Tech Advisor - UK (2021-05)

24 TECH ADVISOR • MAY 2021

REVIEWS

15,whichhasthenextchipdownin

Intel’sCorei7 range.Thisis likelydue

to Gigabyte’sWindforceInfinitycooling

system,whichcanreallycrankupthe

cooling– withouttoomuchextranoise

• if necessary.
  It alsowasn’ttoomuchlowerthan
  ourtest16inMacBookPro,whichhas
  ani9 butolder9th-generationchips.
  Thiswasunexpectedasyou’dexpect
  beingin thehigherrangewouldbea
  biggerboosttoperformancethanjust
  a generationjump – but this a definite
  pointin theAero 15 OLED’sfavour.

CinebenchR23

Apple16inMacBookPro(2020):8,849

Gigabyte 15 Aero(2020):6,103

HPEnvy 15 (2020):7,998

Photoshopis themostwidelyused

applicationforcreatives– whetherasa

coretoolforillustratorsanddesigners,

oralongside animation and video

software. We use the PugetBench

benchmarking automator for Photoshop,

which runs tasks on the image-editing

software that push the processor, RAM,

GPU and storage.

Here the Aero 15 OLED beat every

laptop we’ve reviewed – even the

MacBook Pro. Some of this is due to

the latest-generation GPU – as shown

in PugetBench’s GPU score – but it’s

the combination of components that’s

really behind this. From the use of dual

M.2 drives to speed up disk I/O to the

aforementioned cooling system, this

laptop as a whole has been designed

and tuned for the best possible

performance from when you start

working in Photoshop to when you finish.

Puget Photoshop 2020 GPU

Apple 16in MacBook Pro (2020): 66.4

Gigabyte 15 Aero (2020): 87.3

HP Envy 15 (2020): 66.5

Puget Photoshop 2020 General

Apple 16in MacBook Pro (2020): 61.3

Gigabyte 15 Aero (2020): 73.8

HP Envy 15 (2020): 59.9

Puget Photoshop 2020 Filter

Apple 16in MacBook Pro (2020): 84.4

Gigabyte 15 Aero (2020): 90.6

HP Envy 15 (2020): 75.4

Puget Photoshop 2020 Overall

Apple 16in MacBook Pro (2020): 729

Gigabyte 15 Aero (2020): 822

HP Envy 15 (2020): 679

PORTS & SPEAKERS

The Aero 15 OLED has a good selection

of ports – including one Thunderbolt

3, three USB 3, HDMI and DisplayPort.

Unusually for a thin-and-light model,