A review of my vortex 3. Not as impressed as i should be.

[barlew]

Ok so here are the specs for the laptop:

Chassis & Display
Vortex Series:17.3" AUO Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080) (£85)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-3820QM (2.70GHz) 8MB
Memory (RAM)
16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (4 x 4GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 675M - 2.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
750GB SEAGATE MOMENTUS XT HYBRID, SATA 6 Gb/s, 32MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
SSD CACHE DRIVE
40GB INTEL® 310 mSATA MLC SSD - (mini PCIe SSD for extra storage)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
SONY BD-5750H 6x BLURAY WRITER & CYBERLINK SOFTWARE (£79)
Memory Card Reader
Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)
Sound Card
Intel 5.1 Channel High Definition Audio + SPDIF/MIC/Headphone Jack
Network Facilities
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® ULTIMATE-N 6300 (450Mbps)
USB Options
3 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT AS STANDARD
Firewire
1 X 1394a FIREWIRE PORT
Battery
Vortex Series 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (5,200 mAh/76.96WH)
Power Lead & Adaptor
1 x UK Power Lead & 220W AC Adaptor
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Carry Case
Belkin Black/Red 17.3" Neoprene Notebook Sleeve (£16)
Keyboard & Mouse
INTEGRATED BACKLIT UK KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD
Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 2.0 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Dead Pixel Guarantee
1 Year Dead Pixel Guarantee Inc. Labour & Carriage Costs (£19)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
FAST TRACK 3 WORKING DAY DISPATCH (£59)

I have had the laptop for a good few months now so i feel its a good time to review as i have got to know it very well.

So ill start with the good.

This laptop is an absolute beast it shreds almost all games max settings some examples are:

Battlefield 3
Medal of Honor Warfighter
Max Payne 3
The latest Need for Speed Most Wanted
Nfs Shift 2
Spec Ops the Line
Dishonored
And many other games.

I have only found two games that i cannot run max settings the first is arma 2 (for obvious reasons) and the second is sleeping dogs. But i can play both of these at very high settings.

Start up is rapid and normal daily usage is rapid as you would expect.
In terms of performance i really cant rate this highly enough.

Now the bad.

This laptop does not travel well at all (and for someone in the military that is a big issue). I put this down to the quite frankly shocking build quality.
Parts of the laptop feel very flexible and plastic which i really don't like.
I will take this on the train (in a proper laptop bag) probably twice a week. After either journey i garuntee i'll switch the laptop on and have problems the two main ones are:

I will have a couple of dead pixels in the screen that have to be massaged out. Now most people may not see this as a big issue but as i have paid £1800 for this laptop and paid extra for the best screen it is much more than annoying.

The second issue For some reason carrying it about (even in a laptop bag) makes the cpu fan stick. This results in the laptop shrieking a warning alarm and then turning off. I have to physically open the laptop to sort this issue and it really hacks me off. The fans also have a really annoying intermittent high pitched whine which happens fairly frequently.

Going back to the cheap feel of the laptop, just below the track pad is a finger print scanner. If you press down on the plastic border it clicks and recesses into the body of the laptop almost like a button. However this isn't a button its just poor manufacturing.

The top of the laptop and panel below the keyboard are made of really nice brushed aluminium however this is completely ruined by the tacky shiny plastic that borders the rest of the laptop.

The speakers on the laptop that seem to be hyped up some what are quite easily the worst speakers i have ever had in any laptop they really are shocking.

So my final conclusion. Is this laptop good? Yes it is **** hot the performance is second to none and it looks like its going to have a long life in terms of the games that will be coming out in the future. Unfortunately it feels like it will fall apart before those games arrive.

Is it worth the £1800 price tag i paid for it. No not at all. It has all the performance of a laptop that costs that much but the build quality is absolutely horrendous. I should be able to carry my laptop on a train without having to worry about taking it apart when i get home to fix it.

 

[SmokeDarKnight]

I have the vortex 2 and and think the build quality is amazing but i agree with you that for transportation purposes it might not be the best option. To transport mine i have a sleeve then the transport bag and even then i keep it on me in appose to being in a suit case. I've never had issues with anything braking on it at all. (He says while its at PCS at the moment getting the GPU repaired =D)Also you have the 17" it must way a fair bit.

I would imagine that your in that bracket that requires a sturdy laptop that is graphically powerful and I've never seen a mixture of both.

Think i was about £1,200 for mine and worth every penny but that's just down to each individual.

 

[barlew]

I have the vortex 2 and and think the build quality is amazing but i agree with you that for transportation purposes it might not be the best option. To transport mine i have a sleeve then the transport bag and even then i keep it on me in appose to being in a suit case. I've never had issues with anything braking on it at all. (He says while its at PCS at the moment getting the GPU repaired =D)Also you have the 17" it must way a fair bit.

I would imagine that your in that bracket that requires a sturdy laptop that is graphically powerful and I've never seen a mixture of both.

Think i was about £1,200 for mine and worth every penny but that's just down to each individual.

The jump between the vortex 2 and 3 must be huge then because even out of low budget laptops I've had the build quality on this really does come in last. But tbh this is the first 17" laptop i've ever owned so perhaps the build quality on all 17" laptops from every manufacturer is just as bad i couldn't say.

What went wrong with your gpu?

 

[SmokeDarKnight]

My mate has the Vortex 3 and its pretty much identical except from the Keyboard im not a fan of the Vortex 3 Keyboard. I wander if there is a difference between the 15 and the 17 though as they look a little different on the webpage.

Not sure whats wrong with it, i installed windows 8 then i was watching the Gangnam Style youtube video for the 100th time as you do and the screen went white with grey line. Tried everything uninstalled drivers, even went back to windows 7 but it fails as soon as you put in the GPU driver so GOOSED is as far as i can technically diagnose it.

 

[Portland]

Suspect most people would treat this Clevo chassis as a DTR and travel would consist of shifting it from one room to another with a very occasional actual journey.

In having a spec like this in a lappy, there has to be a degree of tradeoff, as it's not expected to be a T21 style almost indestructible workhorse.

Had my III less than a day, but although it's not a rubber coated titanium chassis'd force of nature, it doesn't strike me as especially flimsy, especially when you "take away" the cost of the individual components.

I think that a toughbook style machine with 17-18 screen and enough cooling to deal with a top end gpu and cpu would be extremely expensive and I'm not sure there's a sufficient market for one.


May not be practical for your particular circumstances, but I personally tend to leave the DTR at home and pootle round with a netbook where I need to be mobile. Easier to carry, sturdy and decent batter life. A recent incident with a bottle of Moretti which was resolved by swift inversion and a nine quid keyboard off ebay shows the sturdiness of a Asus one.

 

[Snowik]

Suspect most people would treat this Clevo chassis as a DTR and travel would consist of shifting it from one room to another with a very occasional actual journey.

In having a spec like this in a lappy, there has to be a degree of tradeoff, as it's not expected to be a T21 style almost indestructible workhorse.

Had my III less than a day, but although it's not a rubber coated titanium chassis'd force of nature, it doesn't strike me as especially flimsy, especially when you "take away" the cost of the individual components.

I think that a toughbook style machine with 17-18 screen and enough cooling to deal with a top end gpu and cpu would be extremely expensive and I'm not sure there's a sufficient market for one.


May not be practical for your particular circumstances, but I personally tend to leave the DTR at home and pootle round with a netbook where I need to be mobile. Easier to carry, sturdy and decent batter life. A recent incident with a bottle of Moretti which was resolved by swift inversion and a nine quid keyboard off ebay shows the sturdiness of a Asus one.

Serves you right for drinking Moretti, go Peroni bro!

 

[barlew]

Suspect most people would treat this Clevo chassis as a DTR and travel would consist of shifting it from one room to another with a very occasional actual journey.

In having a spec like this in a lappy, there has to be a degree of tradeoff, as it's not expected to be a T21 style almost indestructible workhorse.

Had my III less than a day, but although it's not a rubber coated titanium chassis'd force of nature, it doesn't strike me as especially flimsy, especially when you "take away" the cost of the individual components.

I think that a toughbook style machine with 17-18 screen and enough cooling to deal with a top end gpu and cpu would be extremely expensive and I'm not sure there's a sufficient market for one.


May not be practical for your particular circumstances, but I personally tend to leave the DTR at home and pootle round with a netbook where I need to be mobile. Easier to carry, sturdy and decent batter life. A recent incident with a bottle of Moretti which was resolved by swift inversion and a nine quid keyboard off ebay shows the sturdiness of a Asus one.

See the fact is i'm not looking for a tough book style of machine I'm not looking at taking my laptop to war with my. I don't think it is unreasonable to purchase a laptop and expect it to be able to be transported within a laptop bag without having to worry about the thing breaking. Laptops after all are supposed to be portable by very definition. If i wanted a machine that i would just move from room to room and occasionally travel with i would have bought a pc with better specs for less money.