Infinix GT Book Review: A Near Perfect Gaming Laptop

While Infinix has been around since 2013, the brand started making laptops only since 2021. Infinix has primarily been known in the Indian market due to its affordable gaming laptops. It’s now 2024 and Infinix has entered the gaming space with the Infinix GT Book.

So it was only natural that when the RTX 4050, Core i5 13th Gen 13420H variant came to our office, I grabbed it before anyone else. If you’re someone thinking about getting a gaming laptop under the Rs. 80,000 cap, keep reading as I decide on your fate with the Infinix GT Book review right here!

Infinix GT Book Specs

Box Contents

I wasn’t expecting too grand out of unboxing the Infinix GT Book and well, reality was not stranger than fiction here. The GT Book comes with your run-of-the-mill components including a well, the laptop, the charger, and some papers. However, Infinix had this early bird offer up, which gave users a bunch of accessories alongside the laptop.

From a gaming mouse and wide RGB mousepad to an RGB headphone, there was everything with the GT Book needed to kickstart your gaming journey. While the goodies aren’t top-notch quality, it was still a good offer nonetheless.

Design and Build

While the Infinix GT Book comes with a metal lid, I was taken aback by how the laptop didn’t feel heavy at all. At 1.99 kgs, it’s lighter than even the all-plastic Acer Nitro V RTX 4050 model in the segment. The Infinix GT Book was also extremely sleek and felt premium in a way.

For starters, there’s very little lid flex, which is something I always like to see. The lid features what Infinix is calling its Cyber Mecha design, and while it’s no Dot Matrix, I like it. Although it has this gamer-esque vibe to it, it’s stealthy too, blending well with the dark grey all around.

At the center, the Infinix GT black-hole-like logo looks good and has a multi-color glow from different angles against light sources, which is a nice touch. However, do note that this logo is not RGB.

On the leftmost edge, you get to see the Infinix GT branding, which I think could have been avoided to make it more minimalistic. The lid barely attracts smudges, which removes the hassle of having to constantly wipe it like a madman.

Flipping the laptop over, I spotted the pretty orange vents at the bottom, that scream gaming all the way. The two bottom firing speakers on each side also sport this orange covering. There are four rubber feet at the bottom, with two at the front, a big edge-to-edge one at the back, and behind it, a smaller button-like orange one. Yes, I tried pressing it like a dumdum.

However, the nifty addition to the design is the edge-to-edge RGB strip at the back, which adds to the laptop’s gamery vibes. While it’s not as elegant as the one we got to see on the MSI Stealth 14 Studio A13V (review), it’s still cool to see.

With that out of the way, it was time to open up the Infinix GT Book. Some solid weight balance is at play as I could open the entire lid with just one finger. The lid doesn’t wobble as much either, so that was good to see. However, it’s not as flexible and the lid bends by around 135 degrees tops.

Keyboard and Trackpad

Unlike the metal lid, the inside is made out of boring polycarbonate. You get to see a full-scale keyboard as well, with the W, S, A, and D highlighted to increase the laptop’s gaming appeal. Although I do wish it had a better design. There are also three dedicated fan mode keys to go from silent to maximum. I also like that there’s little to no keyboard flex here.

Again, you get to see the Infinix GT branding towards the extreme right on the textured panel at the lid. We know it’s the Infinix GT, Infinix!

Anyway, moving on, there’s something off about the keyboard and it rattles unnecessarily. When you knock on the body, the entire keyboard rattles for some weird reason. While the keyboard in itself offers a good typing experience, the rattling sound extends to when you are typing something out as well. At first, it was quite off-putting. However, like all things in life, you get used to it.

At least, I could type very fast, thanks to good key spacing, and hit over 108 words per minute on MonkeyType.

While the 4-zone keyboard was extremely comfortable, the glass trackpad stole the show. I’m especially happy to see that Infinix has consistently improved the trackpad quality as more of their laptops come out.

The Infinix GT trackpad is definitely one of the best in the segment. It’s premium to the touch, and I honestly never felt the need to plug an external mouse in (besides when I was gaming, of course).

The trackpad placement, while a bit good makes sense because of the way gaming laptops are designed. That has been a problem with most Infinix laptops since they come with these unnecessarily big trackpads. Good to see the brand take a different approach with this one.

Display and Speakers

The Infinix GT Book features a 16-inch 1080p display, which is great. Since I’ve used the Acer Nitro V, the GT Book’s display was a breath of fresh pixels.

The GT Book’s display is not just bigger, but also brighter, offering better visibility both indoors and outdoors. It also required little to no calibration. However, I decided to confirm it by testing it out and taking out the Spyder X calibration tool.

The brand claims that the display offers 100% sRGB coverage. The Spyder X recorded 99% sRGB, which is great. In addition, the GT Book’s display offers 71% of NTSC, 77% of Adobe RGB, and even 76% of P3 coverage, which is commendable. Anything above 70% is good in my books for gaming laptops in this segment.

As for the brightness levels, the Spyder X recorded a peak brightness of 365 nits. However, at 50%, it gives you just around 70 nits, which is too low for my taste. Apart from a dark room at night, it won’t offer good visibility at that level.

So, I mostly kept it between 65% to 70%, and that seemed enough in brightly lit indoors. Outdoors, you will need to max it out. But, I like how brightness range, which can go all the way down and is barely visible even in a dark room.

The Infinix GT book also has good viewing angles. The colors are also nicely managed and I didn’t have any complaints while watching YouTube videos or streaming Netflix content. The 120Hz refresh rate is a bonus, especially in games.

Unfortunately, the dual bottom-firing DTS-tuned speakers don’t match the display’s performance. You almost always hear some crackling of sorts. The worst part is that it stays been at 50% which is just sad. The output also lacks any treble or bass, making it all sound very flat. Thankfully the output is loud enough for you to not use your earphones when having a quick lunch.

Performance

The Infinix GT Book is powered by the Intel Core i5 13th Gen 13420H CPU. It’s further backed by a dedicated 6GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 with a 90W TGP. You also get dedicated 16GB LPDDR5X RAM and 512GB of PCIe Gen 4.0 SSD.

While the Infinix GT Book does look good on-paper, it was time for the real deal. As such, I decided to take it out for a spin. Here’s how it performed.

Day-to-Day Usage

Even though you might think writing is a mundane task, it does require a lot of firepower. My daily work sees me with over 25 tabs open on Google Chrome. Other apps in the background include Spotify, Copilot, Steam, Epic Games, Notion, Slack, and some other hidden culprits.

In addition, I also constantly keep Canva and Paint NET running in the background to fulfill my image editing needs. With all of that open and even unplugged for the most part, the GT Book handled it all like it was nothing. What I really like about the Infinix GT Book laptop is that it was a silent beast and will got my work done as quietly as possible.

Gaming

Let’s get to what you all were waiting for. Gaming. Thankfully the Infinix GT Book is an absolute monster of a gaming laptop. While I knew how good the RTX 4050 was at this price point, I couldn’t help but be amazed at how well it ran every game that I played on it.

Do note that I’m not talking about old games like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla or Control. I decided to run the latest and greatest AAA titles like Hellblade II (review), Alan Wake 2 (review), Cyberpunk, CoD Warzone, and Apex Legends. Here’s a look at the settings and FPS I could squeeze out of these games on the GT Book:

1. Hellblade 2 and Alan Wake 2

Both Hellblade II and Alan Wake 2 are games that you want to run on higher settings to see those dark areas and colorful bits come to life. However, that requires a lot of power, and the GT Book handled it all well.

In 1080P high settings with frame generation, I could easily squeeze out 90 FPS. The good thing is that there were absolutely no stutters in the games and with the 120Hz refresh rate, I barely felt frame generation’s input delay. Without frame generation, I could also easily get a playable 40-60FPS.

2. Cyberpunk 2077

As for Cyberpunk 2077 (review), there’s no doubt that it is one of the most demanding titles to date. The GT Book managed to deliver over 90 FPS in high settings, with DLSS turned on and set to Quality.

I got consistent frames throughout and most importantly, the keyboard never got uncomfortably hot. So, I could play for a decent couple of hours. Turning off ray tracing boosted the FPS to 120 which is beyond commendable for a game like Cyberpunk.

But, I figured that you need to keep DLSS turned on for the best experience with this game. Otherwise, in medium to high settings, while the frames are not too bad, it starts to falter a bit.

3. COD Warzone

With AAA titles like these out of the way, it was time to get competitive. Since forever, COD Warzone has had a RAM leak problem, making it unplayable on a single-channel memory. So, I had to give it a try and was not disappointed one bit.

In high settings with frame generation off, I got around 100 FPS. There was no RAM leak or lag of sorts, thanks to the LPDDR5X RAM, which acts as a dual-channel memory in itself.

4. Apex Legends

Apex Legends ran like butter, giving me around and even over 130 FPS in the maximum possible. My somewhat horrendous skills still got me a couple of kills, which is a win in my books. The overall experience just leaves no room for complaints, thereby making you appreciate the kind of gaming performance the GT Book delivers!

Thermal Management

The best thing is even after gaming for around two hours, the Infinix GT Book’s GPU temps barely hit 75 degrees, while the CPU temps stabilized at around 78 degrees, occasionally spiking to 80. Surface temps remained cool with the keyboard being comfortable to touch. The laptop’s back panel was the warmest, at just around 43 degrees.

That’s some solid thermal management and the kind you get to see on the more premium Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 series of laptops. Upon seeing the stellar thermal management of the Infinix GT Book, I decided to crank it open and see what’s behind it all. And, well, I was certainly not disappointed.

As you can see, the interiors are well organized, with two heat pipes moving vertically at the top and two fans on each side. However, I noticed a critical issue with it – its upgradeability. That brings me to the next section.

Upgradability and Port Selection

When I opened up the Infinix GT Book, I noticed that the 16GB LPDDR5X RAM is soldered onto the board. In other words, it’s not upgradeable. While LPDDR5X in itself is dual channel, I’d have liked to see some upgradeability here. It comes with a 512GB PCIe Gen 4 SSD, which you can upgrade up to 2TB, so there’s that.

Coming to the ports, you get to see a USB 3.2 Gen 2 and a USB 3.2 Gen 1 port. In addition, there’s a DP port for you to make use of, which further increases the versatility of the GT Book. There’s also an HDMI 2.0 port along with a UHS-II SD slot. Such SD slots are super duper useful but uncommon to come across, and I’m glad Infinix decided to slap one onto this laptop.

Another thing I noticed was that while Infinix says this is an HDMI 2.0 port, in my testing, the port could deliver an output of up to 8K 60FPS. I could also get 4K 120FPS out of it, which are the characteristics of a 2.1 port. So, I’m not sure what’s going on here, and my best guess is that this is a 2.1 port. Nonetheless, the laptop packs a good port selection.

Software Experience

Complementing its well-rounded gaming and hardware performance, the Infinix GT Book also packs amazing software performance. But, I do have a concern.

Infinix is not known to give you BIOS updates, which is some vital standard maintenance of your laptop. While you can easily go without any updates as such, it’s good to get them. For example, both my personal Acer Nitro 5 and the Acer Nitro V we have at the office have received around two BIOS updates to date.

Another problem is that the brand hasn’t uploaded the drivers for the GT Book yet. So, I’d recommend not doing a cloud reinstall if you ever want to reset it, since that will really mess up the laptop. We have faced this issue with some other Infinix laptops in the office in the past. It was only very recently that the brand made the drivers for their older laptops available. Infinix, if you’re reading this, please be timely with driver availability.

Keeping that aside, you don’t get to see much bloat apart from the usual Windows stuff. In addition, the Infinix GT Book comes with a Control Center and PC Connection. The former lets you adjust both your keyboard and back zone lighting, switch between the different performance-level modes, tweak the display mode, crank up the fan speeds, and more.

Most importantly, there’s a MUX switch in the laptop, which is always a good thing to see. You can easily set it to prioritize between the dGPU only, iGPU only, and Dynamic settings using the Control Center software.

Meanwhile, the latter lets you mirror your Infinix phone onto the GT Book. A useful ecosystem feature, that I wish was extended to all Android devices.

Battery and Charging

Talking about the battery, the Infinix GT Book packs a 70Whr unit. I have already let you in on what my daily usage looks like (check the performance section). After all of that with the brightness level between 60-70%, fans set to quiet mode, and all the RGBs off, I got around 6.7 hours of screen time.

As far as gaming laptops go, that’s some solid backup. As for charging, the in-box 210W adapter takes around 1.5 hours to top off the GT Book. So, there’s that.

Is the Infinix GT Book Worth It?

With the RTX 4050 variant priced at Rp18.999.000, I think the laptop is priced decently, if not as aggressively as some of the other options in the segment. You do have the Acer Nitro V priced at Rp13.849.000, but it doesn’t have nearly as good a display or build quality.

You will get a lot more gaming-centric features on it, thanks to the NitroSense app. In comparison, the Infinix Control Center feels very barebones.

However, the good thing is that at least it turns on, unlike the latest Colorful gaming laptop we bought. While the Colorful laptop is priced at just Rp12.349.000, the issues we faced sure had me asking people to not get it and to spend a few bucks more on something better.

For the price that it comes in, the RTX 4050-powered Infinix GT Book makes a lot of sense if you want something powerful and silent at the same time, as well as doesn’t come with the bulk of a powerful gaming rig. It doesn’t show off too much with insane fan RPMs and also lets you choose between being too flashy with RGBs or going all stealthy. Not to mention that it feels a lot more premium than its competition.

With all of that going for it, Infinix has done a great job with its first gaming laptop series and I’m seriously impressed. Now, all that the brand needs to do is divert some of its focus into providing BIOS updates and a better overall software experience to enhance the user experience.

All things considered, if you ask me, the Infinix GT Book beats the competition and is certainly worth your money.

Original Post By roperzh