Taiwanese PC hardware manufacturer Gigabyte
is best known for motherboards and graphics cards, but also has a
stable of notebooks, to which it has recently added an extremely slim
and lightweight 11.6-inch ultrabook — the lightest you'll find anywhere
at the moment, the company claims.
Design At just 975g, the Gigabyte X11 is certainly lighter than the Asus Zenbook Prime UX21A, perhaps the leading Ivy Bridge ultrabook to date, which weighs 1.1kg. Apple's latest 11.6in. MacBook Air, another obvious comparison, weighs 1.08kg.
Gigabyte's carbon-fibre-chassis X11 weighs just 975g and tapers from 16.5mm to 3mm thick.
Clearly the X11's light-but-strong carbon fibre chassis underlies
Gigabyte's ability to edge out the 11.6in. competition on weight — just
as Lenovo's X1 Carbon
does in the 14in. ultrabook market. Like the Macbook Air, the X11
tapers to pointy 3mm at the front, with a maximum thickness of 16.5mm
(just inside the Air's 17mm). The X11 certainly feels featherlight in
the hand, while the 'woven' finish to the lid looks classy — although
the shiny surface does pick up fingerprints. The X11's footprint is
roughly A4-size: 29.7cm wide by 19.2cm deep.
Our review unit was a pre-production sample, but it felt well-built,
with no undue flex in any of the key areas, a subdued but stylish look
and feel, and solid hinges that keep the screen where it's put.
Features Our review unit was powered by a 2GHz third-generation (Ivy Bridge) Intel Core i7-3667U
processor supported by 4GB of DDR3 RAM. Storage is provided by a fast
128GB SATA III (6Gbps) solid-state drive. Further capacity can be added
via a microSD card slot — an unusual choice on a notebook, but handy for
swapping files with a smartphone.
Graphics are handled by the CPU-integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000
GPU, while the operating system is Windows 7 Home Premium — the
Professional version is also available though.
The 11.6in. LED-backlit display has a resolution of 1,366 by 768
pixels — the same as the MacBook Air. It's quite glossy, which is not to
some tastes, but the image quality is good, with rich colours, good
contrast and good viewing angles — particularly in the horizontal plane.
The screen has a solid alloy hinge that travels back to an angle of
about 135 degrees. There's a 1.3-megapixel camera in the usual
mid-top-bezel location.
The X11's isolation-style keyboard is respsonsive and solid, although we had one or two issues with the layout.
The isolation-style keyboard feels solid, and the keys give decent
tactile feedback. The spacebar on our review sample only registered if
hit in the centre, but hopefully that's just a pre-production issue. One
or two keyboard layout elements take some getting used to: the large
Shift key can get pressed when you're looking for the smaller Enter key
above it; also, the system's power button is an ordinary-looking key
next to Delete, which again could end up being pressed accidentally if
you're not careful. Elsewhere, the shiny metal strip running between the
screen hinges can prove distracting if you're working with bright
overhead lighting. Finally, we'd appreciate a keyboard backlight.
The large buttonless multitouch touchpad, from Sentelic, works well and the driver has plenty of configuration options.
The X11 is not overburdened with ports and connectors, but we're pleased to see USB 3.0 onboard.
Space for ports and connectors is limited on such a slimline system.
The aforementioned microSD slot is on the right-hand side, alongside a
microphone/headphone combo jack and a USB 2.0 port. The left-hand side
has a Mini-DisplayPort, a USB 3.0 port and the power input jack.
Conenctivity is all wireless — 2.4GHz (802.11b/g/n) Wi-Fi and
Bluetooth 4.0 — because, as on most ultrabooks, there's no integrated
RJ-45 Ethernet port.
Performance & battery life The Gigabyte X11's Windows
Experience Index (WEI) is 5.8 (out of 7.9), this rating being determined
by the lowest component score, which is for Graphics (Desktop
performance for Windows Aero). The other component scores range from 5.9
for Memory (RAM) to an unimprovable 7.9 for Primary hard disk (Disk
transfer rate):
The weakest link in the X11's armoury is clearly its CPU-integrated Intel graphics. This is borne out by the Cinebench 11.5 OpenGL test, where it scores 15.7 frames per second (fps) compared to 49fps for the Eurocom Monster's powerful Nvidia GeForce GT650M:
The Cinebench CPU test also shows up the difference between the X11's
dual-core Core i7-3667U processor and the Eurocom Monster's top-end
quad-core Core i7-3920XM Extreme Edition, with respective scores of 2.52
and 6.43. (Note that the Monster is a class-leading 11.6in. performer
that costs some £600 [ex. VAT] more than the Gigabyte X11.)
To estimate battery life we measured the X11's power consumption when idling and when loaded (running Passmark Software's Performance Test 7),
under the system's High Performance and Power Saver power management
schemes. Dividing the wattage (recorded using a Voltcraft VC940 Plus
multimeter) into the X11 battery's 35Wh gives an expected battery life
figure in hours:
On this basis, you can expect the X11 to last for between 6 hours and
1.5 hours, depending on the workloads you're throwing at it. Clearly,
this isn't a notebook that's going to get you through a full working day
away from a source of mains power.
Our X11 review unit didn't get unduly warm in use, but the noise from
the fan, which has a couple of slim vents at the back, is noticeable
when the system is working hard.
Conclusion With a stampede of slimline Windows 8 notebooks
on the way, Gigabyte's "lightest ultrabook on Earth" claim may not last
very long. Even so, the X11 looks good and performs well for a system
with integrated graphics, although battery life is slightly
disappointing. It's currently available for preorder on Amazon UK for
£1,099 (inc. VAT; £915.83 ex. VAT).
4:04:00 PM
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