Summary and Conclusion

Price

• The XMG NEO 15 (E22) is a highly configurable laptop that can be ordered here. The reviewed configuration of the XMG NEO 15 (E22) currently costs €3,690.88 (incl. VAT) including the XMG OASIS.
• The XMG OASIS external watercooling system costs €199 (incl. VAT) by itself, but is on pre-order with the NEO 15 (E22) owing to low stock, as of the date of this review.

As with the €37,000 Comino watercooled workstation, I took the XMG NEO 15 laptop on for coverage knowing there isn't much else here I could use for comparisons and further context. This is also why we have a modified version of our usual Value & Conclusion page. Instead, and I am sure you will agree, my goal was to not only see how the laptop performed in the provided configuration, but whether it benefits from an additional €199 spent on an external watercooling system. As it turns out, while not perfect, the XMG OASIS is an excellent use of money for the laptop.

Let's get the negatives out of the way first since they are easily dwarfed by the positives. The XMG OASIS currently uses an aluminium radiator for a small loop containing brass connectors and a copper heatpipe. You need to be aware of the potential risk of galvanic corrosion, and if you are new to watercooling, this might be a touch more involved than you might be comfortable with. Making things worse are the PC/ABS connectors on the tubing being incompatible with many readily available PC DIY coolants, having caused some PR hiccups already that nearly saw the OASIS pulled from the market and re-designed. The good thing is that this issue was caught early, which shows how severe it is. The current recommendation of using distilled water with timely replacements will work well enough, but I still want to see an updated OASIS sooner rather than later, and perhaps even an OASIS Pro or Elite with a copper radiator. I recall plans to have larger radiators too, and perhaps the pump could then be replaced by one with a more reliable history.

The NEO 15 (E22) is harder to talk about as it is a configurable platform, and the reviewed configuration costs more than most readers will ever be able to afford. The good news is that you might as well go with the RTX 3070 Ti and save yourself a lot of money because of power and thermal constraints, which is why I was happy I had the RTX 3080 Ti variant to showcase the prowess of the OASIS. The NEO 15 (E22) also has an interesting quirk with the Type-C port tied to the Intel iGPU as a Thunderbolt 4/DisplayPort output rather than from the dGPU. As such, it would not be a good choice for VR enthusiasts. Not having power delivery/Type-C charging is another negative, and display panel uniformity could be better, too.

But I am left very impressed with the hardware, software, and after-sales support from XMG, and two of these metrics are valid across the board for the company. They were quick to get the engineering team involved to discuss the tubing connector issue and when I realized there was coil whine, which unfortunately is a lottery item that can't be dealt with outside of binning power circuitry components at expense. As a positive, it shows XMG does not send reviewers golden samples—what you see here is what you get. There's a lot crammed into this form factor, and in that regard, I can't fault the thermal performance, either. Even the mighty RTX 3080 Ti is able to execute its role, exhausting the base 150 W Total Board Power (TBP) more often than not and only running into its limits in unrealistic stress tests. The MUX switch is handy, too—use it to switch from a balance of long battery life to performance rivaling many desktops.

I can only ask that you read the entire article in order since it is a tale of discovery and exposition, but if you do not have the time, let me make it short and sweet: The XMG OASIS helps the CPU and GPU run cooler while indirectly providing more power to these components owing to the laptop fans no longer being taxed as much. It is louder than the laptop at idle, however, and thus best used in more taxing scenarios where there are significant temperature drops on the order of even 30% and the system is up to 10 dBA quieter. It's almost as if watercooling works and has been around in the PC space for a while now! How this translates into performance gains depends on your use case, with my findings showing 6–8% improvements in gaming, rendering, simulations, and synthetic benchmarks. Given the cost of the OASIS is ~5% of the total system cost and you get a quieter, cooler system as a result, I can't help but recommend the XMG NEO 15 (E22) and XMG OASIS combination!