Gigabyte AORUS MASTER 18 Core Ultra 9 275HX RTX 5090 Gaming Laptop Review
A Closer Look Continued
This is a gorgeous-looking bit of kit, and one of the biggest features, literally, is that impressive 18-inch 2560×1600 16:9 aspect ratio screen. One of the benefits a large display offers is that the laptop is fairly wide, allowing room for a bigger keyboard.
The keyboard is full-size and features a full numberpad; the only difference is that the gaps between the navigation keys and the numberpad have been deleted, but a fair compromise to get a proper numberpad included in the setup.
There’s a large touch pad too, allowing for a great range of movement, as well as the usual array of gestures for pinch zoom, two finger scrolling, and the mouse click functions.
The keyboard itself is pretty standard, but it is of a good quality. It features a nicely light clicky response, as you would expect from a premium laptop such as this.
While I doubt you would be gaming on the built-in touch pad, the keyboard holds up more than well enough for a bit of WASD action. I’m actually a little surprised Gigabyte didn’t include a decent gaming mouse in the box; that would have been a nice addition to this setup, but it’s hardly a deal breaker, given you can pick up a good mouse pretty cheap these days.
The numberpad is a welcome addition, though. I use mine a lot for work, especially when benchmarking and updating spreadsheets.
Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos are badged up the top here, and while I think the Atmos thing is maybe a stretch, it does feature speakers at the bottom of the screen, and under the laptop, so it should give off some decent sound. However, the Dolby Vision is easily legit thanks to the HDR1000-certified mini-LED display.
The panel looks great, with a really good quality matte coating that difuses reflections easily. It’s very bright in here, with the sun shining in, and all internal lights on, so the panel is handling it very well. Of course, this panel is HDR1000, so it should easily outshine the sun anyway.
Around the back, there’s a light ripple to the panel, giving it a more interesting aesthetic than just flat plastic.
There’s also an Aorus logo with a holographic effect that gives it some nice reflections.
When it comes to RGB, those two light bars are really bright and vibrant. Throwing rainbows, or any other colour and effect you desire to the front and back of the laptop.
There’s also a fully RGB keyboard, so it’s nice and easy to see in a darker room while you’re working or gaming.
Around the back, much to my surprise, the logo is LED lit too, and there’s an AORUS logo projection that shines down onto your desk. In short, nothing about the Master 18 is subtle.
On first boot, the laptop went through all the usual Windows updates and this took about twenty minutes to complete, but was all straightforward enough.
And if the laptop isn’t already big enough, there’s also this chunky power brick to keep it charged.
Everything is looking great, and the screen is vibrant, but let’s get on with some benchmarks and see what this beast can do.
