Infinix GT Book Review: Gaming Laptop on a Budget
Infinix makes several affordable products, from smartphones to laptops to televisions. Naturally, when the company reached out to us to review their affordable gaming laptop, I was very interested. The Infinix GT Book is the first gaming laptop from the company, and it offers a lot for the price. The base model comes with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 GPU, which isn’t common in this price range. The laptop also has a large 16-inch display, some RGB lighting, and a unique design.
Does the Infinix GT Book make for a good starter gaming laptop? Is it worth the money, and can it play some serious games? These are some of the questions I’ll be answering in my review. Read on to find out.
Infinix GT Book price in India
The Infinix GT Book is available in three CPU+GPU options in India. The base model, which Infinix sent us for review, is priced at Rs. 59,990 and is equipped with a 12th Gen Intel Core i5 12450H CPU and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 GPU.
The laptop uses aluminium for the top and base plate
There’s also a variant with a 13th Gen Intel Core i5 13420H and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 GPU, which is priced at Rs. 79,990. Finally, you can have the 13th Gen Intel Core i9 13900H CPU and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 combo for Rs. 99,990.
Infinix is selling the laptop in two colour options: Mecha Gray and Mecha Silver. You’ll get just the laptop, some paperwork, and a massive 210W charging brick in the box. The company is also bundling a free accessory set for a limited time. The kit includes an RGB gaming mouse, RGB headphones, and an RGB mouse pad.
The GT Gaming accessories bundle is said to be worth Rs. 8,999, but it didn’t feel that way
If you don’t receive this, don’t be sad, as the headphones and mouse pad quality isn’t that good. The mouse, however, is not too bad and works well.
Infinix GT Book Review: Design and display
Infinix’s new gaming laptop feels solid in hand. It features an aluminium top and base plates, while the centre frame uses plastic. There is absolutely no flex in the lid or the bottom of the laptop. The area around the keyboard also did not show any flex. You’ll find some graphics on the lid, which Infinix calls the Cyber Mecha design, and the Infinix GT branding.
The bottom panel houses an orange-coloured grille for the intake vents and speakers. It also features angled edges. There’s also an RGB strip at the back of the laptop, where the exhaust vents are. I liked the design of the back panel. The front has a single LED to indicate sleep/wake states. The hinges on the laptop seem sturdy, and you can easily open the lid with one hand. The laptop weighs 1.99 kg and is 19.9mm at its thickest point.
The laptop features a coloured grille at the bottom, which looks quite nice
Infinix has provided a plethora of ports on the GT Book. The left side houses HDMI 2.0, a USB Type-A, and a USB Type-C port. The charging connector is also on the left edge. Moving over to the right, you’ll find a USB Type-C, USB Type-A, a 3.5mm headphone port, and an SD card reader.
Overall, the laptop has a nice aesthetic that doesn’t yell ‘gamer’. Even if you’re not a gamer, chances are you’d still like the design.
The 16-inch panel on the laptop has an anti-glare coating
Opening the lid reveals the large 16-inch anti-glare display with slim bezels. The panel offers full HD resolution, a 16:10 aspect ratio, and an adaptive refresh rate of up to 120Hz. It is claimed to deliver 300 nits of brightness and cover 100 percent of the sRGB colour gamut. The laptop has a nice display, and I love its anti-glare coating. It is plenty bright indoors and I’ve enjoyed watching content on the screen. However, the display doesn’t offer fast response times, and this is quite evident when gaming. If you’re someone who will notice the motion blur, then you’ll probably not enjoy gaming on the Infinix GT Book.
Infinix GT Book Review: Keyboard, touchpad, speakers, and web camera
The Infinix GT Book comes with a full-sized chiclet-style keyboard with 4-zone RGB. The keys take some getting used to but offer decent travel and feedback. The RGB backlight isn’t very bright but does the job at night. You get 4-zone customisation, which can be controlled using the Control Center app. The WASD keys are accented, and you get three dedicated keys for the three available performance modes placed on the top right.
The keyboard offers 4-zone RGB customisation, but the lighting isn’t very bright
Next up is the touchpad. You get a decent-sized touchpad with a smooth surface and decent click feedback. It supports multi-touch gestures as well, and they do work well. I have no complaints here. The Infinix GT Book comes with dual bottom-firing speakers that are placed on either side. The speakers are loud and offer some bass, but they can start tearing at full volume when listening to music. The sound quality is good when watching movies and playing games with nice stereo separation. It also helps that the DTS app is enabled by default.
You get a full-HD webcam on the laptop that performs well when there’s plenty of light. The camera also offers good image quality at night as long as there’s plenty of lighting. In low light conditions, there’s a lot of noise, and the image isn’t very clear. Audio from the dual microphones is crisp and clear.
Infinix GT Book Review: Specifications and software
The laptop is available in three different configurations, as mentioned in the beginning. You can equip the Infinix GT Book with up to 32GB LPDDR5X RAM at 6400MHz on the flagship model, whereas the base and mid-variants get 16GB LPDDR5X RAM at 5200MHz. The top-end variant also gets 1TB of PCIE 4.0 storage, whereas the other two get a maximum of 512GB. The RAM isn’t upgradeable, but you can swap out the SSD for a larger one. Infinix has also offered up to Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 on the GT Book gaming laptop.
The Control Center lets you choose between three preset performance modes
Coming to the software, the laptop runs Windows 11 Home out of the box, and there are hardly any additional pre-installed apps. You get a Mouse driver app that lets you configure the included mouse if you’re lucky to get the free bundle on purchase. The laptop has the Infinix Control Center that lets you choose between the three performance modes, customise the RGB lighting on the keyboard and the back strip, and offers a MUX switch.
Infinix GT Book Review: Performance and gaming
Alright, now let’s talk about performance. Infinix sent us the base variant for review, which gets the 12th Gen Intel Core i5-12450H CPU and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 GPU with 6GB VRAM. The GPU can offer up to 80W TGP when the laptop is plugged in and set to the Gaming profile in the Control Center app. In the Performance mode, the GPU offers 65W TGP and 30W TGP in Office mode. I ran some benchmarks and played a couple of games on the laptop to see how it performed.
I’ll list down some synthetic benchmark results first. On Geekbench, in Gaming mode, the laptop scored 2095 in single-core tests and 8874 in multi-core. Running PCMark 10 benchmark on the laptop resulted in an overall score of 5817 points. I also ran the Steel Nomad 3DMark benchmark; the laptop scored 1086 points. The included 512GB SSD delivered good numbers on the CrystalDiskMark storage benchmark.
Hogwarts Legacy worked quite well in full settings
When it comes to gaming, the laptop offers very good performance at a low price. I played Far Cry 6 and Hogwarts Legacy on the Infinix GT Book and got pretty good frame rates. In Far Cry 6, with resolution set to full-HD and 120Hz refresh rate, graphics at Ultra quality, and V-sync on, the laptop delivered an average of 54 fps. When playing Hogwarts Legacy, the laptop was able to offer an average frame rate of about 70 at full-HD resolution and graphics set to Ultra.
In regular usage, for productivity and some photo editing, I didn’t notice any lag or stutter. The 120Hz display also offers a smooth experience when scrolling through web pages.
The laptop features a dual-fan, dual-heatpipe cooling setup that works quite well. In the Gaming mode, the fan does get quite loud though. I also noticed that a half-hour-long gaming session would cause the top left area near the touchpad to get quite warm. This was somewhat uncomfortable, especially since your palm sits exactly at that spot. In normal usage, I didn’t notice any excessive heating.
Infinix GT Book Review: Battery life
The battery life on the Infinix GT Book is what you’d typically expect from a gaming laptop. Infinix has packed a 70 Whr battery in the laptop. In Office mode, the laptop lasted for about 4 to 5 hours of web browsing, YouTube, and some streaming. If you want to game on battery, then you can expect about 1 to 2 hours of usage based on the title. I got about 1 hour of Far Cry 6 in Ultra settings, which is in the Gaming mode. However, on battery, the GPU power draw is capped at 30W, which doesn’t matter what mode you use.
The GT Book comes with a 70 Whr battery
Charging the laptop is also nothing impressive. It took more than 2 hours to get from about 9 percent to 100 using the provided 210W charger.
Infinix GT Book Review: Verdict
With a starting price of Rs. 59,990, and despite the ageing hardware, the Infinix GT Book is an excellent option for those on a tight budget. Even the base model offers good performance in most situations, including gaming. The display is good despite a high response time, the build quality is very good, you get a decent keyboard and touchpad, and there’s no bloatware. It’s a great first gaming laptop from Infinix.
