Took delivery of this today!
I will update the below over the next few days as I do more stuff with it.
Chassis & Display
Optimus Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD IPS LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i5 Quad Core Processor 6300HQ (2.3GHz, 3.2GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON SODIMM DDR3 1600MHz (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 960M - 2.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 12
1st Hard Disk (SATA)
250GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
Ultra Slim 8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
Memory Card Reader
Integrated 6 in 1 Card Reader (SD /Mini SD/ SDHC / SDXC / MMC / RSMMC)
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Def. Audio + SoundBlaster™ Cinema 2
Wireless/Wired Networking
GIGABIT LAN & KILLER™ 1535-AC M.2 WIRELESS GAMING 802.11AC + BLUETOOTH 4.0
EDIT - Removed 250GB Crucial MX200 M.2 2280 SSD (upto 555MB/sR | 500MB/sW) and replaced with 250GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW).
Reason: High temps on the M2 drives, see http://imgur.com/q1tedGI
My current advice is not to get an M2 SSD, mine ran around 20C hotter than my normal Samsung 850 EVO SSD. I would suggest the following:
1st Hard Drive: Standard SSD of 250GB or bigger
2nd Hard Drive: Remove DVD and get another drive bay, and probably at this moment in time opt for 750GB WD Black if you need a 2nd drive.
First impressions...
Chassis
Excellent quality, can imagine it will be a bit of a fingerprint magnet though. Has a bit of a rubberised feel to it, or soft plastic if you will.
Laptop is pretty heavy, you wouldn't want to be moving it around too much. If you need mobility consider the 15" version instead.
The whole thing is very black and understated.
Picture of the laptop:
The lid closed:
Keyboard
Full-sized UK keyboard, fits in very nicely with the black theme. It's backlit which is a nice touch. You can change the keyboard backlight strength or disable it entirely.
The keyboard is obviously not as nice to type on as my main mechanical one, but then I would not expect it to be. So far it's working fine.
I have not detected any bend or flex in typing on the keyboard, it feels very sturdy to me. During gaming the right side of the keyboard tends to get a little warm, not to excess mind. The left side remains cool. Which is good as you will mainly be using the left side during gaming for WASD controls.
Closer image of the keyboard/trackpad:
Touchpad
The touchpad works OK but a mouse is preferred. I wanted the touchpad with the separate left/right click buttons so this fitted the bill. Again fits in with the black theme, very stealth
I'd strongly recommend disabling the tap to click function, it fires for me all the time otherwise. In Windows 10 you can do this by going Start > Settings > Devices > Mouse/Touchpad > Additional Mouse Settings (under Related Settings) > Click Settings with the Synapics Touchpad selected > click Tapping section > Uncheck "Enable Tapping".
Sound
Still need to test more sound, but it's OK so far. Goes reasonably loud, not bad speakers, but you'd probably be better off with a decent headset.
Display
This laptop comes with a 17.3" IPS display. The model listed is LGD046C - this is the display specs I believe for anyone interested: http://www.panelook.com/LP173WF4-SPD1_LG Display_17.3_LCM_overview_24463.html
The panel itself is lovely and bright, and has good viewing angles. I'd rate this type of display (IPS) very highly for general windows usage, photographic work etc. I was playing around with the brightness settings but I found around 60% seemed to be the best for me.
The viewing angles are very good:
IPS panels have the downside of IPS Glow though. More pronounced via the camera, but you can still see it.
IPS Glow is not a panel defect, it's just the nature of all IPS Panels.
Backlight bleed is also a plague on IPS panels. Mine suffers from it here, especially on the right hand side. Maybe it will improve given time? Not sure.
The camera picks it up better than I can, and some of what you see is IPS glow (moves when you move your head). But the right hand side is definitely BLB.
Now I don't normally use the laptop with the lights off, so this is less of an issue. I can still notice the BLB on the right on certain images, but it's not too bad. Shame it exists at all though because it's the only thing I can really find wrong with it.
Gaming
This is not a true gaming laptop. 960M is way less powerful than it's 970M/980M brothers (like seriously, a LOT less powerful!), however it's a capable GPU, and it should play less graphically intensive games just fine.
It's a shame you can't get this chassis with the 970M as an option. I'd like to see that, as the rest of the system would be up to the task.
Been playing some EU4 today with it, plays just fine. The GPU appeared to reach 65-70 degrees or so, which is perfectly acceptable. As I eluded to above, the main heat source seems to be somewhere under the right hemisphere of the laptop, the left side remains reasonably cool.
Fan Noise
Putting fans on max they can get a little noisy but not excessive.
During normal net browsing activity they won't even turn on. The laptop will automatically spin them up if you play games or do intensive things.
Battery Life
Reserved. Need to test in more detail.
Am thinking of finding some other laptop reviews and seeing how they measure battery life, may see how this "stacks up".
Inside the Chassis
I had to open her up to switch the hard drive out from the m2 to the normal SATA.
To get the back off I had to remove around 7 screws, and then edge the casing gently up and backwards from the rear of the laptop near the fan exhausts.
The layout seems pretty sensible, you can easily replace the RAM modules or add another, the M2 slot was easily accessible. The battery is bottom left on the picture below and is accessible without even removing the back panel. The hard drive bay (bottom centre) is another couple of screws (back panel must be removed). PCS included a funny metal bracket, I figured out it's for the SATA hard drive in this slot.
Whilst there I snapped a picture of the RAM module too. This the normal 8GB stick, not the Hyper-X. Spec at the top of this post.
Temps
Since swapping out the M2 SSD my temps are much better.
The CPU appears to be the hottest running thing for me, these are the temps after about an hour of just general usage:
I can use this on my laptop no problem, I expect I can probably game on my lap as well for extended time, the fans really do kick the heat back out when they spin up so it won't overheat.
Issues
I think I can sort out the touchpad click thing via Windows settings. EDIT - I fixed this, instructions above under the Keyboard section.
The backlight bleed is usually caused by uneven panel stress with the bezel. I think it could be sorted out by opening up the bezel and loosening a screw or so.
Randomly, upon receiving my laptop with the trial version of Windows, I could not restart the laptop, it would only boot into windows via a cold boot. I disabled UEFI and re-installed my own Windows 10, and it's now working as normal.
I will update the below over the next few days as I do more stuff with it.
Chassis & Display
Optimus Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD IPS LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i5 Quad Core Processor 6300HQ (2.3GHz, 3.2GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON SODIMM DDR3 1600MHz (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 960M - 2.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 12
1st Hard Disk (SATA)
250GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
Ultra Slim 8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
Memory Card Reader
Integrated 6 in 1 Card Reader (SD /Mini SD/ SDHC / SDXC / MMC / RSMMC)
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Def. Audio + SoundBlaster™ Cinema 2
Wireless/Wired Networking
GIGABIT LAN & KILLER™ 1535-AC M.2 WIRELESS GAMING 802.11AC + BLUETOOTH 4.0
EDIT - Removed 250GB Crucial MX200 M.2 2280 SSD (upto 555MB/sR | 500MB/sW) and replaced with 250GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW).
Reason: High temps on the M2 drives, see http://imgur.com/q1tedGI
My current advice is not to get an M2 SSD, mine ran around 20C hotter than my normal Samsung 850 EVO SSD. I would suggest the following:
1st Hard Drive: Standard SSD of 250GB or bigger
2nd Hard Drive: Remove DVD and get another drive bay, and probably at this moment in time opt for 750GB WD Black if you need a 2nd drive.
First impressions...
Chassis
Excellent quality, can imagine it will be a bit of a fingerprint magnet though. Has a bit of a rubberised feel to it, or soft plastic if you will.
Laptop is pretty heavy, you wouldn't want to be moving it around too much. If you need mobility consider the 15" version instead.
The whole thing is very black and understated.
Picture of the laptop:
The lid closed:
Keyboard
Full-sized UK keyboard, fits in very nicely with the black theme. It's backlit which is a nice touch. You can change the keyboard backlight strength or disable it entirely.
The keyboard is obviously not as nice to type on as my main mechanical one, but then I would not expect it to be. So far it's working fine.
I have not detected any bend or flex in typing on the keyboard, it feels very sturdy to me. During gaming the right side of the keyboard tends to get a little warm, not to excess mind. The left side remains cool. Which is good as you will mainly be using the left side during gaming for WASD controls.
Closer image of the keyboard/trackpad:
Touchpad
The touchpad works OK but a mouse is preferred. I wanted the touchpad with the separate left/right click buttons so this fitted the bill. Again fits in with the black theme, very stealth
I'd strongly recommend disabling the tap to click function, it fires for me all the time otherwise. In Windows 10 you can do this by going Start > Settings > Devices > Mouse/Touchpad > Additional Mouse Settings (under Related Settings) > Click Settings with the Synapics Touchpad selected > click Tapping section > Uncheck "Enable Tapping".
Sound
Still need to test more sound, but it's OK so far. Goes reasonably loud, not bad speakers, but you'd probably be better off with a decent headset.
Display
This laptop comes with a 17.3" IPS display. The model listed is LGD046C - this is the display specs I believe for anyone interested: http://www.panelook.com/LP173WF4-SPD1_LG Display_17.3_LCM_overview_24463.html
The panel itself is lovely and bright, and has good viewing angles. I'd rate this type of display (IPS) very highly for general windows usage, photographic work etc. I was playing around with the brightness settings but I found around 60% seemed to be the best for me.
The viewing angles are very good:
IPS panels have the downside of IPS Glow though. More pronounced via the camera, but you can still see it.
IPS Glow is not a panel defect, it's just the nature of all IPS Panels.
Backlight bleed is also a plague on IPS panels. Mine suffers from it here, especially on the right hand side. Maybe it will improve given time? Not sure.
The camera picks it up better than I can, and some of what you see is IPS glow (moves when you move your head). But the right hand side is definitely BLB.
Now I don't normally use the laptop with the lights off, so this is less of an issue. I can still notice the BLB on the right on certain images, but it's not too bad. Shame it exists at all though because it's the only thing I can really find wrong with it.
Gaming
This is not a true gaming laptop. 960M is way less powerful than it's 970M/980M brothers (like seriously, a LOT less powerful!), however it's a capable GPU, and it should play less graphically intensive games just fine.
It's a shame you can't get this chassis with the 970M as an option. I'd like to see that, as the rest of the system would be up to the task.
Been playing some EU4 today with it, plays just fine. The GPU appeared to reach 65-70 degrees or so, which is perfectly acceptable. As I eluded to above, the main heat source seems to be somewhere under the right hemisphere of the laptop, the left side remains reasonably cool.
Fan Noise
Putting fans on max they can get a little noisy but not excessive.
During normal net browsing activity they won't even turn on. The laptop will automatically spin them up if you play games or do intensive things.
Battery Life
Reserved. Need to test in more detail.
Am thinking of finding some other laptop reviews and seeing how they measure battery life, may see how this "stacks up".
Inside the Chassis
I had to open her up to switch the hard drive out from the m2 to the normal SATA.
To get the back off I had to remove around 7 screws, and then edge the casing gently up and backwards from the rear of the laptop near the fan exhausts.
The layout seems pretty sensible, you can easily replace the RAM modules or add another, the M2 slot was easily accessible. The battery is bottom left on the picture below and is accessible without even removing the back panel. The hard drive bay (bottom centre) is another couple of screws (back panel must be removed). PCS included a funny metal bracket, I figured out it's for the SATA hard drive in this slot.
Whilst there I snapped a picture of the RAM module too. This the normal 8GB stick, not the Hyper-X. Spec at the top of this post.
Temps
Since swapping out the M2 SSD my temps are much better.
The CPU appears to be the hottest running thing for me, these are the temps after about an hour of just general usage:
I can use this on my laptop no problem, I expect I can probably game on my lap as well for extended time, the fans really do kick the heat back out when they spin up so it won't overheat.
Issues
I think I can sort out the touchpad click thing via Windows settings. EDIT - I fixed this, instructions above under the Keyboard section.
The backlight bleed is usually caused by uneven panel stress with the bezel. I think it could be sorted out by opening up the bezel and loosening a screw or so.
Randomly, upon receiving my laptop with the trial version of Windows, I could not restart the laptop, it would only boot into windows via a cold boot. I disabled UEFI and re-installed my own Windows 10, and it's now working as normal.
Last edited:
