I saw a deal on this one and I had to grab it.
It’s an Adata XPG Xenia 15, but that’s more or less just the name on the box. The real name is LAPQC71, or “Intel NUC 9 Extreme Laptop Kit.”
It’s not a kit in the sense that the end user is expected to build it. Rather, it is a barebones laptop chassis (no RAM or SSDs) sold to OEMs to customize and sell under whatever name they wish. The Xenia 15 has many siblings sold under different names, like the Eluktronics MAG-15 or XMG Fusion 15.
Some of the attributes of the unit put it above other competing units in the price range. It has an all-metal, magnesium alloy case, giving the unit a solid, high-end feel, and it’s light for a gaming notebook of its size and capability. It is smaller than the G3 (which has the same sized screen), and the keyboard has no numeric keypad. There isn’t room for it in a case this size.
The touchpad has a glass surface for contact with the user’s finger, as opposed to the more common plastic. The plastic touchpads quickly get worn and shiny in the center, with whatever texture they were manufactured with being worn off, leading to a further reduction in the finger feel. Glass touchpads maintain their feel essentially forever, as the glass surface is much harder than any plastic.
The keyboard is a mechano-optical type, where the actuation of each key is sensed optically rather than with a metal contact, and the travel is considerably greater than in any other laptop keyboard I have used in a modern-era laptop. This leads to a much above average typing feel, which I appreciate (as one who types so many characters for even the simplest of posts). The keyboard deck is solid and does not have any noticeable flex, in keeping with the solid feel of the whole unit.
When the lid is closed, there’s a final “snap” closed that helps to keep it closed, preventing any debris from entering and possibly damaging the screen. This is one thing that was notably lacking from my Dell G3 gaming laptop… the friction hinges that keep the lid/screen from flopping around work the same way throughout the travel of the lid, so that when the user presses the lid closed, the tendency is for it to want to pop back open a little bit. The lid flexes somewhat when it is pushed in opposition to the friction of the hinge, so when the lid touches the base, the hinge still has not reached the position it would be in to be fully closed. When the lid unflexes when the pressure is taken off, the lid opens a little bit.
That would not make much difference if laptops still had a latching mechanism to keep the lid closed, as was the norm in the days of laptops with optical drives, but with the G3, it is an annoyance.
By contrast, my Dell XPS, Acer Swift 1, and my old Asus F8Sn laptops all have that little bit of “snap” at the end. So does the Xenia 15, fortunately.
The display on the Xenia was another selling point. The original screen in my Dell G3 was not a particularly good one in terms of the color gamut. Specifically, the red subpixels were noticeably orange, so the screen was incapable of producing an actual red color. It drove me crazy, and when my cat knocked the unit off my desk and damaged the screen, I was certain to replace it with a unit having a better color gamut (~100% sRGB). I also opted for the higher refresh rate (120hz in this case), since there was no additional cost compared to the 60hz displays.
The display in the Xenia has a near-100% sRGB gamut, 144 hz refresh, and a <4ms response time, which is not bad for a laptop IPS display. It has some light leakage that is noticeable when the screen is black and with the backlight at maximum brightness, but it’s not noticeable with actual content on the display. I do tend to obsess about LCD display flaws, and I have yet to find one I would consider perfect.
The options in the UEFI setup are really quite sparse compared to either of my Dells, but the Xenia does have one option not found in the Dells or most other laptops… CPU undervolting.
I wrote about the undervolting I did on my Dell G3 a while ago (just search this site using the built-in search for “undervolting” and you’ll see them posts!). The gist of it is that Intel has long baked in a margin for error in terms of the voltage an Intel CPU requests, which has in the past helped Intel CPUs to run well on systems that have less than ideal electrical characteristics. If you have a system with good characteristics, all that extra voltage does is use more power and generate more heat, both bad things on a laptop.
When it was discovered that reducing the voltage on an Intel CPU to the point of instability could break the security of Intel’s Software Guard Extensions (SGX), Intel advised OEMs to release firmware updates to block access to the MSRs (model specific registers) that enabled undervolting. It would have been nice if the OEMs had chosen to only block these MSRs if SGX was enabled, since few consumers had any use for SGX anyway, but it was easier just to block it all the time.
With the coming of the 10th generation i-series, Intel tightened up the voltage specs, so there would not be much benefit to undervolting anymore (since the users of these CPUs already have the benefits without having to do anything), but the CPU in the Xenia is an i7-9750H, a ninth-generation that benefits from undervolting as much as its older (mostly identical) sibling, the i7-8750h, which is the CPU in my G3.
It was Intel’s recommendation that MSR support for undervolting be removed from the firmware, which makes it sort of a surprise that Intel’s own product, the QC71 laptop series, have that ability built into the firmware, with no need for external programs like Throttlestop or intel-undervolt.
I plugged in the same settings that I had been using with the G3 with great success, and so far, they are working as well as in the G3.
The Xenia has three USB type A ports (USB 3, though I am not yet sure if they are of the 5GB/s or 10GB/s variety), separate mic and headphone jacks, a USB 3 SD card reader, an ethernet port, a Thunderbolt/USB type C port, and an HDMI port.
The keyboard has individual RGB lighting on a per-key basis, which doesn’t really mean anything to me. The default backlight color is white, and the keycaps give it a greenish-blue color, and I find that pleasant enough to not be concerned about changing the color. There are Linux drivers to make the backlighting available (Windows users can use the Adata software) without changing the color, and that’s okay by me. There may be a way to change the color in Linux too, but I have not investigated it.
The speakers inside were cited as a weak spot in a few of the online reviews of the Xenia I read, but to me, they sound like typical to slightly better than average laptop speakers.
The included wifi card is an Intel AX200, the same unit that is in the G3 (now that I upgraded to it) and the XPS (from the factory, non-removable). Like with the G3, the card is removable if a future upgrade is desired.
I haven’t tested the built-in webcam, nor have I done battery life tests.
The battery is a large one, at 94 watt-hours, which is a nice touch (the G3’s is 52 watt-hours). The reviewers of this unit have sometimes cited battery life as being quite a bit less than what Adata cites as an “up to,” which I think was about ten hours, but based on what I saw with the G3 (which uses the i7-8750H CPU, the near twin to the one in the Adata, which is one generation newer but pretty much the same regardless), it’s believable with the discrete GPU turned off. While it would be nice to have the unit be able to pull double duty as a road-warrior laptop that runs all day on a battery charge, that wasn’t what I bought it for (my Dell XPS 13 has that job, and is more portable by a long shot), so I have not gotten into that yet. I will later, I am sure, and if I do, I will surely post about it here.
The power “brick” on the unit has enough power to supply the laptop’s power demands under load, but it’s gigantic. It is a 240w unit, but I have seen smaller 240s than this. The G3’s included power brick was not powerful enough to keep up with the power demand of the unit, so when it was really drawing a lot of power, the unit would get the additional power from the battery. Dell spun this as a feature, calling it hybrid power, but it’s not… it’s just how laptops work when they are pulling more power than the brick can provide.
As mentioned above, the unit is badged as an Adata, though the actual OEM itself is Intel (manufactured for Intel by the Chinese company Tongfang, in the same manner that Apple iDevices are manufactured in China by Foxconn). The only actual Adata bits inside are the RAM and the SSD (since those are the two things the barebones “kit” does not include). I’ve already removed them both and swapped them with what I had in the G3, so there’s no actual Adata left in this Adata branded unit. I don’t have anything against Adata… it’s just that what I already had in the G3 was better!
The Xenia came with 16GB of RAM, but it is in one SoDIMM. It’s overspecced for the application, being a 32oo MHz unit that’s only running at 2666 MHz, while the RAM from the G3 is in two 8GB SoDIMMs rated at 2666 MHz. Having two SoDIMMs enables dual-channel mode, which is a quick and easy performance boost.
The included Adata SSD is a 512 GB unit, which is just too small for me these days. I swapped in two 1TB M.2 SSDs and put the 512 GB in the G3 along with the 16GB SoDIMM.
In terms of how it runs, it’s about like the G3 but with a substantially faster GPU. Boot times and general “feel” as far as quickness are the same as with the G3. I have not had any crashes or other malfunctions. I just swapped in my SSD that had Kubuntu already installed, so it’s quite literally the same as what I had in the G3.
Temperatures are a bit higher than with the G3 at idle and in light use, but not by much. The fan profile on the Xenia is pretty non-aggressive by default, presumably to keep it quiet. The fans can make some noise at full, but it’s not like having a leaf blower in the house either. It seems that the G3 revved them up a little sooner, which may account for part of the temp difference.
I did repaste the Xenia’s CPU and GPU with Gelid GC-Extreme thermal paste for good measure (I was not certain how good the stock stuff was), but I don’t see any difference. The G3 uses Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut liquid metal, which is as good as it gets for thermal compound, but to use it properly in the Xenia, I’d want to nickel plate the heatsink’s copper cold plates as I did in the G3, and I am a bit sketchy on that bit on a unit that is still under warranty. The performance of the Gelid is usually within a couple or three degrees C of the liquid metal performance, so it’s not far off.
Under gaming loads, the temps are on par with what I see in the G3. The 1660ti in the Xenia is more potent than the 1050ti in the G3, but the cooling system seems to be upgraded too. The G3 has two rear-facing heat exhausts, while the Xenia has two rear-facing and two side-facing, along with better ventilation at the bottom of the unit, where the air is taken into the cooling fans.
Running Furmark for Windows (via WINE), the unit scored 5562 on the 1920×1080 test, which is more than double what I got with the G3. Despite all that performance boost, temps were only 4 C higher than with the G3, at 73C vs. 69C.
This unit came with Windows 10 Home preinstalled, FWIW, and I seem to remember something about Win 11 being available as a free upgrade. I am not any more interested in Windows 11 than I am in Windows 10, and since that Windows 10 installation was on the Adata SSD that is no longer installed, the Xenia is now Windows-free.
I like the G3, but writing all of this has reminded me how I had to change a lot of things to get it that way. I had to replace the G3’s stock 120w adapter with a Dell 180w unit to get it to stop switching to battery while plugged in and performing its intended use (gaming). I had to replace the stock screen with a better one to get a faster refresh rate and a better color gamut (which my cat helped with by damaging the old one). I had to replace the cheap one-channel wifi card with a dual-channel to get the full wifi speed I wanted. I had to add more RAM to bring the G3 up to my preferred 16GB.
The G3 was meant as a budget gaming laptop, and it showed its “budget” roots in each of these cases, as well as in the cheapish plastic chassis into which it was installed (I have had it crack in a few places, which I have had to repair). Fortunately, the XPG has all the bits I wanted, excepting the smallish SSD, and it’s not much more expensive than the G3 was four years ago when I got it for a black Friday sale, before all of this inflation. If you add in the cost of the upgrades I did with the G3, it’s more expensive, and still lacks a glass touchpad and all-metal case.
If you are interested in this unit, I got it from the seller Adorama on eBay for what I consider a great price, $799. The standard warranty (US) is two years on the Xenia, a year longer than the norm for consumer laptops.
This opinion may change if there are reliability issues down the road, but for now, this laptop is fantastic, and even more so for the price. It’s only $100 more than I paid for the Dell G3 four years ago.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)
