavy-duty 4k video editing on this if you’re gonna try to play games. I’m plugging your battery life is gonna be shorter but we managed about 6 hours but the brightness set to 115.
Keyboard
It’s not too bad for a machine with this much power inside the keyboard. It’s not too different for the last generation. It’s their fusion / RGB key backlighting so you can do light shows of any kind make it this little bit of PWM here not like razor blades so it can be a little hard on the eyes though.
So I never said to max brightness you can use the command keys on the keyboard to turn the brightness on and off low high and off or you can use the software to control it more gradually.
The only thing I dislike about it is the fact that just like razor blades of old they finally got around this on the multimedia keys and are not backlit. Your secondary keys are not back and so I find myself being a little blinded by the brightness in the backlight.
While trying to see where the @ sign I forgot you know the key travel this is pretty short it’s not my favorite keyboard and it’s not abysmal or terrible either. This is not so weird. Oh butterfly keyboard or something like that but it’s pretty short travel.
Again more for content creators doing 3d, 2d work and gaming and not so much for you. People who are typing all the time the trackpad is a Microsoft precision trackpad. It works wonderfully.
Speakers
We have 2 2 watt speakers onboard and they don’t have much base. I’ll say that if you want that roar and some Rumble and all that sort of thing definitely speakers or headphones or the answer to that so on the bottom.
Technical Specification
Processor
- Intel Core i7-10750H
Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64-bit
Memory
- 16GB DDR4 3200MHz dual channel memory (8GBx2) for increased multitasking productivity
Display
- Ultra-smooth, anti-ghosting FHD 1920×1080 144Hz IPS LCD display. Displays up to 100% sRGB color gamut coverage.
Graphic
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER Max-Q
Storage
- 512GB NVMe PCIe SSD (2x NVMe storage slots total)
Keyboard
- Per-key RGB Backlight + N-Key Rollover + Windows Hello login enabled | CNC aluminum + Nanoimprint Lithography
Networking
Wi-Fi
- Killer™ Wi-Fi 6 AX1650 (Powered by Intel)
Bluetooth
- Bluetooth® 5.0
Interface
- 3x USB 3.2 Gen1 (Type-A)
- 1x Thunderbolt™ 3 (Type-C)
- 1x HDMI 2.0
- 1x mini DP 1.4
- 1x Headphone-out
- 1x Microphone-in
- 1x UHS-II SD Card Reader
- 1x DC-in Jack
- 1x RJ-45
Audio
- 2x 2 Watt Speaker, Microphone and Nahimic 3
Battery
- Li Polymer 94.24Wh
Weight
- 5.5lbs
Manufacturer Warranty
- 1 year Limited warranty (Include 1 Year Global)
Summary
That’s the gigabyte arrow 17 HDR and I have to say they have finally gotten and right it’s stable in a way that some of the previous arrows that I’ve reviewed haven’t been. It’s thin, it’s light, it’s getting better-looking.
I have no objections to where it looks. It’s none beautiful like I said like a razor blade or a MacBook Pro but hey the horsepower in here and the cooling are super impressive the 4k display on this is very nice.
The keyboard on this one a little pet peeve there no secondary key a little kind of strobe II for the backlighting settings but that’s a small price to pay oh and this is expensive too but at least you’re getting good stuff for your price for more review visit TheKnTech.com.