In a double bill today, we have both Gigabyte and Dell announcing a refresh to their popular “thin and light” series line-up of both XPS and Aero models. In another this-article-only exclusive, I’ll allow you, the readers, to get a sneak peak of what is going through my mind right now:

Not only are the “sweet-spot” hardware of performance/price/portability getting an upgrade, we are finally also getting an indirect confirmation that the GTX 16 series of GPUs are indeed coming in some form to laptops. This is something that I mentioned on my wish list for Computex. Funny thing is, its not even Computex yet! Yet here we are, at least one aspect can be crossed off my wish list!

Currently, according to Intel’s database, an 8-core variant based on is due to launch in the second quarter of 2019 that features both the i9-9880H and i9-9980HK. Presumably, with the difference between the “H” and “HK” variant staying the same as previous generations, the ability to overclock will be the main differentiating factor between these 2 CPUs.

For now, there has been no confirmation on the specifications of the mobile variant GTX 16 GPUs as of yet. Although, I think it is fair to say that one should expect performance that is slightly higher than the last generation 1070 Max-Q according to the performance delta between the two desktop variant cards.

While neither company have stated an exact date of release, Dell has stated an expected timeframe of June as their release period. Expect Gigabyte to do the same with their Aero 15 line-up.

Dell via Notebookcheck & Dell press release

Gigabyte via Notebookcheck & Gigabyte product page

Chia is the horse-author from the far flung year of 2153. While not grazing on grass pastures or reviewing old time-y games and technology from the early 21st century pretending to not know what comes next (as to not disturb the space-time continuum), he can be seen exchanging vast quantities of Earth currency for parts needed to fix his damaged space ship.