Conclusion

Gigabyte's P57W offers a good amount of punch in a sleek, understated chassis that's reasonably slim and able to keep cool without intolerable levels of noise.

It might be time to reconsider a gaming laptop, as the latest crop manage to dispel the common belief that such machines are loud, bulky affairs that offer a level of refinement akin to Donald Trump.

Proving that gaming laptops have mellowed, Gigabyte's P57W offers a good amount of punch in a sleek, understated chassis that's reasonably slim and able to keep cool without intolerable levels of noise.

It's a refined package, yet don't let the minimalist appearance fool you. Beneath the hood a Core i7 processor, 16GB of DDR4 memory and a dedicated GeForce GTX 970M GPU come together to deliver a high level of performance that's well suited to a wide range of usage scenarios ranging from productivity to gaming. In either mode, the 1080p IPS panel delivers anti-reflective visuals from just about any angle, the keyboard and trackpad feel roomy and inviting, and there are enough connectivity options for the P57W to serve as an effective desktop replacement.

There's plenty to like, yet there's room for improvement, too. Gigabyte's choice of SSD isn't the quickest by today's standards, the integrated battery isn't likely to get you through a full day's work, and we'd like to see an option for a higher-resolution screen. Willing to accept such compromises? Then the P57W is worthy of consideration as both a portable gaming rig and a capable workhorse.

The Good		The Bad
Sleek for a 17.3in gaming laptop Quad-core Intel Skylake CPU Capable GTX 970M graphics Keeps suitably cool and quiet Ample connectivity options		No ultra-high-res display option SSD is basic by today's standards Pre-loaded software could be tidier

Gigabyte P57W

HEXUS.where2buy

The Gigabyte P57W gaming laptop is available to purchase from Scan Computers.

HEXUS.right2reply

At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.

*UK-based HEXUS community members are eligible for free delivery and priority customer service through the SCAN.care@HEXUS forum.

Login with Forum Account

Don't have an account? Register today!

A laptop that pairs it to a screen resolution it can handle, it's a miracle!
There is such an over abundance of 4K screens with a 960, or 1080p screens with a 980, it did my nut right in

A review of a gaming laptop without any actual game benchmarks….. how *useful* >_>

So they've fitted in a keyboard from a 15“ laptop, as evidenced by the unnecessary cramming of the arrow keys displacing the Ctrl and 0 keys. That was tolerable on my previous 15” Gigabyte due to space constraints, and again on my current 15“er, but really, on a 17”?

The lack of high def displays on 17“ laptops is the main reason I didn't go for a 17” 6 months ago, I would've had to shell out over £2k. It's frankly upsetting when I can get a phone with a 4k resolution but not a laptop with a 17" screen (smaller screen sizes have this option, bizarrely).

As for the ‘can’t game on 4k on a laptop comments', yes that's certainly true for most newer games, at least without knocking the quality down to levels where you'd be better off running at 1080p. But it should not be difficult to utilise perfect scaling down to 1080p for those times you're trying to play a demanding game with settings on max, leaving you with the increased screen real estate the rest of the time..

Can we get a more useful battery life test? I appreciate that this gives you an idea of how the laptops compare against each other, but it's 2016 - who is playing 720p video from their storage with no wireless radios? A more useful test would be streaming 1080p video from YouTube, or Netflix. That would give potential buyers a good idea of what to expect when they're shelling out ££££, and they don't have to rely on marketing BS from the manufacturer or useless/unrealistic benchmarks from here.