I had a limited budget and wanted to get a laptop for gaming and films, there are lots of options out there for laptops that aim to fill this role, but all of them have shoddy 540M gpus which I don't think is powerful enough, this limited my options to either PCS, MSI or Novatech. Eventually I went with PCS.
I took a few days to spec the laptop and called PCS once to ask some advice - they were pleasant to talk to, however the number is premium rate so spending quite some time waiting did irk me.
This is the spec I went with:
Chassis & Display
Vortex II: 15.6" Matte 95% Gamut LED Widescreen (1920x1080) (£79)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-2670QM (2.20GHz) 6MB
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
500GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD5000BPKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
Memory Card Reader
Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)
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 (3,800 mAh)
I went with the matte screen as I find the glossy reflections to be irritating and frustrating. However, when ordering it was not possible to see the stock level of the components so I ended up having my order delayed because the screen was out of stock. The delay was quite long as I ordered on a Friday - I was very close to cancelling the order as the wait time was getting a little bit silly. Had I known that the screen was not in stock at the time I would have not ordered the screen, I only found out that the screen was out of stock by going to the forums.
When the order was dispatched I was unfortunately in hospital, but there were people in the house ready to collect the laptop when it was supposed to arrive. Unfortunately Yodel did their usual thing of not turning up and not giving a card but claiming they did. This is not particularly a fault of PCS, but of Yodel. I would have paid a premium to not use Yodel.
The laptop arrived in a reasonably large box and things were relatively secure, though some things were lose, they would never have been able to damage the laptop itself. The laptop arrived undamaged with no dead pixels.
Included in the box was the laptop, driver cds, a trial version of nero, the power brick, two manuals and a code for my free copy of batman arkham city. All of this stuff was professionally presented, though the code for arkham city was almost entirely rubbed off and I had to guess at the code.
The laptop itself is quite well built, it doesn't feel cheap to touch, though it does bend a bit if you pick it up and the CD drive does not sit flush with the rest of the chassis. Overall the build quality is roughly on the same level that you would expect from any high end laptop manufacturer such as Sony or Apple.
Chassis
The chassis itself has a good layout, with power and screen outputs at the back and the rest of the ports distributed between the two sides. The battery fits in very well but is not structurally needed so you can use it without the battery without causing any discomfort or wobbliness.
There are however some pretty big niggles with the chassis;
Firstly the keyboard is terrible, I actually was close to sending the entire laptop back as the keyboard is just laid out in a ridiculous way. There are huge gaps between all the keys and the keys are all bunched together to the left, it does not feel natural to type on it and everyone I have showed the laptop to has had issues with the keyboard. The problem seems to lie with the fact that someone decided that the laptop needs a semi-full size numpad, but the implementation of it is really quite bad for the above reasons. I don't think I will ever get used to the keyboard.
The second issue I have with the chassis is the mousepad, it's huge and gets in the way a lot if you are typing on the keyboard, thankfully there is a hotkey to turn this thing off.
My third issue is that the screen does not go back far enough and you feel like you are going to break it if you try, this is a minor issue.
It also picks up dust really easily for some reason.
Software
The laptop comes with a bunch of drivers which are literally essential to usability, they are all pretty self explanatory though there is one piece of software which is particularly important - the performance/power thing, it allows you to switch between "performance" "balance" and "power star". From what I can see these seem to underclock the processor and gpu. I so far have found that when the laptop is in "performance" or "balance" mode, the GPU fan turns itself on and off every few seconds while idle or watching a dvd which is really really distracting and frustrating, luckily this does not happen with the economy mode thing.
Performance
I find it very hard to judge the performance of this laptop. I have tried various games and have had both good and bad experiences, though on the whole I feel that the laptop is trying very hard to punch above it's weight - I shall try to explain further:
Games I have tried:
OpenTTD, Skyrim, World of Warcraft, Battlefield 3, Fallout: New Vegas, Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance, Half Life 2, Portal 2.
In all of these games I have had quite a lot of frame skipping, though FPS is high it often seems to skip frames and this can lead to a very jerky experience, this is often fixed though by lowering the resolution from the native to something lower. The fans are also very noisy during play, though using some headphones will drown this out. I don't have any real complaints with the performance as it is a laptop after all, but I was quite dissapointed at how it ran World of Warcraft and OpenTTD in particular, these are both quite old games and both were very jerky, I suspect this is because they are very processor dependant and not really multithreaded. I am unsure if my processor ever goes into turbo mode, but it feels as though it doesn't.
The playback of 1920x1080 video is really smooth with no problems what so ever and loading windows is very quick. Office and other applications are very quick.
The laptop thankfully never ever really gets uncomfortably hot even under heavy load so i'm pretty happy with that.
The Screen
I am very impressed with the screen. It is slightly too bright and I cannot change the contrast on it, only brightness, but the colours and picture quality are very good. How much of this is down to the fact that the pixel density is very high on such a small screen and how much is down to the fancy 95% gamut LED gubbins, I am not sure. It is however very good. Is it worth the extra £80 though? I'm not sure - I can't comment without having seen the default glossy screen. There is still some glare if you have bright things
The Sound
It's a laptop, the sound is never going to match a good set of headphones or speakers, but overall the quality is good enough for every day use, I do however really recommend getting some nice comfortable headphones if you plan on using the laptop for gaming or watching videos.
Portability
Even though 15.6" doesn't sound very much, it is still a very large piece of kit, I expected it to be smaller than it actually is and can't really say it's ultra portable. However the laptop itself is very leightweight so despite the size it is quite easy to carry around the house or take somewhere.
However! There is one downside with having such a powerful graphics card - the required power brick is very large and very heavy, it severely limits the portability of the entire laptop as the battery life is quite low if you're using one of the high power settings (i've gotten 5 hours of watching video out of it on energy star, but only 40 minutes playing a game on performance). How much of a problem this is would depend on your usage, personally I don't mind it at all as when I need it to be portable I won't be playing games.
Conclusion
For £1000 this is a very good laptop, I don't think it can be beaten. I would have prefered to purchase the parts myself and assemble it myself but there does not seem to be anywhere in the UK that will sell the parts needed. Compared to the competition I don't really think there is any question, PC Specialist are the best at this price point.
However, if I were to go back in time knowing the things I know now, I would not have ordered the laptop, the keyboard and the annoying fan spinning up/spinning down constantly are real game breakers for me and the keyboard really does prohibit any real gaming for any length of time as it is just so uncomfortable. These however are quite personal, my father really likes the keyboard for example.
Ratings;
Customer service: 8/10 (premium rate phone line and lack of stock availiability before ordering limits this from being 10/10)
Performance: 8/10 (for its price it's not really beatable unless you get a desktop)
Build quality: 9/10 (other than the CD drive not being flush it's really extremely good)
Design: 3/10 (the keyboard/mousepad is horrible)
Portability: 7/10 (the power brick limits this from being 10/10)
Overall: 7/10.
The service i've received has been very good and the product I received overall has been good considering the cost, but I couldn't possibly recommend that anyone buy a laptop of this spec/price unless they get to try using it beforehand.
I took a few days to spec the laptop and called PCS once to ask some advice - they were pleasant to talk to, however the number is premium rate so spending quite some time waiting did irk me.
This is the spec I went with:
Chassis & Display
Vortex II: 15.6" Matte 95% Gamut LED Widescreen (1920x1080) (£79)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-2670QM (2.20GHz) 6MB
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
500GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD5000BPKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
Memory Card Reader
Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)
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 (3,800 mAh)
I went with the matte screen as I find the glossy reflections to be irritating and frustrating. However, when ordering it was not possible to see the stock level of the components so I ended up having my order delayed because the screen was out of stock. The delay was quite long as I ordered on a Friday - I was very close to cancelling the order as the wait time was getting a little bit silly. Had I known that the screen was not in stock at the time I would have not ordered the screen, I only found out that the screen was out of stock by going to the forums.
When the order was dispatched I was unfortunately in hospital, but there were people in the house ready to collect the laptop when it was supposed to arrive. Unfortunately Yodel did their usual thing of not turning up and not giving a card but claiming they did. This is not particularly a fault of PCS, but of Yodel. I would have paid a premium to not use Yodel.
The laptop arrived in a reasonably large box and things were relatively secure, though some things were lose, they would never have been able to damage the laptop itself. The laptop arrived undamaged with no dead pixels.
Included in the box was the laptop, driver cds, a trial version of nero, the power brick, two manuals and a code for my free copy of batman arkham city. All of this stuff was professionally presented, though the code for arkham city was almost entirely rubbed off and I had to guess at the code.
The laptop itself is quite well built, it doesn't feel cheap to touch, though it does bend a bit if you pick it up and the CD drive does not sit flush with the rest of the chassis. Overall the build quality is roughly on the same level that you would expect from any high end laptop manufacturer such as Sony or Apple.
Chassis
The chassis itself has a good layout, with power and screen outputs at the back and the rest of the ports distributed between the two sides. The battery fits in very well but is not structurally needed so you can use it without the battery without causing any discomfort or wobbliness.
There are however some pretty big niggles with the chassis;
Firstly the keyboard is terrible, I actually was close to sending the entire laptop back as the keyboard is just laid out in a ridiculous way. There are huge gaps between all the keys and the keys are all bunched together to the left, it does not feel natural to type on it and everyone I have showed the laptop to has had issues with the keyboard. The problem seems to lie with the fact that someone decided that the laptop needs a semi-full size numpad, but the implementation of it is really quite bad for the above reasons. I don't think I will ever get used to the keyboard.
The second issue I have with the chassis is the mousepad, it's huge and gets in the way a lot if you are typing on the keyboard, thankfully there is a hotkey to turn this thing off.
My third issue is that the screen does not go back far enough and you feel like you are going to break it if you try, this is a minor issue.
It also picks up dust really easily for some reason.
Software
The laptop comes with a bunch of drivers which are literally essential to usability, they are all pretty self explanatory though there is one piece of software which is particularly important - the performance/power thing, it allows you to switch between "performance" "balance" and "power star". From what I can see these seem to underclock the processor and gpu. I so far have found that when the laptop is in "performance" or "balance" mode, the GPU fan turns itself on and off every few seconds while idle or watching a dvd which is really really distracting and frustrating, luckily this does not happen with the economy mode thing.
Performance
I find it very hard to judge the performance of this laptop. I have tried various games and have had both good and bad experiences, though on the whole I feel that the laptop is trying very hard to punch above it's weight - I shall try to explain further:
Games I have tried:
OpenTTD, Skyrim, World of Warcraft, Battlefield 3, Fallout: New Vegas, Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance, Half Life 2, Portal 2.
In all of these games I have had quite a lot of frame skipping, though FPS is high it often seems to skip frames and this can lead to a very jerky experience, this is often fixed though by lowering the resolution from the native to something lower. The fans are also very noisy during play, though using some headphones will drown this out. I don't have any real complaints with the performance as it is a laptop after all, but I was quite dissapointed at how it ran World of Warcraft and OpenTTD in particular, these are both quite old games and both were very jerky, I suspect this is because they are very processor dependant and not really multithreaded. I am unsure if my processor ever goes into turbo mode, but it feels as though it doesn't.
The playback of 1920x1080 video is really smooth with no problems what so ever and loading windows is very quick. Office and other applications are very quick.
The laptop thankfully never ever really gets uncomfortably hot even under heavy load so i'm pretty happy with that.
The Screen
I am very impressed with the screen. It is slightly too bright and I cannot change the contrast on it, only brightness, but the colours and picture quality are very good. How much of this is down to the fact that the pixel density is very high on such a small screen and how much is down to the fancy 95% gamut LED gubbins, I am not sure. It is however very good. Is it worth the extra £80 though? I'm not sure - I can't comment without having seen the default glossy screen. There is still some glare if you have bright things
The Sound
It's a laptop, the sound is never going to match a good set of headphones or speakers, but overall the quality is good enough for every day use, I do however really recommend getting some nice comfortable headphones if you plan on using the laptop for gaming or watching videos.
Portability
Even though 15.6" doesn't sound very much, it is still a very large piece of kit, I expected it to be smaller than it actually is and can't really say it's ultra portable. However the laptop itself is very leightweight so despite the size it is quite easy to carry around the house or take somewhere.
However! There is one downside with having such a powerful graphics card - the required power brick is very large and very heavy, it severely limits the portability of the entire laptop as the battery life is quite low if you're using one of the high power settings (i've gotten 5 hours of watching video out of it on energy star, but only 40 minutes playing a game on performance). How much of a problem this is would depend on your usage, personally I don't mind it at all as when I need it to be portable I won't be playing games.
Conclusion
For £1000 this is a very good laptop, I don't think it can be beaten. I would have prefered to purchase the parts myself and assemble it myself but there does not seem to be anywhere in the UK that will sell the parts needed. Compared to the competition I don't really think there is any question, PC Specialist are the best at this price point.
However, if I were to go back in time knowing the things I know now, I would not have ordered the laptop, the keyboard and the annoying fan spinning up/spinning down constantly are real game breakers for me and the keyboard really does prohibit any real gaming for any length of time as it is just so uncomfortable. These however are quite personal, my father really likes the keyboard for example.
Ratings;
Customer service: 8/10 (premium rate phone line and lack of stock availiability before ordering limits this from being 10/10)
Performance: 8/10 (for its price it's not really beatable unless you get a desktop)
Build quality: 9/10 (other than the CD drive not being flush it's really extremely good)
Design: 3/10 (the keyboard/mousepad is horrible)
Portability: 7/10 (the power brick limits this from being 10/10)
Overall: 7/10.
The service i've received has been very good and the product I received overall has been good considering the cost, but I couldn't possibly recommend that anyone buy a laptop of this spec/price unless they get to try using it beforehand.
