CraigBarrett215
Bronze Level Poster
Basic components - i7 10875H, RTX 2070 Super, 32GB 2666MHz RAM, Arctic MX thermal paste.
My first impressions -
First, the good stuff. The power supply is a lot lighter than PCS told me it would be, coming in at around 1kg, as most other 230 power supplies do. That made me happy because it results in a total weight of just over 3kg.
The construction overall is pretty good and the laptop looks and feels nice. The screen looks good and I'm likely the thinner bezel - my old laptop is quite a bit bigger because of a much wider bezel. I haven't tried it out in a bright place yet, so I haven't had a chance to see how the matte screen handles that. But in general I like not seeing my reflection so obviously in the screen. The screen opens and closes nice and easily and though there's very little stiffness to it, I'm comfortable opening and closing it one-handed because it operates so smoothly.
The trackpad works well and I quite like that it's so easy to turn on and off. Moving the mouse cursor around is pretty smooth and the tracking is responsive.
The keyboard is OK. I like a mechanical keyboard, which is one of the reasons this chassis was more appealing. I could, of course, use a separate mechanical keyboard, but that requires more space than I currently have. The key action feels pretty good and the keyboard is, generally, very pleasant to use.
The machine seems to operate pretty well and while the keyboard get warm even in the restricted Office and Eco modes, overall it remains at reasonable temperatures.
I've only done some minor gaming with it - about 10 minutes of Borderlands 3 on ultra settings, about 20 minutes of Witcher 3 on ultra settings and about 10 minutes of Assassin's Creed Origins on ultra settings. It gets good frame rates for all with BL3 pushing it the most - around 60 to 65 fps in pretty much all modes. I plan to push it harder this weekend to see how hot it gets and whether it's possible to have decent gaming sessions on this machine without it becoming unbearable.
And the not so good... This will all seem fairly negative, but mostly the problems I've encountered fall into the category of niggles. At least so far. I think the keys popping off could end up being a major problem. And it may well turn out that this machine simply runs too hot to be usable when gaming.
The buttons on the trackpad are pretty bad, dipping down in the corners. And there's just something clunky about the click.
Unfortunately, as others have noticed, the keys sometimes pop off on their own. In my case "sometimes" so far translates to the W key popping off on it's own relatively regularly, but so far all the others staying put. The keyboard layout isn't great - the keyboard really would've been better without the number pad. Instead the number pad has to be kept turned off most of the time to make keys like Home and End easily usable, the other keys are squashed together, cursor keys are, in a sense, more hidden than usual, and the delete key is just plain the wrong position. I may have to get some key mapping software to correct the delete key position.
I've also had minor issues with the keyboard lighting. It was disabled in the BIOS when I received the machine, which had inexplicably caused Gaming Center not to function at all and be missing two sections - lighting and performance monitoring. The sections that were there didn't work. In the BIOS I didn't spot an option for single colour and so enabled Aurora (whatever that is. There's a checkbox in the Gaming Center to enable Aurora as well, but it appears that all it does is override the keyboard lighting timer so that the lights never turn off even if the timer is set to turn them off). On a restart of the machine the lighting was turned off for no apparent reason. I've only restarted the machine a couple of times and that problem has only occurred once, but I've seen reports of earlier Recoil modes having similar and worse backlighting problems. Most of the lighting presets are just gimmicky and literally no use if you're actually wanting a lit keyboard - I sometimes use my laptop in poor lighting, so being able to see the keys is useful. I mostly touch-type, but I'm not all that good at it, so I like to have the guidance of seeing the keyboard sometimes.
The fan noise is not as loud as I was expecting, but the machine gets a lot hotter than I was expecting (a different build that shall remain nameless runs with the chassis around 20 degrees cooler according to the review I saw). I'm going to be trying out a better cooling pad to see if it helps. Currently the keyboard is hitting well over 40 and the area above the keyboard as much as 53. I haven't yet checked the temperature of the bottom other than to confirm it's too hot to use without something between the laptop and me.
That being said, in Office mode the fans are forced to be quiet and the Gaming Center only gives the appearance of being able to make meaningful changes the fan behaviour. There is a ceiling on the maximum fan speed in Office mode and it's too low. This means that when gaming one of the other two modes has to be used. I've not tried the game mode with fan boost off yet, so I don't know how well it behaves. There was no noticeable difference between the two gaming modes either in terms of CPU/GPU temperature or overall performance even though the plain game mode is supposed to be clocked back compared to turbo mode. But perhaps that'll change with fan boost off.
The camera and microphone, as others have pointed out, are entirely useless and it's not clear why they're included. Because of the camera placement the facial recognition for unlocking the machine is hard to use.
The Bulldog software is, like most security software, intrusive and bad. This isn't specific to the Recoil, of course. I opted not to start the 3 month trial right away and Bulldog shut down. Or did it? It disappeared from the system tray. But it was definitely still pulling some strings. I know this because I was trying to run a game that requires being online and it kept failing to find the required server. The firewall request to allow it had popped up and I'd said to allow it through. I checked the firewall settings and it was there and marked to be allowed through. But it couldn't connect. I tried disabling the firewall temporarily, but it would turn back on after a few seconds. That, it turns out, was Bulldog's doing, even though it appeared to have stopped running because it had disappeared from the system tray. The only way to get the game to run successfully was to disable Bulldog. With no changes other than that - same firewall settings and the firewall running, as soon as Bulldog was entirely neutered the game connected. Perhaps it would behave itself if the trial is started, but a piece of software that essentially fundamentally breaks things is unlikely to be a good thing.
I discovered that the HDMI won't talk to my main HDMI switch. I have a second one that fortunately it does talk to. It's not clear why it's not able to talk to the one I usually use. It's possible that it's an HDMI version problem, but it talks to the monitor fine and as far as I know that and my main switch are both the same HDMI version.
My first impressions -
First, the good stuff. The power supply is a lot lighter than PCS told me it would be, coming in at around 1kg, as most other 230 power supplies do. That made me happy because it results in a total weight of just over 3kg.
The construction overall is pretty good and the laptop looks and feels nice. The screen looks good and I'm likely the thinner bezel - my old laptop is quite a bit bigger because of a much wider bezel. I haven't tried it out in a bright place yet, so I haven't had a chance to see how the matte screen handles that. But in general I like not seeing my reflection so obviously in the screen. The screen opens and closes nice and easily and though there's very little stiffness to it, I'm comfortable opening and closing it one-handed because it operates so smoothly.
The trackpad works well and I quite like that it's so easy to turn on and off. Moving the mouse cursor around is pretty smooth and the tracking is responsive.
The keyboard is OK. I like a mechanical keyboard, which is one of the reasons this chassis was more appealing. I could, of course, use a separate mechanical keyboard, but that requires more space than I currently have. The key action feels pretty good and the keyboard is, generally, very pleasant to use.
The machine seems to operate pretty well and while the keyboard get warm even in the restricted Office and Eco modes, overall it remains at reasonable temperatures.
I've only done some minor gaming with it - about 10 minutes of Borderlands 3 on ultra settings, about 20 minutes of Witcher 3 on ultra settings and about 10 minutes of Assassin's Creed Origins on ultra settings. It gets good frame rates for all with BL3 pushing it the most - around 60 to 65 fps in pretty much all modes. I plan to push it harder this weekend to see how hot it gets and whether it's possible to have decent gaming sessions on this machine without it becoming unbearable.
And the not so good... This will all seem fairly negative, but mostly the problems I've encountered fall into the category of niggles. At least so far. I think the keys popping off could end up being a major problem. And it may well turn out that this machine simply runs too hot to be usable when gaming.
The buttons on the trackpad are pretty bad, dipping down in the corners. And there's just something clunky about the click.
Unfortunately, as others have noticed, the keys sometimes pop off on their own. In my case "sometimes" so far translates to the W key popping off on it's own relatively regularly, but so far all the others staying put. The keyboard layout isn't great - the keyboard really would've been better without the number pad. Instead the number pad has to be kept turned off most of the time to make keys like Home and End easily usable, the other keys are squashed together, cursor keys are, in a sense, more hidden than usual, and the delete key is just plain the wrong position. I may have to get some key mapping software to correct the delete key position.
I've also had minor issues with the keyboard lighting. It was disabled in the BIOS when I received the machine, which had inexplicably caused Gaming Center not to function at all and be missing two sections - lighting and performance monitoring. The sections that were there didn't work. In the BIOS I didn't spot an option for single colour and so enabled Aurora (whatever that is. There's a checkbox in the Gaming Center to enable Aurora as well, but it appears that all it does is override the keyboard lighting timer so that the lights never turn off even if the timer is set to turn them off). On a restart of the machine the lighting was turned off for no apparent reason. I've only restarted the machine a couple of times and that problem has only occurred once, but I've seen reports of earlier Recoil modes having similar and worse backlighting problems. Most of the lighting presets are just gimmicky and literally no use if you're actually wanting a lit keyboard - I sometimes use my laptop in poor lighting, so being able to see the keys is useful. I mostly touch-type, but I'm not all that good at it, so I like to have the guidance of seeing the keyboard sometimes.
The fan noise is not as loud as I was expecting, but the machine gets a lot hotter than I was expecting (a different build that shall remain nameless runs with the chassis around 20 degrees cooler according to the review I saw). I'm going to be trying out a better cooling pad to see if it helps. Currently the keyboard is hitting well over 40 and the area above the keyboard as much as 53. I haven't yet checked the temperature of the bottom other than to confirm it's too hot to use without something between the laptop and me.
That being said, in Office mode the fans are forced to be quiet and the Gaming Center only gives the appearance of being able to make meaningful changes the fan behaviour. There is a ceiling on the maximum fan speed in Office mode and it's too low. This means that when gaming one of the other two modes has to be used. I've not tried the game mode with fan boost off yet, so I don't know how well it behaves. There was no noticeable difference between the two gaming modes either in terms of CPU/GPU temperature or overall performance even though the plain game mode is supposed to be clocked back compared to turbo mode. But perhaps that'll change with fan boost off.
The camera and microphone, as others have pointed out, are entirely useless and it's not clear why they're included. Because of the camera placement the facial recognition for unlocking the machine is hard to use.
The Bulldog software is, like most security software, intrusive and bad. This isn't specific to the Recoil, of course. I opted not to start the 3 month trial right away and Bulldog shut down. Or did it? It disappeared from the system tray. But it was definitely still pulling some strings. I know this because I was trying to run a game that requires being online and it kept failing to find the required server. The firewall request to allow it had popped up and I'd said to allow it through. I checked the firewall settings and it was there and marked to be allowed through. But it couldn't connect. I tried disabling the firewall temporarily, but it would turn back on after a few seconds. That, it turns out, was Bulldog's doing, even though it appeared to have stopped running because it had disappeared from the system tray. The only way to get the game to run successfully was to disable Bulldog. With no changes other than that - same firewall settings and the firewall running, as soon as Bulldog was entirely neutered the game connected. Perhaps it would behave itself if the trial is started, but a piece of software that essentially fundamentally breaks things is unlikely to be a good thing.
I discovered that the HDMI won't talk to my main HDMI switch. I have a second one that fortunately it does talk to. It's not clear why it's not able to talk to the one I usually use. It's possible that it's an HDMI version problem, but it talks to the monitor fine and as far as I know that and my main switch are both the same HDMI version.
