Lafité review

[Toufman]

Greetings,

This is just a quick review of our newly arrived laptop from PCS ! The Lafité is a really nice piece of hardware with a beautiful screen and a great aluminium chassis. It is very light and I could get a decent 5 hours battery life while installing software on it before plugging it to the charger with 20% power left. The 2 SSDs make it very swift to the point that Windows 7 doesn't even get time to show its start up animation in full. Shutting the laptop down also takes about 3 seconds. The Wifi connection worked straight out of the box however I have yet to test the bluetooth connection and webcam. As reported elsewhere the touchpad is an acquired taste: I typically use a mouse since I have low tolerance for the accuracy of touchy/feely squares but I still feel that the lack of dedicated buttons in this instance as popularized by Apple Macbooks just doesn't work well in Windows. My wife only used it a little and told me euphemistically it wasn't the greatest... The keyboard while not backlit is quite pleasant to use.

The build was ordered on 11th June and delivered on 6th July in the ROI. It was delayed by a lack of stock for the M.2 SSD initially configured. PC Specialist informed me of the issue immediately and eventually it was proposed I chose a different model instead of waiting for new stocks. The laptop came in a box well secured by huge bubble wraps.

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While this isn't a gaming laptop, I had hoped that I would be able to install some oldies and run them with the integrated Intel HD 5500 graphics.
I will probably keep a list of the games which succesfully run on it in this thread in case others would be tempted by this laptop for light gaming alongside their productivity activities :shifty:

Lafité Silver Aluminium Chassis: 13.3" Matte Full HD IPS LED (1920 x 1080)
Intel® Core™ i5 Dual Core Processor i5-5200U (2.20GHz, 2.7GHz Turbo)
8GB KINGSTON SODIMM DDR3 1600MHz (1 x 8GB)
INTEL® HD GRAPHICS 5500 (Only with Intel® Core™ CPUs)
500GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
240GB KINGSTON SSDNow M.2 2280, SATA 6Gb/s (550MB/R, 520MB/W)
8x Samsung Slim USB 2.0 External DVD-RW
Integrated 2 in 1 Memory Card Reader (SD, MMC)
Realtek 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-7265 M.2 (867Mbps, 802.11AC) + BLUETOOTH
1 x USB 3.0 PORT + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT AS STANDARD
Lafité Series 4 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (6,300mAh)
1 x UK Power Lead & 40W AC Adaptor
LAFITÉ SERIES INTEGRATED UK KEYBOARD
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
INTEGRATED 720P 30 FPS HD WEBCAM
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Dead Pixel Guarantee
1 Year Dead Pixel Guarantee Inc. Labour & Carriage Costs
Total: Eur 1,217

I need to spend more time with it before I can fully provide feedback about our new toy but so far we're delighted with our purchase from PC Specialist.

 

[Toufman]

After spending some more time with the laptop, I can confirm the battery lasts the advertised +7 hours when doing light browsing and basic productivity but drains in about 3-4 hours when even doing some light gaming.
I installed and ran the following games successfully (don't laugh, most of them are ancient)

Age Of Empire 2
Age Of Empire 3
Unreal Tournament '99
Half Life (+ Opposing Force / Blue Shift / Counter Strike)
Warcraft - Reign of Chaos
Hurrican
Diablo 2
Diablo 3
Torchlight 2
Skyrim (low details)

Still to test:
Half Life 2

I did run into a pretty major issue when trying to install the Battlenet app from Blizzard (which is compulsory for running games like WoW, Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, etc...). I consistently got BSOD when installing / launching it which I eventually traced back to tpfilter.sys one of the driver element for the Lafité touchpad. I uninstalled the driver, proceeded with installing the Blizzard games I wanted then reinstalled the driver freshly downloaded from the PC Specialist website. It appears to have sorted the issue out but this was a bit annoying to face a BSOD a couple of days after receiving the new computer...
One final comment about the Lafité: despite its overall great build quality, I wouldn't recommend it to serious music afficionados. The basic sound is rather weak and lacks bass: I think it is as much caused by the size of the laptop speakers as it is by the limited capabilities of the Realtek soundcard. There appears to be an option now in the configurator for an Asus Xonar U7 card which might improve the output slightly.

 

[tom6561]

Nice review and follow up. What kind of settings are you running for the battery life? Do you have the screen brightness all the way up?

 

[carlthegreat]

I get around 5 hours of battery and would like to know how you got it up to 7 hours?

 

[Robin_hood]

After spending some more time with the laptop, I can confirm the battery lasts the advertised +7 hours when doing light browsing and basic productivity but drains in about 3-4 hours when even doing some light gaming.
I installed and ran the following games successfully (don't laugh, most of them are ancient)

Age Of Empire 2
Age Of Empire 3
Unreal Tournament '99
Half Life (+ Opposing Force / Blue Shift / Counter Strike)
Warcraft - Reign of Chaos
Hurrican
Diablo 2
Diablo 3
Torchlight 2
Skyrim (low details)

Still to test:
Half Life 2

I did run into a pretty major issue when trying to install the Battlenet app from Blizzard (which is compulsory for running games like WoW, Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, etc...). I consistently got BSOD when installing / launching it which I eventually traced back to tpfilter.sys one of the driver element for the Lafité touchpad. I uninstalled the driver, proceeded with installing the Blizzard games I wanted then reinstalled the driver freshly downloaded from the PC Specialist website. It appears to have sorted the issue out but this was a bit annoying to face a BSOD a couple of days after receiving the new computer...
One final comment about the Lafité: despite its overall great build quality, I wouldn't recommend it to serious music afficionados. The basic sound is rather weak and lacks bass: I think it is as much caused by the size of the laptop speakers as it is by the limited capabilities of the Realtek soundcard. There appears to be an option now in the configurator for an Asus Xonar U7 card which might improve the output slightly.

Love UT99. I just bought UT2004 on GOG last week for $2.50 hehe!
Sucks about the trackpad though. Do you also encounter the problem with the fan going on/off like others do?

I get around 5 hours of battery and would like to know how you got it up to 7 hours?

Hey, do you also encounter the problem with the fan going on/off like others do?


[edit, I see this is about Lafite, not Lafite II, so the fan issues shouldnt be there... my bad]