Aorus X5S v5 is a portable 4K powerhouse that packs a gaming punch

Aorus has launched a pair of gaming laptops packing slim and light chassis designs paired with meaty GPUs under the hood.

Called the Aorus X5S v5, the first of the two is a spin on the Aorus X5 that launched at CES 2016. It boasts a 4K 15.6-inch display with a 3,840 x 2,160 pixel-resolution and is driven by an Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M alongside Intel's Core-i7 6700HQ CPU.

Aorus reckons it delivers a great balance between performance, portability and also a solid level of battery life. Let's hope so, because we didn't find the Aorus X5's battery longevity to be very impressive.

It's joined by the Aorus X7 Pro v5, which has a Skylake Core i7-6820HK processor beating at its heart, along with twin GeForce GTX 970M GPUs hooked up in SLI for some major mobile power.

This laptop also boasts a 17.3-inch full HD display, which will mean some very smooth gaming at this resolution given the graphics power on offer – particularly as G-Sync is also on board, Nvidia's tech that reduces tearing and stuttering.

This is a desktop replacement machine though, and weighs in at 3kg, although it's not too hefty at 24mm thick.

Super-streaming

Aorus also offers an option on Hardware Live Streaming Engine tech, which keeps things smooth and aims to prevent dropped frames when streaming your gaming session. Aorus claims a 10% boost in terms of frame rates over a typical software streaming solution.

The price of these notebooks obviously varies depending on the exact specification, but as you'd imagine, they're not particularly cheap. Currently the base model of the Aorus X7 Pro v5 (with 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD plus 1TB hard disk) starts at around £2,200 (about $3,140, or AU$4,140) online.

As for the Aorus X5S v5, that's currently available online at around the £2,100 mark (about $3,000, or AU$3,950), with an 8GB GTX 980M GPU, 16GB of system RAM and a 256GB SSD along with a 1TB hard drive.

So if you fancy one of these beasts, best start saving now.

• Check out our review of the Aorus X7 Pro-SYNC