Gigabyte Gaming A16 review

My little article is a tale of two laptops. Or maybe I should tell the dual GPU story instead. I recently had the honor of reviewing the Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 RTX 5060 gaming notebook, and honestly, it made quite an impression on me. While it’s not perfect in every respect, its performance is excellent, and combined with the crisp 15.6-inch IPS panel, it thankfully delivers an exceptional gaming experience no matter what I throw at it. Even despite the weird and not-so-great combination of SSD and RAM.

When the Gigabyte Gaming A16 landed on my desk shortly thereafter, along with the same RTX 5060 chip and a similar IPS display with a 1920 x 1200 resolution, I hoped that perhaps the weaknesses introduced by Lenovo in its model could be addressed by a slightly more sensitive brand. Let’s just say a little more flair in gaming.

And that’s the most vital thing here. Both the Gigabyte A16 and Lenovo Gen10 cost around $1,300 (there’s some confusion on the UK front, but I’ll talk about that in a moment). They both have almost the same casing, both are aimed at the same budget-conscious audience, and have extremely similar components underneath. On the surface, this should be a tough fight, but I promise, nothing like that is possible.

The problem is the relative TGP, i.e. the total graphic power of the two graphics processors constituting the heart of the laptops in question. In compact, Gigabyte for some reason decided that the A16 should draw a total of 85W of power, regardless of what graphics card you put in the configuration box. RTX 5050… 85 W, 5060… 85 W, 5070… you get the picture.

The problem is that the card simply can’t maintain a high enough clock speed for long enough to stand out from the competition. It’s already struggling to be a mobile variant and losing a good 15% of CUDA cores compared to its desktop counterpart, and now it has to compete with the likes of Lenovo’s LOQ 15, Erazer’s 15 P1 replacement, and Asus’ TUF A14, all of which have TGPs well over 100. And that’s telling, let me explain.

Now I’ll type in a number and at first glance it won’t look that bad. The difference is approximately 14% in terms of actual performance loss. This compares to Gen10 in all the titles I tested at standard graphics settings, with no upscaling. Some of these games average 5 to 15 frames per second at 1080p, and all of them average 30 to 60 frames per second.

However, if you add any form of scaling or framerate to the mix, you know it’s all about the juicy DLSS 4 goodness on the RTX 50 series, with the framerate bouncing even higher into the low 100s, and the worst I’ve seen is a difference of almost 40fps between the two (looking at F1 24), you know between the two similar RTX 5060 laptops, priced appropriately, advertised similarly…

There’s also some weird stuff going on here with internal hardware reporting. Even after installing the latest drivers, both HWInfo and Nvidia FrameView detected numerous errors related to this GPU. I’ve often seen reports of clock speeds of 4000MHz (it’s not a CPU, I checked) or temperatures registering at 0 degrees for extended periods of time.

Particularly inconvenient considering what GiMate is supposed to do in the background, optimizing power delivery and fan profiles.

It’s really frustrating because overall, the rest of the specs are pretty damn impressive. Unlike the Gen10, the entire range, including the entry-level model I have here, uses dual-channel memory. That’s 32GB if you’re in the US, and 16GB in the UK (with a subsequent £200 price drop). The whole thing is then secured by a bulky 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD; one of Gigabyte’s own Aorus 5000E models with TLC technology, which is a fairly rapid 6 GB/s drive. This combination is significantly better than the average single-channel RAM and 512GB SSD found in the Lenovo LOQ.

The processor does leave a little to be desired, as it’s one of the best Intel Core i7 13260H editions of 2023 and struggles to keep up with newer models from the Ultra and Ryzen lines, but honestly, the whole package is solid and I can’t particularly criticize it. Overall CPU and system performance was quite decent, especially on the single core, despite the two-year age difference between it and the newer Ryzen chips.

It must be the battery’s fault, right, the lower TGP? Surely this is the most vital thing I’m overlooking? And you’re right to say it. The A16 has a powerful ancient unit inside, 76 Wh to be precise, and in the PC Mark gaming test it lasts 183 minutes. It helped in gigantic part thanks to the magical AI gubbins that Gigabyte threw into its GiMate suite. The thing is though, I’d rather sacrifice battery life to be sincere. 99% of the time you’ll be playing on this device plugged into the wall anyway, so why sacrifice those frames for an extra hour or two of stutter instead?

Still, for the money and what you get, if you ignore the probably glaring faux pas of reduced frame rates on the sinking TGP graphics card, the Gaming A16 is a thing of beauty.

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He has this stealthy aura that oozes personality. Business casual, if I had to sum it up in two words. There are no protruding dividers or webcam sockets, no glaring RGB logos or gigantic, bulky cases, just a super-sleek, slim device that looks as at home in your Monday 9:15 SEO strategy and customization call as it does in the Siege of Orgrimmar raid on a Friday night. The bezels are gaunt, the RGB keyboard does its job well, there’s a webcam so you can spend more time with your face, and there’s plenty of connectivity options, including dedicated Ethernet, Wi-Fi 6E, and Bluetooth 5.2, all in a nice little package.

I mentioned GiMate earlier, and it’s worth mentioning because it’s probably one of the best-featured AI suites I’ve seen on a laptop so far. Of course, it still promises the world, local LLMs this kind of work, automatic overclocking solutions, fan profiles that somehow adapt to the environment, equalizer tweaks, a privacy mode that detects people jumping on your shoulder (admittedly some of this stuff we’ve technically had for years, just without the AI ​​badge). But overall, it’s very sleek and works well with Microsoft’s support.

Does this change the rules of the game? Not really, you’ll forget about it in about 2 weeks, but it’s nice to see it being used in a slightly more thoughtful way than previous iterations.

So, the best gaming laptop of 2025? No, unfortunately not. The A16 certainly isn’t. There are advantages, yes: build quality, RAM and SSD combination, software, price, battery life, but the difference in performance of one RTX 5060 compared to another, all due to the TGP limitation, is simply amazing. It’s a gaming notebook. He must be good at playing. This is true in isolation All right at games. However, in today’s competitive world, this is simply not enough.