Gigabyte Gaming A16 Review

It’s been a while since we’ve had a Gigabyte laptop in for review. They’ve always offered good value and this one comes with a price tag that we didn’t think existed in the current RAM-crisis-affected market. Will the 16-inch Gigabyte Gaming A16 be as cheerful as it is (relatively) cheap? Let’s find out…

Gigabyte Gaming A16 Specs

Features, Ergonomics and Design

When closed, Gigabyte’s A16 is an unassuming all-black laptop whose glossy, textured logo adds some interest when it catches the light. Opening it up reveals the 16-inch, 1,920 x 1,200 resolution IPS display. That’s not the highest resolution screen on the market, but I found it comfortable and accurate to work with for extended periods.

Having used plenty of OLED displays recently, the A16’s colours felt rather muted and washed out, but it’s not to a deal-breaking degree. Contrast is modest – the screen doesn’t (fully) support HDR which leads to blacks feeling washed out and details getting lost in bright areas. However, dark areas are well-illuminated meaning enemies won’t be able to hide in shadows. Both colourful and monochromatic gradients are surprisingly smooth, with only very minor stepping.

The screen has a quick(ish) 165Hz refresh rate and this marries with a modest 3ms pixel response time to banish some blurriness surrounding fast-moving objects. Competitive FPS players would grumble, but nothing is unplayable. Ultimately, it’s not the best screen on the market, but it has no real weak points – it befits a budget gaming laptop.

Above the screen is a decent Full HD webcam (which supports Windows Hello log-on). It can get a little grainy in low light but it’s certainly very usable. The partnering microphone isn’t great at capturing clear audio in noisy (or quiet) environments. Both are functional, though.

The Scrabble-tile RGB keyboard looks very smart with its translucent-sided keys. It’s a little firmer than rivals meaning that more pressure is needed to banish mistakes when typing, but it’s comfortable and accurate for extended gaming. There’s no number pad, though and the arrow keys are squished. However, they’re isolated in the bottom right hand side, so they remain intuitive to reach for.

The large trackpad is smooth and accurate and the button actuations are comfortable – they operate with only a soft, satisfying click.

Inside are two, 2-Watt speakers. They offer reasonable fidelity when it comes to music, but they don’t get particularly loud and there’s very little bass.

It’s worth mentioning Gigabyte’s GiMate software. On the one hand, it performs many of the tasks we’ve come to regard as normal on laptops (especially management of power modes). GiMate does offer some more-unusual apps, though, like AI coding and stable diffusion image generation. Many users would likely use online versions of the same thing, but some people would like local AI for privacy and offline usage. You discover more about it, here.

Connectivity and Ports

Inside there’s Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2. It’s not the latest-and-greatest connectivity complement, but all the key ports are there and few in the target market will grumble. I’m not a fan of having power connectors half-way down the sides, but at least this won’t affect right-handed mouse users (sorry lefties).

All in all, the Gigabyte A16 feels like a functional, reasonably well-featured device considering its budget designation. There’s not much missing.

Features, Ergonomics and Design Score: 2.9 / 5

Performance

Inside the Gigabyte Gaming A16 is a 13^th-gen Intel Core i7-13620H processor (Raptor Lake) which has six Performance cores and four Efficient cores that operate across 16 threads between 3.6 -4.9GHz. While it’s getting a bit long in the tooth, it’s not not powerful and processors like this generally work well in budget gaming laptops. Their modern equivalents aren’t always much faster – just more power efficient and laden with AI.

It’s backed-up by 16GB of DDR5-5600 RAM and a quick, 1TB NVMe SSD. The GPU is Nvidia’s punchy, upper-mid-range, 8GB GeForce RTX 5070. That should be more than enough for a Full HD+ display, but let’s see what the scores say.

General Computing & CPU Tests

In Geekbench 6, the Gigabyte Gaming A16 scored 11,069 which is rather low for a modern laptop (it scored 2,574 in the single-core test for those interested in these numbers). We suspect the processor may be showing its age in this test. Score 1.7 / 5

In the Cinebench R24 processor rendering test, the Gigabyte Gaming A16 scored 865 which is (once again) rather low for a processor (the single core score was 110 for reference). As such, rendering tasks are best offloaded to the Nvidia GPU. Score 1.8 / 5

In the Procyon Microsoft Office tests, it scored a reasonable 7,503 (Score 3.3 / 5) in the primary test and 240,000 in the Multi-platform variant (Score 2.4 / 5). These scores demonstrate that it can capably perform Microsoft Office tasks… like every other laptop. So, all good. I also ran the Procyon AI Machine Vision CPU benchmark and it registered 103 (Score 2.6 / 5). I still can’t find a real-world reference point for AI benchmark numbers.

At the end of the day, while these scores are quite low by modern standards, few casual users will notice during day-to-day usage. The processor in this laptop pretty much just needs to provide a platform for the GPU’s performance while not acting as a bottleneck – and it does that.

General Computing & CPU Score 2.1 / 5

Graphics & Gaming Performance

To establish the Gigabyte Gaming A16’s gaming potency, I started by running the 3DMark gaming tests. The results were as follows…

We don’t count Night Raid in the overall scores as it scales badly and skews the results. It does give a decent idea of basic, older game performance though.

Other scores include the GPU version of the Procyon AI test and the Gigabyte Gaming A16 managed 554 (Score: 2.9 / 5). I still couldn’t tell you what that means when it comes to real-world performance.

The GPU version of Geekbench 6 was 113,834 (Score: 2.7 / 5)

These scores all show that the Gigabyte Gaming A16 can play most games smoothly but will run into stuttering when it comes to resolutions approaching UHD or when rendering eye-candy-rich ray-tracing effects (when using an external monitor that supports higher resolutions). So, it’s an above-average gaming laptop that can play all games – although you’ll likely need to drop the resolution and detail settings of the most-demanding titles.

I also ran the UL Procyon Video Editing test, which uses Adobe Premiere and the Gaming A16 scored 32,990 (Score 2.9 / 5). That means the most difficult rendering test (UHD, H.265, 60fps) for a 900MB video file took 74 seconds. The fastest laptop we’ve seen takes 38 seconds and models without a discreet GPU can take several minutes. So, the Gigabyte Gaming A16 is a reasonable choice for those who need to perform occasional video editing on the move.

Cooling

Gigabyte has always offered impressive cooling solutions on its products, so I shouldn’t be surprised that the Gaming A16 ran cool and quiet most of the time. If the fans did ramp up (to a moderate whoosh) when under a particularly heavy load, they quickly quietened down again afterwards.

Graphics & Gaming Performance Score: 2.8 / 5

Portability & Battery Life

I expect very little from gaming laptops when it comes to portability but, again, the Gigabyte Gaming A16 provided us with a pleasant surprise. Its 76Wh battery ran our UL Procyon Modern Office Battery Life test for an impressive 12 and a half hours which is far longer than I’d expect from a big laptop with a 13th Gen Intel Raptor Lake processor.

Despite being something of a 16-inch powerhouse it also weighs just 2.23KG which is almost lightweight. The small power brick ‘only’ adds an extra 503g to the mix – we’ve seen much larger on gaming laptops.

This all said, I wouldn’t want to be transporting the Gaming A16 to too many new places. While the base is solid and robust, there’s significant flex in the lid when a twisting force is applied and the hinges (though capable of keeping the screen from wobbling) aren’t the sturdiest we’ve seen.

Portability & Battery Life Score: 2.4 / 5

Price, Availability & Value

In our home country of Australia, our review unit SKU of the Gigabyte Gaming A16 (A16 CWH) has a sticker price of $2,499 which puts it in old-school budget gaming laptop territory – remarkable considering how the RAM crisis has ballooned the price of laptops in general and gaming laptops in particular. What’s more, it’s also currently available in EoFY sales for just $1,899 and there are plenty of different SKUs to choose from.

In the US, NewEgg is selling it for US$1,500.

In the UK it’s £1,100.

In India we found it for ₹ 248,785. 

That represents good value in the current climate – enough to make it our new Best Budget Gaming Laptop, in fact!

Value Score: 3.5 / 5

Value Score in current sales: 4.1 / 5

Conclusion: Should you buy the Gigabyte Gaming A16?

If you’re in the market for a budget gaming laptop that has no real weaknesses then the Gigabyte Gaming A16 should be near the top of your list. You can find laptops that perform better at everything but very few offer such a combination of power, performance and features at such a (relatively) low price. If you can find it on sale, it’s even better value so, we’re happy to anounce that it’s our new Best Budget Gaming Laptop.

Overall Score: 3.2 / 5

Awards

Last Updated on 22 June 2026 by Nick Ross