I just realised I am a couple of weeks away from my Defiance II turning two years old.
My review after year and a bit is here - https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?51946-Defiance-II-a-year-(and-a-bit)-on
Since then, I've gone through the pain of doing an in-place upgrade to Windows 10 Creators Edition. Despite my preference to usually do a clean install, this time I decided to take the short cut. Don't. It caused me all sorts of headaches including, but not limited to: short bursts of freezing; in-game oddities such as incorrectly coloured characters and all sorts of weird artefacting but worst of all for me was a serious case of WiFi instability. I ended up rolling up and down various versions of the Intel driver until I got one that was "ok" at best but still pretty terrible.
So I decided to blow it away and reinstall from scratch anyway which made the problems mostly go away. I still see occasional WiFi dropouts but that is, as I see it, down more to the Intel drivers/card than anything Windows related.
For the machine itself - well when it arrived I was a bit concerned about the quality of materials chosen. To be fair, this was more a perception thing coming from an aluminium macbook pro and I think in hindsight, anything that was plastic would have given me qualms.
The thinness and surprising amount of flex in the display were also a concern.
None of it bore fruit - the laptop has stood up to two years of being dragged the length and breast of the country and apart from the odd mark here and there is still physically intact.
I still stand by that I made a bad choice in the 4k display option. When playing a game that supports it, it looks great (e.g. DooM 2016) but for day-to-day use, Windows sucks. Even Windows 10 still struggles to give a seamless user experience - some, of course, is the way applications are written but a lot is Windows' itself. One example would be a remote desktop connection. One time it'll give you full size desktop icons but miniscule task bar icons. Menu bars would be so small as to be invisible. It remains a fact that high DPI and Windows does not make for good bed fellows.
Temperatures were always on the high side until I did a repaste job. They were in the high 70's and 80's at idle. Now they're in the mid 50's unless I am taxing it.
Performance-wise...hmm...so here's where I'd usually be complaining after two years. My use cases are such that I tend to push a machine hard and it doesn't take long to start to see degradation to the point that I am ordinarily beginning to consider my next machine around 18 months in. Two years is the very longest.
Not so here - it takes everything I throw at it and asks for more. Which causes me a bit of a conundrum as I'd rather like a DIII but can't justify it right now
All in all, I am still very happy with my unit and I'd have no qualms at all about recommending a PCS machine to anyone (and indeed a friend bought a 17" DIII a few months ago on my recommendation).
My review after year and a bit is here - https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?51946-Defiance-II-a-year-(and-a-bit)-on
Since then, I've gone through the pain of doing an in-place upgrade to Windows 10 Creators Edition. Despite my preference to usually do a clean install, this time I decided to take the short cut. Don't. It caused me all sorts of headaches including, but not limited to: short bursts of freezing; in-game oddities such as incorrectly coloured characters and all sorts of weird artefacting but worst of all for me was a serious case of WiFi instability. I ended up rolling up and down various versions of the Intel driver until I got one that was "ok" at best but still pretty terrible.
So I decided to blow it away and reinstall from scratch anyway which made the problems mostly go away. I still see occasional WiFi dropouts but that is, as I see it, down more to the Intel drivers/card than anything Windows related.
For the machine itself - well when it arrived I was a bit concerned about the quality of materials chosen. To be fair, this was more a perception thing coming from an aluminium macbook pro and I think in hindsight, anything that was plastic would have given me qualms.
The thinness and surprising amount of flex in the display were also a concern.
None of it bore fruit - the laptop has stood up to two years of being dragged the length and breast of the country and apart from the odd mark here and there is still physically intact.
I still stand by that I made a bad choice in the 4k display option. When playing a game that supports it, it looks great (e.g. DooM 2016) but for day-to-day use, Windows sucks. Even Windows 10 still struggles to give a seamless user experience - some, of course, is the way applications are written but a lot is Windows' itself. One example would be a remote desktop connection. One time it'll give you full size desktop icons but miniscule task bar icons. Menu bars would be so small as to be invisible. It remains a fact that high DPI and Windows does not make for good bed fellows.
Temperatures were always on the high side until I did a repaste job. They were in the high 70's and 80's at idle. Now they're in the mid 50's unless I am taxing it.
Performance-wise...hmm...so here's where I'd usually be complaining after two years. My use cases are such that I tend to push a machine hard and it doesn't take long to start to see degradation to the point that I am ordinarily beginning to consider my next machine around 18 months in. Two years is the very longest.
Not so here - it takes everything I throw at it and asks for more. Which causes me a bit of a conundrum as I'd rather like a DIII but can't justify it right now
All in all, I am still very happy with my unit and I'd have no qualms at all about recommending a PCS machine to anyone (and indeed a friend bought a 17" DIII a few months ago on my recommendation).