Schenker XMG Pro 15 (RTX 3080 Ti) laptop review: The Mike Tyson of all-round laptops

At the beginning of the year, we reviewed the predecessor with the Tiger Lake CPU and RTX 3080 . Now Schenker has created a new case and updated the hardware to Alder Lake and RTX 3080 Ti . This time, we are reviewing the variant with a QHD IPS display instead of a 4K OLED screen.

In addition to the predecessor, other 15-inch laptops with similar hardware are used for comparison, including the MSI Raider GE66 12UHS as well as the Razer Blade 15 . We also compare the performance with that of the in-house XMG Neo 15 with and without its XMG Oasis liquid cooling system . Schenker uses a new case, the Clevo PD50PNT.

The display lid and the bottom shell are still made of aluminum, while the display bezel and the top shell are made of plastic. The display lid and base make slight creaking noises under torsion, but still give a sufficiently sturdy impression, especially the base. No uneven gaps were found, and the workmanship is on a good level.

The design is relatively simple and kept in black, which should also appeal to content creators. The XMG logo is barely visible on the lid because it is also dark. The surfaces are a magnet for fingerprints and grease marks.

Interestingly, the new Pro 15 is slightly thicker (~25 mm) and heavier than its direct predecessor (19. 8 mm). Width and depth, on the other hand, have remained almost the same, but the weight has increased by around 300 g.

This brings it closer to the XMG Neo 15 (26. 6 mm), thus no longer ranking among the very thin devices that attempt to reach the dimensions of a Razer Blade 15 (~17 mm). Schenker has reintroduced a card reader, but only in MicroSD format; the predecessor did not have an SD reader.

This also changes the distribution of the USB ports: The two USB-A ports are now on the left, while a USB-C port is located on the right in addition to the microSD reader. Together with a MiniDP on the back, this makes the Pro 15 VR capable. A fingerprint sensor has been integrated into the upper left corner of the touchpad.

The distribution of the ports is acceptable, but a thick network cable may get in the way of the right mouse hand. The MicroSD reader has a snap-in mechanism so that the card hardly sticks out. However, speeds with our AV PRO microSD 128 GB V60 test card are below average.

The reader of the Razer Blade is twice as fast. The manufacturer has opted for the popular Intel AX201 WiFi module, which does not yet support Wi-Fi 6e, but connects to 5 GHz networks. The transfer rates of the Pro 15 are consistently in the high range.

The webcam also gets an upgrade, namely from 720p to 1080p, which is Full HD. We measured acceptable color deviations, but the picture looks a bit grainy (outdoors, shadows) and pale despite Full HD. The Pro 15 offers a Kensington port, TPM, and a fingerprint sensor.

The sensor’s integration into Windows Hello works reliably, and logging in is very fast. The typical Schenker accessories, such as a USB stick with drivers or a mouse pad, are missing from the Pro, which only comes with a CD driver. Schenker offers a 24-month warranty in Germany.

The aluminum underside is secured by 16 Phillips screws. Not even the Neo with its water ports has so many (14). Fortunately, all screws have the same length, so there is no confusion.

The baseplate can then be removed very easily without any additional tools, and you have access to the battery, the fans, the two M. 2 slots and the RAM. Only the WiFi module is hidden, namely underneath the SSD, which is perhaps not so optimal in terms of cooling.

Instead of the optomechanical keyboard like in the Neo 15, Schenker uses a “normal” chiclet keyboard with RGB backlighting for each key in the Pro 15. The layout is very tidy. While the keys have a small design, they are well spaced and there is still room for a numpad on the right.

The power button has been installed as an extra key above the keyboard, and the arrow keys are of a normal size. Only the F keys have been halved in height. The lettering is not very large, but easy to read thanks to the clear white.

Typing is uncomplicated and fast, key travel is acceptable, and key feedback is palpable. Stroke noise is moderate. The wide touchpad (~12.

1 x 7. 3 cm) has good gliding properties; only during very slow movements can it falter slightly. The dedicated mouse buttons of the predecessor are now history, unfortunately.

The clicks of the integrated buttons are short, crisp and reliable, and the noise moderate to medium loud. Schenker uses a matte QHD IPS panel (2560 x 1440) from BOE with 165 Hz. Alternatively, the high quality 4K OLED option of the predecessor is again available, as well as a Full HD panel with poorer color space coverage.

The brightness is just under 300 nits due to the less-than-uniform illumination. The contrast ratio could also be a little higher, but it is okay. Overall, the display doesn’t deliver top values, but it is well-rounded overall: good response times, acceptable brightness and good color space coverage.

PWM is not used for brightness control. Screen bleeding is extremely minimal and hardly noticeable even in dark environments. The panel in the Pro 15 covers sRGB completely and DCI-P3 at over 97 percent, AdobeRGB at 85 percent.

Unlike the Neo, the panel is thus suitable for editing photos and videos. The display is properly calibrated ex-works; manual calibration hardly changes the average color deviation values. The matte surface eliminates many reflections outdoors.

However, due to the rather average brightness and a not-too high contrast, you should stay in the shade and ensure a direct frontal view. As is typical for IPS, the viewing angle stability is very good. Only under extreme viewing angles do brightness and colors suffer a little.

The XMG Pro 15 is aimed at gamers as well as content creators, which is reflected in the sleek design and the strong hardware (i7-12700H and RTX 3080 Ti) on the one hand, and in the QHD display with its good color space coverage on the other hand. A generous 32 GB of RAM also benefits both parties, but this is unfortunately only available in the DDR4 version here, unlike in the Neo. All important performance settings are adjusted in the XMG Control Center; Schenker uses different software here than in the XMG Neo.

Manual settings for the offset values or Dynamic Boost are largely absent. Only the fan curve can be adjusted manually. On the other hand, four performance modes can be selected: Silent, Power Saving, Entertainment and Performance.

For the best benchmark results, we carried out our tests in the most powerful mode, which is Performance mode. However, Schenker recommends Entertainment mode, which is intended to be a good compromise between performance and noise. An Intel Core i7-12700H is used as the CPU (14 cores, 20 threads).

The combined E and P cores roughly clock from 1. 8 to 4. 7 GHz.

The CPU is very powerful and is used in many Intel gaming laptops. In the Cinebench loop, the performance drops slightly over longer periods of time. Nevertheless, the curve is comparable to that of the MSI Raider GE66 with its i9-12900H , but the same i7-12700H is even faster in the Neo 15.

The TDP only briefly draws 116 W in the first run, after which it drops and stabilizes at around 80 to 85 W. In Entertainment mode (instead of performance mode), the TDP briefly extracts 108 W in the first run before also dropping and stabilizing at 45 W with very short initial peaks of 55 to 80 W. The Pro 15 beats the i7-11800H in the predecessor by around 30%.

Overall, CPU performance in the Neo 15 and the MSI Raider is a few percentage points better, but the Pro 15 is still on a very good level, namely slightly above the expected rates. In Battery mode, the maximum power consumption is only 25 W, and the TDP sometimes drops to 16 W during the Cinebench runs. Performance is correspondingly lower, seeing reductions of around 57% compared to the plugged-in Performance mode.

In PCMark 10, the benchmark values are roughly on par with the expected level, but performance falls sharply in the area of content creation. Browser opening did not cause any problems, but there were issues when loading our website. The determined latency increased when opening multiple tabs and when playing our 4K/60 fps YouTube video.

At the very least, the video ran without dropped frames, but the latency is still relatively quite high. The installed Samsung SSD 980 Pro with 1 TB and PCIe 4. 0 ranks 11th in our SSD/HDD best list .

It is also quite fast in the Pro 15, but the sustained performance is not constant, which means the performance can be significantly lower. This may indicate a possible cooling problem here, which could also explain the low PCMark10 score. Right next to the Samsung SSD is another M.

2 slot for a secondary storage drive. Upon enquiry, the manufacturer stated that the review sample was issued by XMG before the internal release of the model series and is said to have an incorrect cooling pad that is not used in the series model. Apparently, however, there is nothing unusual about the cooling pad.

The XMG Pro 17 also shows a decrease in the long-term performance of the SSD under testing. The Nvidia Geforce RTX 3080 Ti is currently the most powerful laptop graphics card available. However, its performance strongly depends on the TGP set by the manufacturer.

In the case of the Pro 15, the GPU is allowed up to 155 W (including Dynamic Boost). According to Nvidia, up to 175 W is possible. Nevertheless, 3D performance should be very high in all applications.

Only the MSI Raider is faster in 3DMark 11, and the Neo 15 sometimes overtakes the Pro 15 in the other 3DMarks, but the differences are rather small. In Battery mode, 3D performance drops by a whopping 86% in another Time Spy run! The Pro 15 is often just below average in low graphics settings, and slightly above in high details. Overall, gaming performance is at the expected level.

However, the Neo 15 and the MSI Raider in particular are almost always faster, even in high details. In Strange Brigade, the Pro 15 is the fastest device. However, things become a little tight in terms of ray tracing, depending on the game and detail level.

In Dying Light 2 with high ray tracing settings and Full HD, the Pro 15 manages 38 fps, but stutters in native QHD resolution at just over 20 fps. But this is no different in other laptops with the RTX 3080 Ti. The Witcher 3 Ultra frame rate is fairly constant over an hour and fluctuates between 110 and 125 fps.

The CPU heats up to an average of 77 °C and the power consumption is only 28 W, also because Witcher 3 cannot utilize newer processors well, especially the new E and P cores of the Intel CPUs. The GPU heats up to an average of 86 °C. It cannot maintain the Turbo rate and clocks at an average of 1.

4 GHz. It can happen that the Pro 15’s fans stand still, but this is rare, even in Silent mode (idle). Sometimes the second fan also runs quietly in Entertainment or Performance mode.

Nevertheless, this fan behavior is already an improvement over the even louder predecessor. Overall, the fans of the Pro 15 rev up quite loudly and very quickly, and also have a hard time slowing down again. For example, the fans spin up after only 16 seconds in 3DMark06 and reach their maximum after 40 seconds.

Other laptops remain quiet longer and don’t necessarily rev up to maximum volume under average loads. This was also the case in Entertainment mode, but the maximum volume here was 54. 5 dB instead of 56.

5 dB. The Razer Blade and even the MSI Raider are significantly quieter under load. When launching 3D programs like Witcher 3 or 3DMark06, we hear an electronic whirring that probably comes from the GPU.

The underside can heat up to 60 °C during gaming, and it is not much cooler on the top in the center. The WASD key area registers around 52 °C. The Razer Blade is significantly cooler, and the strong MSI Raider gets similarly hot.

At least the palm rests remain in a comfortable range. The cores start our stress test at over 3. 8 GHz.

The clock rates slowly drop and there are periodic minor drops, whereby the thermal limit of the Pro 15 apparently only kicks in very late. Thus the average core temperature is a high 95 °C! At the same time, a fairly high average clock rate of around 3. 2 GHz is possible.

The GPU heats up less (around 69 °C), but the clock fluctuates significantly (average at 1. 2 GHz). The memory clock also varies between 1.

5 and 2 GHz. The card draws around 69 W from the power supply on average, and only occasionally reaches 150 W and only very briefly. The speakers are not particularly loud.

At least the bass is average instead of completely underrepresented, while the trebles are balanced. External analogue audio devices can be connected via two jack slots. One gets the impression that the performance modes of the Pro 15 are not fully optimized.

The consumption measurement was not straightforward in idle. The lowest consumption with minimized brightness in flight mode was difficult to achieve in energy-saving mode; the measured 40 W is extremely high. If you switch to the nominally higher entertainment mode under the otherwise same settings, consumption then drops to about 10 W within a few seconds.

Switching back to the energy-saving mode again displays 40 W without any noticeable slowdown after more than a minute. No bothersome background processes were detected. Only the Control Center was opened and closed in between.

And even in Performance mode, idle consumption is quite high at 35 W. Gaming demands an average of 235 W (input power at the wall socket), and we also measured very short load peaks of a maximum of 273 W in the stress test. The 230 W power supply (output power, size approx.

15. 4 x 7. 5 cm) should just about suffice here.

Schenker installs an 80 Wh battery, the same as in the Razer. The MSI Raider has considerably more reserves with 99 Wh. Browsing lasts between 5.

5 and 6 hours depending on the brightness, and watching videos lasts around 5 hours. The runtimes are not particularly long in comparison; competing devices last longer, especially when watching videos. The Pro could learn something from the Neo, which has more stamina with its 93 Wh battery.

The XMG Pro 15 brings a lot of features that constitute a good gamer or a good work laptop for content creators. First and foremost, the QHD screen with its fast response times and good color space coverage. The hardware is also impressive, the input devices are decent at the least, the WiFi is very fast, and the general performance is high.

Schenker attempts to counteract the typical disadvantages of laptops with strong hardware with a thicker case, but this only works to a limited extent. Yes, the new Pro 15 is a little quieter than the old, thinner Pro 15, but it is still one of the loudest devices in the comparison field, and the fans very quickly reach their limits. At the same time, the temperatures have not really improved.

And so the many advantages of the Pro 15 are accompanied by a small “but”: The QHD display is fundamentally decent, but the illumination is uneven. Schenker has installed a fast Samsung 980 Pro SSD, but it throttles under constant load (heat). Performance is very high, but the device becomes very loud and hot very quickly.

An SD reader is back on board again, but it only reads MicroSD cards and is slow. The XMG Pro 15 is a very fast gaming and work computer with many good features which, however, often seem to be out of balance. The Pro 15 is currently unavailable nationwide in Germany, the manufacturer’s homeland.

Only Schenker’s own store bestware. com lists the device, but not in our review configuration; the corresponding display or the RTX 3080 Ti cannot be selected at present. Prices start at €1,978.

99 (just under US$ 2000) for the model with an OLED display, but a weaker RTX 3060, 16 of GB RAM and a 500 GB SSD. With an RTX 3070 Ti, 32 GB and a 1 TB SSD, the model costs €2,510 (US$ ~2520). .