The Gigabyte Aero 14 OLED 2023 comes equipped with the powerful core i7-13700 H CPU and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 GPU, all packed within a slim and lightweight chassis. Here I’m eager to explore how this laptop, known as the Aero 14 OLED 2023, will fare. Sporting a stunning 14-inch OLED display boasting a 90 Hz refresh rate, it certainly catches the eye.
Specifications
| Display | 14-inch 16:10, 2880×1800 Resolutions OLED, HDR, 90Hz |
| CPU | Intel Core i7-13700H |
| Graphics | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 GPU 6GB VRAM, 35W TDP, Intel Iris Xe 96 EUs |
| Memory and Storage | 16GB DDR5 Soldered RAM, 1TB PCIE 4.0 NVMe SSD Storage. |
| Battery | 63Wh Lithium-Polymer |
| Webcam Camera | 1080p FHD IR Camera |
| Speakers | 2x 2W Speakers, Microphone DTS:X Ultra Audio Technology |
| Operating System | Windows 11 Home |
| Price | $1,499 |
Design and Build
The build quality is impressive, boasting an all-metal design in a sleek silver color that minimizes fingerprint visibility. It feels comfortable to hold, not overly bulky, with smooth edges that aren’t too sharp. Opening the lid is effortless, requiring just one finger. While it doesn’t have a 180-degree hinge, it still offers a decent range of motion without much flex in the chassis. Weighing in at 1.49 kilograms or 3.28 pounds, it’s remarkably light considering the powerful CPU-GPU combo it houses, making it a standout in its category.
On the left side, there’s a USB Type-C port that is the one you’re going to charge on. Next to that is a Micro SD card reader and a 3.5 millimeter microphone/headphone combo jack.
On the right side, you’ll find two USB Type-C Thunderbolt 4 ports and the heating vent positioned nearby. It’s worth noting that while these USB Type-C Thunderbolt 4 ports don’t support charging, they do support data transfer and display output.
On the back, you’ll find an HDMI 2.1 port, which is always a welcome addition, along with a USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 1 port to complete the port array of this laptop. Overall, it’s a solid selection of ports, although it would have been preferable if the two USB Type-C Thunderbolt 4 ports supported power delivery, which unfortunately is not the case.
User Upgradeability
Regarding what’s user-upgradable, the RAM is soldered into the motherboard, making it non-user-upgradable. While this might be disappointing, it’s not unexpected given the trend in 2023 towards thinner and lighter chassis. This unit comes with 16 gigabytes of LPDDR5 RAM, operating in dual-channel mode.
| All | Read (MB/s) | Write (MB/s) |
|---|---|---|
| SEQ1M Q8T1 | 7019.39 | 5012.63 |
| SEQ1M Q1T1 | 2869.64 | 3785.05 |
| RND4K Q32T1 | 1013.15 | 766.53 |
| RND4K Q1T1 | 81.53 | 291.98 |
The SSD is user-upgradable, which is great news, and the one-terabyte SSD showcases Gen 4 speeds, evident from its impressive reads and writes. This is exactly the kind of performance we’re pleased to witness. As for wireless connectivity, the laptop features a Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 combo card that’s slotted in, rather than soldered. This means you have the option to replace it in the future if needed, though the Wi-Fi performance is already outstanding. Additionally, there are no issues with Bluetooth on either front.
Display
The Gigabyte Aero 14 features a 14-inch 2.8K OLED display with a resolution of 2880 by 1800, boasting a 90 Hertz refresh rate. This ensures a smooth and fluid experience without significantly compromising battery life compared to higher refresh rates like 120 Hertz. Although battery life isn’t its strongest suit, we’ll discuss that shortly.
In terms of display quality, it ticks all the boxes for an OLED display: deep blacks, vibrant colors, and high contrast. The color gamut coverage is excellent, and the display is highly color-accurate. It’s also an HDR 600 true black display, delivering exceptional visuals when watching high dynamic range content on platforms like Netflix, Amazon, and YouTube. The 90 Hertz refresh rate enhances the experience with smooth scrolling and fluid motion. While it does impact battery life somewhat, it’s not as significant as higher refresh rates like 120 Hertz.
There are two two-watt speakers on Aero 14 OLED, and it’s equipped with DTS audio. I thought the volume was good, and the mids were decent, although it could use a little bit more bass. Overall, I would say it delivers good sound, but not great sound.
FHD IR Webcam and Mics
So the camera on the Aero 14 OLED 2023 is a full HD camera, providing 1080p video quality. It’s also an IR camera, which means you can log in with face recognition using Windows Hello. Also it has the Nvidia Broadcast app, which allows you to blur the background, remove the background, and provides features like auto-framing and auto-exposure, along with studio effects similar to what we’ve seen with other brands, they’ve got it here again pretty nice features.
Performance
| PCMARK 10 | 7,244 |
| Geekbench 6 (Single-Core) | 2,661 |
| Geekbench 6 (Multi-core) | 13,563 |
| Cinebench R20 | 5,378 |
| Cinebench R15 | 2,566 CB | 206.98 FPS |
| CiNEBENCH R23 | 1,922 Single-Core, 14,356 Multi-Core |
| 3DMARK Fire Strike | 15,334 |
| 3D Mark Time Spy | 6,159 |
As I mentioned earlier, Aero 14 OLED laptop is running the Core i7-13700H, a 45-watt CPU with 14 cores, including eight efficient cores and six performance cores. As you can see above benchmark results, it delivers good performance, both single and multi-core performance are very good. Cinebench R23 scores of 1922 for single core and 14356 for multi-core are impressive. Overall, it performs well for everyday tasks such as Microsoft Office, email, and web browsing.
| Asus ZenBook Pro 16x OLED Core i9-13905H RTX 4050 | 1 minute 32 Seconds |
| Lenovo Slim/Yoga Pro 9i Core i9-13905H RTX 4050 | 1 minute 50 seconds |
| HP Envy 16 (2023) Core i9-13900H RTX 4060 | 1 minute 55 second |
| Gigabyte Aero 14 OLED BMF Core i7-13700H RTX 4050 | 2 minute 00s |
When it comes to more demanding tasks like video editing in Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve, it’s certainly capable, thanks to the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 GPU it has. When I rendered a three-minute H.264 4K video in DaVinci Resolve, it took two minutes, which is a respectable result for a thin and light laptop.
| Titles | Low | Medium | High | 4K |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Witcher 3 | 110 FPS | 100 FPS | 87 FPS | 59 FPS |
| GTV V | 183 FPS | 180 FPS | 161 FPS | 72 FPS |
| DOTA 2 Reborn | 147 FPS | 139 FPS | 134 FPS | 69 FPS |
| F1 22 | 156 FPS | 149 FPS | 100 FPS | 32 FPS |
However, the RTX 4050 is not the most powerful GPU with a total TGP of 45 Watts in Aero 14 OLED laptop. So, while it helps with graphics performance, don’t expect to play AAA titles on their highest settings. When it comes to gaming, this isn’t a dedicated gaming laptop, but the RTX 4050 is capable of playing some games on certain settings. The frame rates will vary depending on the game and settings, but it’s worth noting that if gaming is a priority, there are dedicated gaming laptops out there that are more capable and better suited for gaming at this price point.
Surface Temperature and Fan Noise
The Gigabyte Control Panel gives you a lot of options when it comes to the fan profiles, especially the power mode, which I like to use most of the time. There’s also the turbo mode, which keeps the fans on full blast in a constant state, but it can get a little bit annoying, and I didn’t really see that much of an improvement in terms of performance between the power mode and the turbo mode.
When I ran the Time Spy stress test to see if this laptop would thermal throttle under heavy load, it got a score of 94, meaning it detected a little bit of thermal throttling, although not too bad since 97% would be the passing score, so it’s very close to that with just a bit of thermal throttling detected.
When it comes to surface temperatures, there are a few hot spots here and there, nothing too concerning, although the side where the vent is gets the hottest, which makes sense because that’s where the heat dissipates from. On the underside, there are some hot spots reaching as high as 59 degrees Celsius, so something to be aware of.
Regarding fan noise, it’s about 41-42 decibels in power mode, but when you put it into turbo mode, it shoots up to about 60 decibels, which is quite noticeable. It’s one of the loudest I’ve ever heard, and the fans will be constantly on in this mode. So, that’s something to be aware of, and as I mentioned earlier, I didn’t really notice that much of a performance boost in turbo mode compared to power mode, so I don’t see the benefit of using it, especially considering the increased fan noise.
Battery Performance
| Apple MacBook Pro 14 M2 Pro (70Wh) | 13 hours 28 minutes |
| Acer Swift X 14 (58.7WH) | 10 hours 14 minutes |
| Gigabyte Aero 14 OLED BMF (63Wh) | 7 hours 37 minutes |
| Asus Zephyrus G14 (76Wh) | 7 hours 29 minutes |
The Aero 14 OLED has a 63 watt-hour battery, which is not a bad size for a 14-inch laptop, although there are other laptops in this category with larger batteries. It did 7 hours and 37 minutes on the PC Mark 10 Modern Office battery test, which is a middle-of-the-road result. It also did 7 hours and 27 minutes on the PC Mark 10 Video Playback test, another middle-of-the-road result.
My overall takeaway is that this laptop has mediocre battery life. Keep in mind that I had the 90 Hertz refresh rate enabled, which does impact battery life. You can expect maybe an hour more if you reduce it to a 60 Hertz refresh rate. Of course, everyone’s use case is different, so your mileage may vary. Just please keep that in mind.
Keyboard and Touchpad
As I mentioned earlier, yes, you can open the lid with one finger, and the screen goes back as far as you see here. The hinges are on pretty nice and tight, with very little screen wobble when typing. That’s a good thing and addresses a pet peeve of mine. I don’t see too much of that here, which is good.
Now, as for the keyboard itself, it’s pretty good to type on with decent key travel and comfortable typing for longer documents and emails. However, one little nitpick I have is that the keys are white against the white LED backlight, making it hard to see the contrast and differentiation when you’re using the backlight. So, it’s not very effective in that regard. But overall, I would say it’s pretty good to work with this keyboard.
Regarding the touchpad, it’s nicely sized, with a bit of branding as you can see. It worked well for scrolling, gestures, and everything seemed to work as expected. It’s a glass touchpad and not haptic, but it is a more traditional type touchpad that worked very well without any issues.
Conclusion
To sum it up, there’s a lot to like about the Gigabyte Aero 14 OLED 2023, It’s a thin and light laptop that packs a punch with its bright and sharp 2.8K OLED display, 90 Hertz refresh rate, solid productivity performance, competitive gaming performance, plenty of ports, good keyboard, and a full HD webcam capable of 1080p video. Its rock-solid aluminum build is another plus.
However, there are some downsides to consider, including mediocre battery life, noticeable fan noise under load (especially in turbo mode), and the lack of USB power delivery on the two USB Type-C Thunderbolt 4 ports. Despite these drawbacks, the Gigabyte Aero 14 brings a lot to the table and checks many boxes for a thin and light laptop that delivers solid performance.
The Gigabyte Aero 14 OLED boasts powerful hardware, including the core i7-13700 H CPU and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 GPU, all housed in a sleek and lightweight chassis. The 14-inch OLED display with a 90 Hz refresh rate delivers stunning visuals, complemented by a solid selection of ports. While it excels in performance and display quality, drawbacks such as mediocre battery life and noticeable fan noise need consideration. Despite these shortcomings, the Aero 14 OLED stands out as a capable and versatile thin and light laptop option.
Pros
- Powerful hardware
- Stunning 14-inch OLED display
- Slim, lightweight chassis with durable all-metal build
- Decent key travel and minimal wobble for comfortable typing
Cons
- Battery Offers around 7-8 hours of usage
- Under heavy load, fan noise becomes audible
- White keys against white LED backlight may be hard to distinguish in low light
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Design9
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Display10
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Hardware9
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Ports8
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Performance10
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Thermals / Fan Noise8
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Keyboard9
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Touchpad9
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Webcam8
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Audio7
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Battery7
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Price8
