The Gigabyte P35X v3 Review: Slim GTX980M Gaming Laptop
by Brett Howse on April 23, 2015 8:00 AM ESTDesign
If I had to compare the P35X to another gaming system, the first that would come to mind would be the Razer Blade, which is fairly high praise. The body and lid of the system are black aluminum, and the overall finish is very similar. Obviously the P35X is quite a bit larger than the 14 inch Blade, but if I had to guess where they took inspiration from it would be the Razer. However inspiration and execution can be very different, and Gigabyte has certainly gone their own route on the design.
Gigabyte looks to have gone to great lengths to make the P35X as thin as they could. With a 47 watt CPU, and the most powerful notebook GPU available right now, there are certainly limits as to how far you can take it, so one way in which Gigabyte has shaved some thickness off of the device is by making the laptop lid very thin. What that does mean though is that the lid is not very sturdy, and on such a large display, it is very easy to get a lot of flex. The hinges are fairly light to operate though so normally this is not a big deal. The hinges do not need to be very stiff because the display lacks a touch digitizer, so unless you are one of those people that pokes at your display, the resistance on the hinges are just about perfect. They have also added a small lip at the top of the display to assist with opening.
The underside of the P35X features six feet to keep the laptop stable, and they are thick enough to keep the laptop elevated for air circulation. In the center of the device is the access port for getting to the memory, and the entire bottom will come off if you ever need access to storage or other components. The fourth storage bay is at the front, and the included DVD drive can be removed and replaced with a 2.5 inch disk drive.
Inside, and at the back, is the cooling system for the P35X. Keeping these components cool can be quite a challenge, so Gigabyte has gone with a dual-heat pipe and dual-fan configuration. Cool air is drawn in from the front and underneath, and exhausted out two very large grilles at the rear of the device.
On the left side is the RJ-45 jack for wired networking, along with the SD card slot, two USB 2.0 ports, and the headphone and microphone jacks. The right side has two USB 3.0 ports, the charging port, and the plethora of video connectors. Not too many devices these days have support for every PC video connector, but the P35X hits them all with a VGA connector, HDMI, and DisplayPort, and the mini DisplayPort output supports 4K at 60 Hz.
The display bezels are quite large, especially on the top and bottom, and unlike most of the laptop, they are black plastic. The large size is to accommodate the DVD drive at the front of the laptop, but It feels like a DVD drive in 2015 is not really necessary though, nor is using the slot for a fourth storage bay really something that most people will require, You can already get a lot of storage in the first three. Gigabyte could have trimmed down the dimensions a bit of they opted to forgo this, and increase mobility.
The keyboard has two backlight levels and is large enough to accommodate a number pad. The Zero on the number pad is only half of its normal width though because the arrow keys have been crammed in against it. There is a pile of empty space on the right side of the keyboard deck, and a better solution would be to offset the arrow keys down a bit. Perhaps it is a habit I could unlearn, but when I use a number pad I tend to hit the zero key on the left side, which would likely move my cursor instead of entering a number. The rest of the keys are not the best either, with fairly limited key travel despite the thickness of the laptop. Key strokes were a bit mushy too, but if I needed to type quickly, it never seemed to cause much of an issue.
Gigabyte’s trackpad is an Elan model, and the pad material is very smooth and easy to glide over. Gigabyte has chosen to go with a clickpad for the P35X, and with the real estate available I wish they had gone with dedicated buttons. Using the trackpad was not a fantastic experience, and several times it missed taps, and double taps would end up not registering. It is hard to explain why after all of these years, basic trackpad use can still be so challenging, but here we are. If I was gaming on the P35X, I would likely use a dedicated mouse anyway.
Styling is very subjective, but I do like the look of the P35X compared to many gaming systems out there. It is subtle and understated, which I like. However the execution of the design leaves a bit to be desired, and Gigabyte would do well to re-examine their keyboard and trackpad. As the primary input methods on a $2000 laptop, they really need to be top notch.
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Hubb1e - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
If you like the idea of this laptop but are not sold on the total execution, the Clevo p650se should be on your radar. It has a thin design that is only a little larger than the Gigabyte but lacks the optical drive and adds more cooling performance. Build quality is comparable and quite good. I just got a Clevo p650se (from Sager np8651) with the 970m and it is decently portable for a gaming laptop with a top tier GPU. At idle it is almost completely silent with only a very slight hum from the CPU fan. The 2nd HD spinning is noisier than the fan in my Clevo and that turns off after a minute of use anyways. As an early member of SilentPCReview.com idle noise was important to me. Less important to me was load noise and this Clevo exceeded my expectations with only a mild hum from the exhaust (vsync is on reducing load). I can game easily without headphones on and don't notice the noise at all once in the game. As a Clevo notebook you can get it from several vendors which opens up displays from bad TN 1080p panels to full 4k IPS displays. I opted for the Sager which came stock with a pretty good 1080p IPS panel. Mine has some light bleed in the lower left corner, but is otherwise one of the best displays I've used on a Windows laptop. I wanted this Gigabyte in this review but after reading other reviews on it I decided I didn't want a noisy laptop. My Clevo has been great and I recommend it. Hopefully Anandtech can get their hands on one.Dr_Orgo - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
I have this laptops little brother, the Gigabyte P34G-V1. I've been quite happy with it. Howerver, these thin and light gaming notebooks aren't for everyone. I was looking for a work laptop that was small enough to bike to work with, but powerful enough to run modern games at 1920x1080 with good settings. I already have a gaming desktop that I use as my primary machine. I wanted a laptop to play co-op pc games with my wife at good enough quality. It serves that purpose quite well.Darkstone - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Are you really sure you've interpreted the cooling/frequency graph correctly? From the way i see it, the CPU is throtteling at 800mhz. 30 seconds into the test.This can mean 2 things, either the benchmark does not utilize the CPU beyond a very basis level, or the system is really throttling. In either case, the benchmark is completely unrepresentative.
I suggest running prime95 on a low priority alongside any game, carefully monitor the TDP of the CPU and the clock speeds of the GPU. The temperature can be, imo, mostly ignored. The clock speeds of the cpu can be completely ignored.
Brett Howse - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
The CPU Load is only 30%, so the CPU clocks down to keep temps down.Jon Tseng - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
The Gigabyte P35X v3 Review: Slim GTX980M Gaming Laptop"Slim" and "GTX980M" - two words I never thought I'd see in the same sentence! :-p
bennyg - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
Slim, powerful, cool, quiet, reasonably priced. Pick a maximum of three.BMNify - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Excellent Slim gaming laptop, cheaper and better than Razer Blade too, And not to forget the most important point: Gigabyte actually sells their laptops worldwide whereas Razer is USA only !! Can't take any laptop manufacturer seriously who sells only in one country.meacupla - Sunday, April 26, 2015 - link
Well, razer does sell to Canada, but with expensive shipping + duties.I'm sure razer could prepay duties, like newegg does, but nope.
erple2 - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
I've been waiting a bit for this review. It looked like it checked all of the right boxes, and could be the replacement for my aging Envy 15t, at least as a portable gaming computer. I was hoping for better battery life than what this gives (just under 5 hours seems low), and a better keyboard. The trackpad on my Envy 15 is pretty bad (then again, every non-macbook pro trackpad has been pretty terrible IMO), but the keyboard is reasonable. It's battery life is terrible though at a whopping 90 minutes at idle on the desktop.Anyway, I wish they'd just get rid of the space the DVD drive takes up, and shrink the chassis more. Also, the more I use laptops, the less I like a number pad. I'd rather connect it up to a KVM switch if I really needed a number pad.
I dunno, it still looks like a pretty solid laptop, and isn't horribly angled like the kiddie laptops that have similar internals.
milkod2001 - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
i wonder if it would help dramatically with noise/thermal issues if they have implemented different notebook design approach: Starting from front very thin(2-3 mm) continuing to thick(up to 25mm).This way there would be enough space at the rear to implement better/bigger cooling system.
Plus it would be better for typing as laptop keyboard would face up the same way as any external keyboard.
Aslo trackpad completely removed for navigation only touch screen or external mice would be used.
Keyboard moved to front, made bigger for better typing experience and at the position where keyboard currently is now to have bigger speakers +small sub.