Friday, September 17th 2021
Gigabyte Unveils its New U4-series of Ultralight Notebooks
The Ultrabook name seems to have faded away, but the concept has clearly not gone anywhere and Gigabyte has announced its new U4-series of what they simply call ultralight notebooks. This is also the first 14-inch notebook series from Gigabyte in a while, since the company has focused on 15.6 and 17.3-inch models over the past couple of years' with the last 14-inch model from the company being the AERO 14.
The U4-series is quite a different beast, as the AERO 14 was still weighing in at 1.89 kg, whereas the U4 is almost half that at 990 grams. If you're a sucker for sturdy products, then this might be what you've been waiting for, as Gigabyte claims it meets the MIL-STD 810G specification, which means that the product has gone through "simulation-testing has been conducted in eight harsh working environments, including extreme altitude, temperature and humidity, mechanical vibration, sand and dust, salt fog, etc."
So far it seems like Gigabyte is only offering a single processor option, which consists of an Intel Core i7-1195G7 CPU, which is a quad core part with a top boost speed of 5 GHz and Iris Xe graphics. The U4 comes with 8 GB of soldered down DDR4 memory and there's a spare expansion slot for a single DDR4 SO-DIMM, for a maximum of 40 GB of RAM in total, although Gigabyte claims 64 GB.
Somewhat more unusual, especially for a notebook that only measures 17.2 mm at its thickest point, is the inclusion of a pair of M.2 slots, one with support for PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives and one with support for SATA or PCIe 3.0 NVMe drives. It's not clear which type the U4 ships with as standard and there might be different SKUs in different regions.
Not quite as impressive is the 1920x1080 resolution of the 14-inch IPS-level panel, as there are plenty of similar notebooks with higher resolution displays. Beyond it being an "anti-glare" display, Gigabyte provides zero details, so we have no idea what to expect in terms of brightness. The keyboard is backlit and Gigabyte has added a "wider" touchpad without going into details about its size.
Most notebooks in the ultra thin segment tend to lack connectivity options, but the only thing really lacking here is an Ethernet port, as Gigabyte has included a Thunderbolt 4 port with USB4, DisplayPort and 35 W USB-PD charging support, as well as one each of a USB 3.2 Gen 2 and a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port, an HDMI 2.0 port, a 3.5 mm combo audio/mic jack, a microSD card slot and DC jack. There's also an Intel AX201 Wi-Fi 6/Bluetooth 5.2 card thrown into the mix, as well as a nondescript HD webcam. Finally we have a pair of speakers and a dual-array microphone with noise cancellation. Windows 10 Home or Pro is also part of the package.
The battery is rated at 36 Wh which is said to be good for up to 8 hours of usage and the 65 W power adapter can charge 45 percent of the battery in 30 minutes. The U4 measures 322x216.8 mm (WxD) and is 14.9 to 17.2 mm thick and weighs as mentioned 990 grams. No word on pricing, but Gigabyte claims it has an affordable price point, which presumably is relative in this case.
Source:
Gigabyte
The U4-series is quite a different beast, as the AERO 14 was still weighing in at 1.89 kg, whereas the U4 is almost half that at 990 grams. If you're a sucker for sturdy products, then this might be what you've been waiting for, as Gigabyte claims it meets the MIL-STD 810G specification, which means that the product has gone through "simulation-testing has been conducted in eight harsh working environments, including extreme altitude, temperature and humidity, mechanical vibration, sand and dust, salt fog, etc."
Somewhat more unusual, especially for a notebook that only measures 17.2 mm at its thickest point, is the inclusion of a pair of M.2 slots, one with support for PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives and one with support for SATA or PCIe 3.0 NVMe drives. It's not clear which type the U4 ships with as standard and there might be different SKUs in different regions.
Not quite as impressive is the 1920x1080 resolution of the 14-inch IPS-level panel, as there are plenty of similar notebooks with higher resolution displays. Beyond it being an "anti-glare" display, Gigabyte provides zero details, so we have no idea what to expect in terms of brightness. The keyboard is backlit and Gigabyte has added a "wider" touchpad without going into details about its size.
Most notebooks in the ultra thin segment tend to lack connectivity options, but the only thing really lacking here is an Ethernet port, as Gigabyte has included a Thunderbolt 4 port with USB4, DisplayPort and 35 W USB-PD charging support, as well as one each of a USB 3.2 Gen 2 and a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port, an HDMI 2.0 port, a 3.5 mm combo audio/mic jack, a microSD card slot and DC jack. There's also an Intel AX201 Wi-Fi 6/Bluetooth 5.2 card thrown into the mix, as well as a nondescript HD webcam. Finally we have a pair of speakers and a dual-array microphone with noise cancellation. Windows 10 Home or Pro is also part of the package.
The battery is rated at 36 Wh which is said to be good for up to 8 hours of usage and the 65 W power adapter can charge 45 percent of the battery in 30 minutes. The U4 measures 322x216.8 mm (WxD) and is 14.9 to 17.2 mm thick and weighs as mentioned 990 grams. No word on pricing, but Gigabyte claims it has an affordable price point, which presumably is relative in this case.
27 Comments on Gigabyte Unveils its New U4-series of Ultralight Notebooks
At the same time, it's not going to be outside the realms of cooling as long as the device itself is cool to start off with.
That cooler is a 20W cooling solution at best, so this 1195G7 will be configured for 12W cTDP for sure. Test have shown that this silicon can hit 5GHz on a single-threaded load at around 55W which is going to overwhelm that cooling solution in a couple of minutes at best, but this is how all laptops have worked for ages; The cooler has maybe 50% headroom over the idle TDP and the CPU can boost to 250% of the cooler's dissipation ability at the cost of raising the laptop's chassis temperature. That's STAPM.
I've used alloy-bodied laptops configured to 15W that have boosted to 45W before, and whilst they can only handle that for 30 seconds or so, the performance is there for bursty workloads.
Realistically, 5GH *is* a marketing stunt number; I'd expect 4.7GHz boost would consume around 15% less power and still deliver 95% of the boost performance (and of course 100% of the continuous performance since that is entirely limited by the cooling solution). This is why I'd actively avoid paying for the 1195G7 and just get the 1165G7, though the i5 is even better since it'll knock $150 off the laptop price and all you really lose is a few GPU execution units which changes Xe from "not really great but it'll have to do" to "still not really great but I guess it'll have to do". IMO that's a win-win.