The Chinese consumer electronics giant, Xiaomi surprised us by launching a completely unexpected gaming laptop at company’s Mi Mix 2S event alongside the Mi Mix 2S smartphone. The literally-named “Mi Gaming” Laptop is the company’s first attempt at building a high performance gaming laptop and only its second laptop attempt ever. It is a notebook style laptop which they call a “gaming laptop that can be carried to work”.
This mid-range laptop is designed to provide semi-pro level gaming experience without actually looking or feeling like a gaming laptop. Looking at the device, it is just a really well-machined laptop with really clean edges and metal chassis. The hinge looks a lot like the piston hinge we have seen on the HP Spectre which makes the laptop look really good. The laptop has a minimal vibe with its grey slab, no red accents, no logos. The only Xiaomi branding that you will find is at the bottom of the screen, it is actually one of the least gamer looking laptop that you can find in the market. The company did not mention anything about the size yet given the ultra thin screen bezels measuring 9.9mm and brushed aluminum frame, it ought to be a compact and light-weight for a 15.6-inch laptop.
Despite of its minimalistic look, the laptop packs some really impressive specs under the hood. It is a 15.6 inch laptop powered by the Intel’s 7th Gen Core i7 processor paired up with 16 Gigs of RAM and a combination of a 256GB SSD with 1TB HDD. The graphics are powered by the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 which offers pretty decent gaming performance and is capable of running all the recent AAA titles. You also get an expansion slot to add an extra SSD to allow space for more storage.
However, if you find this laptop too expensive for you, there is a base model available which offer Nvidia Geforce GTX 1050Ti graphics, 8 Gigs of RAM paired up with a combination of 128GB SSD and same 1TB HDD. Other specs are all the same. The laptop also has an RGB keyboard that lights up with 16 million colors to ensure the gaming feel of the laptop. You also get five programmable keys located on the left side of the keyboard for quick access to the important functions, there’s a ‘Tornado’ button turbo cooling system to minimize heating while rendering high-end games which results in a temperature drop of 3-5C after around 10 minutes of ramping up the cooling. Also, the keyboard features anti-ghosting with 30-key rollover for precise and accurate gaming input.
The Display is a Full HD 1080p (1920×1080) resolution display featuring “wide color gamut”. For connectivity, you get four USB 3.0 ports, two USB-C ports, HDMI and an audio jack. This laptop also features Xiaomi’s unique cooling technology which relies on large heat-pipes, a pair of 12V cooling fans, and four air vents at the side and the back.
So this was all that was currently unveiled about the laptop at the event, no confirmations have been received by the company about releasing it outside of China. The lower end model will be available for around $955 or £675, and the higher end variant will sell for around $1,435 or £1,010.