I've had my laptop about six weeks, and decided that it is time to post my review. I wanted to wait a bit and have some time to play with the laptop to see how I go with it, learn any little things that I like or dislike before sharing my opinion/review.
Specs:
Chassis & Display
Vortex II: 15.6" Glossy Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5 Dual Core Mobile Processor i5-2450M (2.50GHz) 3MB
Memory (RAM)
8GB SAMSUNG 1333MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (2 x 4GB)
Graphics Card
1.5GB nVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 560M - DirectX® 11 (15.6" Vortex II)
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
120GB Corsair Force 3 SSD (bought elsewhere)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Network Facilities
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS 802.11N CARD INC. BLUETOOTH 3.0
USB Options
2 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS AS STANDARD
Battery
Vortex Series 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (5,200 mAh/76.96WH)
Webcam
INTEGRATED 2.0 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM
So, on to the review.
The PCS Experience
I have to say that almost everything here was fantastic. I was able to choose the components I wanted and they were well priced. For £1000 I have pretty much my dream laptop. It took a little longer than I wanted for it to be built but honestly any negative feeling here is down to my own impatience. PCS updated me regularly as to what was going on, I even got a text telling me what hour to expect the laptop on the day of delivery, and they were bang on the money. The laptop was well packaged and wrapped.
My only bone of contention is that the delivery was delayed two days (instead of being completed same day as the guidelines state) because apparently the courier, DHL, only send one van per day. I cannot understand why PCS do not request an extra van now and again to catch up, or even have their own van to drop off at DHL's depot when things are busy (they do allow this afaik).
But it was a minor complaint, overall I am very happy with the service.
The Screen
The screen is fantastic, bright and vibrant colours with great viewing angles. I was a bit worried about reflections but unless there is quite a bright light source behind me it's not an issue. I love the fact that it is 1080p, I hunted high and low for a screen at that resolution as it's important to me both for work as a web developer and for gaming in my spare time.
The Chassis
I love the no frills style of the chassis. The rubberised covering is much more preferable to plastic, but it does mark easily and already one corner is showing some tiny marks. It seems that the rubberised texture is some kind of coating on the lid, and all around the edges it has started to peel away. You have to look closely to tell, and as it is transparent it does not affect colour. It's not a major issue, I still love the rubberised texture, though I wonder in a year how much it will have degraded.
The blue indicator lights are a particularly tasteful touch, and the colour and nondescript appearance are actually really nice. It looks like a laptop for business, that means business. I've had a few friends comment on how they like the minimalistic appearance. The weight is lighter than I expected and it feel's quite solid, none of that worrying bending going on as you have with some laptops. I grabbed myself a Targus Sport backpack to carry it in after finding a messenger bag was a bit inconvenient to carry about, and that was a very good decision. I can fit the laptop in there and all my gym gear too, and never have to worry about it or feel like I am carrying the weight of the world.
The keyboard is great, very responsive and easy to use. I've sat quite happily using it for hours for work purposes. It does rattle a little, some of the keys sound just a little too loose compared to some other laptop keyboards I have used. I also very much wish that there had been a backlit option for the keyboard, I would happily have churned out silly money for that feature, even though it is mostly for vanities sake!
Performance
I've thrown in Skyrim and Battlefield 3 to stress test the laptop and they are performing brilliantly with both set to Very High settings and still getting 30fps+. I tend to turn anti-aliasing down to x2 or even off, as on a 15.6" screen with a 1080p resolution jagged edges are barely noticeable. This let's me turn up other settings much higher than I anticipated. I have to admit that I had not expect such amazing performance, my main PC has a GTX 560 Ti yet the laptop runs games at very nearly the same level of performance with not that much frame rate loss, certainly not enough to worry about!
Load times and other software is incredibly quick due to the SSD, it's faster than my PC and I was sorely tempted to throw the SSD into my main PC, except that it isn't large enough to accomodate everything.
I ordered a second hard drive caddy and swapped out the optical drive a few weeks ago, definitely a good decision. I've placed most of my steam games onto that drive and kept the SSD for work and a couple of games I play a lot (Skyrim, BF3, Rift). It's obviously slower than the SSD, but the convenience is worth it.
Battery life is great, I can get three hours out of a full charge, maybe a little more. That's just word processing and browsing the internet of course, I haven't tried gaming with it, I suspect that it would be lucky to last even an hour on the battery.
Heat and Noise
Heat is a complete non issue. The CPU fan I've only heard a couple times because it barely gets hot. I deliberately chose an i5 instead of an i7 because I knew that I would not be using the laptop for video editing and so a dual core with less heat and energy use would be preferable for both work and play, and I know now that it was the right decision.
The GPU's temperature never exceeds 63 degrees Celsius thanks to the separate heatsink and fan. However, the fan can get a bit too loud for my liking at full speed, and regrettably there is no option in MSI Afterburner to lower the fan speed (if anyone knows how I might achieve this I would be eternally grateful). I feel that the temperature is well within the safety limits for the chip and would rather have a little more heat and a little less noise. I have noticed that if the temperature drops to 55 degrees then the fan is much less noisy and with this in mind I ordered a Notepal U2 laptop cooling mat to see if that would keep temperatures and therefore noise down, but no joy, the vents underneath are fairly small and even being able to place the fans on the cooler directly under them it didn't make the slightest bit of difference. I kind of wish that I had ordered the better thermal paste, but part of me thinks that this wouldn't have made that much of a difference anyway. I will never know now.
When I am just working on MS Word or writing code in Dreamweaver or Netbeans the laptop is practically silent. Often the fans don't appear to be on at all, then they will quietly cycle up for twenty seconds or so and turn off again, repeating this maybe once or twice a minute. At first I thought this might be distracting but you soon learn to ignore it, the noise really is minimal.
Conclusion
Overall I can say that I am extremely happy with this laptop. I had concerns about taking a 15" over a 17", and about taking an i5 over an i7. In both cases I can say that I made the right decision. While there are times I think that I would enjoy having a 17", the portability that the smaller size affords me far outweighs a couple more inches of desktop, especially when there is no benefit in resolution. And I have yet to feel let down by the i5. it churns effortlessly through everything.
For what it packs the laptop is lighter than I expected, though admittedly there are lighter laptops out there if you just want a laptop for work, I am without a doubt carrying a couple of pounds extra in terms of the GPU, heatsink, and the power brick (and it is a brick, people make fun of it... until they see the laptop's performance
). But for what I wanted from a laptop it is perfect.
My sole major complaint is noise, the GPU fan is just too loud, unnecessarily so some might say considering that temperatures never reach anywhere near acceptable thresholds. Annoyingly there is no way to control the fan's speed, and cooling mats seem to have little to no impact probably due to to the small size of the vents beneath the laptop. I will continue to look into options to reduce this noise, but ultimately I may have to accept it as I doubt that many laptops of this high specification can perform under load and not make similar amounts of noise. If I am honest I am getting used to it and it's not as bad as some PC GPU fans, but it is noticeable, and it can be a distraction unless you're wearing earphones or a headset.
But when all is said and done I find that the more that I use this laptop, the more I come to appreciate it. Light, small, powerful, beautiful, everything you would want from a laptop.
Specs:
Chassis & Display
Vortex II: 15.6" Glossy Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5 Dual Core Mobile Processor i5-2450M (2.50GHz) 3MB
Memory (RAM)
8GB SAMSUNG 1333MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (2 x 4GB)
Graphics Card
1.5GB nVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 560M - DirectX® 11 (15.6" Vortex II)
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
120GB Corsair Force 3 SSD (bought elsewhere)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Network Facilities
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS 802.11N CARD INC. BLUETOOTH 3.0
USB Options
2 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS AS STANDARD
Battery
Vortex Series 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (5,200 mAh/76.96WH)
Webcam
INTEGRATED 2.0 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM
So, on to the review.
The PCS Experience
I have to say that almost everything here was fantastic. I was able to choose the components I wanted and they were well priced. For £1000 I have pretty much my dream laptop. It took a little longer than I wanted for it to be built but honestly any negative feeling here is down to my own impatience. PCS updated me regularly as to what was going on, I even got a text telling me what hour to expect the laptop on the day of delivery, and they were bang on the money. The laptop was well packaged and wrapped.
My only bone of contention is that the delivery was delayed two days (instead of being completed same day as the guidelines state) because apparently the courier, DHL, only send one van per day. I cannot understand why PCS do not request an extra van now and again to catch up, or even have their own van to drop off at DHL's depot when things are busy (they do allow this afaik).
But it was a minor complaint, overall I am very happy with the service.
The Screen
The screen is fantastic, bright and vibrant colours with great viewing angles. I was a bit worried about reflections but unless there is quite a bright light source behind me it's not an issue. I love the fact that it is 1080p, I hunted high and low for a screen at that resolution as it's important to me both for work as a web developer and for gaming in my spare time.
The Chassis
I love the no frills style of the chassis. The rubberised covering is much more preferable to plastic, but it does mark easily and already one corner is showing some tiny marks. It seems that the rubberised texture is some kind of coating on the lid, and all around the edges it has started to peel away. You have to look closely to tell, and as it is transparent it does not affect colour. It's not a major issue, I still love the rubberised texture, though I wonder in a year how much it will have degraded.
The blue indicator lights are a particularly tasteful touch, and the colour and nondescript appearance are actually really nice. It looks like a laptop for business, that means business. I've had a few friends comment on how they like the minimalistic appearance. The weight is lighter than I expected and it feel's quite solid, none of that worrying bending going on as you have with some laptops. I grabbed myself a Targus Sport backpack to carry it in after finding a messenger bag was a bit inconvenient to carry about, and that was a very good decision. I can fit the laptop in there and all my gym gear too, and never have to worry about it or feel like I am carrying the weight of the world.
The keyboard is great, very responsive and easy to use. I've sat quite happily using it for hours for work purposes. It does rattle a little, some of the keys sound just a little too loose compared to some other laptop keyboards I have used. I also very much wish that there had been a backlit option for the keyboard, I would happily have churned out silly money for that feature, even though it is mostly for vanities sake!
Performance
I've thrown in Skyrim and Battlefield 3 to stress test the laptop and they are performing brilliantly with both set to Very High settings and still getting 30fps+. I tend to turn anti-aliasing down to x2 or even off, as on a 15.6" screen with a 1080p resolution jagged edges are barely noticeable. This let's me turn up other settings much higher than I anticipated. I have to admit that I had not expect such amazing performance, my main PC has a GTX 560 Ti yet the laptop runs games at very nearly the same level of performance with not that much frame rate loss, certainly not enough to worry about!
Load times and other software is incredibly quick due to the SSD, it's faster than my PC and I was sorely tempted to throw the SSD into my main PC, except that it isn't large enough to accomodate everything.
I ordered a second hard drive caddy and swapped out the optical drive a few weeks ago, definitely a good decision. I've placed most of my steam games onto that drive and kept the SSD for work and a couple of games I play a lot (Skyrim, BF3, Rift). It's obviously slower than the SSD, but the convenience is worth it.
Battery life is great, I can get three hours out of a full charge, maybe a little more. That's just word processing and browsing the internet of course, I haven't tried gaming with it, I suspect that it would be lucky to last even an hour on the battery.
Heat and Noise
Heat is a complete non issue. The CPU fan I've only heard a couple times because it barely gets hot. I deliberately chose an i5 instead of an i7 because I knew that I would not be using the laptop for video editing and so a dual core with less heat and energy use would be preferable for both work and play, and I know now that it was the right decision.
The GPU's temperature never exceeds 63 degrees Celsius thanks to the separate heatsink and fan. However, the fan can get a bit too loud for my liking at full speed, and regrettably there is no option in MSI Afterburner to lower the fan speed (if anyone knows how I might achieve this I would be eternally grateful). I feel that the temperature is well within the safety limits for the chip and would rather have a little more heat and a little less noise. I have noticed that if the temperature drops to 55 degrees then the fan is much less noisy and with this in mind I ordered a Notepal U2 laptop cooling mat to see if that would keep temperatures and therefore noise down, but no joy, the vents underneath are fairly small and even being able to place the fans on the cooler directly under them it didn't make the slightest bit of difference. I kind of wish that I had ordered the better thermal paste, but part of me thinks that this wouldn't have made that much of a difference anyway. I will never know now.
When I am just working on MS Word or writing code in Dreamweaver or Netbeans the laptop is practically silent. Often the fans don't appear to be on at all, then they will quietly cycle up for twenty seconds or so and turn off again, repeating this maybe once or twice a minute. At first I thought this might be distracting but you soon learn to ignore it, the noise really is minimal.
Conclusion
Overall I can say that I am extremely happy with this laptop. I had concerns about taking a 15" over a 17", and about taking an i5 over an i7. In both cases I can say that I made the right decision. While there are times I think that I would enjoy having a 17", the portability that the smaller size affords me far outweighs a couple more inches of desktop, especially when there is no benefit in resolution. And I have yet to feel let down by the i5. it churns effortlessly through everything.
For what it packs the laptop is lighter than I expected, though admittedly there are lighter laptops out there if you just want a laptop for work, I am without a doubt carrying a couple of pounds extra in terms of the GPU, heatsink, and the power brick (and it is a brick, people make fun of it... until they see the laptop's performance
). But for what I wanted from a laptop it is perfect.My sole major complaint is noise, the GPU fan is just too loud, unnecessarily so some might say considering that temperatures never reach anywhere near acceptable thresholds. Annoyingly there is no way to control the fan's speed, and cooling mats seem to have little to no impact probably due to to the small size of the vents beneath the laptop. I will continue to look into options to reduce this noise, but ultimately I may have to accept it as I doubt that many laptops of this high specification can perform under load and not make similar amounts of noise. If I am honest I am getting used to it and it's not as bad as some PC GPU fans, but it is noticeable, and it can be a distraction unless you're wearing earphones or a headset.
But when all is said and done I find that the more that I use this laptop, the more I come to appreciate it. Light, small, powerful, beautiful, everything you would want from a laptop.
