Gigabyte Sabre 15 evaluate: a gaming laptop computer that makes sacrifices in all the best locations

Another Gigabyte gaming laptop computer has scooted throughout my desk: the Sabre 15. Within its black body lies some severely cellular beefy silicon: Nvidia’s GTX 1060 and Intel’s eighth Gen hexacore Core i7 8750H. An spectacular loadout able to delivering 1080p gaming at its very best. But it’s the sensible compromise and something however ostentatious design that make this laptop computer a worthy mid-range gaming laptop computer.

The Sabre 15 makes for stark comparability to the over-the-top aesthetic of among the Gigabyte Aorus units we’ve had within the workplace for evaluate. Its fairly extra light angular accents and mono-colour design make for a clean-cut look, though one which utilises noticeably much less ‘premium’ supplies than some gaming laptops or skilled notebooks.

At £1,457 the Sabre 15 is remarkably good worth in a aggressive market full of rival corporations vying to your love (however principally your cash). It’s exhausting to argue that something over 1K is a discount, however the Sabre 15 is actually a higher worth proposition than Gigabyte’s outlandish Aorus lineup. That value-conscious territory comes with some compromises, nevertheless, though few which might be overtly detrimental.

Within its weighty shell, the Sabre 15 has sufficient house for each a 2.5-inch HDD and a single M.2 PCIe x4 NVMe SSD. These are each accessible via the plastic underbelly of the laptop computer, which is held on by an ungodly variety of screws. The two SODIMM slots are additionally accessible this fashion, so, to keep away from the forwards and backwards of screwing and unscrewing the Sabre 15’s case, I’d suggest saving up all of your upgrades for one tremendous enjoyable day.

As custom calls for, the keyboard is absolutely RGB-backlit, however Gigabyte has additionally seen match to cram a numpad onto the Sabre 15. Considering I’m au fait with key switches (basically I’m a mechanical elitist), I usually can’t abdomen something much less. However, I received together with the Sabre 15 completely nicely. The keys have journey distance and really feel responsive with out an excessive amount of undesirable squishiness.

Yet for any compromises made elsewhere, Gigabyte hasn’t given any floor on the specs. Within the Sabre 15’s chassis lies considered one of Intel’s most high-performance cellular processors so far. The six-core, 12-thread i7 8750H clocks at 2.5GHz however can attain 4.1GHz when required. 16GB of DDR4 was sufficient to maintain this CPU tearing via computationally-intensive duties, managing a Cinebench R15 multi-threaded rating of 1,214. That’s simply shy of the behemoth Aorus X9 and its equally-threaded i9 8950HK at 1,263.

Considering the numerous distinction in worth between the Sabre 15 and Aorus X9, £1,400 to £3,700, the 4 p.c lower in processor efficiency is greater than a bit of bearable.

While the GTX 1060 is much from the top-performing graphics chip available on the market, it’s completely suited to the the Sabre 15’s 15.6-inch 1080p show. This VA panel is able to a 120Hz refresh fee, and when you received’t all the time be hitting that within the very newest and biggest AAA titles, there are many aggressive shooters able to taking full benefit.

Across our benchmarking suite, the Sabre 15 utilises its beneficiant chassis measurement to its benefit, buying and selling blows with the same spec Aero 15W. The vital Z-height of the Sabre 15 permits it to get a bit of extra out of that mid-range Nvidia silicon than the slim and light-weight Aero 15W, though that doesn’t depend for a lot efficiency on the subject of pure gaming efficiency.

3DMark Firestrike and Heaven each rating extremely for the Sabre. While gaming efficiency isn’t equally beautiful, this innocuous gaming laptop computer manages to ship nicely over 60fps in Rise of the Tomb Raider and GTA:V with extremely (or equal) graphical settings in place. That’s roughly on par with the Aero 15W, no straightforward feat even with the additional actual property.

The Sabre 15 joins Gigabyte’s lineup as a robust system that tows a average line. Its specs are weighted in the direction of sturdy 1080p efficiency and it hits that efficiency bracket admirably and with ease. With a specs record match for gaming, productiveness, and even mild enhancing work, the Sabre 15 makes the equitable compromises to maintain its worth cheap with out sacrificing what avid gamers need: efficiency and worth.