30 Days of Use (and counting...)

The idea of pairing watercooling with a laptop is something that seems a bit crazy, since space is in such a constraint. Just how much cooling can you really get in such situations? The answer is simple, really; you get just enough to matter, and not in a small but in a huge way. The additional cooling is more than welcome in such cramped spaces, where hardware is often found to be bouncing right at thermal limits, any time there is a decent load. But that is not the case with the NEO 17; on its own it offers a nearly silent idle profile and rather muted load acoustics, being far quieter than almost every other laptop I've tested thus far. While it is quiet, that doesn't mean it also runs hot, as is the case with some other laptops; rather here the entire system runs rather cool, so there isn't a need for higher fan speeds. This is largely in thanks to the excellent cooling design that doesn't require the benefit of the watercooling to perform well.

The sound of the fans at gaming load levels has a lower tone than I really expected, to be honest. There's some serious hardware in here, with a decent amount of power they can pull together, yet while gaming, this thing has the sound of any open air 120 mm fan. Once you add in the OASIS cooler into the mix, the NEO 17 is barely audible at full load, and instead the noise is now coming out of the OASIS radiator, rather than the laptop. It's a neat trick, that. The OASIS cooler can be run in a quiet mode as well, and this has the NEO 17 still very quiet. The tubing of the OASIS is warm to the touch at load, so you can tell that there is a decent amount of heat transferred to the external OASIS cooler quite effectively. The same applies when you want to pump up the clocks and get some free added performance; it doesn't cause the system to run any louder.

Both the CPU and GPU seem chosen to match the abilities of the complete cooling solution from a real gamer's perspective; you get the added boost in performance that delivers a truly noticeable difference in-game, and the power limits of each chip are increased to support that. The CPU goes from 45 W up to 110 W, the GPU goes from 150 W to 175 W and you also get added clock limits available to you in the "Control Center" software. A 200 MHz boost to the 3080 Ti GPU's clocks seemed to offer me an average of about 10 % in overall performance, all while being nearly silent. This isn't just normal for a gaming laptop, it's exceptional.


The LED software, I must confess, is somewhat weak, but works okay enough. The Orange power light that indicates charging is actually more welcome than the LEDs on the keyboard that are self-dimming after a set amount of time, and can sometimes stay stuck off. The keys are great, but if you happen to be like me, and pause occasionally when typing, and that interval of time matches the "OFF" timer for the LEDs, they just stay off. Crazily enough, this literally happened as I typed this out. Stop for a drink, and there you go, keyboard is as dark as can be. Fortunately, simply lifting your fingers off the keys until the LEDs blink will see the lighting return to its normal operation, another thing I did while typing this out. It's become a game almost for me, trying to make it stay off. "Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen..." You can outright disable the timed auto-off if you like.

The keyboard deck itself, where you rest your palms, has a rubbery texture to it, that is actually very nice to use and has a soft feel that doesn't pick up fingerprints easily. The keys themselves have a fairly soft feel to them too, but they do transfer some heat while at gaming load levels. Checking temperatures of the hardware sees rather low temperatures, so this must be an effect of the light-weight aluminium chassis design; we all know how good of a thermal conductor aluminium can be. It's the middle of winter here now, so I truly don't mind the heat, but it does mean that I might be noticing it a bit more due to my environment.

The main game I played on the NEO 17 was "Days Gone," which I managed to log almost 60 hours playing on the NEO 17. It's a game that kind of predicates that you spend a decent interval of time playing, and isn't really suited to short gaming sessions (at least for my gaming style), so my NEO 17 spent hours at load at a time, and all that time the cooling allowed for one of the best laptop gaming experiences I have ever had, and the input/output ports allowed me the same functionality I would have at my desktop while gaming, thanks to it's triple USB Type-A ports. Mouse, gamepad, and VR headset; all can be used simultaneously.

XMG's NEO 17 is a fantastic gaming laptop. You don't need the OASIS watercooler to get an amazing experience, but it does add to the NEO 17 a level of awesomeness that shouldn't be overlooked. I'm now left wondering; why don't more laptop makers do this?