Initial Defiance VII Review

[Severon]

So I ordered my laptop on 6th October. I've just received it today on 1st November as I'm currently deployed out in the Falklands.

Here are the specs that I ordered:

Chassis & Display
Defiance Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD 144Hz 72% NTSC LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 Eight Core Processor 10875H (2.3GHz, 5.1GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM)
64GB Corsair 2666MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 32GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 2080 SUPER Max-Q - 8.0GB GDDR6 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1
1st M.2 SSD Drive
2TB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3500MB/R, 3300MB/W)
Memory Card Reader
Integrated Micro-SD Memory Card Reader
AC Adaptor
2 x 180W AC Adaptor
Power Cable
2 x 1 Metre Cloverleaf UK Power Cable
Battery
2 x Defiance Series Battery Pack (One Spare, Requires Assembly)
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Sound Card
2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Wireless/Wired Networking
GIGABIT LAN & KILLER™ Wi-Fi 6 AX1650 M.2 GAMING + BLUETOOTH 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options
1 x THUNDERBOLT 3 PORT + 3 x USB 3.2 PORTS
Keyboard Language
17" DEFIANCE SERIES UK KEYBOARD
Operating System
Windows 10 Professional 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Supplied on USB Drive
Office Software
Microsoft® Office Home & Student 2019 (1 Digital License)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Google Chrome™
Keyboard & Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 1MP HD WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Dead Pixel Guarantee
1 Year Dead Pixel Guarantee Inc. Labour & Carriage Costs
Delivery
TIMED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND - MON-FRI (BEFORE 10.30AM)
Build Time
FAST TRACK 3 WORKING DAY DISPATCH
Welcome Book
PCSpecialist Welcome Book - United Kingdom & Republic of Ireland
Price: £2741.00 including VAT and Delivery

Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/defianceVII-17/Cztb4mUVjE/


This is just an initial review on the physical aspects as I haven't had a chance to really test it yet it takes an age to download any AAA game down here.

The Positives:
- I absolutely love the look and feel of this laptop. It's very sleek and smart. The PCS logo on the front is subtle which is fine, I don't mind having the logo showing. - - The keyboard is a joy to type with, and I enjoy having the ability to changing the backlight.
- The trackpad seems smooth and very responsive, however I rarely use trackpads and opt to using my own mouse. One point to note is the location of where the finger print scanner is. While I don't intend to use the trackpad, I foresee that for some, having the scanner in the top right corner my get in the way for some people.
- I love the weight and slim look to this laptop. Having always gone from desktop replacements, its a nice change to actually having a laptop be a little friendly to the knee seeing as I am now more mobile.
- On the point of being mobile, I'm pleased to see up to 5 hours when idle on balanced. This being an upgrade from 1 hour using my old DTR so I'm very happy to have traded for a bit more battery life.

The Negatives:
- I'm not 100% sure if there's a fault, but the GPU (right hand side) fan seems to have this strange vibrating sound. Doesn't sound at all like the quieter CPU fan. This bothers me because I'm not sure if its intended or if its defected.
- The sound quality. Wow...this really was far more disappointing than I had expected. The sound seems to be projecting out to the sides and not at all towards you. It's also very low quality and sounds very muffled. By comparison, I placed my iPad mini 2nd Gen, at the same distance equal to the laptop, same volume and played the same soundtrack and the difference was very noticeable. I'm aware that these are two different devices but I would still have expected far better quality from the laptop.

Overall:
Despite the numerous positives on the physical aspects so far, I'm not finding myself loving this laptop as I ought to. When you spend near enough £3000 it really ought to tick almost all the boxes. Whilst I was careful to choose all these aspects as best I could, there's no way to tell how the laptop will sound.
Sadly for me, this seems to be a bigger issue than I had intended. I watch a fair amount of films, streams and youtubers but with a combination of muffled audio quality and somewhat jarring fan noise that puts me at unease, I'm rather at a loss as to what to do.

I'm not quite sure whether I should stick with it and try to learn to love my new laptop, or If I should send it back, (if I'm even able / allowed to). If I did send it back, it wouldn't be until mid December when I return from the Falklands.

All in all, feeling somewhat disappointed and disheartened, that this laptop hasn't lived up to my expectation.

I will amend this review once I've had a chance to play around with some software and games. Also if there's any advice on what I should do, I would appreciate it.

 

[ubuysa]

Thank you for the very detailed and honest review. TBH I don't know if any laptop that PCS do that gas decent sound. Personally I've never come across any laptop that has decent sound. IMO it's one of the compromises you make when buying a laptop. External speakers are always the best option.

You can open it up without voiding your warranty and check that there's nothing obstructing the GPU fan.

You can send it back for a refund if you're not happy. In PCS's Ts&Cs that has to be within 14 days, but since you're in the Falklands I'd expect them to make allowances. You'll need to decide fairly quickly if you do want to send it back, but if you contact PCS as soon as you've decided to let them know its coming back for a refund, I'm sure they'll be accommodating.

 

[hcb4gp]

I also have a 17" Defiance laptop, and while I dont have a lot of experience of laptop audio, and to me the audio from this one is not really noticeably better or worse than than others I've used. Like UBUYSA I've found that external speakers, or headphones are the best way to go.

Have you tried any of the options in Soundbalster Atlas, it helps to improve the sound from the inbuilt speakers. there are a number of preset options to chose from and also a graphic equaliser to play with. I've only tried a few of the options to check that they works, I use headphones
in Neutral most of the time.

The fans can make quite a row and that gets comments from my wife, but it is just the sort of noise you would expect from a pair of fans. I run it in quiet power mode and silent fan mode most of the time to keep the peace.

 

[Severon]

After a few days further use here is a little more information for my review regarding temps and the fan.

So initially when idling the laptop is around 36-40 degrees. When playing Stellaris with High settings the CPU shoots up to 90 degrees and around 60 for GPU. The fans are basically running at 80 - 90% at the time. I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing. Has me slightly worried that this laptop wouldn't be able to cope with more recent titles without overheating but perhaps someone who's more hardware orientated can give a better understanding.

I mentioned before in the post above about the GPU fan not sounding right. I still haven't heard back from PCSpecialists but the laptop seems to have this very annoying stop, start thing with the GPU fan which makes this annoying vibrating (almost farting sound) effect for a second and then stops. This occurs when I'm idling or just browsing the web. Even when running the laptop in Silent mode, the GPU doesn't even register a temperature but yet the fan will still stop, start every time I load a webpage or pretty much do anything.
Again, this could be simply because I'm not used to having a slimmer laptop, going from DTR's and that this is normal. However it is rather noticeable and can be quite distracting.

When gaming, with the fans having to run at 70 to 80% speed is very loud! I don't think I could ever bring myself to take my laptop to somewhere public or with people in the room as the fan noise will defiantly have people complaining.

I think overall, I'm kinda disappointed that the fans have been a major sore point for me because everything else about the laptop looks and feels great.