This is billed as a gaming laptop. I was looking for a ultra high resolution screen, 32GB Ram and oddles of SSD and reasonable portability for a work machine that'll run Visio, Word alongside a lot of Virtual Machines at once. By trade, I'm a freelance IT consultant designing IT infrastructures for FTSE 100 companies. I've had the device a couple of weeks now.
Specced it with
32GB of Ram
Core I7
2x265MB MSATA in a RAID0
Added 1TB SSD I had at home
3K screen.
3GB graphics card (that I doubt I'll use but, in for a penny..)
I paid for the expedited delivery, but even then it was faster than I anticipated and operated perfectly by PC Specialist.
Previous Laptop was a MacBook pro (admittedly mostly running in Windows). I was also looking at the Dell XPS (only has 16GB RAM and single SSD) and a Lenovo (+£1500 more expensive!)
First impressions: it's huge! (piece of paper is A4)
Billed as 15 inches, it could possibly pass as a 17 incher. It's waay bigger than 15 inch MacBook, footprint wise. It's not unacceptably large but it's a big ol unit. The thickness of the device (or lack of it) helps. It's reasonable thinn
I was a bit worried when I first turned it on, as on a completely black screen, bleed on the corners is very noticeable. This has not proven to be an issue in use. it might be if you were prowling round in dark games. Otherwise the 3K screen is excellent. I dislike glossy screens and was hoping to have it set to 100% font size which was the reason I went for the 3K non glossy. I've had to set font size to 125% (I've got good eyesight, but not that good) which still gives me awesome amount of real estate and amazing picture quality.
I was ideally looking for a numpad-less device as I don't like the imbalance of shunting the keyboard left, however this keyboard is excellent, no flex with high typing speeds and the keypad not a problem (one advantage of the size). I am able to touch-type easily. Trackpad is good, though not MacBook good.
Whipping the back off to install the SSD showed a decently laid out insides and I loved the fact I was supplied with screws to fit the SSD.
The lid is wobbly, which probably isn't a problem and arguably may make it more resilient when dropped, but to doesn't inspire confidence. The base of the machine is solid and can be picked up by one corner without any creaking.
Installing my own copy of windows 8.1 was a bit of a drama because tracking down drivers was tricky. PC specialist would do well to host them on their own website. A CD is provided but of course device doesn't have a drive and one assumes drivers on a CD will always be out of date.
Power supply is reasonably chunky. I've seen worse, but it's a fair old brick. I ordered two because I don't intend to travel with it!
Performance wise, I've not really put it through its paces yet, but what I've asked of it, it's blisteringly fast. I was unconvinced of the merits of a RAID0'd MSATA SSD but benchmark wise it's much higher than the Samsung SSD I've also got in it.
So, overall, very happy with it. Looks conservative enough so won't look out of place in meetings with clients, but I can also have a datacentre worth of servers running at the same time!
Specced it with
32GB of Ram
Core I7
2x265MB MSATA in a RAID0
Added 1TB SSD I had at home
3K screen.
3GB graphics card (that I doubt I'll use but, in for a penny..)
I paid for the expedited delivery, but even then it was faster than I anticipated and operated perfectly by PC Specialist.
Previous Laptop was a MacBook pro (admittedly mostly running in Windows). I was also looking at the Dell XPS (only has 16GB RAM and single SSD) and a Lenovo (+£1500 more expensive!)
First impressions: it's huge! (piece of paper is A4)
Billed as 15 inches, it could possibly pass as a 17 incher. It's waay bigger than 15 inch MacBook, footprint wise. It's not unacceptably large but it's a big ol unit. The thickness of the device (or lack of it) helps. It's reasonable thinn
I was a bit worried when I first turned it on, as on a completely black screen, bleed on the corners is very noticeable. This has not proven to be an issue in use. it might be if you were prowling round in dark games. Otherwise the 3K screen is excellent. I dislike glossy screens and was hoping to have it set to 100% font size which was the reason I went for the 3K non glossy. I've had to set font size to 125% (I've got good eyesight, but not that good) which still gives me awesome amount of real estate and amazing picture quality.
I was ideally looking for a numpad-less device as I don't like the imbalance of shunting the keyboard left, however this keyboard is excellent, no flex with high typing speeds and the keypad not a problem (one advantage of the size). I am able to touch-type easily. Trackpad is good, though not MacBook good.
Whipping the back off to install the SSD showed a decently laid out insides and I loved the fact I was supplied with screws to fit the SSD.
The lid is wobbly, which probably isn't a problem and arguably may make it more resilient when dropped, but to doesn't inspire confidence. The base of the machine is solid and can be picked up by one corner without any creaking.
Installing my own copy of windows 8.1 was a bit of a drama because tracking down drivers was tricky. PC specialist would do well to host them on their own website. A CD is provided but of course device doesn't have a drive and one assumes drivers on a CD will always be out of date.
Power supply is reasonably chunky. I've seen worse, but it's a fair old brick. I ordered two because I don't intend to travel with it!
Performance wise, I've not really put it through its paces yet, but what I've asked of it, it's blisteringly fast. I was unconvinced of the merits of a RAID0'd MSATA SSD but benchmark wise it's much higher than the Samsung SSD I've also got in it.
So, overall, very happy with it. Looks conservative enough so won't look out of place in meetings with clients, but I can also have a datacentre worth of servers running at the same time!
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