Gigabyte is a well known brand in the PC enthusiast market but not that well known in terms of laptops. As I still have my old desktop working with Linux Mint after years of hard work and overclock using a Gigabyte motherboard, I decided to choose a model and investigate a little to check what people were saying about Gigabyte laptops, in particular the laptop I was about to buy. Given that impressions were good, I decided to buy the Gigabyte Sabre 17 K.

This is a gaming laptop that if it wasn't for the RGB keyboard, it wouldn't look a gaming laptop at all. It's sleek and discreet, which is unusual in these range of laptops. Also, usually, these kind of models have some slightly varying specifications but are basically the same. Here's mine:

• Intel® HD Graphics 630 + NVIDIA® GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB GDDR5
• 7th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-7700HQ Processor
• 17.3" Full HD 1920x1080 WVA Anti-Glare Display
• 8 GB of DDR4 2400MHz – Up to 32GB
• 16.7 Million Colors RGB Backlit Keyboard
• Optimized 2.0mm Key Travel Distance
• Blazing-fast M.2 PCIe Gen3 X4 SSD: Reach 2000MB/s (optional)
• Dual Storage System: M.2 PCIe Gen3 SSD 128GB + HDD 1TB - 7200RPM
• 1x USB3.1 Gen.2 Type-A, 1x USB3.1 Gen.2 Type-C, 1x USB3.1 Gen.1 Type-A and 1x USB2.0 Type-A
• 1+3 Displays (Included 17.3" IPS Anti-Glare display + 1 HDMI + 2 DisplayPort)
• 10/100/1000 Mbps LAN
• 802.11ac Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth V4.2
• 720p webcam
• Noise cancelling Dual Array Microphones
• 6 in 1 card reader (SD/Mini SD/SDHC/SDXC/MMC/RS MMC)
• Flexikey® - Software Macro Function
• Sound Blaster™ Cinema 3
• Windows® 10 Home - 64 bits
• 6 cells 47W battery
• Measurements: 418.5 x 284 x 27.6 mm
• Weight: 3.10 Kg

The **Gigabyte Sabre 17 K ** came in a nice sealed box with a handle, to carry it suitcase style. Inside the box, the laptop came inside two protective foams and inside a cloth bag. Between the lid/display and keyboard there was a cloth too. On the sides in separate compartments, the power source and an European cable, the battery and a bag with a manual, warranty card and, strangely enough, a Utility Driver Disc... I draw your attention to the fact that this laptop doesn't have an optical drive. XD Still, it's always nice to have the drivers in physical format. You might need them in a situation where you don't have access to the internet but might have access to another computer with an optical drive.

Look at that gorgeous Gigabyte chromed logo and clean look! What's not to like? Well, let me tell you... Every time you touch the gorgeous mate surface, there will be fingerprints showing. Very soon, you'll have a surface full of stains even if you have cleaned your hands. This one is a fingerprint magnet! But this is common to a lot of laptops, not only this one. When I open the lid, I'm also greeted with a discreet Gigabyte grey logo, some vents, the keyboard and touchpad, and only an on/off button! What a clean and minimalist look! :o Very classy for a gaming laptop! And the stickers... Of course, the usual stickers telling about the laptop's specifications.

Looking a little more closely to the Gigabyte Sabre 17 K, in the left side we can see a Kensington lock, a power plug, RJ45 (LAN), 2 DisplayPort and 1 HDMI connectors, a USB3.1 Gen.2 Type-C and a USB3.1 Gen.2 Type-A connectors, and a card reader.

In the right side, a vent for the graphics card (if I'm not mistaken) heat-sink and fan, a USB3.1 Gen.2 Type-A and a USB2.0 Type-A connectors, a mic in and headphones out. The Gigabyte Sabre 17 K has more than enough connection, using recent protocols, so you can connect your devices and be assured it's future proof.

In the front there's only 4 small leds that let you know if the laptop is on, if the battery is fully charged or being charged, if it's in airplane mode and the SSD/HDD activity. Also, in the front but underneath, there are the two small speakers that together with the Sound Blaster™ Cinema 3 software, makes them more than competent.

In the back there's two apparent vents, but only one is a real vent and functional. The functional one is from the CPU's heat-sink and fan (if I'm not mistaken). Also in the back, but on the underside, you can find the battery. It's nice to have a removable battery. Although depending on how you use the Gigabyte Sabre 17 K, the battery can last from less than an hour to a few hours. If you need to use the laptop for a long time without being able to charge the battery, having the possibility to carry an extra battery with you and easily connect it at any time is always a plus.

When using the ** Gigabyte Sabre 17 K** for the first time, we are greeted with a fresh Windows installation, asking only for some inputs for the initial setup. Everything came pre-installed, saving me a lot of work. The drivers, in general, were up to date. There's a utility called Smart Update that searches for the latest drivers and some included software, and updates them automatically. Pretty useful! In fact, some installed drivers were even more recent than the ones available in the official website. There's little bloatware installed. There's some broadcasting software to try, but I uninstalled it right away. If I need broadcasting software I'll just use OBS Studio and that's it. This laptop has an hidden recovery partition with the entire system saved as it came from factory. So, if you ever need to format your PC and put everything as it came from factory, you just press F9 when booting, choose your option and voila. Also, it comes installed with a software called Smart USB Backup that let's you put the contents of that partition in a USB flash drive, for even further recovery options. You will need a 32GB USB flash drive, as the content/partition is 20GB in size.

When starting the Gigabyte Sabre 17, the keyboard color always defaults to blue. But as soon that the Flexikey software is loaded, the configurations you defined in it takes charge. You can define macros for your keyboard and mouse. You can also configure your keyboard leds and have any color you want! There's several blinking patterns to choose from and you can divide the keyboard in three separate sections and give each one it's color. There's a Control Center where you can choose among four different power profiles, control your fans, activate or deactivate your touchpad and webcam, and activate/or deactivate your Windows key so you don't press it accidentally when playing your favorite games. You can also check if your NumLock, CapsLock, ScrollLock are active or not, as there's no indicating leds for them in the laptop, again following the minimalist look.

Overall, I'm very happy with the Gigabyte Sabre 17 K. It's thin and light for a 17.3" laptop, it's sleek, elegant, minimalist, discreet, looks very nice, the battery lasts for a reasonable amount of time and most of all, the hardware specifications are good to do what I need it to do. The SSD makes it fast and smooth to start and work in Windows 10,while the HDD gives it great storage capacity, the processor has enough power and cores to edit some video on the go, one graphics card is very efficient and the other one powerful enough to play modern games (although I didn't bought this laptop with the purpose of playing games) and RAM is decent enough to do all that without a problem. The display is a 17.3" IPS with great colors and a good viewing angle, typical of IPS displays. I have a more powerful desktop that I built around Christmas 2017 (check it here), so I didn't need a top of the line laptop. I bought it with a slight discount for 1180€ and I think it's a fair price. It has performance, looks and quality. Does everything I need and then some. I'm pretty happy with it.

Links

Gigabyte - https://www.gigabyte.com
Gigabyte Sabre 17 K - https://www.gigabyte.com/Laptop/Sabre-17

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