Vortex IV 15.6” review
Hi guys
I’ve had my vortex over a month now, which I thought was a good amount of time to truly test it in a real life scenario. Thought I’d post a short review to give my thoughts on the system. Sorry for the lack of pictures, im writing this on my lunch break. Hope some of you find this interesting or useful when considering a purchase.
Quick spec –
Intel i7 4810 cpu
16gb ram
Nvidia GTX 980m 8gb graphics
120gb msata ssd
1tb Seagate SSHD
Standard 1080p screen
DVDRW
Running Windows 7
Size, look & ports:
I had a tough time deciding the between this and the defiance, but chose the vortex in the end for a few reasons 1 – easier to upgrade / replace any faulty parts, 2 – bigger size so more airflow to run cooler, 3 – ability to have the “full” memory version of the graphics cards.
Size: I was quite worried about the size of it from reading the sizes on paper – 3.5-4cm thick sounds pretty large but you know what, in reality it’s not a bad size at all and not as heavy as I expected. It’s very impressive when you consider the power of the system.
Look: The system is surprisingly sleek, I like its understated look – it doesn’t scream “I’m an epic gaming laptop” but at the same time you can tell it means business, especially with the keyboard backlights. I expected my friends, even non-techy ones, to think it was pretty ugly and looked like something from the 90s and was genuinely surprised when people have referred to it as looking really good.
Ports: Really happy with this. Not much more to say – it’s got everything you could really want. The amount of usb ports means I can leave the dongle for my wireless headphones in constantly and never have to worry about running out even with a memory stick and control pad plugged in theres still one free.
Mouse & Keyboard –
I was worried about the “rubberised” surfaces mentioned online, especially for the trackpad, but in my opinion its an exaggeration, really isn’t bad at all in fact I quite like it. Its definitely textured and not smooth but I’ve never had any issues with it – I’m coming from a macbook pro and the trackpad on that is amazing, so I’m pretty impressed how this one holds up, but it isn’t anywhere near the quality or performance of a high end apple / Lenovo trackpad. The mouse buttons are the biggest down point of the laptop to me, they need to be pressed pretty firmly to click, although over the years I’ve noticed that to be a trend with a lot of the gaming laptops I’ve used. I’m not a fan of fingerprint scanners in the middle of the buttons either, but perhaps that’s personal opinion. I imagine most gamers will use a proper mouse with it anyway. I tend to lean towards a control pad myself as its hard to use a mouse sat on the sofa.
Keyboard there isn’t a lot to say – the backlights look great and its very nice to type on. No issues there for me.
OS and drivers –
I installed my own OS and drivers. It didn’t take more than an hour or two to be fully up and running. No issues here. OS is installed on the SSD so boot time is 10-20 seconds to desktop at the max.
Screen –
The 3 or 4k screens on some of the alternatives were really tempting to me, but now that I have my vortex I’m really glad I stuck with 1080p. The screen is very crisp and clear, and a 1080p on a 15” screen some icons can be pretty small so I’m happy I didn’t go higher. Equally, generally games won’t run maxed out on 3 or 4k resolutions, so for a gaming laptop it makes sense to stick with 1080p to me. In terms of colours and blacks, I’m not an expert, I see the 95% gamut screen is now available, but the standard is very impressive to me. Im picky with image quality, being a designer, and have a very high end TV. There haven’t been any moments where I haven’t been happy with the blacks, contrast or colour replication. On some of my other portable devices – tablets, vita, 3ds and even wii u, I can noticeably tell the screen isn’t great quality when I compare to my TV, but that’s not the case with the screen on my Vortex. No dead pixels either, which is nice, and stupidly I didn’t pay for the guarantee – I probably would next time though to be safe
Performance, gaming & temperatures –
So, this is what really matters. It’s impressive. I’m not a heavy benchmark tester so haven’t run any official testing software on it but I have played most of the latest games and checked temps while under load to check its performance.
In terms of software, I’m a professional designer so stuff like photoshop is my bread and butter. I have a decent PC at work (2nd gen i5, 8gb ram) but with all the plugins and addons I use photoshop takes about 2-3 mins to open. My vortex … 10 seconds. Maybe theres something I’m missing here as that difference is extreme, however I’m not complaining.
Gaming – the main reason I got the laptop was so I had a good gaming setup that I could take with me and have a good few years life in it before I needed to upgrade.
I’ve played all the latest games on it, settings on max, including far cry 4, advanced warfare, dragon age: inquisition, a very highly modded skyrim, divinity: original sin, titanfall, wolfenstien: new order and more. Everything has worked with every setting on max, including filtering and aliasing, apart from the Filmic SMAA 2x with 16x filtering on – that was a little choppy, turning the filtering down to 8 or 4x increased FPS significantly and I couldn’t see any noticeable difference in graphics whilst playing. In terms of fps, on far cry 4 on everything max I get around 50fps so that should give you a decent idea. If you want any others I can run FRAPS and let you know.
Temps and noise – when under strain the fans do kick in, and you can hear them. They don’t overpower the speakers, and I tend to use headphones anyway whilst my gf watches the TV. Shes never mentioned how loud they are or had to turn the TV up so they aren’t hairdryer loud, but I wont lie – they aren’t exactly quiet either.
In terms of temps ive checked the heat when playing some of the higher end games, CPU tends to be around the 60-65c level, the max ive seen the GPU get to us around 78, but it usually sits around the 65-70c level so pretty darn cool considering what its pushing!
Issues: Only had one small issue really which I was couldn’t get my Bluetooth headphones to work with the system which is a pity. They work fine with phones but whilst it connects to the laptop theres some issue with the Bluetooth audio driver that stops it working. I picked up a Logitech pair with dongle that work fine, so im not sure if that’s an issue with the headphones themselves or the Bluetooth driver for the laptop.
Overall im very, very, very happy with the laptop. I cant recommend it highly enough.
This went on a little longer than I expected, so ill end it here – any questions though let me know!
Hi guys
I’ve had my vortex over a month now, which I thought was a good amount of time to truly test it in a real life scenario. Thought I’d post a short review to give my thoughts on the system. Sorry for the lack of pictures, im writing this on my lunch break. Hope some of you find this interesting or useful when considering a purchase.
Quick spec –
Intel i7 4810 cpu
16gb ram
Nvidia GTX 980m 8gb graphics
120gb msata ssd
1tb Seagate SSHD
Standard 1080p screen
DVDRW
Running Windows 7
Size, look & ports:
I had a tough time deciding the between this and the defiance, but chose the vortex in the end for a few reasons 1 – easier to upgrade / replace any faulty parts, 2 – bigger size so more airflow to run cooler, 3 – ability to have the “full” memory version of the graphics cards.
Size: I was quite worried about the size of it from reading the sizes on paper – 3.5-4cm thick sounds pretty large but you know what, in reality it’s not a bad size at all and not as heavy as I expected. It’s very impressive when you consider the power of the system.
Look: The system is surprisingly sleek, I like its understated look – it doesn’t scream “I’m an epic gaming laptop” but at the same time you can tell it means business, especially with the keyboard backlights. I expected my friends, even non-techy ones, to think it was pretty ugly and looked like something from the 90s and was genuinely surprised when people have referred to it as looking really good.
Ports: Really happy with this. Not much more to say – it’s got everything you could really want. The amount of usb ports means I can leave the dongle for my wireless headphones in constantly and never have to worry about running out even with a memory stick and control pad plugged in theres still one free.
Mouse & Keyboard –
I was worried about the “rubberised” surfaces mentioned online, especially for the trackpad, but in my opinion its an exaggeration, really isn’t bad at all in fact I quite like it. Its definitely textured and not smooth but I’ve never had any issues with it – I’m coming from a macbook pro and the trackpad on that is amazing, so I’m pretty impressed how this one holds up, but it isn’t anywhere near the quality or performance of a high end apple / Lenovo trackpad. The mouse buttons are the biggest down point of the laptop to me, they need to be pressed pretty firmly to click, although over the years I’ve noticed that to be a trend with a lot of the gaming laptops I’ve used. I’m not a fan of fingerprint scanners in the middle of the buttons either, but perhaps that’s personal opinion. I imagine most gamers will use a proper mouse with it anyway. I tend to lean towards a control pad myself as its hard to use a mouse sat on the sofa.
Keyboard there isn’t a lot to say – the backlights look great and its very nice to type on. No issues there for me.
OS and drivers –
I installed my own OS and drivers. It didn’t take more than an hour or two to be fully up and running. No issues here. OS is installed on the SSD so boot time is 10-20 seconds to desktop at the max.
Screen –
The 3 or 4k screens on some of the alternatives were really tempting to me, but now that I have my vortex I’m really glad I stuck with 1080p. The screen is very crisp and clear, and a 1080p on a 15” screen some icons can be pretty small so I’m happy I didn’t go higher. Equally, generally games won’t run maxed out on 3 or 4k resolutions, so for a gaming laptop it makes sense to stick with 1080p to me. In terms of colours and blacks, I’m not an expert, I see the 95% gamut screen is now available, but the standard is very impressive to me. Im picky with image quality, being a designer, and have a very high end TV. There haven’t been any moments where I haven’t been happy with the blacks, contrast or colour replication. On some of my other portable devices – tablets, vita, 3ds and even wii u, I can noticeably tell the screen isn’t great quality when I compare to my TV, but that’s not the case with the screen on my Vortex. No dead pixels either, which is nice, and stupidly I didn’t pay for the guarantee – I probably would next time though to be safe
Performance, gaming & temperatures –
So, this is what really matters. It’s impressive. I’m not a heavy benchmark tester so haven’t run any official testing software on it but I have played most of the latest games and checked temps while under load to check its performance.
In terms of software, I’m a professional designer so stuff like photoshop is my bread and butter. I have a decent PC at work (2nd gen i5, 8gb ram) but with all the plugins and addons I use photoshop takes about 2-3 mins to open. My vortex … 10 seconds. Maybe theres something I’m missing here as that difference is extreme, however I’m not complaining.
Gaming – the main reason I got the laptop was so I had a good gaming setup that I could take with me and have a good few years life in it before I needed to upgrade.
I’ve played all the latest games on it, settings on max, including far cry 4, advanced warfare, dragon age: inquisition, a very highly modded skyrim, divinity: original sin, titanfall, wolfenstien: new order and more. Everything has worked with every setting on max, including filtering and aliasing, apart from the Filmic SMAA 2x with 16x filtering on – that was a little choppy, turning the filtering down to 8 or 4x increased FPS significantly and I couldn’t see any noticeable difference in graphics whilst playing. In terms of fps, on far cry 4 on everything max I get around 50fps so that should give you a decent idea. If you want any others I can run FRAPS and let you know.
Temps and noise – when under strain the fans do kick in, and you can hear them. They don’t overpower the speakers, and I tend to use headphones anyway whilst my gf watches the TV. Shes never mentioned how loud they are or had to turn the TV up so they aren’t hairdryer loud, but I wont lie – they aren’t exactly quiet either.
In terms of temps ive checked the heat when playing some of the higher end games, CPU tends to be around the 60-65c level, the max ive seen the GPU get to us around 78, but it usually sits around the 65-70c level so pretty darn cool considering what its pushing!
Issues: Only had one small issue really which I was couldn’t get my Bluetooth headphones to work with the system which is a pity. They work fine with phones but whilst it connects to the laptop theres some issue with the Bluetooth audio driver that stops it working. I picked up a Logitech pair with dongle that work fine, so im not sure if that’s an issue with the headphones themselves or the Bluetooth driver for the laptop.
Overall im very, very, very happy with the laptop. I cant recommend it highly enough.
This went on a little longer than I expected, so ill end it here – any questions though let me know!
