General System Analysis

Display

I haven't specifically spoken about the display yet, so let's start our analysis of the laptop with the 15.6" IPS display. It's a 2560x1440 resolution screen that is quite sharp at native resolution, which is probably overkill for this size. It is capable of less-than-perfect upscaling of 1080p content, but has a 240 Hz refresh rate despite being an IPS screen, which has things click into place. Given the gaming nature of the laptop, I can appreciate a faster refresh rate being key for both marketing and end users. So you could go with the likes of a 1080p 360 Hz VA panel, 4K 60/120 Hz IPS panel or this still-rare 1440p 240 Hz IPS panel. All things said and done, I'd have gone with this screen, too. It is rated for 350 nits of brightness (350 cd/m²) with a non-glare coating and supports up to 95% sRGB.


Well, I simply had to test that! Out came the Datacolor Spyder 5 Elite, and above are relevant measurements for the display panel used on this laptop. 91% sRGB, ~70% Adobe RGB, and 64% NTSC doesn't make for the best IPS panel on the market, and there wasn't much room for improvement after calibration, either. I would not use this panel for any professional color work involving printing without printer profiles, but that isn't the target audience, either. In fact, I edited a lot of photos used in this review on Lightroom installed on this laptop, and as evidenced by the previous few pages, it worked plenty fine for online media. Gamma response was on point, color uniformity was generally good except for the region furthest to the edge-lit LCD source, and screen brightness was within 10% of the center, again making it good enough for most users, but not award-winning if this were a separate monitor review. I set the display to ~130 nits with my own calibrated profile for better color accuracy, but appreciated XMG providing their own profile and a plethora of calibration options in Control Center.


I then went to Blur Busters motion tests and used my phone to record 720p 480 FPS burst videos in a few different scenarios to confirm the 240 Hz refresh rate was working without any ghosting or noticeable frame skipping.

Keyboard

Given keyboards are my forte and a key ingredient for my laptop preferences, I had to see how this ~90% unit worked in practice. Once I got used to the layout, it certainly was smooth sailing but for some keys not registering. Taking off the thin ABS keycaps with laser etched legends revealed they were indeed backlighting compatible as promised, but with two sets of thin clips to hook into the switches similar to other low-profile switches, such as the Kailh CHOC series we saw before. The switch stem is significantly smaller than the overall switch footprint, and each switch has a stabilizer, so press down on the center of the keycap to guarantee the stem moves down to actuate the switch or the keystroke might not register. This can be frustrating, but as I got more used to the keyboard layout, I naturally gravitated towards hitting the keycaps in the middle, which resulted in a satisfying typing experience.


The switches themselves are very good for a laptop keyboard, using an optical actuation mechanism with a tactile bump, so these are "optomechanical" after all. There is 2 mm of total travel with a 1 mm actuation distance, and the tactile bump occurs slightly before with a peak force of 60 cN. It's not the quietest keyboard I have used, and the switches are right on top of the fans, so recording a typing session with the system on wouldn't be all that useful. As such, I just took a mock recording with the laptop turned off. These are silent enough not to be bothersome in even a shared workspace, perhaps because the tactile bump isn't very pronounced, but you will inevitably bottom out on these low-profile switches, which is the primary sound signature here. Obviously, there's no empty chassis underneath for any reverberations.


Here is a look at the keyboard lit up in a static color and a rainbow wave effect. It's not very bright or the most color accurate, but does the job if you want a light show on your desk. By default, the lights turn off after an idle 15 seconds, which can be changed in XMG Control Center—not having these turn off is an option, too.

Battery

Battery life is the next most important metric for me when I look for laptops, and the 91 Wh/93.5 Wh typical battery rating combined with the relatively small form factor and weight results in an impressive portable device. I used PCMark 10's battery test for consistency, and went with logical system preferences, including the default settings—performance mode with dGPU and battery savings mode with iGPU. I also let the display automatically lower the brightness in two steps—first when the system detects the charger is not connected, and again when the battery level drops below 20%. Keep in mind that the dGPU throttles to near-useless levels for gaming, but the continuous load there resulted in just under 2 hours of battery life even so. I then conducted a forced test keeping the GPU clocks fixed, and the battery went from 100% to 5%—the system hibernates at 5% by default—in less than 30 min. Some basic battery saving features are integrated into the keyboard LEDs, which helped. The more realistic scenarios were of course far more impressive, going up to over 6 hours with NVIDIA Optimus in the video test. I didn't bother with the idle test scenario since it is not very useful. The combination of CPU, GPU, battery, and Win 11 come together to make for a laptop you can work on for a typical 8-hour day with intermittent inactivity and no charging—imagine saying that about a gaming laptop just a couple of years ago!

Miscellaneous

I mentioned that I am a big fan of the large Microsoft Precision glass touchpad. My fingers smoothly glided over the surface, and it supports singe and multi-finger gestures natively on Win 11. The gestures may be setup to work on different compatible programs too, and anyone used to gestures on Android will find these a logical progression. There are two integrated buttons, and I've become used to not having separate buttons on laptops, which I maintain are superior, and these work as expected, as pressing down in the middle from the top works plenty fine. The touchpad is inset into the palm rest area and placed under the space bar key, so it's slightly biased to the left for good positioning while typing on the alphanumeric section.

The Windows Hello-compatible webcam is another feature that merits talking about again, with it being the only non-password login option and has added security credentials. Microphone quality was surprisingly good for video calls, with some basic noise cancellation algorithms ongoing in the background, and the video quality will be plenty fine for your typical work video conference call. Having the webcam at the top of the display alone makes it a winner; I wish laptop makers would stop installing them under the screen on the bottom bezel. The integrated speakers are mediocre, with poor bass and treble extension and generally best at volume levels of 75% or below to minimize distortion. The bar for laptop speakers is low, however, so I can't blame XMG specifically here.

The I/O section is fantastic for the laptop size even though the Type-C port being TB 4 means it's not tied to just the Intel iGPU and doesn't do well with intensive loads (think VR). It also doesn't support laptop charging via Type-C, which would have been the icing on the battery-life cake. There are enough USB Type-A ports on the side too, and the full-size Ethernet port and HDMI 2.1 are great despite most people no doubt using WiFi 5 or 6 with good throughput from the Intel NIC onboard. The dedicated headphone out and microphone in jacks are more useful to me personally because of headphone and IEM reviews, but these can be handy for gamers with analog headsets or those using a standalone microphone paired with a good set of headphones. I still recommend going with a decent portable DAC/amp to get over the Realtek audio bottleneck that's best reserved for when you have no other options. Last but certainly not the least, a toast to the full-size SD card reader even if the card will stick out of the slot!