Best Performing Gaming Laptop
This is the best performing gaming laptop I’ve ever tested. It’s XMG’s Neo 16, and it’s broken most of our performance records. What makes it special is you can easily attach a liquid cooler to boost performance and lower fan noise. But even without the optional liquid cooler, this 16-inch gaming laptop was constantly beating larger 18-inch models on air cooling. And there’s more to it than that—the Neo 16 is just much better this year. That starts with the build quality, which feels way nicer compared to last year’s version. Last year it was just the lid that was aluminum, but now this year it’s also the interior and bottom panel too, which means the soft rubbery finish around the keyboard is gone. There’s a bit less flex to the lid and keyboard now too, but more importantly, the screen doesn’t wobble around anywhere near as much as it used to.
Design and Build Quality Improvements
The middle of the lid sticks out a little, making opening super easy, and the lid goes the full 180 degrees back now compared to last year’s 135. The hinges feel super sturdy, even when ripping the lid open fast. Fingerprints show up but aren’t too obvious, and they’re easy to clean with a microfiber cloth. It’s not a huge laptop or anything, but it’s definitely thicker compared to a lot of other 16-inch models we’ve tested. But hey, you know what they say, more chonk means more performance. It’s still fairly portable at 5.6lb or 2.5kg, increasing to around 7.9lb or 3.6kg with the 330-watt charger included. It’s only slightly heavier compared to last year’s model, and realistically still pretty reasonable relative to other 16-inch laptops. I mean, Alienware’s x16 markets itself as a thinner device, yet it weighs a bit more. Even with the 330-watt charger, it’s far lighter compared to the 18-inch options, which is worth noting, because again, even without the liquid cooler the Neo 16 outperforms most of them. It’s using a GaN charger this year too, which means it’s a bit smaller compared to the previous massive brick.
Performance and Customization Options
I’ve got the maxed-out configuration with Intel Core i9-14900HX processor and NVIDIA RTX 4090 mobile graphics because I really want to put the water cooler to the test, but you can customize it quite a bit with the link below, which affects the price. So, XMG is offering this laptop as the Neo 16 to their customers in Germany and Europe, but the laptop itself is actually produced by Uniwill, aka Tongfang. Basically, this just means that other companies around the world are able to sell the same laptop with a different name. For example, in the US it’s known as the Hydroc 16 from Eluktronics, while here in Australia, Aftershock offers it as the Rift 16X. The Eluktronics version has a different Prema BIOS with more customization available, but at the end of the day, what I’m showing here in this review should reflect most regional variants.
Keyboard, Ports, and Cooling Features
There’s no mechanical keyboard option this year, but it still feels good to type with. The keyboard has per-key RGB backlighting which lights up all keys and secondary functions. Key brightness can be adjusted between 4 levels or turned off by holding function and pressing the spacebar. Mine has the German keyboard layout, but XMG lets you pick from a wide range of options when ordering. Lighting is customized under light settings in the control center software, and that includes the light bar on the front. This isn’t really important, but you can get a nice smooth transition of colors on the light bar, but then on the keyboard this is as best as you can get it, which just isn’t as smooth of a transition compared to a lot of other laptops. The glass touchpad is a little bigger this year. It’s smooth, clicks down anywhere and works well.
As for ports, the left side has USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A and Type-C ports and a 3.5mm audio combo jack. There’s a Kensington lock at the back. The right has a full-size SD card reader and two more USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports for 3 in total. Unfortunately, none are faster Gen 2. The rest is on the back. From left to right there’s the port for the liquid cooler, a Thunderbolt 4 Type-C port with USB 4 support, HDMI 2.1 output, 2.5 gigabit ethernet, and the power input on the right. It would have been nice to have some rear port icons on the back so you know where to plug stuff in without turning the laptop around or looking behind, but there’s not much space. The Type-C port on the back gets an upgrade this year and can now be used to charge the laptop with up to 100 watts. And that same Type-C port on the back also has DisplayPort 1.4a support for connecting a monitor, and it connects directly to the Nvidia discrete graphics, which is exactly what you want for VR gaming. And that applies to HDMI too, which could run our LG B9 TV at 4K 120Hz 12-bit with G-Sync.
Getting inside requires taking out 10 Phillips head screws; the 4 down the front are shorter than the rest. It was pretty easy to open up with pry tools. Inside we’ve got the battery down the front, two RAM slots above in the middle, two PCIe Gen 4 M.2 slots for storage on the left, and the Wi-Fi card on the right. Wi-Fi speed was in line with other 6E laptops, but on the lower side compared to others with the same card. But this is still well over gigabit speeds and plenty for most people. The performance from the 1TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD was excellent, but this will vary depending on the drive you select when ordering the laptop. The speeds from the SD card were ok, but not impressive, as other laptops can do 200 megabytes plus in sequential reads and writes with the same card. The card does not click in and sticks out, so be careful not to bump it. The upgradeability score is about as good as it can get for most 16-inch gaming laptops, with the same amount of changes as last year’s model. We can change both memory slots, the Wi-Fi card, and both M.2 storage slots, which can both fit double-sided SSDs no problem.
The speakers are found underneath on the front left and right corners. They’ve got some nice bass but sound a bit muffled and not clear. It sounds way better if you lift the laptop up off the desk. The latencymon results weren’t the best, but not as bad as we’ve seen from others. The Neo 16 is powered by a 99.8Wh battery. You can enable automatic refresh rate under general settings then GPU settings to automatically lower the screen’s refresh rate down to 60Hz on battery to help save power. This makes the screen flash black while the refresh rate changes, and it goes back up to 240Hz when you plug the charger back in. You could also set iGPU mode to prevent the more powerful Nvidia graphics from waking up, but we tested in hybrid mode, aka optimus on. You can use the control center software to adjust the charging profile. This limits charging speed and maximum charge capacity to help improve the longevity of the battery. Battery life was okay but not amazing, almost lasting for 5 hours in the YouTube video playback test. Still, this is 20% longer compared to last year’s Neo 16, and it’s ahead of most of the big and powerful gaming laptops that I’d say are its competition performance-wise.
Thermal and Performance Testing
Let’s check out thermals next. There are two fans with heat pipes shared between the CPU and GPU, and there’s liquid metal on both. At least for the RTX 4080 and 4090 versions, the 4060 and 4070 use PTM7958 instead. The pipe for water cooling goes through the block, so you can’t see it, but it goes over both the CPU and GPU now. In last year’s 2023 model, the water pipe was on top of the heat pipes, and it only went over the GPU, so I’m expecting better results from the newer 2024 design. There are holes for air intake directly above the fans, and air also comes in through the keyboard. Air gets exhausted out of the left and right sides, and from both corners out the back. The Control Center software lets us pick between different performance modes, which from lowest to highest are balanced, enthusiast, and overboost. You can also enable the custom profile for manual tuning, but only overboost overclocks the GPU by default. Custom mode gives you control over the CPU temperature limit, CPU and GPU power limits, GPU overclocking, and enabling fan boost, which sets the laptop fans to full speed. You can also swap between these modes using the button next to the power button. Its color changes so you can easily see which mode you’re in at any time. You can also go into the BIOS and change it so this button is a shortcut to max out the fans instead. Undervolting is supported through the BIOS, but I haven’t tested that here as results will vary based on silicon lottery, aka luck.
The liquid cooler is only compatible with the RTX 4080 or 4090 versions, and connecting it is easy. The laptop charger plugs into the cooler instead of the laptop, and then a power cable runs from the cooler to
the laptop. I could run the laptop without the cooler plugged in and just have it connected to air, or run the cooler without it being connected to the laptop, which allowed me to leave it on and warm up for a few minutes before plugging it in. This results in the lowest possible temperatures right away. XMG’s Oasis cooler has a 120mm fan inside with a radiator to cool the water, and this does have its own fan noise. Water flows through the laptop and absorbs the heat, and then goes back out to the radiator to be cooled down before being pumped back into the laptop to repeat the process. That should give you an idea of how it works, so let’s start with temperatures.
I’ve got one set of results with the liquid cooler disconnected, and one with it connected. The air-only results were quite similar to last year’s model when comparing the same test. But when we connected the liquid cooler, we dropped by 8 degrees on the CPU and 10 on the GPU, a massive difference, even better than the 2023 version with the cooler attached. The 2024 model uses different liquid metal and a more optimal water block, which seems to be paying off. The keyboard got to the mid-50s on air-only, which is the hottest I’ve ever seen a keyboard get, but I didn’t feel it was that hot in use. The wrist rest area was fine, and the WASD keys don’t seem to get that hot because there’s air intake above. With the liquid cooler connected, the middle of the keyboard cools by over 10 degrees, which is much more reasonable and a great result. When comparing full system fan noise in overboost mode with the fans maxed out, the liquid cooler was slightly quieter compared to air-only, even when using the default balanced profile.
Performance Benchmarks
Now let’s see what those thermals mean in terms of performance. Cinebench R23 was used to see how the CPU performs when both plugged into wall power and running on battery. With the liquid cooler attached, the Neo 16 absolutely destroys everything else, but even on air cooling, it’s the best result we’ve ever had from any laptop, and the liquid cooler just improves things further by almost 10%. To be fair, this is the highest power limit we’ve had in this test so far, but as you’ll see, the GPU doesn’t get ignored either. At the end of the day, XMG does have the best performance I’ve ever seen in a gaming laptop. The next best on air cooling is MSI’s GT77 Titan, which was an i9-13980HX plus RTX 4090 combination, and that was below XMG even when XMG was only running on air cooling. We can’t ignore the new Legion 9i, though, which is Lenovo’s new liquid-cooled gaming laptop. But, unlike this, Lenovo’s is permanently attached, so you lose portability, and in terms of raw performance, Lenovo is lower too, but only by a little. I haven’t tested the Legion 9i yet, though, and with Lenovo shipping that as I post this, that could change the high-end liquid cooling laptop landscape. Now, last year’s 2023 Neo 16 had some strange inconsistencies when running Cine bench repeatedly. Basically, it could boost up to a high score, but the longer you let the test run, the more the score would start lowering. That wasn’t happening with the new 2024 version, so it seems they’ve fixed that issue this year.
Gaming Performance
Games, which are more graphically demanding, had some of the highest frame rates recorded, though it was only a little behind a couple of other 4090 laptops in Diablo 4. When looking at the games that are more CPU dependent, the Neo 16 is the best laptop I’ve ever tested. Again, the Neo 16 is just better this year, and there’s not really anything holding it back now. Whether using air cooling or the liquid cooler, the Neo 16 is an absolute beast. Now, the liquid cooler obviously takes up some extra space and requires more effort to set up, but it’s giving you a performance that beats the majority of other laptops, including larger 18-inch models, but with better portability. It’s not all good news, though. The 2024 Neo 16 is definitely one of the hotter-running laptops we’ve ever tested on air cooling, and I would have liked to see lower temperatures from such an expensive laptop, but the liquid cooler does help with that. The liquid cooler makes the Neo 16 a unique option that performs better than most gaming laptops, so it’s definitely one you’ll want to keep on your list when comparing options.