Tested: UMG U506 Gaming Laptop

While some major companies have come to the table with some big-name gaming laptops, it’s mostly more niche companies who have remained the face of high-end gaming in a portable form factor. One such company is XMG, a gaming brand from German-based outfit Schenker. XMG is largely devoted to laptops that offer the speed and performance of a full Desktop Gaming PC build but with the full portability one would expect from a laptop - and that’s quite a tall order.

We got the chance to test out the XMG U506, one of the company’s flagship models, and found ourselves ultimately quite impressed with the output of the machine in spire of being quite the sceptics as far as high-end gaming and laptops go. So let’s get down to it by kicking off with the machine’s specifications and our full impressions below:

The XMG U506 focuses doesn't worry too much about its chassis, instead focusing on performance.

XMG U506 Specifications In Brief

• 15.6-inch (1920 x 1080) 141 ppi IPS matt anti-glare LCD

• Intel Core i5-6700K

• Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M with 9192mb GDDR5

• 512GB Samsung SM951 PCIe M.2 SSD

• 1TB HGST 7200rpm HDD

• Qualcomm Killer AC 1525 Wifi Card

• Gigabit Ethernet (Qualcomm Killer E2400)

• HD Audio, Sound Blaster® X-FI® MB5, ONKYO 2.0 Speaker-System

• Multicolour backlight UK keyboard with Numeric Key Pad and N-Key rollover

• 2.0 MP Webcam

• Integrated Microphone

• eSATA Port (USB 3.0 Combo Port)

• 3x USB 3.0 (1x powered)

• 2x DisplayPort 1.2

• HDMI 2.0 (with HDCP)

• Headphone, Audio Input & Microphone Jacks

• Windows 10

• 4 cell smart Lithium-Ion battery pack, 82 Wh (approx. 2 hrs general usage)

• Dimensions: 387 x 266 x 37.5mm

• Weight: 3.4kg

XMG U506 Impressions

At a glance, the specs sheet for the XMG U506, which you can see above, reads like a full-blown desktop PC. The numbers that jump out, such as an i5-6600K and a GTX 970, are impressive. It’s only things like the mention of weight and the ‘M’ label on the GPU that make clear exactly what this is at first glance - and yet, from the outside, the U506 looks just like a regular laptop, albeit a chunky one with some of the typical ‘love them or hate them’ hard-edged angles that are so often associated with ‘pro gaming’ products.

The U506 runs like a dream, staying comparatively cool and quiet.

The heart of the U506 comes in the form of its desktop-level Intel Core i5 CPU, Quad Core in nature. It’s worth noting off the bat that the U506 can ship with a number of different configurations with slight variances in power depending on the sort of price you want to lay out, and so you’re not limited to the 6600K model we tested and can actually get a boost beyond that - but with that said, this still felt more than enough, with the CPU performing admirably under pretty much all the scenarios we threw at it.

Impressive is the machine’s use of the latest power management offered by Skylake, the newest Intel processor revision, to keep heat and power usage down. It’s true that you’re not going to want to play a high-end game without having the U506 plugged in to the mains, but the point is that even when it is plugged into the mains the laptop managed to steer clear of feeling like it was about to spontaneously set ablaze beneath your fingertips - something that many gaming laptops fail to accomplish. It’s all well and good packing impressive power into a small package, but if it can’t be used without feeling downright dangerous, it’s pointless - and the U506 avoids this well, and all without having fans that feel any louder than the average gaming laptop.

Key in accomplishing this are the laptop’s two generously-sized fans and a fairly significant network of heat pipes. On fans - yes, this machine performs several clips louder than your average shop-bought Dell, but this also offers a whole different level of performance and so that has to be accepted as a reasonable trade-off. The battery, while not suitable for gaming at length, allowed for standard web-browsing and video-consuming use with WiFi on for around two hours and, in less intense testing, a little over that.

The advantages of a desktop-grade CPU rather than a typical laptop model are numerous, and the U506 seems to embrace it with quality performance for intense taks like gaming and video editing aliike. Packed on top of that ix the X170 chipset and an Nvidia GTX 980M (also available is the 970M), the mobile variants of what are currently the most popular choice for desktop GPUs.

The 980M included in our sample tore through releases from late in the last console cycle with ease. Games such as COM: Enemy Unknown and Injustice: Gods Among Us easily zipped by at well beyond a necessary FPS, while even more recent titles such as Grand Theft Auto V, The Witcher III: Wild Hunt and Fallout 4 all performed brilliantly on the card. At a point with titles like GTA5 and The Witcher a definite benefit was found in dropping the settings from their highest to merely ‘high’ - though even with the settings dropped a little, visually and in terms of frame rate this laptop card was still handily outperforming its console rivals. These are the kind of results we tend to expect from Desktops, so to see it out of a laptop that isn’t hideously large is quite the feat.

On top of that the included RAM in our sample topped out at 16gb of HyperX DDR4 - something that likely outperforms even many desktops currently, with many desktop chipsets still focused on catering to the much more common DDR3.

A simplistic design, solid performance & good connectivity help this laptop to stand out.

In terms of connectivity, the machine comes rocking Thunderbolt 3.0 and USB 3.1 both, as well as a card reader, a LAN port, an eSATA port, and the variety of headphone and microphone jacks you’d expect, plus a speedy gaming-focused WiFi card as an option for when a direct LAN connection isn’t available.

Perhaps where the XMG U506’s audience becomes most clear is in its chassis design. It’s a utilitarian, rugged thing that cares not for the fact that, yes, it is a bit bulky. It knows that it’s less designed to be slipped into a side bag and taken to a coffee shop and more likely to be hauled to a LAN event or a tournament - and its design reflects that. Plates on the underside of the machine slide away for easy access to key components for chopping and changing, and the design features sleek pro-gaming inspired curves. XMG’s bright green logo is the only splash of colour on the thing beyond the backlit keyboard; it strikes me, in a sense, as the sort of laptop Batman would have. It’s rugged, it’s big, but it gets the job done with that brute force.

On paper, the UMG U506’s specs look like that of a desktop. As such, when you then realize what they belong to, the whole thing seems a little like madness. Crazy talk. Why would this work? How could this work? Somehow, Schnecker and UMG have made it so, utilizing the new Skylake architecture to deliver a machine with brilliant performance and solid power and heat consumption while just barely scraping in at the top end of real laptop machine size and weight. It’s an expensive thing, but if a desktop is truly out of the question for you or simply too inconvenient, this is an easy recommendation.