Xiaomi Announces 15.6-inch Mi Gaming Laptop: Mid-Specs with Aggressive Pricing
by Joe Shields on March 29, 2018 10:00 AM EST
Chinese brand Xiaomi this week announced its new Mi Gaming Laptop, its first endeavor into the gaming side of laptops. The 15.6-inch Full-HD 1080p gaming laptop will offer up to a GTX 1060 6GB graphics card, 16GB of DDR4 memory, and a Kaby Lake i7 Kaby Lake processor. Starting under $1000 for the i5-7300HQ plus 1050 Ti variant, the Mi Gaming Laptop is searching for the user looking for a decent gaming experience without breaking the bank.
The outside of the black aluminum chassis has a brushed aluminum finish and goes without a logo on the lid giving it a pretty unassuming, almost business-like appearance. The laptop measures in with a 15.6-inch 1920x1080 screen and weighs in around 2.7 kg. In order to add a bit of flare to the gaming oriented device, Xiaomi includes and four-zone RGB backlit keyboard as well as RGB illumination located on the bottom of the chassis. Outside of the lights, the only other things we see are I/O ports as well as four exhaust ports for cooling located on the side and back of the chassis.
Internally, The Mi Gaming Laptop’s base configuration starts off with a 7th generation Intel Core i5-7300HQ, a quad-core with a base frequency of 2.5 GHz and a maximum turbo frequency of 3.5 GHz. The base video card is an NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti 4 GB GDDR5 which should offer adequate gaming performance. The Mi’s 15.6-inch FHD panel has 72% NTSC color gamut with 300 nits brightness and the only panel choice. The device starts off with 8 GB of DDR4-2400 memory which is upgradeable to 16 GB.
The high-end configuration steps up to an Intel Core i7-7700HQ, a quad core with hyperthreading and base speeds of 2.8 GHz, pushing a maximum turbo of 3.8 GHz. The GPU moves up to the faster GTX 1060 with 6 GB GDDR5. Memory capacity also doubles to 16GB DDR4-2400 as standard. Cooling any configuration is Xiaomi’s own 3+2 ‘large diameter’ heat pipe design and two fans which intake air from the bottom and exhaust out of the side vents.
For storage purposes, the Mi Gaming Laptop is able to house two M.2 PCIe drives and a single 2.5-inch drive. These can be filled with any combination of 128 GB or 256 GB SSD as well as a 1TB HDD option, although Xiaomi does not state if these M.2 ports are SATA or PCIe. I/O connectivity includes four USB 3.0 ports, a USB 3.0 Type-C port, microphone and headphone jacks, an HDMI port, and a Gigabit Ethernet port. The Mi also includes 802.11ac Dual-band Wi-Fi with speeds up to 867 Mbps as well as Bluetooth 4.1.
| Mi Gaming Laptop | |||||
| Core i5 Model | Core i7 Model | ||||
| GTX 1050 Ti | GTX 1060 | 128 GB | 256 GB | ||
| Warranty Period | 1 Year Warranty | ||||
| Product Page | LINK | ||||
| Processors | Intel Core i5-7300HQ 4C / 4T 2.5 GHz Base 3.5 GHz Turbo |
Intel Core i7-7700HQ 4C / 8T 2.5 GHz Base 3.8 GHz Turbo |
|||
| Memory | 8 GB DDR4-2400 |
8 GB DDR4-2400 |
8 GB DDR4-2400 |
16 GB DDR4-2400 |
|
| Network Connectivity | Gigabit Ethernet 802.11ac Dual Band (2Tx2R) Wi-Fi |
||||
| Storage | SSD | 128GB | 128 GB | 128 GB | 256 GB |
| HDD | 1 TB | 1 TB | 1 TB | 1 TB | |
| Graphics | GTX 1050 TI 4 GB GDDR5 768 CUDA |
GTX 1060 6 GB GDDR5 1280 CUDA |
GTX 1060 6 GB GDDR5 1280 CUDA |
GTX 1060 6 GB GDDR5 1280 CUDA |
|
| Expansion Slots | 1 x SD card reader | ||||
| Display | 15.6+ FHD 72% NTSC color gamut | ||||
| Ports and Connectors | 1 x USB Type-C 4 x USB 3.0 Type-A 1 x HDMI (v2.0) 1 x 3.5mm Headphone 1 x 3.5mm Mic-In 1 x SD Card Reader (SD/SDHC/SDXC) |
||||
| Input Device | RGB Membrane Keyboard | ||||
| Camera | HD Camera | ||||
| Power | 330W External AC Power adapter, 94.24Wh Battery, Li-Po |
||||
| Audio | 3W x 2 Dolby Panorama Sound | ||||
| Dimensions | 14.3" x 10.4" x 0.82" | ||||
| Weight | 5.95 lbs+ | ||||
| Price ($US) | 5999 CNY ~$815 |
6999 CNY ~$952 |
7999 CNY ~$1087 |
8999 CNY ~$1223 |
|
The base model with the i5, 8GB DDR4, and 1050 Ti graphics will cost 5999 CNY while the top end i7, 16GB DDR4, and GTX 1060 combo will run at 8999 CNY. After taking out China's tax rate, this comes to a range of $815 to $1223. These are not available now, but will only be released in China with a Chinese version of Windows on April 13th.
Xiaomi's previous foray into laptops include a Mi Notebook Pro with a Core i7-8250U and MX150, and a Mi Notebook Air, each with similarly aggressive pricing.
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Source: Mi.com
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DanNeely - Thursday, March 29, 2018 - link
My immediate thoughts are that only 8GB of ram is rather stingy for a gaming laptop. I'm also a bit concerned about the claim that it can only be upgraded to 16. I hope that's just the factory max, and not an indication that it only has a single sodimm slot; with 2 it should support 32gb using currently available modules.Skinny screen bezels and a top webcam is nice.
At the listed prices I can't fault the pairing of an SSD and HDD. I'd like to see a 5th model with a 512 SSD and optionally no spinning rust; but if Xiaomi is intending to primarily sell to the domestic Chinese market that might be getting too spendy.
The 330W PSU seems rather seriously oversized too, it's a 45W CPU and an 80W GPU. Even with everything else in the system and being able to do a reasonably fast charge while gaming 200W or slightly more seems like it should be plenty large enough.
f4tali - Thursday, March 29, 2018 - link
One of the slides during the presentation (most likely) said it supports up to 32GB. Also pretty sure the same slide says the HDD can be swapped out for a second SSD.Diji1 - Thursday, March 29, 2018 - link
Well that's just silly seeing as 4GB, 8GB and 16GB are pretty much the same as far as game performance goes.DanNeely - Friday, March 30, 2018 - link
If you're not seeing any difference between 4 and 8 gb, I can only assume you're either playing older/less demanding titles or possibly just at lower settings (this last one is speculation, I'm not sure if 720p/potato actually would reduce ram significantly vs 1080p/ultra).If only 4GB was enough, gamers wouldn't've lead the switch to 64bit windows over a decade ago when Vista came out and most major titles would still be launching as 32 bit instead of 64 only.
I'm not sure if any games are - by themselves - pushing >8gb of ram yet, but if you use your system for more than just gaming it means you don't have to worry about killing off resource hogs (eg browsers with more than a handful of tabs) just to have enough ram to keep your game from swapping.
PeachNCream - Friday, March 30, 2018 - link
I just wanted to chime in here. From the Depths regularly grabs more than 5GB of RAM. Admittedly it's a leaky Unity-based game, but with 8GB, I was regularly hitting swap space on my SSD and if I turned off virtual memory, my computer would start throwing out of memory errors which is one of the reasons why I ended up buying 16GB of RAM for it.PeachNCream - Thursday, March 29, 2018 - link
Those prices don't seem that aggressive to me. A quick Amazon search shows similarly equipped laptops at similar prices. I think the word competitive is a better description of the pricing.seetohey - Thursday, March 29, 2018 - link
94Wh battery? Yes please!seetohey - Thursday, March 29, 2018 - link
Hmm, https://www.mobigyaan.com/xiaomi-mi-gaming-laptop-... seems to indicate the battery is only 55 Wh... booYukaKun - Thursday, March 29, 2018 - link
Wow, it's like they actually want to sell those laptops to people that knows a thing or two!I'm flabbergasted!
Cheers!
thesavvymage - Thursday, March 29, 2018 - link
Too bad its not the core i5/i7-8xxx series, its a gen behind already