The HyperX Clutch Gladiate is a seriously impressive controller for its price. Not only does it offer ‘Pro’ controller adjacent features like back paddle buttons and hair trigger locks, but it also boasts surprisingly good build quality with comfy textured grips and satisfyingly tactile buttons and sticks.
HyperX Clutch Gladiate’s low price makes it a more affordable Xbox Series X controller than the likes of the Nacon Revolution X Pro and the 8BitDo Pro 2 wired controller. If you’re on a strict budget, I highly recommend the HyperX Clutch Gladiate.
The gamepad only has a couple of drawbacks, though one is significant. The controller’s D-pad is on the basic side, lacking texture, making it feel flat. The bigger problem is the pad’s hair trigger locks. When toggled on, trigger presses register inconsistently. As a result, I opted to leave them off throughout the majority of our testing phase.
Despite those issues, I still recommend the HyperX Clutch Gladiate controller. Read on for our full breakdown and review.
Price and availability
The HyperX Clutch Gladiate is available to buy for $34.99 (around £29.99) from March 27, 2023 across a broad range of online retailers. Comparatively, that’s a lower price than many of the best Xbox controllers you can buy today, such as the 8BitDo Pro 2 and Turtle Beach Recon. In terms of design and functionality, the Clutch Gladiate’s most similar to Nacon’s Revolution X Pro.
HyperX Clutch Gladiate: Design
(Image credit: Future)
Surprisingly strong build quality
Lovely face buttons and sticks
D-pad and shoulder buttons could be better
The build quality of the HyperX Clutch Gladiate isn’t up to par with the high bar set by the Xbox Wireless Controller, but it doesn’t feel cheap. Despite its low price, HyperX has managed to manufacture a pad that feels solid in the hands while also being relatively lightweight at just 280 grams.
Thanks to textured grips, the pad immediately feels secure to hold. The overall shape is ergonomic, too, allowing for a comfortable gaming experience for long and short sessions.
That quality is consistent with the Clutch Gladiate’s face buttons, sticks, and triggers. The face buttons are a particular highlight here. Made of solid plastic, they have a subtly bouncy feel, allowing for easy and quick presses. The sticks are another highlight with a slightly weighty feel and concave design.
I can’t say the same about the shoulder buttons. They’re ever so slightly longer than those on the official Xbox pad, while feeling mushier and less satisfying to press. That sentiment extends to the middling D-pad, which lacks texture and feels flat.
Lastly, the Clutch Gladiate comes with a 2.95 m USB-C cable, a requirement for the wired pad. And while I wish it were a touch longer, it’ll be more than enough for most gaming setups and is plenty long for play on PC. The 3.5mm headphone jack is welcome, too, making the Clutch Gladiate an overall great choice if you prefer wired play.
Design score: 4 / 5
HyperX Clutch Gladiate: Features
(Image credit: Future)
Rear paddle buttons are a joy
They’re easily remappable, though macros aren’t supported
Hair trigger locks are frustratingly inconsistent
Impressively, the HyperX Clutch Gladiate boasts a suite of ‘Pro’ pad adjacent features, allowing you to get more out of the controller. First up, I'm a fan of the two rear buttons. While basic, they have a clicky, tactile feel to them.
The rear buttons are remappable, so you can assign them as secondary inputs. You do this by first holding the center-rear P1 button for a few seconds, followed by pressing the button you wish to map as secondary. Finally, pressing either of the rear buttons will assign the original button to it. While a great feature, button macros (multiple button combinations) aren’t supported, unfortunately.
One of the Clutch Gladiate’s standout features should be its hair trigger locks. These switches on the back of the pad allow the triggers to stop midway, registering a trigger press in half the travel distance. In theory, this is great for games where rapid trigger presses can give you an advantage, such as shooters like Overwatch 2 or Halo Infinite.
In practice the hair trigger locks are inconsistent on both console and PC. This is the Clutch Gladiate’s biggest flaw. I first tested a controller setup on Final Fantasy 14, customized so that double-tapping a trigger gives access to a secondary hotbar. When this didn’t work, I hopped over to Elden Ring, where triggers activate strong attacks by default. I found that I had to press the triggers hard to initiate strong attacks, thus defeating the point of having trigger locks in the first place.
Sadly, the issue was present on Xbox Series X|S, too. Though I did have overall better luck with first-person shooters, the hair trigger locks worked just fine in both Halo Infinite and PUBG Battlegrounds. If you plan to use the trigger locks, check to see if your game has trigger sensitivity settings, as I found this allowed us to use the feature better.
Features score: 3 / 5
Should I buy the HyperX Clutch Gladiate?
(Image credit: Future)
Buy it if...
You’re on a strict budget
‘Pro’ adjacent pads don’t get more affordable than the Clutch Gladiate. It’s certainly one to consider if you want to keep costs low.
You’re interested in some light ‘Pro’ features Remappable rear buttons and hair trigger locks provide a good introduction to higher-end controller features on a pad this affordable.
You want good comfort and feel Despite the low price, the Clutch Gladiate is a satisfying controller to both hold and play with for long gaming sessions.
Don't buy it if...
You want more ‘Pro’ features The Clutch Gladiate is still light on ‘Pro’ adjacent touches, and the hair trigger locks are a bit of a letdown here.
Printing A3 photos or illustrations with an inkjet printer was always an expensive exercise, given the pitiful amount of ink that typical cartridges held. Running out was never a good option, making the cost per print extremely high.
People found ways of reducing the cost through ink delivery systems, and the printer makers eventually realized their greed had cooked this commercial goose, launching ink replenishment schemes and EcoTank printers.
The Epson ET-18100 is an A3 EcoTank design that has six reservoirs of ink, each with 70ml of capacity that can relatively cheaply be refilled. With six inks alongside the standard black, magenta, cyan and yellow, light magenta and light cyan are added for a much greater subtlety of colour in lighter areas of a print. These are also all dyes, with no use of pigment for black, which is common on four-tank printers.
Printing on A4, a full-page graphic takes around 75 seconds to print once uploaded to the printer, and an A3 borderless print takes about 150 seconds for the whole process at standard quality. That’s not blinding fast, but it’s quick enough for generating colour proofs or limited photography runs.
The printer can connect via WiFi or USB, although to get WiFi connected needs the use of the Epson Smart Panel software on a phone or tablet.
Our only reservation about this printer is that it has no LCD panel to display errors or instructions, instead relying on software on a computer or phone to relay the status.
Overall, the print quality of the ET-18100 is stunning, the cost of ownership is acceptable, and the ink is affordable.
Where can you get it? Not available in the USA, but it is in Europe and Asia.
Currently, the ET-18100 isn’t a Global design and has been only released in all EMEA markets, but not Canada, US, Australia or New Zealand.
It’s also the only printer currently using Epson 107 series inks, though that situation might change.
The cost of around £700 seems steep, but it’s the same as the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300, a cartridge printer that can output A3+.
In fact, at the time of writing, neither Canon nor HP makes a tank printer for photos that can print bigger than A4/Legal.
Using cartridges makes for an expensive way to produce output on A3+ paper, and it’s the critical selling point of tank printers.
Each 70ml ink bottle costs just £9.99 direct from Epson, and these official bottles can be bought slightly cheaper online.
The contents of each bottle represent up to 1500 15x10 cm prints in that specific colour, approximately twelve times as much ink as is in a typical cartridge.
Therefore, the unit cost of printing 15 x 10 cm prints is about 5p, and even an A3 poster is much less than £1, excluding the cost of paper.
Therefore, while the hardware isn’t cheap to buy, the cost of using the ET-18100 is remarkably low and is rated for a lifespan of at least 50,000 prints.
Other consumables include a replacement pickup roller for £12.99 and a ‘Maintenance Box’ that is £22.49. The quoted durability of the roller is 50,000 pages, but no specific life is allocated to the box.
(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)
Value score: 4/5
Epson ET-18100 design
A plastic box
Ink reservoir system
No display
I don’t think that we’re being abusive to call the ET-18100 a plastic box. Because, in whatever way that might be dressed up, it's precisely what this printer is.
Out of the box, except for the CD printing tray, the printer comes fully assembled and can be connected to a computer with a USB cable for quick deployment.
Like the other EcoTank designs we’ve seen, the ET-18100 uses large bottles of ink that need to be loaded into the reservoir system prior to printing. These use a clever connector design that stops an ink colour from being loaded in the wrong part of the reservoir, and there are six different colours available, but no white or grey ink.
The ink code for this printer is 107, and replacements for each colour can be purchased for around $10 each, making a complete set around $60.
From the tanks, ink is fed to the print head with 180 nozzles allocated to each colour, giving a total of 1080 nozzles, a print resolution of 5,560 x 1,440 DPI and individual ink droplets of just 1.5 Pico litres.
The quoted print speed is eight pages a minute for both mono and colour based on the 5% coverage of ISO/IEC 24734, but realistically that’s not remotely the type of printing this machine is designed to do.
The single input chute at the rear can take stock from A3+ (329mm x 483mm) all the way down to 10 x 15 cm, 80 sheets at a time, with stock ranging from thin 64 g/m² to much thicker 300 g/m² paper. It can also print on suitably surfaced CD/DVD disks and ID card blanks.
Even at the largest paper size, printing is borderless, and prints arrive on the output tray dry enough to handle most stock.
One inexplicable aspect of this printer is that while it will print borderless at A3, A4, 20x25cm (10 x 8 in),13x18 cm, 10x15 cm, 9x13 cm and Legal, for reasons that defy logic, it won’t at A5, A6, B4, B5, B6 or 5x8 in, or in any of the envelope sizes. This has been an issue with Epson designs before, and it has been possible to circumvent these limits by creating a custom size for A5 as an example and then selecting borderless printing on that. But on this printer, that doesn’t appear possible.
(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)
It’s interesting to compare this design with the Epson ET-8550 model. That model has a colour touch display, faster quoted print speeds, a scanner, an Ethernet port and some extra firmware features, like Apple AirPrint.
In the USA, the ET-8550 is $799.99, and in the UK, it is £729.99, making it only £30 more than the ET-18100. The trade-off is that the ET-8550 only has three coloured inks, two blacks (a dye and a pigment) and a grey. That might make it better at mono photo output but inferior in colour reproduction.
What the ET-18100 needed was the display that the ET-8550 gets, so feedback about any potential errors or setting up WiFi requires external software either on a computer or via a mobile device.
But even with that feature annoying missing, the ET-18100 has the critical functionality to perform the job it was designed to do. Namely, producing A3+ or smaller full-colour output to a reasonable colour accuracy in an acceptable timescale and affordably.
(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)
Design score: 4/5
Epson ET-18100 printing costs
Ultra-low cost prints
Easy Ink installation
Specs
The Epson EcoTank ET-18100 that was sent to us for review came with the following hardware:
Functions: print Media: A3+, A3,A4, A5, A6, B4, B5, B6, No.10 Envelope,DL Envelope, C6 Envelope, C4 Envelope, 10x15cm, 13x18cm, letter, legal Connection: Hi-Speed USB 2.0 (device), Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct Print head nozzles: 180 (black), 900 (all colours) Print Resolution: 5,760 x 1,440 DPI Tray capacity In/Out: 80 sheets, 100 sheets Paper Thickness: 64 g/m² - 300 g/m² Inks: Black, cyan, magenta, yellow, light cyan, light magenta (all are dyes) Page Yield out of box: 1500 photos black, 1500 photos colour Quoted ISO print speeds: 8ppm B&W, 8 ppm colour Borderless print: Yes (all paper sizes) Duplex: No Dimensions: 523 x 369 x 150 mm Weight: 8 kg Warranty/support: 1 year or 50,000 pages
Printer makers have become masters of diversion when it comes to the cost of ownership in regard to ink supplies.
What helps them in this is that ink won’t last a specific number of pages since we’ve no idea how many colours each page will contain and the balance of the dyes required.
What we can say with some certainty is that cartridges are a much more expensive way to print, and the chance of having a failure due to a cartridge running dry mid-print is significantly higher than with a tank printer.
Printer makers all still make environmentally unfriendly cartridge designs, but the newer EcoTank products (Smart Tank, whatever), like the ET-18100, do make some effort to make the cost less for those that are likely to be printing large full coverage output.
The quoted yield for each 70ml bottle of ink is 1500 pages, irrespective of colour, based on ISO/IEC 29103 pattern with Epson’s methodology printing photos in 10x15cm format.
A photo this large is about a quarter the size of A4, reducing that page count down to 375, and A3 would reduce that to about less than 100 pages.
However, at $60 for that number of A3 pages, the unit cost is only around 70 cents, which is very reasonable when compared with cartridge costs.
Depending on what you specifically print, it may be that some inks are more likely to be used, but as you can buy those inks specifically, that’s not an issue.
The only flipside to reservoir systems is that the printer has no idea how much or little ink is in each colour tank, and therefore it is up to the operator to make sure that ink levels aren’t allowed to get too low, allowing air to get into the supply lines.
The way the ink bottles operate, it isn’t possible to overfill, so keeping it filled is easy as long as you have ink on hand.
(Image credit: Seiko Epson Corporation)
Without the chip tracking annoyance of cartridges, this printer can also take ink that wasn’t made by Epson, which they warn the customer will invalidate their warranty.
Third-party dyes are available that can cut costs further, and these sources also allow this printer to use dye sublimation inks, turning the ET-18100 into an A3 capable production platform for short-run T-shirt design printing.
A limitation of doing this is that once the printer has sublimation inks installed, and it must be done from empty, it is not easy to convert it back to conventional use or vice versa.
These aren’t the types of inks that Epson is offering right now on this product, but it is likely that sublimation printing is one of the jobs this printer will be used for.
For those curious, the warranty on this printer is 50,000 pages, or a year, whichever comes first. There doesn’t seem to be an option to replace the printhead, which may be a part of this printer that fails first.
However, Epson appears to think it will last longer, as they make a roller wheel replacement that has a life of 50,000 pages, and there would be little point in replacing it if the printhead was destroyed after this much use.
It may be the cost of ownership balance has moved from the ink to having to replace the printer after 2 or 3 years, but only extended use of this machine would reveal that.
(Image credit: Seiko Epson Corporation)
Hardware score: 5/5
Epson ET-18100 performance
8/8 print speeds
2 minutes 45 seconds for A3
(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)
Printer makers are infamous for quoting speeds owners don’t usually see by using obscure ISO standards where pages have only 5% or less coverage.
That might be relevant for document printing, but for a photo printer, those numbers are largely irrelevant, as photos and designs usually have, or are close to, 100% coverage of the paper.
Epson quotes that the ET-18100 can print a 15 x 10 cm photo (as defined by ISO/IEC 24734) in 12 seconds. That seems implausibly fast to this reviewer.
In our tests, to output to gloss paper at this size took around 72 seconds, although a good portion of that was the sending of the data to the printer prior to actual printing. This is faster over WiFi than USB in most cases.
In a sequential print run where the same print was printed repeatedly, the difference between the end of one print and the end of another was 27 seconds, although this printer probably only spent 18 seconds printing and the rest loading and unloading paper.
As gloss paper was used in our test, this is automatically printed using the better-quality ‘standard’ setting. The quicker option is draft mode, possibly explaining where Epson came up with 12 seconds.
It’s tempting to extrapolate those numbers and assume an A4 or A3 print will take a very long time, but curiously that’s not the case.
In our tests, a full A3 graphic at high quality onto glossy paper took around 165 seconds (2 mins 45 seconds) to complete, with at least one minute of those process being the computer preparing our 7424 x 10496 resolution image and sending it to the printer over USB.
The actual print process lasted only around 90 seconds, which seems more than acceptable given that not every print is likely to be at this scale.
What works in favour of the larger prints is that paper handling is effectively a constant, irrespective of size, and therefore a smaller portion of the overall print time.
In conclusion, the quoted speeds of 8 ppm for both black and colour are a little unrealistic, but the performance for a photo printer is more than acceptable. Although, it is worth noting that the Epson ET-8550 is rated at double the speed for mono and 50% faster for colour output.
But, and this is the head-scratcher, Epson quotes 25 seconds per 10 x 15 cm photo on Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper. An identical time Epson predicts for the ET-18100.
The bottom line is that the ET-18100 isn’t the fastest A3 printer in the world, but it’s quick enough for a design environment printing, mostly outputting A4 and A3.
For those using colour professionally, it should be possible to calibrate the ET-18100 to sync with the controlled colour metrics of the computer displays used by the designers. With six inks, graduations and colour transitions are largely seamless, and the dyes seem well-balanced for delivering subtle shades and punchy chromatics.
We need to say that while the strength of colour in dyes is superior to pigments, they are conversely less durable, and you might not want to use them to create images for archiving or long-term display.
Many users of these printers will use perceptual colour representation rather than absolute colour metrics because that’s fine for their purpose. Those needing more accurate colour representation should expect to pay much more for the printer and the output cost than the ET-18100 and its inks.
Performance score: 4/5
(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)
We might argue that not having a display was a cost-saving Epson didn’t need to make at this price, and it would have made the printer easier to configure. But that point aside, what the Epson ET-18100 does brilliantly is print photos, and even at A3+ they don’t take a long time to print.
The other weaknesses of this offering are a missing Ethernet port, and the grey ink reservoir that the ET-8500 and ET-8550 both got. Maybe Epson has a seven or eight-tank variant planned that would be ideal for B&W photos in addition to colour.
For those that print entirely in colour, that difference is less important, though the lack of a screen and Ethernet port might be more relevant.
When we first looked at this printer and its rather cut-down model, it was tempting to think that it was overpriced for what it is. But on further reflection, there isn’t an obvious alternative to the ET-18100 in either the HP or Canon ranges that doesn’t use cartridges.
And, given how expensive printing on A3+ is with those, those costs could be rapidly recovered by this design, even if it only lasts a few years of service.
While tank printers are now starting to dominate the home and small office space, the ET-18100 might become the breakthrough photo printer that makes EcoTank the norm for the photo enthusiast slice of the market also.
Apple is gearing up to unveil its upcoming MR (mixed reality) headset soon and the device was showcased to the top 100 Apple executives last week at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The new report suggests Apple is eyeing a WWDC 23 launch (this June) for the headset which will reportedly debut as the Apple Reality Pro or Apple Reality One and will be one of its most important launches in a long time.
According to Gurman, the headset development has been showcased to Apple execs numerous times over the years but the latest preview was...
The latest 5G modem from Samsung Semiconductor is here with the newly announced Exynos Modem 5300. The Sub-6GHz and mmWave 5G-capable modem brings up to 10Gbps download and 3.87 Gbps upload speeds with support for both SA (standalone) and NSA (non-standalone) 5G networks.
Exynos 5300 is fabbed on Samsung Foundry’s 4nm EUV process, which should bring improved power efficiency and in turn longer battery life. The new modem is configurable to connect to various chipsets thanks to its built-in PCIe interface and supports the very latest 3GPP 5G NR Release 16 standard.
There’s no...
Introduction
Much like the smartphone market, smartwatches have come to a period of relative standardization with similar designs and features over the last few years. Huawei decided to bring a breath of fresh air to the market with the Huawei Watch Buds - a full-fledged smartwatch with magnetically attached wireless earbuds inside its casing. The resulting product is not the first of its kind on the market but it’s the first one from a major tech brand and as such deserved our attention.
Straight out of a James Bond movie with the deployable earbuds cleverly attached below the...
Samsung was once more the dominant force on our website this week, its phones occupying five of the top 10 spots including the first four.
Just like last week it's the newly announced Galaxy A54 mid-ranger on top ahead of the Galaxy S23 Ultra flagship.
The newly announced Galaxy M54 is off to a flying start, capturing the third position and pushing the Galaxy A34 off the podium.
Having made its European debut, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 12 shot to fifth position ahead of another phone that just expanded its availability - the Tecno Spark 10 Pro began the Indian chapter of its journey...
Week 12 was really busy and full of smartphone announcements, so let's recap it.
The Samsung Galaxy M54 is official with a 6.7-inch 1080p 120Hz Super AMOLED display, an Exynos 1380 chipset, a 108MP main camera, and a 6,000mAh battery with 25W charging.
The Oppo Find X6 and Find X6 Pro debuted in China and unfortunately odds are they won't be leaving it. The Pro has what Oppo calls three main cameras - 1-inch 50MP wide angle, 50MP ultrawide with a 1/1.56-inch sensor, and 50MP 65mm periscope zoom with the same sensor, which is the biggest in a periscope module along with a bright f/2.6...
This is the Xiaomi Redmi Note 12 4G and it's one of the four members of the series we have at the office. So let's do an unboxing. It ships with a case, USB cable, and a 33W charger.
We have the Blue model. Here it is next to the Green Redmi Note 12 - the 5G variant. They have the same-size 6.67-inch 120Hz Super AMOLED with the same 1080p resolution. Also, both phones have 5,000mAh batteries with 33W charging support. Xiaomi claims you'll get from 0% to 50% in 22 minutes.
Xiaomi Redmi Note 12 4G on the left, 5G on the right
On the back of the Redmi Note 12 4G sit a 50MP...
This week we found some major discounts on current flagships, plus deals on mid-rangers and some entry-level phones. Use the links below to jump to your region:
USA
The UK
Germany
The Netherlands
India
USA
The Google Pixel 7 is down to $450, which is a surprisingly low price for a still current flagship, even if it’s not the best one with a 90Hz display, no tele camera and 20W charging. Still, you get the pure Google experience, complete with interesting software features with every update.
...
Gigabyte has a solid track record in putting out pretty outstanding gaming laptops that deliver good performance for the asking price. They’re durable and simplistically designed, and despite being a little loud or a little heavy, they’re usually worth top marks - like the Gigabyte Aorus 17, which racked up a respectable 4 stars. Even in their non-gaming laptops they usually pack a powerful punch, like the 2021 Aero 17 model, which hit home with 5 stars and an abundance of praise for being the creative professional's dream. So, naturally, we had very high expectations for the Gigabyte G5.
This expectation was, predictably, met and at times surpassed by the Gigabyte G5 and we couldn’t reasonably ask for more from a gaming laptop with a sensible price tag like this one. After spending some time with this laptop we can definitely see it hanging with the best gaming laptops and holding its own.
The model we tested had an Intel Core i5-10500H CPU and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card which places the laptop as a midrange entry in relation to other gaming laptops. There are many different (some more powerful) versions of the G5, some with newer RTX 4000-series GPUs from Nvidia, but to be quite honest even if you’re running a bunch of AAA titles at max settings you’re unlikely to need much more internal power, since this one performed really well in our benchmarks and the G5 only packs a 1080p display - so there’s no need to shoot for higher resolutions.
The laptop comes with a stunning 1080p 15.6-inch display with anti-glare technology and a thin bezel. Colors come to life and maintain a rather striking brilliance on the screen that never dulls. You can see this very clearly with games like Cyberpunk 2077 or even when you’re watching films or Youtube videos.
I popped on an episode of Bojack (Horseman, obviously) and it really felt like I was watching the show on a cute and compact TV rather than a little laptop screen. 15.6 inches doesn't sound like a lot on paper but it arguably looks a lot bigger than it is, so don’t be too worried if screen real estate is a big concern for you.
Aside from the sound benchmark scores and pretty face, the Gigabyte G5 is just a really nice bit of hardware. It has some weight to it, but not as much as you would expect for a gaming laptop; I threw it in my backpack on multiple occasions and it didn’t drag me down or make itself consistently known, never screaming ‘I’m here! And heavy! And fragile! Good luck to your shoulders!’
Gigabyte G5 review: Price and availability
Starts at $1,099.99 / £1,293.49 / AU$2,349
UK version tested costs £1,800
Massive variety of configurations
The Gigabyte G5 RTX 3060 configuration starts at $899.99 in the US which is pretty decent for the specifications you’re getting and the package those specs come in. The RTX 4060 version costs $1,099, but in the US you can only get this version with 8GB of RAM, and not the 16GB of RAM you can get in the UK with an RTX 4060. As standard, we'd advise that any gaming laptop should have 16GB of RAM as the baseline.
As I said, I don’t think there are many cases for upgrading to the more expensive configuration unless you are looking to fully ‘future-proof’ your investment. The RTX 3060 graphics card is perfectly sufficient to be able to play just about any game at 1080p right now, but if you’re worried about things getting ahead of you, it’s worth considering moving up if you have the cash to spare. If not, our version is perfectly fine.
(Image credit: Future)
In the UK our review model costs £899.99 (AU$1,499) which is basically dead on with the US pricing, and is still a pretty decent asking price for what you get. The models are the same across the US and UK barring that one caveat we mentioned above, though again, we can’t really justify dropping that extra cash when the cheaper model is still really impressive.
The Gigabyte G5 has a good chance of gracing our best cheap laptops list for sure, as it offers strong performance and a lot of dazzling features for the asking price.
Price score: 4/5
Gigabyte G5 review: Specs
The Gigabyte G5 comes in two variations. The model we tested comes with the RTX 3060 graphics card, and the other configuration comes with RTX 4060.
In terms of CPUs, it can come with ever an Intel Core i5 or i7 processor - ours uses the i5 version. The RAM and SSD capacity varies between the two models. You can check out the specs of our version below:
(Image credit: Future)
Gigabyte G5 review: Design
Sturdy design
Ports on the rear edge of laptop
Pretty lightweight for gaming laptop
The design of the Gigabyte G5 is pretty bog-standard in terms of aesthetics; nothing specific or unique to write home about, but I don’t actually mind that. It’s still a very handsome laptop and the classic chassis design is a breath of fresh air from other gaming laptops that try a little too hard to scream ‘gaming’ as loud as possible.
It isn’t riddled with flashy RGB that demands attention and maintains a very classy appearance. There’s slightly blue-tinted LED backlighting for the keyboard and if you’re like me (read: not a fan of excessive RGB), that is enough.
The G5 is super portable, so much so that I forgot about the laptop being in my backpack at times - not just because of the lightness, but because the build is very durable. I’ve accidentally dropped my bag with the G5 inside on the office floor and been knocked around on public transport, but I never felt worried because this thing is very robust.
Despite its sturdy build quality, it’s definitely one of the more portable 15-inch gaming laptops I’ve reviewed, so if you’re after a machine you can take with you on adventures, this is it. Like most of the best laptops, the physical appearance of the laptop is sleek, and slightly futuristic and doesn't go too crazy with RGB lighting that offends the eyes.
(Image credit: Future)
Some of the USB ports and the headphone jack are on the side of the laptop with more of the physical ports along the back edge. However you feel about port positioning, we must admit that rear ports can be super convenient if you’re planning to plonk the laptop down on your desk and never move it, letting you keep your workspace free of cable clutter. Though with how easy this is to carry around it may be a little inconvenient if you want to plug in a USB mouse or a flash drive.
You get an adequate amount of ports and a somewhat unusual keyboard layout. Personally, as someone with smaller hands, I found the keys to be a little too spaced out for me when typing on the keyboard, but it felt fine when playing games with it. I asked someone with larger hands to give it a go and they felt the keyboard was well spaced out and rather comfortable, so be warned smaller hand gang! Do some finger stretches before you start writing that novel on the Gigabyte G5.
Design score: 4/5
Gigabyte G5 review: Performance
1080p is ideal for most games
Might be weaker on CPU-heavy tasks
Relatively quiet when gaming
Benchmarks
Here's how the Gigabye G5 performed in our suite of benchmark tests:
3DMark Night Raid: 38,189; Fire Strike: 17,723; Time Spy: 7,572 Cinebench R20 multi-core: 2,660 GeekBench 5: 1,205 (single-core); 6,345 (multi-core)
PCMark 10 (Modern Office): 5,694 PCMark 10 (Battery life test): 3 hours and 51 minutes TechRadar Battery Life Test: 4 hours and 1 minute Total War: Warhammer III (1080p, Ultra): 63 fps; (1080p, Low): 173 fps Cyberpunk 2077 (1080p, Ultra): 68 fps; (1080p, Low): 91fps Dirt 5 (1080p, Ultra): 69fps; (1080p, Low): 137 fps
All things considered, the performance of the Gigabyte G5 is pretty hard to beat at this price point. The RTX 3060 is a decent affordable graphics card and while it may not delight you with 4K gaming, it’ll deliver excellent performance at 1080p with the best PC games. You can play the most demanding games without dropping to abysmal framerates.
The FHD display does a great job, and you'll definitely appreciate its stunning clarity when you’re gaming, watching a film, or scrolling through photos.
The Intel Core i5 processor at the heart of the gaming laptop is pretty standard - as you may have noticed, it's an older 10th-gen Intel chip that doesn't have the fancy split core architecture of those newer 12th and 13th generation processors, but it's not so old that it'll cause any noticeable performance bottlenecking - you can do most basic CPU-bound tasks without causing the laptop to stutter. However, CPU-intensive workloads like real-time strategy games may struggle to run on the Gigabyte G5.
(Image credit: Future)
From the decidedly average scores in benchmarks like Cinebench R20 and GeekBench 5, you probably won’t be able to run a lot of heavy workloads like video editing or 3D animation but it should be able to handle some lower-level creative work. You can dabble in a little music creation or some very basic home video editing, but that might be where the bar lies.
The fan design within the Gigabyte G5 is emphasized quite a bit by Gigabyte and rightly so: the laptop doesn’t have a nuclear meltdown when playing games for extended periods of time, and when the fans do kick in they’re relatively quiet for a gaming laptop. The laptop does get a little warm but never uncomfortably hot to the touch. The cooling technology comprises two gigantic fans and four heat pipes all vented out through the three exhaust slots.
Performance score: 4/5
(Image credit: Future)
Gigabyte G5 review: Battery life
Lasts about 4 hours
A little disappointing for a gaming session
Pretty quick charge
If you're planning to take the laptop around with you and game on the go, the four hours the Gigabyte G5 lasted in our battery life benchmark doesn't really feel like a lot. The power brick is not that heavy, but it's inconvenient to carry both the laptop and the brick in a backpack.
So the battery life is not great, but fairly middle-of-the-road for a gaming laptop. When playing triple-A games on the G5, you're not likely to get more than two hours of use without plugging it in - less if you're got a bunch of wired peripherals connected. Keep in mind that if you don't plan to keep the laptop on your desk and move around with it, you'll be searching for wall sockets a lot.
Battery life: 3/5
Should you buy the Gigabyte G5?
Buy it if...
You want to game on the go
As we've said, the Gigabyte G5 is incredibly portable. You can whack this bad boy into any backpack and roam (and shoulder strength) for more.
You plan to use the laptop as a mini TV
With the clarity and vividness of the display any game gets a breath of new life on the Gigabyte G5, it would be a shame to relegate it to just gaming. Any movie or TV show streaming from the laptop would defiantly shine on this device.
Don't buy it if...
You're planning on doing anything creative
If you're planning on doing some serious video editing, 3D modeling, or animation work, the older CPU means this may not be the laptop for you.
You want an office laptop There are loads of laptops that double as gaming laptops, and if you're doing very basic admin you might get away with it on the G5 - but ultimately, this is a gaming laptop and should really be kept that way.
Gigabyte G5 review: Also consider
If our Gigabyte G5 review has you considering other options, here are two more laptops to consider...
How I tested the Gigabyte G5
(Image credit: Future)
Played games in the evening
Did some light work during the day
Took with me between work and home
As with most of my gaming laptop reviews, I tried to swap the Gigabyte G5 into my daily life and place myself into the vibe of a potential user. I used it for both work and play and really got to know the product.
I did regular tasks like writing emails, basic web surfing, and some long-form writing. In the evening I played the Sims 4 on it and a little bit of Cyberpunk 2077 too.
Most of the general-use testing I did was with the laptop running on battery power, leaving it to charge to full power before using it till it died to get a better sense of what it would be like relying on the battery when carrying it around. Naturally, our benchmarking tests were conducted with the laptop plugged in for maximum performance.
