At its Mi MIX 2S launch event in Shanghai today, Xiaomi had a couple of surprises up its sleeve. The flagship Mi MIX 2S stole the show, naturally, but the rest of the announcements more than just stirred the audience (both live and livestreaming).
As you may know, Xiaomi already offers several notebooks—the Mi Notebook Pro and Mi Notebook Air. And now it’s ready to take on the PC gaming big guns.
Keeping things no-frills, Xiaomi names its new entry Mi Gaming Laptop—a 15.6-inch gaming notebook with some commendable specs.
Xiaomi may position its latest notebook as a gaming machine but it’s also expecting consumers to use it as a work horse. Hence the understated aesthetics.
There’s no loud, over-the-top styling. No edgy lines. Nor is there LED-lit alien streaks.
What you’ll get is a sleek, boxy form factor with a premium-looking aluminium brushed chassis, which wouldn’t look out of place in a boardroom meeting.
The wide-gamut (72% NTSC) display pushes Full HD (1920×1080) resolution which isn’t cutting-edge but perfectly fine.
Under the hood you’ll find a 7th Gen Intel Core i7-7700HQ on the high-end model, and a Core i5-7300HQ on the entry-level model. Memory is up to 16GB of DDR4 2,400MHz RAM, coupled with 256GB of NVMe SSD and 1TB HDD storage.
What’s awesome is the discrete NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB GDDR5 or GTX 1050 Ti 4GB GDDR5 graphics options that should get you going on AA gaming titles in no time.
Xiaomi is also touting the notebook’s high-power proprietary cooling system.
The keyboard is backlit with 16-million colour four zones, and comes with five macro keys.
The notebook also boasts Dolby Audio, with dual 3W speakers.
In terms of expansion and connectivity, the notebook offers 4x USB 3.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, headphone jack, full-size HDMI 2.0, 3-in-1 card reader, Bluetooth 4.1 and 2×2 dual-antenna Wi-Fi 802.11ac.
The Mi Gaming Laptop comes with Windows 10 Home out-of-the-box.
Interested in full specs? Head over to Mi.com.
Pricing and availability
The real shocker is perhaps the price. Undercutting similarly spec-ed notebooks from competitors Razer and Alienware, the Mi Gaming Laptop absolutely kills it for CNY8,999/USD1,440/MYR5,554. The entry-level model is as low as CNY5,999/USD955/MYR3,702.
It will be tough trying to buy one outside of China, but hey, there’s always grey importers and online shopping platforms.
What do you think? Are you game?
