A new batch of 10th-generation Intel laptops are here, this time powered by its Comet Lake CPUs, which are designed to be more higher powered than Ice lake chips and offer higher clock speeds and better gaming performance, as they're meant to be paired with a dedicated graphics card. The review results are in, and the performance does have a trade off: Power draw was up cross the board.
Hexus took a look at the Gigabyte Aero 17 HDR which came equipped with an Intel Core i7 10875H, and an RTX 2070 Super Max Q edition. It delivered decent multi-threaded and single-threaded performance, only really falling behind the Core i9-9980HK and AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS in dedicated CPU tests. Broader system tests showed it taking the top spot in PCMark, and even staying competitive with systems with more powerful GPUs, like a full-fat RTX 2070.
In gaming it took the top spot in almost every test, showing that the higher clock speed definitely helps in the lower thread count scenarios when gaming at 1080p. But this added power comes at the demand of more of it. The 10875H laptop pulled nearly 100w when encoding, and over 150 when gaming. This lead to a worse battery profile than most ninth-generation competition, even if it does manage eight hours of light use on a single charge.
TomsHardware looked at the same laptop and concluded that while it was a decent laptop, but its battery life isn't amazing, and its performance and efficiency fall behind some of the recent AMD entries, like the ROG Zephyrus G14.
PCWorld was more complimentary however, with praise for the high-end 4K capabilities of the Aero 17 it looked at. But it did say that Ryzen 4000 loomed large and that Intel may need to do more in future to remain competitive with AMD's best.
