Hello everyone,

Thank you for your interest in the XMG PRO 16 Studio and many thanks to Notebookcheck for the detailed review.

We would like to make a few additions here and answer the comment above.

-- About the display --

First, about the PPI rating:

Quotehow can this be a content creators laptop with an abysmal 189 PPI? [...] the BARE MINIMUM should be 200 PPI but even that is incredibly low. All OEMs need to take a page out of Apple's and Microsoft's playbook with 254 PPI and 267 PPI displays, respectively.

This is an interesting perspective, since we often get feedback from the opposite direction: customers lament the death of 1080p displays. The display of XMG PRO 16 Studio is 2560x1600 at 16". The next viable resolution would be 2880x1800, but that wasn't available to us in this screen size.

Generally, there probably is no single perfect resolution in such a hybrid between creator and gaming laptop. If you push the resolution too high, the 3D performance suffers (and battery life as well, slightly). I guess Apple and Microsoft can get away with it since their laptops are not really meant to be gaming laptops at all, as their iGPUs are vastly inferior in gaming compared to an RTX 4060 or RTX 4070.

But we are taking note of your feedback. For what it's worth, if you check out our new XMG EVO series, you will have higher pixel densities.

• XMG EVO 15 has 197 PPI
• XMG EVO 14 has 243 PPI

https://www.xmg.gg/en/xmg-evo/
^{(Copy URL and paste it into your browser's address bar.)}

I will suggest our product marketing team to list these PPI values for those machines that are close to 200 PPI or higher.

Under the German translation of the review, there was also a comment regarding the sRGB color coverage in XMG PRO 16 Studio not being really a "Creator"-type display.

In fact, this specification also meets the requirements of the 'NVIDIA Studio' certification programme. According to NVIDIA, you don't need an AdobeRGB or DCI-P3 colour space to build a Creator laptop, but only a high colour accuracy in the sRGB colour space. The colour accuracy is rated as good in the test with DeltaE = 2.26.

Which value is actually more important is debatable. On the one hand, you naturally want a low colour deviation and therefore an image that is as correct as possible, e.g. if you want to have digital photography printed professionally. On the other hand, the argument in favour of DCI-P3 (no matter how inaccurate) is often that you want to see how your own image material may look on oversaturated OLED televisions or mobile phone screens. Which advantage outweighs the other depends on the particular application.

Unfortunately, there is currently no display available to us in the 16" 16:10 range that has both a higher colour space coverage (100% DCI-P3) and a reliably low DeltaE value. The choice in the 16:10 range is still limited. Such displays may exist, but some are still exclusive to other brands. However, we are keeping an eye on this topic for future Creator models.

We currently offer the following models with 100% DCI-P3 colour space coverage:

XMG PRO 15 - E23
https://bestware.com/en/xmg-pro-15-e23.html

XMG PRO 17 - E23
https://bestware.com/en/xmg-pro-17-e23.html

SCHENKER KEY 17 Pro - M24
https://bestware.com/en/schenker-key-17-pro-m24.html

The displays installed in these models also all have a high colour accuracy (DeltaE < 3 in Notebookcheck before calibration), but are limited to the 16:9 aspect ratio.


-- Performance profiles --

At the time of testing at Notebookcheck, the performance profiles were still being tweaked. The final status is as follows:

Performance mode: 135W PL1 / 150W PL2 / 96°C CPU Temp Target / 140W GPU Power
Entertainment mode: 65W PL1 / 130W PL2 / 87°C CPU Temp Target / 85W GPU Power
Silent mode: 35W PL1&PL2 / 85°C CPU Temp Target / 85W GPU Power

This information can also be found in the form of a table in the appendix of this article.
The specifications do not change the system behaviour in performance mode, in which the PRO 16 Studio was tested by Notebookcheck. The benchmark values in the test are therefore still valid. In an all-core stress test, for example, the CPU can permanently maintain over 100 watts of CPU package power.


-- Correction for Entertainment mode --

QuoteThe "entertainment" profile caused significant fluctuations in performance during our test. As a result, we refrained from using it.

The fluctuations in the test were based on a firmware bug, which caused that a customised fan curve had not yet been fully rolled out. Corresponding performance fluctuations were observed in a gaming scenario with a high CPU load (here: Cyberpunk 2077), where thermal bottlenecks occurred due to the incompletely implemented fan curve. This bug has since been fixed.

Overall, the Entertainment mode is a good choice for continuous operation of the laptop. The components run at their optimum efficiency and can be operated with very quiet fans thanks to the large vapour chamber. With a CPU-focused load (all cores simultaneously, e.g. CPU rendering), the fan volume in maintenance mode is only approx. 45 dB(A), measured from a distance of 15 centimetres. The value only rises when the CPU and GPU are loaded simultaneously, to 49 dB(A) in Entertainment mode and approx. 53 dB(A) in Performance mode.


-- Power consumption in idle mode --

Notebookcheck measures approx. 33 watts at the socket in idle and writes:

QuoteIn idle mode, the laptop's power consumption is far too high—significantly higher than the similarly equipped predecessor model.

We cannot reproduce this impression. We suspect that the NVIDIA graphics card was still active in the background in this test - possibly triggered by a software monitoring tool or an NVIDIA bug. In the past, we have had cases where deselecting GeForce Experience has led to sporadic waking of the dGPU, which subsequently led to this FAQ article:

➡️ https://xmg.gg/en/faq/tips/#geforce-experience

In principle, the hypersensitivity of the NVIDIA graphics card (which we as OEMs cannot control any further - this is the sole responsibility of Microsoft and NVIDIA) can be tamed by using the 'iGPU-only' mode in the BIOS or Control Center.

Alternatively, it is also possible that the battery has still charged the last few per cent. In normal idle mode, the system consumption is less than 10 watts (at the laptop's AC adapter input, not at the wall outlet). In battery mode, the system consumes around 13 watts on the battery during video playback (1080p H.264).


-- CPU comparison: i9-13900H vs. i9-14900HX --

In the German discussion, a user wrote:

QuoteTake the M23 model, it's much quieter and similarly fast :)

The difference between the M23 and M24 models lies mainly in the CPU used.

• The i9-13900H in the M23 with 14 cores and 20 threads only scores around 18500 points in Cinebench R23 in the performance profiles.
• The i9-14900HX in the M24 with 24 cores and 32 threads achieves over 28000 points in the same profile.

This represents a performance increase of approx. 50% in multi-core scenarios. This performance increase can be felt 1:1 in the encoding time of film editing projects via X264 or X265 encoders, i.e. the final export to the master file.

Under pure gaming load, however, the multi-core advantage of the i9-14900HX will hardly have any effect - or at most only at the 1% low FPS in particularly CPU-intensive games. In gaming, the higher energy consumption of the 24-core CPU, even under medium load, is more of a burden for the cooling system, which is why we also had to adjust the performance profiles and fan curves compared to the predecessor.

However, if you buy the XMG PRO 16 Studio (M24) primarily as a Content Creation machine, the faster and more powerful CPU is definitely a big advantage.

We are happy to answer any further questions you may have. Thank you for your feedback!

VG,
Tom                               

how can this be a content creators laptop with an abysmal 189 PPI? NBC seriously needs to start considering how low PPI is terrible for graphic design, typography work, illustration, video editing, photography, animation, etc. it leaves vector edges jagged, video/photo raw files fuzzy, and text/fine detail line work muddled. the BARE MINIMUM should be 200 PPI but even that is incredibly low. All OEMs need to take a page out of Apple's and Microsoft's playbook with 254 PPI and 267 PPI displays, respectively.