Gigabyte X11 review

£1000
Price when reviewed

The usual suspects have unveiled dozens of Ultrabooks since Intel debuted the brand last year, and now more surprising names are starting to get in on the action. Gigabyte, better known for its graphics cards and motherboards, is the latest to hop aboard the thin-and-light bandwagon with its 11.6in Ultrabook, the X11.

This is by far the lightest Ultrabook we’ve come across, at 984g, and it’s also one of the slimmest. The front edge tapers to a wafer-thin 3mm at its thinnest point, and it’s a mere 16.5mm thick when closed – half a millimetre thinner than even Apple’s MacBook Air 11.6in.

Gigabyte X11

Gigabyte has got the weight down by constructing the X11 almost entirely from sheets of carbon fibre. As well as making for an extremely light laptop this lends the X11 a particularly fetching look, with the carbon fibre weave more reminiscent of a sports car or high-end road bike than a laptop.

It isn’t all good news, though. Gigabyte’s quest for the world’s thinnest and lightest Ultrabook has seen build quality fall by the wayside. There’s a lot of flex in the 4mm thin lid, and the base is similarly malleable, twisting to and fro all too easily. It’s absolutely no match for the MacBook Air’s aluminium chassis, or any of the metal-clad Ultrabooks we’ve seen.

Gigabyte X11

The poor build quality affects ergonomics, too. The squishy base beneath the keyboard gets it off to a bad start, and the small cursor keys and single-height Enter key mean the layout is more fiddly than we’d like. The spacebar often failed to recognise our presses no matter how firm, and the typing action across the rest of the keyboard is imprecise and uncomfortable. The trackpad is no better. It has integrated buttons, which have a positive click, but the rest of its smooth surface provided inconsistent cursor control and occasionally failed entirely to respond.

We have no complaints about what’s inside the X11, though. The 2GHz Core i7-3667U is Intel’s top-end low-voltage Core i7 chip, and it flexed its might in our benchmarks, scoring 0.75, enough to outpace both the 0.71 scored by the Sony VAIO Duo 11 and the 0.68 of the Apple MacBook Air 11.6in. If there’s a downside to the nippy Core i7, it’s battery life – it lasted for only six hours in our light-use benchmark.

Warranty

Warranty2 yr return to base

Physical specifications

Dimensions297 x 192 x 16.5mm (WDH)
Weight984g
Travelling weight1.2kg

Processor and memory

ProcessorIntel Core i7-3667U
RAM capacity4.00GB
Memory typeDDR3

Screen and video

Screen size11.0in
Resolution screen horizontal1,366
Resolution screen vertical768
Resolution1366 x 768
Graphics chipsetIntel HD Graphics 4000
DisplayPort outputs1

Drives

Capacity128GB
Hard disk usable capacity111GB
Hard diskAData XM11
Replacement battery price inc VAT£0

Networking

802.11a supportyes
802.11b supportyes
802.11g supportyes
802.11 draft-n supportyes
Integrated 3G adapterno
Bluetooth supportyes

Other Features

Wireless hardware on/off switchno
Wireless key-combination switchyes
Modemno
ExpressCard34 slots0
ExpressCard54 slots0
PC Card slots0
USB ports (downstream)1
FireWire ports0
PS/2 mouse portno
9-pin serial ports0
Parallel ports0
Optical S/PDIF audio output ports0
Electrical S/PDIF audio ports0
3.5mm audio jacks1
SD card readerno
Memory Stick readerno
MMC (multimedia card) readerno
Smart Media readerno
Compact Flash readerno
xD-card readerno
Pointing device typeTouchpad
Integrated microphone?yes
Integrated webcam?yes
Camera megapixel rating1.3mp
TPMno
Fingerprint readerno
Smartcard readerno

Battery and performance tests

Battery life, light use6hr 0min
Battery life, heavy use1hr 24min
3D performance (crysis) low settings40fps
3D performance settingLow
Overall Real World Benchmark score0.76
Responsiveness score0.94
Media score0.78
Multitasking score0.53

Operating system and software

Operating systemWindows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
OS familyWindows 7

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