Infinix GT Book Review Philippines: The Infinix GT Book isn’t perfect, but it’s a great laptop for people looking to get the most out of their money. It’s hard to beat its price, especially when you consider the competition’s products are considerably more expensive.
Pros:
- Relatively thin for its class
- Good design
- Addressable RGB
- Fantastic performance-to-price ratio
Cons:
- Loud fans
- Some backlight bleeding
- Single Type-C port
- Doesn’t come with a smaller charger for travelling
If you told me that a 13th-generation, Core i9 laptop with an NVIDIA RTX 4060, 1TB of storage, and 32GB of RAM would retail for a hair under Php 85K in the Philippines, I would have called you crazy. But that’s exactly what you’re getting with the top-tier variant of the GT Book, Infinix’s newest product stack in the Philippines. The brand isn’t happy with just dominating the local smartphone market with its bang-for-the-buck offerings, it seems like it wants to conquer the gaming laptop market as well.
And while Php 85K is quite spendy for a gaming laptop, Infinix is also offering a lower-spec Core i5 model with the same chassis and RTX 4060 GPU with half the RAM and storage at just a smidge under Php 65K, which is insanely affordable considering the specs.
Infinix GT Book Review Philippines: Design
Despite the GT Book being their first gaming laptop, Infinix got a lot of things right with the overall design. First off, it’s not that heavy of a gaming laptop, considering it’s a 16-inch machine that has a Core i9 processor in it. It’s around 2 kilos in weight, which is lighter than some 16 inches that we’ve tested before. Unfortunately, though the GT Book doesn’t come with a smaller charger when you’re traveling, which means you’ll have to lug around the massive 190W power brick with you if you want to game on the go.
The GT Book is also not that thick for a gaming laptop, which made it easy to stuff in our bag while traveling to COMPUTEX 2024. The laptop’s overall design follows Infinix’s GT line of phones in terms of overall aesthetic, though surprisingly enough the RGB lighting isn’t on the circular GT design on the lid – it’s on a lightbar at the back near the exhaust ports.
I was very surprised to learn that the GT Book used an aluminum shell for the lid and chassis, especially when you consider the price. There’s very minimal flex on the lid and keyboard – certainly not any more than what you’d see on similarly-built laptops from other manufacturers.
Probably the only complaint I have with the chassis is that there are not enough USB-C ports. You only get one, and it’s just a plain USB-C connector–so you’re not going to be charging this via a PD charger or using Thunderbolt with it.
Aside from that small fault, Infinix has pretty much nailed it with the design of the laptop, which is surprising considering this is their first go at a gaming laptop.
Infinix GT Book Review Philippines: Display and Sound
Both versions of the Infinix GT Book will come with a 16-inch, 1920×1200 resolution 120Hz IPS LCD panel. It’s a 16:10 aspect ratio which is increasingly becoming popular with gaming laptops, giving you a little bit more space for productivity and gaming.
From what I can tell the panel doesn’t come with the usual bells and whistles like G-Sync or FreeSync certification that more expensive brands come with, but that hasn’t been a problem for me while I’ve been using it. The 120Hz refresh rate might be a limiting factor for people with e-sports in mind, but for regular people who just want to play AAA games on the laptop, it’s more than adequate. We did notice some noticeable blacklight bleeding on the lower right side of the display near the hinge, so take note of that if you’re thinking about buying this laptop.
The display is matte, and Infinix claims that it has 100% sRGB coverage. Unfortunately, our colorimeter has joined our creator so we couldn’t test that claim as of press time. For what it’s worth, the display looks fairly good, though it’s not going to match the newer OLED panels that we’ve been seeing on pricier gaming machines.
The weakest link in the whole entertainment package is probably the speakers–they lack bass and definition goes out the window when you’re cranking up the volume. I’d suggest you grab a pair of headphones or TWS with this if you decide to buy it.
Infinix GT Book Review Philippines: Keyboard and Trackpad
Because of the large size of the chassis, Infinix managed to fit a full QWERTY keyboard on the GT Book. The keys use addressable RGB, though you’ll only be able to customize the colors on a per-zone basis, not per key.
As for the actual keys–eh they’re alright. They’re a little small for my liking, and because there’s a number pad on the chassis the actual QWERTY part is slightly offset to the left side of the chassis, along with the trackpad. Key travel also isn’t fantastic–it’s good enough to be able to type accurately with practice but if you’ve used the keyboard of say, a ROG laptop, you can feel the difference.
As for the trackpad, it’s serviceable. It feels a little small considering how big the chassis is, but as it is right now it’s passable.
Infinix GT Book Review Philippines: performance, software, battery life
The Infinix GT Book will come in two configurations: a top-of-the-line, 13th Gen Core i9-13900H processor with 1TB of NVMe PCIe 4.0 storage and 32GB of DDR5 RAM, and a more affordable Core i5-13420H processor with half the RAM and storage. Both versions use an RTX 4060 GPU.
We couldn’t identify the SSD drive used in the Infinix GT Book in our review unit but it had fast read and write speeds–certainly on par with the SSDs we use in our desktop gaming rig.
OK, time to go to gaming performance: For Cyberpunk 2077, I hit 60 FPS on average for the built-in benchmark with everything on ultra without Ray Tracing or DLSS on. With DLSS, you’re going to be able to achieve higher frames in both benchmarks and actual gameplay above 100FPS with DLSS set to quality.
For Warhammer 40K: Darktide, another punishing game graphically, you’re pretty much getting the same result. The laptop can hit 55 to 60 frames per second on the highest setting without ray tracing on, though it sometimes dips down to 50 when the action is especially busy. But with DLSS and frame generation on, you’re getting a much higher 122FPS average.
Playing a title without DLSS to help out, like Helldivers, is a little tougher, but with most of the settings cranked up to high I was hitting around 63-65 FPS.
As far as thermals go, the laptop’s internals run a little hot, with the software reporting maximum temps of 84 degrees for the CPU and 82 degrees Celsius for the GPU while gaming. The fans are also quite noisy when they’ve ramped up and you’re in performance mode.
Speaking of performance mode, the GT Book has software installed to control RGB lighting as well as performance presets, but it’s fairly barebones and doesn’t give you a chance to tinker with fan curves or fine-tune the power profile. On the flip side, On the flip there’s almost zero installed bloatware in the laptop, so you’re not going to delete unnecessary stuff like Norton or McAfee. Brands like ASUS, Lenovo, and Acer need to take note here.
Battery-wise, you’re not getting a lot from the 70Wh battery. You’ll need to be plugged in to get the most out of the laptop’s gaming capabilities, and if you’re not plugged in, I suggest that you stick with mostly productivity tasks. From our experience you’re getting around 3-4 hours on a single charge with the GT Book–5 hours if you’re really lucky and drop the brightness down, which highlights the GT Book’s utility–it’s a gaming machine, not a productivity laptop.
Infinix GT Book Review Philippines: Wrap-up and Verdict
The Infinix GT Book is a great laptop no matter which way you look at it, and even with its minor issues, its overall value as a gaming machine cannot be denied. With an SRP that’s significantly lower than what the competition is offering, the GT Book is a great buy if you’re looking for a laptop that delivers solid gaming performance at a reasonable price.
Infinix GT Book Price Philippines:
The 13th Gen Core i9-13900H version of the Infinix GT Book that has an RTX 4060, 1TB of SSD NVMe PCIe 4.0 storage, and 32GB of DDR5 RAM is priced at Php 84,999. The lower-spec Core i5-13420H, 512GB SSD NVMe PCIe 4.0, and 16GB DDR5 RAM variant is priced at Php 64,999.