Intel i7 2670QM 2.2GHz quad core
Nvidia GT 555M 2GB DDR3
4GB RAM
17.3” screen, 1920x1080 resolution
About £750 excluding extras
Build quality – 2/5
This isn’t a well-built laptop. The plastic creaks, the keyboard flexes, and the power button and hotkeys sometimes will not register a push. The rubber pads on the display bezel soon fell off and the plastic on the hinges feels like it might do the same. You can’t open it up without using two hands to prise the screen and base apart. This isn't a very portable computer and it won't be moved around much so these issues aren't too important.
Keyboard – 4/5
Fine for typing on for extended periods. Being a 17” it could have had a full-sized numpad, but this isn’t a huge problem. It’s not possible to safely remove the keys to clean under them, so don’t eat a sandwich near this laptop.
Touchpad 3/5
When purchased, the touchpad had a nasty brittle texture and it was not pleasant at all to brush fingernails over. This problem was solved quickly as after a few weeks it had worn down to become smooth in the centre. After a few months, despite mostly using an external mouse, the left touchpad button’s mechanism broke and it was sometimes as unresponsive as the power button. PC Specialist later judged that this was fair wear and tear and charged £30 for the replacement. The button works now but it does squeak (expected for a mouse I suppose?).
The touchpad itself works fine, but not great. It claims to have features like two finger scrolling and pinch to zoom, but these are badly implemented and not worth turning on. I like to have different sensitivities and settings for the touchpad and my external mouse (for gaming), so I use a utility called Mouse Speed Switcher which changes them automatically.
Other – 4/5
Webcam – low res, but does the job.
Microphone – fine.
Speakers – so quiet that they are basically useless. Even a cheap phone has better.
Headphones/audio out – still a bit quiet compared to other devices, but fine.
USB ports – four of them, two are USB3. Three on the left, one on the right. No problems here and the speed of USB3 is much appreciated for backups.
Video out – has both VGA and HDMI ports so works great for plugging into a projector or TV. The HDMI also carries audio out, though you might need to fiddle around with Windows settings to enable this.
Gaming/performance – 3/5
Buy or build a regular desktop PC unless you absolutely need your gaming machine to be portable. It’s cheaper, you can upgrade the parts, and a laptop BIOS does not give options to disable stutter-inducing features like hyperthreading.
For the specs I got a decent price from PC Specialist, and it plays Civ 5 and Assassin’s Creed 3 reasonably well at medium settings. It’s a shame that they carried the DDR3 version of the GT 555M rather than the GDDR5, which is apparently much faster, and it’s definitely the weak link in this system.
This laptop uses ‘Optimus technology’ to switch between the integrated Intel HD 3000 graphics and the Nvidia card. Usually it works fine but some games (like Napoleon Total War) don’t know how to handle it and can only see the Intel chip.
For storage, I recommend getting a 128GB SSD in the laptop for speed, and a 1TB external hard drive (about £50) for backups and any games you can’t fit on the SSD. I ordered a hybrid Maxtor 500GB HDD which keeps a few gigs of cache to store anything that might need loading quickly. Windows and other applications boot up quickly.
Battery life – 3/5
Only about 2 hours web browsing on low brightness, but this is to be expected with a system of this spec. It’s a desktop replacement so it’s meant to be stuck in one place, plugged in. I chose the ‘upgrade battery’ option when ordering and I actually received two batteries, which was a nice surprise.
Display – 5/5
It looks great. Most laptops even at a higher price have a much lower DPI. Text and images are crisp and you have enough room to put two Word documents side by side. Only problem is that it doesn’t have a glass protective layer so it’s difficult to clean and scratches can build up quickly. PC Specialist offer a replacement for only £65 which is reassuring.
Customer service – 1/5
Disappointing.
After less than 2 years, the laptop was overheating, the CPU was throttling down to 900MHz under any kind of load, the hard drive appeared to be on its last legs, and the touchpad button was wonky. PC Specialist charged £35 for delivery through DPD, who were very efficient and provided an incredibly detailed tracking service showing the GPS location of the laptop when it was out for delivery. It is good to see they have listened to feedback on the dreadful Yodel and changed to a better service.
Contact with PC Specialist throughout the repair period was sporadic. The only way to get in touch quickly is an 0844 number that is expensive to call on mobiles. The live chat is only for sales support, and they take several days to respond to emails, if they even respond at all. I was advised that it would take 8-12 days to replace the hard drive. This seems unreasonable in an age when I can order the same part from Amazon and have it arrive the next day, but as it turned out even this estimate was optimistic.
Including the couple of days for delivery, I was without my laptop for almost five weeks, and no explanation was given for why it had taken so long. On the fourth week I was promised that the repair would be completed on that Friday. On Saturday I emailed to ask why it had not arrived, and this email was ignored. On Wednesday I received an email saying the item had been dispatched, and then I received the laptop on Friday. It had been a bank holiday Monday and according to the forums several staff were on leave, which may explain the delay, but even so there should have been better communication and an apology for the missed deadline.
Out of the box, the screen and keyboard were covered in what seemed to be fine sawdust (?). I used compressed air to blow it off to avoid scratching the display.
To their credit, PC Specialist replaced both the hard drive and the motherboard for free after the warranty on the laptop had expired, using the manufacturer’s warranty on the specific parts. However seeing as the laptop was less than 2 years old it is clearly covered by the Sale of Goods Act and EU legislation. It would be unreasonable for them to have charged at all (as they had initially warned they might). It also doesn’t seem right that I should have to pay for the shoddy mouse button when I barely use it at all. If it breaks after just over a year under light use then it is clearly a badly made touchpad.
So far all the issues I had seem to be solved, though I will be conducting further tests on the overheating. If there were any more problems I would pay more money to have it fixed by a local computer shop, or attempt to do the repair myself.
Summary
I would be hesitant to buy from PC Specialist again. The specs are good for the price, and I love the screen, however the build quality is poor, and the customer service was a huge letdown. My problems were taken care of, but it took a very long time, during which I had to do all my computing on a smartphone. If I had further problems I would feel more comfortable taking the laptop to a local shop or attempting the repairs myself.
Nvidia GT 555M 2GB DDR3
4GB RAM
17.3” screen, 1920x1080 resolution
About £750 excluding extras
Build quality – 2/5
This isn’t a well-built laptop. The plastic creaks, the keyboard flexes, and the power button and hotkeys sometimes will not register a push. The rubber pads on the display bezel soon fell off and the plastic on the hinges feels like it might do the same. You can’t open it up without using two hands to prise the screen and base apart. This isn't a very portable computer and it won't be moved around much so these issues aren't too important.
Keyboard – 4/5
Fine for typing on for extended periods. Being a 17” it could have had a full-sized numpad, but this isn’t a huge problem. It’s not possible to safely remove the keys to clean under them, so don’t eat a sandwich near this laptop.
Touchpad 3/5
When purchased, the touchpad had a nasty brittle texture and it was not pleasant at all to brush fingernails over. This problem was solved quickly as after a few weeks it had worn down to become smooth in the centre. After a few months, despite mostly using an external mouse, the left touchpad button’s mechanism broke and it was sometimes as unresponsive as the power button. PC Specialist later judged that this was fair wear and tear and charged £30 for the replacement. The button works now but it does squeak (expected for a mouse I suppose?).
The touchpad itself works fine, but not great. It claims to have features like two finger scrolling and pinch to zoom, but these are badly implemented and not worth turning on. I like to have different sensitivities and settings for the touchpad and my external mouse (for gaming), so I use a utility called Mouse Speed Switcher which changes them automatically.
Other – 4/5
Webcam – low res, but does the job.
Microphone – fine.
Speakers – so quiet that they are basically useless. Even a cheap phone has better.
Headphones/audio out – still a bit quiet compared to other devices, but fine.
USB ports – four of them, two are USB3. Three on the left, one on the right. No problems here and the speed of USB3 is much appreciated for backups.
Video out – has both VGA and HDMI ports so works great for plugging into a projector or TV. The HDMI also carries audio out, though you might need to fiddle around with Windows settings to enable this.
Gaming/performance – 3/5
Buy or build a regular desktop PC unless you absolutely need your gaming machine to be portable. It’s cheaper, you can upgrade the parts, and a laptop BIOS does not give options to disable stutter-inducing features like hyperthreading.
For the specs I got a decent price from PC Specialist, and it plays Civ 5 and Assassin’s Creed 3 reasonably well at medium settings. It’s a shame that they carried the DDR3 version of the GT 555M rather than the GDDR5, which is apparently much faster, and it’s definitely the weak link in this system.
This laptop uses ‘Optimus technology’ to switch between the integrated Intel HD 3000 graphics and the Nvidia card. Usually it works fine but some games (like Napoleon Total War) don’t know how to handle it and can only see the Intel chip.
For storage, I recommend getting a 128GB SSD in the laptop for speed, and a 1TB external hard drive (about £50) for backups and any games you can’t fit on the SSD. I ordered a hybrid Maxtor 500GB HDD which keeps a few gigs of cache to store anything that might need loading quickly. Windows and other applications boot up quickly.
Battery life – 3/5
Only about 2 hours web browsing on low brightness, but this is to be expected with a system of this spec. It’s a desktop replacement so it’s meant to be stuck in one place, plugged in. I chose the ‘upgrade battery’ option when ordering and I actually received two batteries, which was a nice surprise.
Display – 5/5
It looks great. Most laptops even at a higher price have a much lower DPI. Text and images are crisp and you have enough room to put two Word documents side by side. Only problem is that it doesn’t have a glass protective layer so it’s difficult to clean and scratches can build up quickly. PC Specialist offer a replacement for only £65 which is reassuring.
Customer service – 1/5
Disappointing.
After less than 2 years, the laptop was overheating, the CPU was throttling down to 900MHz under any kind of load, the hard drive appeared to be on its last legs, and the touchpad button was wonky. PC Specialist charged £35 for delivery through DPD, who were very efficient and provided an incredibly detailed tracking service showing the GPS location of the laptop when it was out for delivery. It is good to see they have listened to feedback on the dreadful Yodel and changed to a better service.
Contact with PC Specialist throughout the repair period was sporadic. The only way to get in touch quickly is an 0844 number that is expensive to call on mobiles. The live chat is only for sales support, and they take several days to respond to emails, if they even respond at all. I was advised that it would take 8-12 days to replace the hard drive. This seems unreasonable in an age when I can order the same part from Amazon and have it arrive the next day, but as it turned out even this estimate was optimistic.
Including the couple of days for delivery, I was without my laptop for almost five weeks, and no explanation was given for why it had taken so long. On the fourth week I was promised that the repair would be completed on that Friday. On Saturday I emailed to ask why it had not arrived, and this email was ignored. On Wednesday I received an email saying the item had been dispatched, and then I received the laptop on Friday. It had been a bank holiday Monday and according to the forums several staff were on leave, which may explain the delay, but even so there should have been better communication and an apology for the missed deadline.
Out of the box, the screen and keyboard were covered in what seemed to be fine sawdust (?). I used compressed air to blow it off to avoid scratching the display.
To their credit, PC Specialist replaced both the hard drive and the motherboard for free after the warranty on the laptop had expired, using the manufacturer’s warranty on the specific parts. However seeing as the laptop was less than 2 years old it is clearly covered by the Sale of Goods Act and EU legislation. It would be unreasonable for them to have charged at all (as they had initially warned they might). It also doesn’t seem right that I should have to pay for the shoddy mouse button when I barely use it at all. If it breaks after just over a year under light use then it is clearly a badly made touchpad.
So far all the issues I had seem to be solved, though I will be conducting further tests on the overheating. If there were any more problems I would pay more money to have it fixed by a local computer shop, or attempt to do the repair myself.
Summary
I would be hesitant to buy from PC Specialist again. The specs are good for the price, and I love the screen, however the build quality is poor, and the customer service was a huge letdown. My problems were taken care of, but it took a very long time, during which I had to do all my computing on a smartphone. If I had further problems I would feel more comfortable taking the laptop to a local shop or attempting the repairs myself.
Last edited:
