Adata is probably not the first name that comes to mind when you're thinking about buying a new gaming laptop. But the XPG Xenia 15 is a surprisingly impressive debut from a company known more for storage and memory than full machines, and it might seem a bit callous to say that any success is surprising if you haven't seen the bizarre car-crash moment that is Xenia's launch video.

If you prefer 16 minutes of uncomfortable viewing, it's still on YouTube." Mike Lan, a "technical and game analyst" (definitely not a made-up person), questions why Adata is bothered, "arrogant or just plain stupid," and states categorically that "XPG will be a disaster and a sad, sad spectacle.

Thus, Adata decided to unveil the first ever gaming laptop. [This sentiment was reinforced when the box supposedly containing the XPG Xenia 15 laptop arrived in the mailbox. The packaging felt rather light, and when I opened it up I assumed it would contain an SSD, two sticks of RAM, and of course a note declaring that Adata was going to focus on what he does best.

But it wasn't, and inside was the XPG Xenia 15, a sleek black notebook with a subtle style that the company doesn't necessarily excel at. The XPG branding on the lid was all black, with a negative space in the glossy arrows that would look right at home in a boardroom or lecture hall.

But if you're looking for cuteness, there it is. The low-profile mechanical-switched keyboard inevitably offers RGB illumination per key, just below the wide, responsive trackpad, with a light strip on the front, plus customizable RGB LEDs.

Yes, this is a mechanical-switch keyboard.

This is not something you'll find on many gaming laptops, but Adata made a pitch with the Xenia to offer an impressive spec list with features you'd never expect from a $1,500 laptop, with one notable exception... The graphics card.

Quickly, my biggest disappointment with the XPG Xenia 15 is that the mainstream version with the Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti costs $1,500. Normally, you can get this kind of GPU on machines like Acer and MSI for around $1,200. But while GPUs are a major component of PC gamers' desires, they do not tell the whole story.

The use of Intel 9th generation chips doesn't bother me; despite the release of the Core i7 10750H, there is little to beat the similar 6-core, 12-thread Core i7 9750H that Adata included in the Xenia 15. He also noted that supply chain constraints were a factor, allowing Adata to focus future R&D efforts on the upcoming Tiger Lake platform. [9750H is a quality gaming laptop processor that does not have the multi-threaded processing power of the AMD Ryzen 4800H, but still performs well in gaming performance numbers.

What makes these games shine is a 1080p IPS display running at 144Hz. We also mentioned earlier that we were disappointed with the value proposition of the GTX 1660 Ti, but it is still a great 1080p gaming GPU. It also has 1TB of NVMe SSD storage (Adata's own SX8200 Pro drive), which is plenty of room to store your game library on the go. The Xenia 15 also has a large 32GB of 2,666MHz DDR4 memory. This may not be the fastest, but it is a very large amount of memory.

Considering the battery life of over 2 hours for everyday productivity tasks as well as gaming, this price point seems a bit of a bargain. Like I said, it's the whole laptop picture.

Benchmarks show that they are a bit behind the gaming and CPU pace of the $1,200 and $1,300 AMD-powered machines from Dell and Asus, respectively, but these machines also have their own problems. As much as we like the new all-AMD Dell G5 15 SE, its gaming performance can win or lose to the Xenia, and the Asus TUF A15 doesn't exactly crush the Adata machine either. Nor is the Asus TUF A15 crushing Adata machines.

These two machines run considerably hotter than the magnesium alloy chassis Adata has dressed the XPG Xenia 15 with. They also do not have the rest of the spec list for this debut laptop.

There is much to like about this new series of XPG gaming laptops. It tries to keep things simple, aiming for a subtle design, excellent gaming battery life, and a spec list that is hard to find on other machines at this price point; the GPU itself may seem like a supporting role at first, but it still performs impressively at this level; the RTX 2070 Max-Q Design graphics card, there is the Adata XPG Xenia 15, which has the same essential spec list but costs $2,000 and another $500 for a higher class GPU.

I would much more likely recommend the XPG Xenia 15 at this price point. I did not expect to be so pleasantly surprised by Adata's first foray into the gaming laptop market. Not least because, as "Mike Lan" (if that is your name) must eat his words, and given the design philosophy behind it, Adata deserves to do well with this excellent little machine.