Maingear ML-16 Gaming Laptop Review: Premium, Powerful, Customizable
Maingear ML-16 Gaming Laptop Review: System Tests, Graphics And Gaming Benchmarks
ATTO Disk Benchmark
The Maingear ML-16 we tested came equipped with a Team Group T-Force Cardea A440 PCIe Gen 4 SSD, which offered excellent read and write performance. Reads peaked at nearly 6.5GB/s, and writes hovered around the 6GB/s mark.
Speedometer 2.0 Browser Benchmark
We use the BrowserBench.org’s Speedometer test to gauge web experiences, which takes a holistic look at web application performance. This test automatically loads and runs several sample web apps from ToDoMVC.com using the most popular web development frameworks around, including React, Angular, Ember.js, and even vanilla JavaScript. This test is a good example of how systems cope with real web applications, as opposed to a pure JavaScript compute test like JetStream. All tests were performed using the latest version of Chrome.
It should be noted that this test is influenced by browser updates, and we don't have all of these machines on hand indefinitely to continually re-test. That said, the Maingear ML-16 performed well and finished behing only the 2024 ROG Zephyrus G14, with its Ryzen 9 8945HS processor. It also bested the MSI Prestige 16 AI EVO, with its similar Intel Core Ultra 7 165H CPU.
Cinebench 2024 Rendering Benchmark
Cinebench 2024 is the latest 3D rendering benchmark from Maxon, based on the Cinema 4D R23 rendering engine. We tested both single-threaded and multi-threaded tests on all of the notebooks represented here.
The Maingear ML-16 faltered in the multi-threaded Cinebench 2024 test, and trailed other notebooks powered by similar processors. Its single-thread performance was competitive with other Meteor Lake powered machines, though.
Geekbench 6 Benchmarks
Geekbench is a cross-platform benchmark that simulates real world processing workloads with image processing, particle physics, and a handful of other scenarios. We tested the notebooks featured here with Geekbench’s single and multi-core workloads.
The Maingear ML-16 finished just where you'd expect based on its processor -- a few percentage points behind the MSI machine with its higher-end Core Ultra 7 165H, but ahead of previous-gen machines using older platforms.
PCMark 10 Whole System Benchmarks
PCMark 10 uses a mix of real-world applications and simulated workloads to establish how well a given system performs productivity tasks, including image and video editing, web browsing, and OpenOffice document editing. While these scores appear to be all over the place, the systems are sorted by their overall PCMark score, which is the third (gray) bar in each cluster.
The Maingear ML-16 finished alongside the upper eschelon of systems in our PCMark tests. The fact is, all of these notebooks are more than capable of running these productivity and creator applications and the Maingear ML-16 hangs with the best of them.
3DMark Graphics And GPU Tests
3DMark has several different graphics tests which focus on different types of systems. We start with Time Spy, which was 3DMark's headline benchmark until just recently. This test presents a pretty significant challenge for the system's CPU and GPU using the DirectX 12 API...
The Maingear ML-16's GeForce RTX 4070 performs as well as any other, but its CPU holds it back here somewhat. Time Spy factors the CPU's Physics score in the overall result, so we'd expect the Maingear ML-16 to trail notebooks that have additional CPU cores, but a similar GPU.
Port Royal Ray Tracing Benchmark
The 3DMark Port Royal test uses DirectX Ray Tracing (DXR) along with traditional rasterization techniques to illuminate a scene...
Once again we see the Maingear ML-16 performing well, finishing alongside other GeForce RTX 4070 powered systems, powered by similar performing processors.
Middle Earth: Shadow Of War Tests
Middle Earth: Shadow of War is a fun and beautiful title set in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings universe. To test the game's performance relative to other systems, we set the resolution to 2560x1440 and turned the visuals up to the High preset. The frame rates here are the average reported by the built-in benchmark.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the Maingear ML-16 with its GeForce RTX 4070 landed just about where you'd expect in Shadow Of War, bunched up with the other GeForce RTX 4070-powered systems, save for the HP Omen Transcend 16, which has a slightly higher TDP.
Shadow Of The Tomb Raider Benchmarks
The finale in the rebooted Tomb Raider trilogy, Shadow of the Tomb Raider is easily the best-looking of the bunch. It's also brimming with Tobii eye-tracking hardware support, and leading-edge graphics technologies for the time. To test this game out, we again turned the visuals up to their highest preset and tested at a resolution of 2560x1440.
Tomb Raider ran particularly well on the Maingear ML-16. The system led the pack with the base minimum and average framerates, though we must reiterate again that driver, system, and game updates may affect the reslts -- expect the Maingear ML-16 to perform similarly to other RTX 4070-powered machines in real games.
Marvel’s Guardians Of The Galaxy
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is an action-adventure game where you play as Star-Lord and lead the rest of the Guardians from mission to mission. The game’s minimum requirements call for a Radeon RX 570 or GeForce GTX 1060-class GPU, but it also supports some of the latest graphics technologies, including DXR and DLSS.
The Maingear ML-16 also performed well in the Guardians of the Galaxy benchmark. Here, the machine trailed only the larger, more powerful notebooks with beefier GPUs.
Black Myth: Wukong Benchmark
Black Myth: Wukong hit the gaming scene earlier this year, and quickly became a massive hit. Gamers praised the game for having great battle mechanics, and a gorgeous world. The game also comes with a benchmark tool, allowing gamers to get an idea of how it will run on a specific machine.
The Maingear ML-16 is perfectly capable of playing Black Myth Wukong, thanks to its GeForce RTX 4070. With the High graphics preset (which enables DLSS with Frame Generation), the system put up an everage framerate of 58 FPS. With the graphics cranked down to Medium and the average framerate increased to 61 FPS, a marginal increase in performance for noticable drop in image quality.
