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Gigabyte’s latest lightweight is a top-notch gaming laptop

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If Razer didn’t trademark the term “gaming ultrabook” after trimming the fat off the uber-thin Blade, maybe Gigabyte will once the Ultramax P35X goes on sale. This 15.6 incher is just slightly thicker than the Blade, at 0.82 inches.

Still, it’s unbelievably light for its footprint and bleeding edge internals, tipping the scales at a little over 5 pounds. By comparison, the 14-inch Razer Blade weighs 4.5 pounds or so, as does the Alienware 13.

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Gigabyte’s high-end gaming contender offers more screen real estate than these lightweight competitors. And not just any real estate, but a beautiful wide-viewing angle LCD with up to 2,880 x 1,620 resolution.

Alternatively, you can settle for a 1,920 x 1,080, aka Full HD, display, if you’re keen on saving a few bucks. As is often the case with extravagant notebooks, the Ultramax P35X is all about choice, running your favorite OS from Windows 8.1, 8.1 Pro, 7 Home Premium and 7 Professional.

Of course, since power users and hardcore gamers make up the target audience of this lightweight machine, there’s no low-end processor available. You’ll be able to purchase a fourth-generation Intel Core i7-4860HQ or i7-4710HQ Haswell chip clocked at between 2.4 and 3.6GHz. Nvidia’s flagship GeForce GTX 980M GDDR5 8GB card is employed to handle the graphics business.

Pre-installed system memory ranges from 4GB to 8GB, with expansion up to 16GB supported. And you’ll have all the room in the world to hoard the best, highest-quality games and 4K movies. Solid state storage of up to 512GB can be paired with two hard drives holding an extra 2TB of data each. That’s up to 4.5TB of storage in total.

Speaking of 4K, the Gigabyte P35X comes with a built-in Mini DisplayPort, which lets you stream UHD video on suitable monitors and TVs. Obviously, that’s not the sole connectivity highlight, as no less than four USB ports also offered, along with HDMI, a full-sized SD card reader, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 and LAN Ethernet.

The slew of gaming-friendly features wouldn’t be complete without an auto-adjustable backlit keyboard, and the Dolby Digital Plus Home Theater system should be a treat for your ears.

Last but not least, we have to point out the Ultramax P35X looks vastly different from your run-of-the-mill gaming laptop. It’s not only light as a feather, but also somewhat inconspicuous, relying on performance and elegance as standout elements rather than “aggressive” paint jobs and the works.

Gigabyte plans to sell the laptop within the next few days, but the MSRP has not been announced. The system will be available on Amazon.com once it hits retail.

Adrian Diaconescu
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Adrian is a mobile aficionado since the days of the Nokia 3310, and a PC enthusiast since Windows 98. Later, he discovered…
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