Review: XMG C703 - world's thinnest 17in gaming laptop

Conclusion

...Its gaming pedigree is realised through a GeForce GTX 765M GPU, offering decent performance at the screen's native full-HD resolution

Laptops arriving with a retail price the wrong side of £1,000 need to be special in order to attract interest from the well-heeled consumer. German manufacturer XMG's 17.3in C703 offers big-screen gaming thrills and spills in a slimline form factor usually found on much smaller laptops.

Housing well-thought-out components into a desktop-replacement laptop weighing just 2.6kg, the C703 has both style and substance. Its gaming pedigree is realised through a GeForce GTX 765M GPU, offering decent performance at the screen's native full-HD resolution, while speedy support, most notably via the Samsung SSD and quad-core Haswell chip, provides a smooth experience all round.

Packaging such power into a thin chassis does come with a proviso; the unit becomes rather warm and noisy as the power is switched on. There's no way around this, frankly, because the cooling has to dissipate over 100W when running at full chat.

But, overall, we come away with a positive impression, one highlighting that a speedy laptop needn't be built like a tank. Want a slim, big-screen and good-looking laptop that can game as well as many desktops? As reviewed, XMG's £1,300 C703 might just be the ticket.

The Good

Very thin, rather powerful
Sensible component selection
Above average keyboard
Vivid screen

The Bad

Can get noisy and loud

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XMG C703

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The reviewed laptop is available to purchase from XMG/mysn.co.uk.

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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.

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slim is always beautiful! :D not bad with the performance also. the battery life is okay, gaming quality is very good, also pricing of this laptop is reasonable competing with other gaming laptops out there. :)

the bad side of this is it can get noisy and loud… well it's because it's slim type and airflow is in a very tight space that's why there's no way that noise can be reduced.

What defines a ‘gaming’ laptop? If it's performance then in two years time this laptop will no longer be a ‘gaming’ laptop as it's GPU will be outdated?

If it's simply defined by its ability to be used for modern games at half decent resolutions then this is NOT the worlds slimmest gaming laptop. Sure it's a bit more powerful than (say) a retina macbook but you can still game successfully on a much slimmer machine.

At this level and price the screen really should be IPS.
Being noisy and loud negates the ‘thinness’ for me.

Myss_tree
At this level and price the screen really should be IPS.
Being noisy and loud negates the ‘thinness’ for me.

Seems like a OEM version of MSI GS70 but with better price. Friend use to have one and “Can get noisy and loud” is like an understatement. He sold it within a week and got the Asus G750 instead.

Its not like 17" laptops are made to be carried around… I'd rather opt for something with better cooling if I was to game on one.