Adata XPG Xenia Xe
Should Intel be leaving the laptop making to the lifestyle brands?
With the ongoing advance of AMD into the laptop processor space and the loss of Apple processor manufacturing contracts, we’re not overly surprised that Intel is keen to start building more of its own devices. The XPG Xenia Xe is the second 15-inch NUC to come from Intel, but considering the processor manufacturer isn’t on top of its game in other areas, is it stretched too thin to make a successful laptop?
The XPG Xenia Xe is a 15.6-inch Full HD professional ultrabook that has a simple, squarish silver shape and an inoffensive overall layout. The keyboard’s keys are a little smaller than they needed to be, with a large chassis area around them, but they offer enough resistance and travel to be fine for typing.
If you’re keen on battery life, bigger screens and the fastest storage around then the XPG Xenia Xe should be up the top of your shortlist for sure. Managing around 13 hours in 1080p movie playback, it’s one of the longer lasting professional ultrabooks we’ve tested, and it’s also one of the first 15-inch Full HD screens we’ve seen in 2021. Both the i5 and i7 models also get a generous 1TB allocation of PCIe Gen 4 SSD storage that’ll read and write between 4,000 and 5,000MB/s, which is a considerable jump over the last generation of storage performance.
The 11th generation Intel processors give the XPG Xenia Xe a solid base of general processing power, but the new integrated Iris Xe GPU is still the star attraction, delivering playable frame rates on most modern games at 1080p resolution and dialled-down graphics settings.
An excellent laptop if battery, screen size and speedy storage are the most critical elements for you.