Gigabyte’s RTX 3060 laptop is cheaper than other Black Friday deals we’ve seen with similar specs

Gigabyte’s Aero 15 laptop comes with a 15.6-inch 4K OLED panel attached to it, making my paltry 27-inch 1440p monitor’s pixels look weak in comparison. This laptop has an RTX 3060 powering it and is currently at a $1249.99 Black Friday price at Best Buy, which comes in $20 to $30 cheaper than other similar options.

The Gigabyte Aero 15 is a hefty laptop that’s $250 off for Black Friday. Given the state of the graphics card shortage, laptops and prebuilts are really the only ways to reliably get a 30-series Nvidia card. Alongside its RTX 3060 is an Intel Core i7 11800H, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. Those are good specs for a gaming laptop around this price, especially compared to the other ones we found during Black Friday.

The RTX 3060 in this laptop will do the heavy lifting when it comes to running games on its fancy screen, but 4K gaming might be hit or miss (Nvidia DLSS will definitely help with that). The RTX 3060 is on the lower end of the spectrum for Nvidia laptop cards, touting a 1530Mhz boost clock. It might struggle to keep playable frame rates at 4K for modern games. You can knock the resolution down to 1440p—which we recommend as a middle ground between 1080p and 4K—and be able to play a lot more games at high frame rates.

The 16GB of memory and the 8-core i7 11800H (4.6GHz boost) are more than good enough for most games, but reviews of this laptop note that it, unsurprisingly, gets very hot and has weak battery life. That’s the downside to powerful gaming laptops: the portability takes a nosedive. But if you’ve got a power outlet nearby or are fine with limited on-the-go sessions, this is a competent choice.

This laptop also comes with a tiny bonus in the form of a free month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. You can use it to try a bunch of games out via the Windows Xbox app. It beats having to spend more on new games to test out this laptop’s strengths. 

The Aero 15 includes an HDMI 2.1 port, mini DisplayPort, three USB 3.0 ports, Ethernet port, Thunderbolt 4 port and an SD card reader, so you’ll be set if you need to use it more like a desktop PC replacement. It also has a full-size keyboard with a numpad, which isn’t always the case with laptops.

Best Buy allows you to return this laptop should anything go wrong until January 16, and Gigabyte offers a one-year warranty.

Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/gigabytes-rtx-3060-laptop-is-cheaper-than-other-black-friday-deals-weve-seen-with-similar-specs