Aorus X5S v5 Camo Review

It’s been a while since I reviewed the Aorus X3, so I was happy to be asked to have a look at its big brother. It has a 15.6inch, 3840 x 2160 resolution display and a full keyboard -- plus, the power button isn’t on the side. Other than that, the X5S looks pretty identical to the X3. You know, apart from the kick-ass camouflage paintwork.

The box contains the manual and worldwide warranty, along with the laptop and charger cable. The laptop itself is your usual full keyboard, but has six macro buttons on the left side of the keyboard. The laptop feels nice and solid with a full-metal chassis. It has the power button on the side, a Mini DisplayPort, three USB 3 and one USB-C (3.1) port, monitor port, an HDMI port, headphone and microphone jacks, and a memory card slot. The power socket and ethernet port are in the rear. It is an i7-6700HQ processor with 32GB RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M.

The keyboard is nice and solid, with a backlight. The trackpad, however, is a different story. The left and right click are part of the trackpad without any lines or breaks, which means that if you slide your thumb very slightly on one of the buttons -- you’re now clicking something else.

The first thing I did was download Steam and install Elite Dangerous: Horizons. It’s my go-to for checking out how good a laptop is, and after the poor performance of the X3 I was curious if it was an Aorus thing or just that one laptop. The X5 managed perfectly with high graphics settings at the full 3840 x 2160 resolution. Despite the fans going absolutely mental, and heating up the left side of the laptop, it still ran fine for a good couple of hours.

Curiously enough, during my time with the laptop it received a Windows Update. I told it to update and shut down, then went to bed without giving it a second thought. After the update, the fans stopped revving up as fast. I played Horizons quite a bit more, and even landed on a planet which makes my PC’s graphics card spin up on lower graphics settings. The X5S ran perfectly quietly through that and even into combat -- not that it was silent, but it was certainly not as loud as it had been.

It scored 848 on Unigine's Heaven Benchmark on ultra quality, 2048x1536 full screen with 8x anti-aliasing, and an average of 33.7 frames per second. So it’s more than enough to make even the Skyrim Special Edition look nice, if not amazing.

The battery lasted about half an hour whilst I was gaming on it, which I’ve found to be about average compared with most of the laptops I’ve reviewed. When not in a game, it lasted for about four hours whilst downloading

I was a little upset by the range of the wifi, which was on the weak side. It tended to cut out about the same distance from the router as my HTC phone from 2008. This meant I couldn’t use the laptop in my bedroom unless I wanted to sit at the end of my bed -- and if I wanted to do that, I wouldn’t be in the bedroom in the first place…

In all, the Aorus X5S Camo is a great laptop. It’s robust, powerful and when it’s turned off it can help conceal you in dense foliage. If it’s on or in sleep mode, however, the camo paint job is rendered pretty useless by the pulsing Aorus logo on the lid. If you’re looking for a limited edition gaming laptop, this certainly fits the bill, though the paint work doesn’t really add anything to its usability. It does look cool, though.