Introduction
This is a review for the recently released Lafité II laptop from PC Specialist. I'd been looking into buying the original Lafité for a few months so when I saw that an updated version had been released I jumped at the opportunity to get one. I didn't want the laptop for anything too intensive (just web browsing, word processing and watching videos usually) but I decided to go for the best graphics card offered for this model for future proofing and in case I ever need to use the laptop for anything more intensive. The build was lightning fast (I ordered it on a Friday and received the laptop the following Friday) and was to an incredibly high standard. I've noticed no issues whatsoever in terms of the build and would highly recommend PC Specialist in this regard.Chassis
The Lafité looks almost spookily like Macbook Air but without the branding. I'm sure this was a very intentional decision and I am very happy with the result. Like many other people, I've received numerous comments asking what brand the laptop is and how it looks exactly like a Macbook Air. My response is usually "it is a lot like a Macbook Air, but it's twice as good and half the price". Both are over-exaggerations, but I still find it funny. Despite looking like a Macbook, the chassis on the Lafité does not scream "rip-off" in the slightest. It's incredibly well made and looks and feels premium. The laptop is incredibly light and compact too, which is always good for travel purposes. In particular, I really love the new backlit keyboard which gives the laptop that little bit of extra functionality and class that just makes it so striking. Overall, if looks and a premium feel are important to you in a laptop, you can't get much better than the Lafité II.Screen
The Lafité comes with a 1920x1080 IPS LED screen as standard and it is absolutely beautiful. I'd recommend playing around with the scaling options in Windows if you choose that operating system, because I found everything looked very blurry at the default 150%. If you set it to 100% as you may be tempted, then I hope you have the vision of a hawk because this is a 13" display after all. I find 125% to be an excellent compromise and the screen looks fantastic for a laptop screen at this setting. It isn't the best display I've ever seen, but for a laptop it's more than sufficient. Brightness and colour reproduction are excellent, but I find that blacks could be a bit deeper. This is only especially noticeable when I switch over from my television to my laptop while watching a film or TV show - it's immediately noticeable how the blacks aren't anywhere near as deep or inky on the laptop as they were in the same scene on my TV. This is obviously to be expected however, and comparing a laptop screen to a television is hardly fair, but it's the only flaw I've noticed so far.Speakers
Speakers are one of the most difficult things to get right on a laptop of this size. Given that it's so thin, I was very concerned that the speakers would sound very tinny and weak. When I took that laptop out of the box and realised the speakers were underneath the laptop, I got even more worried. Things did get off to a bad start - the default Windows alert sounds sounded terrible and had a horribly brash and tinny quality to them. However, after watching a large amount of YouTube videos and listening to music through the laptop, I've realised that the speakers are fairly decent for everyday use. The are capable of a really high volume and music sounds surprisingly decent. I would invest in a pair of headphones if you haven't got any if you intend to watch movies or listen to much music however, as this will obviously make the experience a lot better.Touchpad
This was one of my biggest worries when buying this laptop. I had read a lot of horror stories about the first edition of the Lafité having an unresponsive, laggy and generally horrible trackpad. I am very pleased to confirm that I've encountered no such issues on the Lafité II. In fact, I'm absolutely in love with this trackpad and its multitouch gestures. I've never used a trackpad with multitouch before so using two fingers two scroll down a webpage or pinching to zoom are both huge revolutions on a laptop to me. Once I turned up the pointer sensitivity to max in Windows settings, I was fairly pleased with the responsiveness of the trackpad as well. I've never had to click multiple times in order for it to register and it also knows what I want to do. Overall, the trackpad is actually one of my favourite things about this laptop.Performance
Wow. This laptop is a beast. For my everyday use (web browsing, multimedia consumption, word processing) it's lightning fast and never seems to slow down. I've thrown multiple fairly intensive programs at it at once and it's never stuttered. The SSD is also incredibly quick, allowing the laptop to start up from cold in about six seconds - absolutely amazing. There isn't really much more to say about this other than that the laptop is more than capable of handling my workload and it's probably the quickest laptop/desktop/anything that I've ever used.Battery Life
Right. I'm a little bit conflicted about the battery life on this device. I haven't really gotten a feel for it yet. The first time I set up the laptop, it lasted from max charge for about 4-5 hours. "Okay," I thought, "I was installing a lot of programs and getting everything set up so it was probably an unrealistic testing environment and 4-5 hours is still pretty good". Then I brought the laptop out with me a few days later and used it for some light word processing and was shocked at how quickly it was running down. I was losing a percent or two every other minute and dropped to 60% after less than an hour of use. Enabling the power saver configuration and battery saver upped the battery life considerably, but this also decreases the performance of the laptop which can make videos choppy and opening programs slow. However, I find that opening a word document first and then switching to power saver mode allows me to continue working as usual with very little battery consumption. Overall, this is something that I'll have to keep an eye on in the future, but battery life on the Lafité II at the moment seems decent enough, just not exceptional.Note: I typically use the laptop at 40% brightness when on battery. I am concerned that the battery is not removable without taking the laptop apart, which means that when the battery inevitably dies it's going to be a lot more difficult to replace than with previous laptops I've owned.
Summary and Conclusion
I think I've covered all of the important aspects of the Lafité II. Overall, this is an exceptional laptop and by far the best I've ever used. I absolutely love the design of the thing and how fast it is in everyday use, along with the trackpad which is just incredibly useful for me. The main problem for me comes from the potentially poor battery life (although this requires further testing on my behalf, so don't quote me on it! I've heard plenty of people say they get excellent battery life out of this laptop). In general though, I would not for a second hesitate to recommend the Lafité II to anybody looking for an Ultrabook and PC Specialist have offered me an unmatched customer experience.I'm going to put some photos of the laptop as well as list the full specifications of my build below so that anybody interested can see exactly what went into my Lafité II. Thanks for reading!
Full Specifications of the Lafité II Laptop Build
Chassis & Display
Lafité Silver Aluminium Chassis: 13.3" Matte Full HD IPS LED (1920 x 1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 Dual Core Processor i7-6500U (2.50GHz, 3.1GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON SODIMM DDR3 1600MHz (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
INTEL® HD GRAPHICS 510 [Pentium] | INTEL® HD GRAPHICS 520 [Core™]
Memory - Hard Disk
500GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
Memory Card Reader
Integrated 2 in 1 Memory Card Reader (SD, MMC)
Sound Card
Realtek 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless
WIRELESS INTEL® AC-8260 M.2 (867Mbps, 802.11AC) + BLUETOOTH
USB Options
1 x USB 3.0 PORT, 1 x USB 3.1 PORT + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT AS STANDARD
Battery
Lafité Series 4 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (6,300mAh)
Power Lead & Adaptor
1 x UK Power Lead & 40W AC Adaptor
Keyboard Language
LAFITÉ SERIES BACKLIT UK KEYBOARD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence
DVD Recovery Media
Windows 10 (64-bit) DVD with paper sleeve
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Notebook Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 720P 30 FPS HD WEBCAM
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 6 to 8 working days
Photos
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