XMG's NEO 17 stands out right away, thanks to it's rare cooling abilities. Water cooling and laptops don't exactly seem to be a natural thing, but let me tell you, it is something that turned out to be rather awesome when implemented like the NEO 17 does it. It makes the laptop a ventriloquist who throws his voice (the fan noise) to another location. That gets the laptop fans out of the way of the laptop's audio. The way this all works really shifts focus on different areas than on other laptops, and the NEO 17 shows that XMG has those angles covered. The NEO 17 is currently both the overall fastest and the quietest laptop in my fleet of laptops at home, and those two things, fast and quiet, don't normally mix either.

The top of the NEO 17 is stark, and rather plain. That's not a bad thing, but it is definitely unassuming. You wouldn't expect this to be such a powerful laptop at just a glance, but simply opening it up and feeling that rubberized keyboard deck against your palms immediately gives a different impression. That surface is great for extended gaming sessions, even if you get sweaty palms from time to time. That's where it begins. You know it is different right when you very first touch it. Then you can push it a little bit, and it doesn't fight back. It simply says "OK" and keeps on going.

I spent hour after hour after hour with overclocked gaming on the NEO 17. I enjoyed every minute. XMG says they are all about gaming, high-end gaming to boot, and guess what? They actually do it right. There isn't a lot of software bloat here. There's just the fastest AMD CPU and fastest NVIDIA RTX 3000-Series GPU you can get, both with ample cooling. The fast 1 TB drive and reduced latency 40-39-39-77 memory modules, and all the rest of it, can run guns blazing 24/7 with reasonable temperatures and noise. The watercooling loop drops temperatures to levels that allows the fans to barely spin, while the CPU and GPU enjoy 70-ish Celcius gaming temperatures, rather than the 90-ish degrees that other gaming laptops would be running at, with much more noise. Having that level of performance with barely any noise; it makes for a very pleasant gaming experience, different from what you'd expect from gaming on a laptop. You do have the option of custom-tuning the fan curve on the NEO 17 as an added feature as well, something that so many other "gaming" laptops lack.

I really think the OASIS watercooling is a worthy addition to the NEO 17, since that near-silent operation is thanks to what the OASIS cooler provides. The OASIS just takes things to a level that so few other gaming laptops simply can't offer, simply because their form factor is actually quite limiting. I've often been amazed by the performance of laptops these days, but laptops as a whole tend to be quite noisy when gaming, and with some, headphones are a must. With the OASIS watercooler in "Very Quiet" mode, all you hear is the quiet noise of the water pump, and when gaming, you might hear the fans of the NEO 17 spin up. With a relatively low volume of 25% I barely noticed the fan noise, making gaming just so much easier on the ears, so much so that gaming on the NEO 17 is less tiring, I find.

The 175 W capable 3080 Ti mobile GPU offers a very decent level of performance in games and benchmarks but it has been around for some time now. It is paired with an equally-capable 240 Hz 2560x1600 screen, which while it isn't 4K, it is also definitely not 1080p, either. The screen only offers 240 Hz or 60 Hz options however, whereas I wouldn't have minded being able to choose 90 Hz or 120 Hz. It seems that while they offer great color and a high refresh rate, the current selection of 2560x1600 laptops are still limited in some areas, and this is a common theme. The NEO 17 does provide a really nice gaming-level of color that can also be used for editing duties if needed, but I'd still stick to an external monitor if I was using this laptop for professional work. I did put the USB-C port to use, not only for an external monitor, but also for my VR headset, both of which worked nicely.

The 16-thread AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX APU is a 45 W part, not the 35 W HS version, and you have the option of increasing that power use up to 100-110 W, thanks to that "HX" designation. That helps ensure that the AMD CPU can keep up with the NVIDIA graphics card, and it does that quite well. Even with that relatively huge power increase, the NEO 17 doesn't get more noisy; rather it just gulps down the heat and seems to ask for more.

The XMG NEO 17 is a costly device. Aimed at the high-end gaming market, the NEO 17 seats itself firmly in that position with pricing and components, leaving little else left on the table that you could ask for, but there are a few areas that I could see improving. The keyboard and trackpad leave little in need, both being built with high-end parts, but the onboard camera and mic array could be better in my opinion. Beyond that, the LED controls could be better, as could the BIOS, but both offer what's needed to get the job done. The NEO 17 itself is a literal light-weight device, a fair bit under 3 lbs, which is pretty good for a full-size 17-inch laptop. I would have liked to have seen a 2 TB main drive offered at this price level, especially for a high-end gaming device. I have no issues filling the 1 TB drive almost to the limit, and I actually uninstalled some things due to the 1 TB size. The 32 GB of RAM is perfect, but I would have like to have seen some enthusiast-branded memory modules with even lower latency, and options in the BIOS to tune them.

The XMG NEO 17 is a fully-capable watercooled gaming laptop that offers something many laptops do not; a low-noise laptop gaming environment. That's worth a premium in my books, but I know that $4000 is just simply out of the price range of many gamers. Yet if you can afford it or find it on a decent sale, I really think the XMG NEO 17 is a cut above almost every other gaming laptop in that it does run so quiet when paired with the OASIS watercooling, and that really lets the NEO 17 stand out. The default cooling that is easy on the ears is pretty good on its own, even quieter yet with the included OASIS cooler, and when combined when the soft-feel keyboard deck, where your hands will spend lots of time, these features really set the NEO 17 as being among the best laptops ever.

To wrap it all up, I really enjoy the time I spend gaming with the XMG NEO 17. I was actually really hesitant about the idea of watercooling a laptop, but in the end, that aspect of the XMG NEO 17 really won me over. You're not exactly moving around lots while gaming, or rather, I know I don't, so being tethered to the OASIS seemed like a huge benefit that I think most people would enjoy. With a rather simple loop and what is really a small amount of water, enough heat and noise is moved away from the laptop directly, and that allowed the NEO 17 to have significantly reduced fan noise while under gaming loads. That's something that pretty much every other laptop gets beat at, thanks to the OASIS watercooler. The performance of the laptop itself is great too, thanks to the AMD/NVIDIA combo, and the added performance that is possible with each is a requirement at this price level and the XMG NEO 17 excelled at that too. I have no problems recommending the XMG NEO 17, provided your wallet can handle it. Good screen, great keyboard deck feel, decent audio, and vastly reduced noise? Yes, please.