RTX 3060 laptops are everywhere – but just how fast are they?

The RTX 3060 feels everywhere. The desktop version of the graphics card topped the March 2023 Steam Hardware Survey, while the laptop version came in 8th in the same ranking. This isn’t an entirely unexpected situation, with this tier of GPUs dominating since the great GTX 1060 in 2018, but the laptop version in particular deserves a more detailed look.

Our interest was aroused by two factors.The first is that RTX 3060 laptops use the exact same silicon as desktop cards, even more CUDA cores activated – just a slightly lower power target. This dichotomy is rare in the laptop space, which typically combines high-end GPU names such as the RTX 4090 with more low-end market GPU dies (AD103) – with a corresponding gap in expected performance. The second, more prosaic reason is that recent sales have pushed the top-end 3060 laptop to the £1,250 mark, while budget examples are well below the £1,000 threshold.

So, with these factors in mind, how do these laptops perform – can a 3060 laptop GPU rival a desktop-grade 3060? We’ve picked up two RTX 3060 gaming laptops, a heavyweight option from British company Chillblast (via parent company CCL) and a more complex model from German company Tuxedo, which specializes in advanced Linux machines.

The Chillblast Defiant 16 laptop is an all-rounder with a 28mm thick 2.5kg chassis and ample cooling potential as well as a 115W TDP, while the Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 16 Max Performance is thinner at 17mm and lighter at 1.7kg , which is closer to a high-end workstation in appearance, but with a higher 130W TDP.

Both 3060 laptops have a similar MSRP (£1549 vs £1590) and pack a 12th Gen Core i7 12700H processor, 16GB of DDR5 RAM, a large NVMe SSD and a high-refresh 1440p screen – so it should be one A close battle.

I used each laptop for work and gaming for two months and then benchmarked each laptop against a desktop RTX 3060 and Core i9 12900K system to see exactly how the two 3060 laptop systems compare to the desktop system power difference.

Before we get into our performance tests versus the desktop RTX 3060 on page two and our value judgments on page three, let’s cover some important facts about the design, hardware, and software of these laptops.

With similar levels of performance on hand thanks to nearly identically matched components, I find the physical design and software experience to be the biggest differences between the two machines.

Considering the hardware first, it’s clear that the Chillblast Defiant 16 is the more interesting of the two. The prominent WASD keys and sci-fi keyboard font, not to mention the RGB backlighting behind each key and around the fan grill on the back of the device, this is definitely a gaming machine. It’s wedge-shaped, with the screen hinged up about an inch into the device rather than the edge.

Meanwhile, the InfinityBook Pro 16 has a slimmer build and a more subtle widening from front to back, with screens hinged at the edges, and a familiar design: a silver magnesium alloy chassis, black keys, and an oversized trackpad.

Both machines have number pads, which I’m not a big fan of personally, but at least make sense for the InfinityBook Pro, which has a half-height top row and scissor switches below. The two 16-inch 2560×1600 screens are also in a 16:10 aspect ratio, which is great for productivity and gaming, and the IPS panel delivers good brightness, contrast and motion handling, as well as excellent viewing angles and color reproduction. The only difference here is the refresh rate, which is limited to 165Hz on the Chillblast and 240Hz on the InfinityBook Pro.

On the software side, the Chillblast Defiant 16 is more straightforward – it’s a fairly standard Windows laptop with some bloatware pre-installed (gamers use the Norton 360), a tool to adjust fan speed, keyboard backlight and power/ Custom Control Center for Performance Mode. Even after running the company’s uninstall tool, I can’t actually uninstall the Norton software, so I’m greeted with a popup every time I start it up – pretty annoying, but ultimately doesn’t hurt performance.

Meanwhile, the Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 16 ships with your choice of Tuxedo OS (Linux, free) or Windows 10/11. I chose the Linux option because it’s a great way to save some money if you already have an unused, legally acquired Windows license, and I’m curious what the German company has changed compared to a standard Ubuntu installation. I’ve found that most of the user-facing changes are actually quite modest, with the default configuration offering a KDE Plasma desktop — more Windows-like than the Gnome desktop in “standard” Ubuntu — with a Tuxedo-branded Control Center. I installed Windows for performance testing, which of course provides a completely clean copy of the OS without any bloatware.

Now let’s get to the meat of the analysis, the RTX 3060 laptop vs. desktop performance tests. Can these midrange laptops hold a candle to our full-on gaming desktops?

RTX 3060 Laptop Performance Analysis

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