Acoustics

The XMG NEO 17 has to be one of the quietest devices I've ever used. All you really hear is the "whoosh" of air when the fans spin up and that's about it. At idle there is no noise at all, and at full load the noise given off by the NEO 17 is surprisingly low in volume and tone. You aren't making a trade-off in temperatures for lower fan noise, either; the cooling of the NEO 17 is more than ample for the provided hardware.

Subjective Audio Quality

Audio provided by the NEO 17 is actually pretty good for a laptop, with the speakers suspended within the chassis on little blue grommets. The speakers are very forward towards the edge of the laptop that sits closest to you, so while you type the sound comes from next to your arms, which was a bit to adjust to. Even so, the stereo imaging is quite good, with audio seemingly coming from behind the screen as long as you're not blocking the audio with your forearms.

Combining the Two

I found that commonly just sitting around on YouTube or Netflix, I actually had the volume at just 16-20 out of 100. This was also OK in-game, although I did seem to prefer to turn up the volume a little bit while in-game as the fans spun up. But even so, 30 percent was more than enough for me. I never needed to go any higher, which was more than welcome, and leaves huge overhead in volume for noisier environments if needed. Going above 60 was way too high for almost any environment, but i didn't hear any distortion at those higher volumes.