Introduction

XMG has been at the forefront of introducing legendary laptops with watercooling for some time now. With a focus on high-end portable gaming, XMG has specialized in products that many might consider "halo" products. XMG just makes such products the norm, and manages to do so quite well, something you almost have to personally experience in order to understand. It is really not that easy to constantly live at the bleeding edge of technology while staying elegant, so when you add in the focus on high-end portability as well, things can become extremely complex and you've got a big problem to solve... just how do you really keep it all quiet?



The XMG NEO 17 (E23) is a laptop that takes both Intel and NVIDIA high-end mobile parts and adds in a splash of water to that problem of staying quiet. It's truly usable watercooling, with a big pay off - a huge reduction in operating noise. That's quite important, because when you take everything high-end and mobile, and cram it into a thin chassis, there's plenty of heat to be removed from this current generation of hardware. Here's what XMG says about their choice of GPUs:

"All graphics cards available in the NEO 17 work with their maximum specified TGP in order to fully release their full performance potential. The top-of-the-line trim features the groundbreaking NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090, the fastest laptop GPU ever, with 16 GB of GDDR6 memory and a sustained TGP of up to 175 watts for demanding ray tracing, high-resolution graphics detail, and extreme 3D acceleration: perfect for gaming and content creation. AI-based technologies such as DLSS 3 provide you with unprecedented FPS values even at maximum resolution settings."

XMG is really set on providing us with the top-end of mobile NVIDIA GPUs, with some fairly significant 175 W power limits, stuffed into a rather thin chassis, that can optionally also include a mechanical keyboard. Yes, optional, as you can choose a more quiet membrane-based option as well if that is what you would prefer. XMG is about providing you with choices, after all. All of that combines with the Core i9-13900HX, which features 24 cores and 32 threads, while offering 55 W + power use, with user-adjustable limits. Add in a 240 Hz 2560x1600 17-inch G-SYNC capable display, and you've got the full run of high-end specifications crammed into a chassis that's barely an inch (27 mm) thick. That's where the OASIS watercooling comes in, an add-on accessory that not only lets the XMG NEO 17 operate full guns blazing 24/7, but also lets it do so fairly quietly, so you get a true high-end gaming experience, without any compromises with noise. New with the XMG NEO 17 (E23) is compatibility with XMG's latest XMG OASIS cooler, an external watercooling solution chock full of RGB while also updated to further reduce noise with a new fan and a quieter pump, an easier-to-fill reservoir, and a new type of connection, all while still in the same relatively small form factor. There's plenty of updates to XMG's NEO 17 for 2023 all around! Full specifications below:

Packaging and Contents

The XMG NEO 17 shows up in a rather plain brown outer box, inside which you'll find a more fancy, and yes, still kind of plain, black box. I love the hazardous materials label printed on the brown box; there due to the battery, and required for traveling by air. Ready to go international, by design, which is nice to see.


It seems that XMG includes a nice mousing surface with their laptops. I considered letting my sample NEO 17 reside on that surface while I had it, but it could only obstruct airflow, so I made use of it as a mousing surface. Its a nice "freebie" to make use of in different ways for sure. It's just as large as the NEO 17, as you can see.


You find the NEO 17 in a protective fabric sleeve, as it should be, and under that are the accessories.


For some reason its quite reassuring to find the NEO 17 clad in this black fabric as it is. I've had better bags in my hands before though, and this is an area I think XMG can improve upon. This is a top dollar laptop, so it would be nice to get some sort of carrying bag specialized for this chassis, as it is a rather large 17 inches.


There is a small amount of additional accessories here; new is the bottle opener, while also new is a specific one of the included stickers, which I am so glad they included as a separate item rather than plastered to the keyboard deck and rubbing against your palms or your wrists.


XMG sent me some distilled water to use in my testing. This was a nice treat, actually. I've never tried water from so far away before! Totally cool to have in the package. Speaking of packages, the top of the NEO 17 was wrapped in plastic like a package, even though it was in a bag. It was quickly removed, of course.


The provided adapter has been designed by FSP; a rather hefty 330 W unit that is best hidden under your desk. It has a fairly lengthy cable coming out the laptop side, while a standard power supply plug sits on the other side. I can't comment on the receptacle side, as that wasn't included with my early preview unit. Since it was a standard plug, I just grabbed one I had laying around to use for testing. I'm not a fan of this PSU, really. There are other 330 W models that don't give off as much heat as this FSP unit does.

A Closer Look

The NEO 17 comes in the same out chassis design seen in the previous model I tested, although this time with far more horsepower under the hood. So much about it is familiar yet there's much here new that needs to be talked about.


The underside of the NEO 17 features a recessed area on the underside to improve airflow to the two fans, and those fans need that space to breathe for sure.


Everything here about the connectivity remains the same as it was in the previous model. You get a triplet of USB Type-A plugs, both a headphone and a mic jack, a SDXC slot, a USB Type-C plug, HDMI, LAN; its all here, including the ports for the optional OASIS watercooling; something I don't really see as optional myself. It is required.


The rear holds both the Ethernet and HDMI ports, along with the USB Type-C port and OASIS port. This connectivity for the OASIS cooler is very different this go around. Believe it or not, this one is magnetic, and it attaches only by those magnets, yet doesn't leak.



My XMG NEO 17 is outfitted with Cherry MX key switches, with some fairly decent appearing LED lighting that has different modes for you to choose from, like most RGB keyboards these days, although it is important to note that this keyboard offers per-key customizable lighting. We have a large trackpad here as well, with a fairly decent feel, although i personally prefer a slightly more textured surface.

A look Inside

I cannot stress enough how impressive what I see here really is. This is one absolutely tiny PCB crammed with some of the most powerful hardware possible, a couple of fans, a couple of drives, and really not much else. CPU, GPU, memory and chipset all reside on the small mainboard, while the connectivity side of things is mostly provided by smaller daughter boards screwed to either side of the chassis and connected to the mainboard with ribbon cables.


We find a 97.5 WH battery installed fairly close to the middle, with the memory and drives just above. You get a huge multitude of memory options in the NEO 17 chassis; from a single 8 GB 4800 MHz stick up to 64 GB of high performance 5200 MHz memory is possible, with 5600 MHz 16 GB sticks an option as well.


We find a retail-branded Samsung 990 PRO installed as a main drive; the secondary slot is right below the primary. 500 GB drives up to 4 TB per slot are possible if you have a wallet big enough. XMG supplied me with a 1 TB model of the 990 PRO; I had to add another drive myself. There are several brands and type of PCI-E available for you to choose from. I like all these options for sure, and its nice to see retail hardware here rather than some plain OEM stuff.


The fans are of the type that has a huge number of blades to push the air; each is unique as they direct their airflow slightly differently, which also can lead to you hearing both fans, as they might have a slightly different pitch from each other. That's definitely the case with the NEO 17; with the fans blazing full speed you can definitely tell there are two fans here, but at lower speeds that effect is not as noticeable as it is under high loads (which changes when you have the OASIS LCS running).


The heatpipe arrangement here on the NEO 17 is interesting as well. The heatpipe complex isn't really that complex, with only a few pipes (six in total, plus the OASIS pipe), which means each individual heatpipe is under a fairly significant load. That's potentially 55 W per heatpipe (330 W /6), which is actually a significant number too; that's how much the CPU alone is rated for. So if you happened to notice that 5 of the heatpipes travel over the GPU cooling plate, while three go over the CPU plate with just one pipe alone eccentric with the CPU, the layout here actually makes a lot of sense. Of course, we really have 5 pipes for the GPU, leading to maybe about 35 W total per pipe as it crosses the GPU plate, and although it doesn't exactly work quite that way, its an interesting way to consider what you see here. Clearly there is a lot of focus on the GPU cooling, and not so much (but some) given to the CPU.


Even more interesting is the super-thick thermal pad on the chipset; so often chipsets in laptops get no cooling at all.the underside cover does feature a metal plate and thermal pads for the M.2 drives, to help keep those devices cool.


I did manage to find the CMOS battery, tucked under the main battery. These daughter boards for the I/O are nice, and a clever way of offering all of this connectivity that the NEO 17 features.