Mi Gaming Laptop (2nd Ed)

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Xiaomi Notebook Pro GTX 1050 & Mi Gaming Laptop Refresh

Xiaomi Notebook Pro GTX 1050 & Mi Gaming Laptop Refresh

Xiaomi has just posted on their Weibo and forums that the Mi Gaming laptop and Mi Notebook Pro 15.6″ laptops are in for an upgrade. Two of which are an upgrade to the GPU for the Mi Notebook Pro I predicted (But it was obvious) And the CPU for the Mi Gaming laptop, again obvious.

The Mi Notebook Pro now gets an upgrade in three key areas the GPU is now a GTX 1050 Max-Q with 4GB of DDR5 RAM. A welcomed GPU upgrade to give this laptop an FPS boost in games.

The cooling has also improved, new blades to help with the added heat. The CPU remains the same, the Intel i7 8550U. Since there is no new 9th Gen U i7 CPU we will have to wait for the end of the rear or begging of next for that. And lastly, the SD card slow is UHS-II spec with 312MB/s reads max. A nice upgrade for sure, but I would have loved to have seen a touchscreen and thunderbolt 3 added. Then it would be almost perfect. No word if it got the gigabit Intel Wireless AC? I hope so. The rest of the spec is the same Samsung NVMe 256GB PM961 and spare M.2 2280 NVMe or SATA 3 slot.

The power supply is now 90W to handle the extra draw of the Nvidia 1050 4GB MAX-Q but remains Type-C.

It’s available on the 16th and sells for $921 USD in China for the i5 8250U, 8GB RAM, 256GB NVMe and GXT 1050 Max-Q. And $1,111 for the i7 8550U, 8GB, 256GB and GTX 1050 MAX-Q 4GB model. I’m 90% sure I’ll review this model to check the thermals and performance etc vs my current i5 8250U + Nvidia MX150 model.

The Mi Gaming Laptop gets the six core, 8th gen i7 8750H. This is what I should have shipped within in the first place. The memory card reader is now UHS-I spec. So no more USB 2.0 24Mb/s crappy limit (yay!) But now over 100MB/s reads and writes. And Intel wireless AC gigabit 2×2 speed card. My guess is the Intel Wireless 9260 with BT 5.0?

The move to the six-core 8th Gen Intel i7 means you can expect up to around 35%+ multicore performance gain over the i7 7700HQ, games will not really benefit from this apart from the 4.1Ghz higher turbo but for media creators out there this will really speed things up.

The other improvement is the RAM speeds has increased to 2666Mhz DDR4 up to 16GB, slightly more memory bandwidth. This, of course, is from the move to the new 8th gen chip.

The last change is the bios now has gaming features, a visual bios with GPU, CPU clocks, fan profiles maybe? And other tweaks.

The Mi Gaming laptop first model I review was a good laptop, but far from perfect. It’s loud but runs cool and my biggest complaint was the location of the macro keys on the left-hand side of the keyboard rather than above it. Sadly, Xiaomi hasn’t redesigned the keyboard, or Thunderbolt 3 or added a 120hz low refresh screen option. I think they should have, but I guess that would add a huge additional cost. My review of this first-gen model is below. And I’m really on the fence as to whether or not I should review it considering the GPU options are the same, the Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB or GTX 1050 Ti 4GB. The rest of the configuration is the same.

It’s on sale on now taking orders and deliveries start on the 16th of this month. The based model with a Core i5-8300H (4 cores, 4.0Ghz max) version with Nvidia 1050 TI is $969 USD in China. And the top spec Intel Core i7 8750H (6 cores, 4.1Ghz max), 16GB DDR4 2666Mhz, 256GB + 1 TB HDD and Nvidia GXT 1060 6GB model sells for 1316 USD.

Source: Xiaomi Forums (Chinese)

Press material on the Mi Gaming Laptop upgrade in August 2018.

Offical website: Mi Notebook Pro GTX & Mi Gaming Laptop

Video tech reviewer and tech blogger. I have a huge interest in the latest tech, tablets, laptops, mobiles, drones, and even e-scooters. Active in the tech community since 2008 days of the Omnia i900 Windows phone. Samsungi8910omnia.com, Samsunggalaxysforums.com founder from way back.

20 Comments

  1. Also lets add the Dell can be RAM upgraded…. 8^)

  2. Chris,

    LOL! Had a good laugh after watching both your reviews and comments about the “fanboys”. Seems like they’ve succeeded in copying almost everything wrong about a certain “fruit” company… the “notch” on phones, overheating/thermal throttling in the latest gen. thin and light laptops (Hint: i9 processor in a recently released “Pro” laptop from the above mention “fruit” company) and now that “fanboy” culture that fervently defends them at all costs (It’s overheating? You’re MUST be using it “wrong”. You’re doing something to skew the results and make it look bad). Hmm… on 2nd thought the “fanboy” culture and loyalty that they cultivated might be something that they copied and got right. After all, a certain “fruit” company is now worth 1 trillion, helped in no small way by their loyal followers over the years. (Reception is bad? You’re holding the phone wrong! LOL!)

    Don’t get me wrong I own, and love, the original Mi Notebook Pro (It’s definitely a keeper! Just wish it had Thunderbolt 3) as well as quite a number of other Xiaomi products. I’d gladly buy their products in a heartbeat… when they get the design and price right. This new GTX model is not one of them. I had half suspected even before its release that, unless it had a VERY aggressive fan curve and an epic thermal solution, it would run into thermal issues. I’d seriously doubt a simple repaste would lower temps by a margin large enough to get the temps into the “acceptable range”. It’s just physics… thin and light = less thermally forgiving and able to disperse heat.

  3. Chris have you ordered the Xiaomi Notebook Pro GTX 1050 yet? And if so from where? Looking forward the review!

  4. Got the old Xiaomi air 13 A06 Timi1613 its the one with skylake/940MX though rev2 with other IPS-panel there are smearing prone and with native PM961 drive and have also fitted it with an 512GB (70bucks) Sata3 M.2 storage in the second slot and overall I’m been happy with it, got it in early 2017 for a fraction over 500Euros but holy damn it gets hot..
    when playing GTA5 on it in FHD, I’m reaching just below 60C on the keyboard and on the metal part below the keyboard are so hot I can’t touch it for long…
    Have finally just reposted it last week and it helped to get the CPU degrees down around 85c and GPU around 80 under heavly load, so the temps on the board is okay https://www.eevblog.com/forum/thermal-imaging/thermal-imaging-gallery/msg1722536/#msg1722536
    but the outer alucasing is insanely hot but that’s how it is’ as one big heatsink, but I’m okay with that, and when playing on it usually with Xbox X controller and the signal routed to LG OLED 55″ screen so not touching the laptop itself..

    Biggest cons so far is the heat and the lack of VP9/HEVC acceleration (skylake SOC) and the battery there are wearing down like a MTF’er atm at -30.81% procentwear, but have picked up a new spare Xiaomi air battery 27USD ½ year back from China with 0.0%wear so planning too swap that somewhere down the line.
    Have been checking the heat on the xiaomi as the weather are extremely hot these months but not more I can do other than putting more cobber on top of the native-heatsinks which seem to work fine from my measurement thrue radiometric infrared heat values
    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTJtb7oyUVo0CVfd0RQ5rsw/videos
    but after all it is what it is. and its not a new computer and overall happy with it. and its certainly not a gaming machine, even though im impressive that 1GB old 940MX chipset are giving me just under 34.700 in Geekbench compu and above 2300 in firestrike.. and when im gaming I do prefer big OLED 4K HDR screen and Xbox X and not on a little ultrabook in 13 or 15″

    But I do reckon we also will see the 1050GPU in Xiaomi air 13 laptops, – but its impresive to see the jump on CPU power on the 8gen Intel U-CPU’s (quad). but I would certainly also like to see a new take on the ultrabook-design from Xiaomi, instead of solely hardware upgrades and it’s not like they are so mind-blowingly cheap that 500euro price was more or less solely sale price and if you purchased these model in question and then put another regional tech taxing on top plus another +25% VAT, then we pretty up there.

  5. There are a few things they can do to improve their laptop line even more(some will add to the cost, some maybe won’t).
    1.More upgradeabillity – let people add more ram(a lot of people are using these type of devices for development etc and sometimes they just need more ram)

    2.Thermals- before their next generation of notebooks(it’s more relevant to the mi notebook pro and air), they should really work on better thermal solutions so they won’t end up like the latest generation of macbooks, especially after upgrading the graphics card.
    3.Thunderbolt- at their price points, they should add a thunderbolt port(even 1 will be great) just so that they can compete with similar devices from dell/asus/msi/lenovo etc.

    3.Battery- I don’t expect the mi gaming laptop to last 9 hours, but the mi notebook pro and air should last at least7+ hours so that they can compete with macbooks and other windows ultrabooks in runtime.

    4.Language- it’s true that installing a fresh english windows version is simple for a lot of people, but if they want to reach a bigger audience, they should at least make sure their devices are ready out of the box. that way the demand for their laptops outside of china will grow even bigger.

    And of course I can suggest a few more things, but in my opinion they are less important and will just increase cost too much.

    Thanks for the great reviews and articles Chris!

  6. Also Chris, the next ULV is already out, Whiskey Lake U (Core i5-8265U). And the new grafic card generation by nvidia will be revealed at 20 aug.
    I feel the timing is really bad for this laptop as usually for Xiaomi, but atleast it looks better than their gaming series.
    And of course it should have had an touchdisplay and thunderbolt 3.0.

    But still I am looking forward the review of the Notebook Pro GTX with GTX1050 4GB.
    Is it the i5 or i7 you getting?

  7. I think the Pro gtx model with the 1050 Max Q looks really nice. Same slim firm factor as the old Pro but with just a bit more power.

  8. Hi,
    may be, we can upgrade fan notebook pro v2 on v1? (if we buy spare) 🙂
    Also, i think, if you have v1 gaming or pro, wait next gen gpu nvidia.

  9. no thunderbolt 3 at this price… I’ll pass.

  10. tough comp at that price. For that kinda $ outlay I think I’d go for a big name like Dell, HP, or Lenovo to have better support and more readily available, if not also cheaper, replacement parts if something breaks. Are parts for Xiaomi’s notebooks easy to find/buy?

    • Acer, Asus, Samsung too? I don’t know who are the most widely sold these days. I’ve had a couple Lenovo’s and an HP in the past. Lenovo parts were always relatively cheap and easy to find.
      I think the model is also important – ie., popular models like the Dell XPS 15, Lenovo Ideapad, Lenovo Thinkpad, Acer Aspire, HP Pavillion, etc. Perhaps one or more of the Xiaomi models will be bigly popular enough that parts suppliers will have stock?

    • Definitely, for the Mi Gaming laptop, it’s a hard sell I said that in my review. Up against ASUS, MSI, Dell, Lenovo and Acer it’s hard for them to compete at that pricing. My ASUS laptop I’m waiting on to review is i7 8750H + 8GB, SSD and GTX 1050 TI it’s around $999 so on par with Mi Gaming Laptop. The issue that price is BEFORE the retailers cut which will add another $100 to $150 easy.

      Then if you import you have the warranty issues and all that talked about. But you can buy the Mi Gaming Laptop here in Spain with a local warranty. However at a higher premium than importing it.

      The Mi Notebook Pro on the other hand if this new more powerful GPU model ends up selling for around $850 or so later down the line it would and is a great alternative to the Dell XPS with the same spec. I just really thing Xiaomi should have also give it a touchscreen option and thunderbolt 3 it would be almost perfect for a thin and lighter 15.6″ laptop.

      • Wouldn’t it be more cost effective to buy/build a desktop gaming computer and focus a notebook config on maximizing battery life? Isn’t top performance is at odds with battery life and portability (weight)?… and of course cost.
        I personally would rather have a notebook with a mondo 20+ hour battery life (with yet respectable performance) and a home/desktop system with maximum performance irrespective of size/weight.

        • There are people who are never home. So it’s good to have a gaming laptop. So no, a desktop gaming pc + a laptop is not cost-effective at all.

          • OK fine. But those people are FAR from the majority of the market. So while potentially more expensive “gaming” optimized designs makes sense for some, it doesn’t for any notebook design that wants to sell broadly and in large numbers.

        • I think everyone has different trade-offs they are willing to deal with. Although I’d like 20+ hours battery life, there are a lot of places you can plug in, if you need to. I’m not sure how often I’d face that scenario.

          It’s a value to me to not have to set up and maintain another pc, especially with how un-joyful it is to beat down all the Windows 10 designed functionality. For me, I’d rather have 1 PC than two, for the set up, maintenance, and expense. If laptops are getting “good enough” to game on, then it seems worth considering, next time you are going to replace yours.

          • It’s not only about how long a charge lasts, esp when you first buy it, but it’s also about how long it lasts some years later, and the longevity of the notebook because battery capacity goes down over time the more it’s discharged and recharged. This is even more important if the notebook was not designed to replace the battery – hard to open and battery glued in place. Assuming the first thing to die on the device is the battery.
            What you said about not wanting two more than 1 PC makes sense. Esp if you have lots of RAM and storage so can setup your machine to boot multiple OS’s and/or create Virtual Machines to run other “systems” on the same computer. Backing up the data also becomes more of a chore with more than one PC. But if you use a PC for your work/business it’s prob good to have a backup/spare system if your main machine breaks or is stolen.

      • Chris, gearbest has the Honor Magicbook AMD R5-2500U at 600€. Will you review it? I think it would be your first AMD Ryzen laptop review

      • There is the Acer Nitro 5 Spin, that has a thinner form factor and is a convertible. Tent mode, I can see that having value, but a 15″ laptop as a tablet is a little much. It has a 1050 with 4GB in it. Also, has a SSD + HDD configuration. Maybe the 1050 isn’t quite an uber gamer machine, but in the $900 range, with a warranty and a decent quality to begin with, it’s a good contender for the “light gamer” laptop.

        I’d like to see a GPU like that in a 12-13″ convertible, that would have a little better portability, as long as they didn’t have to shrink the battery too much.

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