Hi, bought the 17" Vortex III laptop about 2-3 weeks ago and thought I'd do a review of it to share my experience 
The specs were:
Chassis & Display
Vortex Series: 17.3" Glossy Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-3720QM (2.60GHz) 6MB
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
120GB KINGSTON HYPERX 3K SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 555MB/sR | 510MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk
750GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD7500BPKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
SONY BC-5550H 4x BLURAY COMBO DRIVE & CYBERLINK SOFTWARE (£49)
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® ADVANCED-N 6235 (300Mbps) + BLUETOOTH
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
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence
Office Software
FREE Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 (Limited functionality Word & Excel)
Anti-Virus
NORTON ANTI-VIRUS 2012 - 1 Year Licence for 1 PC (£14)
Keyboard & Mouse
INTEGRATED BACKLIT UK KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD
Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 2.0 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)
Dead Pixel Guarantee
1 Year Dead Pixel Guarantee Inc. Labour & Carriage Costs (£19)
Insurance
1 Month Free Laptop Insurance inc. Accidental Damage & Theft
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 6 to 8 working days
Quantity
1
People who worked on it and processing dates:
Processed Date 06-08-2012
Pre-Production Date 07-08-2012
Build Date 13-08-2012
Test Date 22-08-2012
Awaiting Dispatch Date 22-08-2012
Dispatch Date 24-08-2012
Built By Ben Alderson
Tested By Carl Auckland
QC'd By Carl Auckland
Packed By Aiden Ramsden
Ok lets get started,
Performance and Reasons for Specs:
My last laptop I bought was about 2 and a half years ago and that was a pretty basic laptop with integrated graphics and nothing special about other than it was an awesome laptop with no faults with it from the time I had it. I thought I would get a real gaming laptop and trying pc gaming since laptop gaming has come a long way and I didnt really want a desktop because I move around too much and I hate being in a corner of a room or always in my Bedroom.
I chose the Vortex III because it looked good, had awesome specs and was vastly configurable to what I wanted.
Even tho its a 17.3" laptop I heard a lot of people talk about, because of its size it wasnt really good to move about in or is ideal for one place only. When I got it I was surprised that it wasnt really that heavy and I could easily move around the house occasionally carrying it and caused no problems even with the laptop cooler (carrying with adapter is different tho since it is pretty big and normally requires 2 trips lol). Havn't tried carrying it outdoors yet tho so that may be a different story.
I chose a balance of gpu, cpu, memory and hard drive (some might say ram is high but too late now lol). So far these specs have been good and reliable with games and other tasks performing brilliantly with full settings.
Initially I went with 2 750GB hard drives but after watching a few youtube videos about SSDs I was hooked onto them. They are awesome and one of the best decisions I made about the laptop. Its only a 120 GB SSD atm so I only put the OS, some software and games I'm currently playing onto it, old games I transfer to the HDD. Maybe if I feel its too full I grab a bigger one.
The Nvidia 675 is brilliant. When I first ordered it I then looked at the reviews at the AMD Radeon 7970 and thought "Crap, I've made a mistake, I should have gotten that", but when I ran games on this gpu it ran really smoothly. Caused no problems and I was really happy about my decision later.
Saying this I dont really play demanding games, my current game collection just includes Dark Souls 2, Prototype and Final Fantasy XI.
The Chassis
The laptop looks sleak and nice. When I saw pictures of it I really thought it might be bulky or the materials used are gonna be different. I thought the keyboard was gonna be disproportionate to the rest of it (from pictures I saw), but when it came, I was so happy and it looked really nice, one I felt proud to own. I heard people had problems with the enter key being smaller than the average but I have had no problems with that at all. The backlight is a fine touch on a fine laptop.
Screen
The screen is one of the best things about the laptop, it is so bright and vivid and big! I chose Glossy screen because I just use it indoors and my last laptop was glossy screen and caused no problems whatsoever. Had one problem. there is a dead pixel towards the centre of the screen which annoys mecant really unsee it and was frustrating, I requested a RMA and it got approved and they collected it today (coincidentally the day I write the review )
Sound
If theres a negative about this laptop its the sound quality. I mean its not too bad but compared to other laptops ive had it could be slighly louder. I don't know If I got the settings wrong or the drivers mixed up but so far its been decent, nothing to boast about.
Overall
Overall the laptop is worth the price. It runs very fast and so far very reliably
Pros:
Speed
Looks Stylish
Vivid and Bright Screen
Backlit Keyboard
Weight
Cons:
Sound
a rogue pixel (not fault of PCS tho I dont think)
Size of adapter
Overall: 9.5/10 (the cons are so minor that put together they only take away 0.5 from total score)
Hope this review is helpful and hopefully I should get my laptop back problem free in the next week or so
Regards,
Harun
The specs were:
Chassis & Display
Vortex Series: 17.3" Glossy Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-3720QM (2.60GHz) 6MB
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
120GB KINGSTON HYPERX 3K SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 555MB/sR | 510MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk
750GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD7500BPKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
SONY BC-5550H 4x BLURAY COMBO DRIVE & CYBERLINK SOFTWARE (£49)
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® ADVANCED-N 6235 (300Mbps) + BLUETOOTH
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
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence
Office Software
FREE Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 (Limited functionality Word & Excel)
Anti-Virus
NORTON ANTI-VIRUS 2012 - 1 Year Licence for 1 PC (£14)
Keyboard & Mouse
INTEGRATED BACKLIT UK KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD
Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 2.0 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)
Dead Pixel Guarantee
1 Year Dead Pixel Guarantee Inc. Labour & Carriage Costs (£19)
Insurance
1 Month Free Laptop Insurance inc. Accidental Damage & Theft
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 6 to 8 working days
Quantity
1
People who worked on it and processing dates:
Processed Date 06-08-2012
Pre-Production Date 07-08-2012
Build Date 13-08-2012
Test Date 22-08-2012
Awaiting Dispatch Date 22-08-2012
Dispatch Date 24-08-2012
Built By Ben Alderson
Tested By Carl Auckland
QC'd By Carl Auckland
Packed By Aiden Ramsden
Ok lets get started,
Performance and Reasons for Specs:
My last laptop I bought was about 2 and a half years ago and that was a pretty basic laptop with integrated graphics and nothing special about other than it was an awesome laptop with no faults with it from the time I had it. I thought I would get a real gaming laptop and trying pc gaming since laptop gaming has come a long way and I didnt really want a desktop because I move around too much and I hate being in a corner of a room or always in my Bedroom.
I chose the Vortex III because it looked good, had awesome specs and was vastly configurable to what I wanted.
Even tho its a 17.3" laptop I heard a lot of people talk about, because of its size it wasnt really good to move about in or is ideal for one place only. When I got it I was surprised that it wasnt really that heavy and I could easily move around the house occasionally carrying it and caused no problems even with the laptop cooler (carrying with adapter is different tho since it is pretty big and normally requires 2 trips lol). Havn't tried carrying it outdoors yet tho so that may be a different story.
I chose a balance of gpu, cpu, memory and hard drive (some might say ram is high but too late now lol). So far these specs have been good and reliable with games and other tasks performing brilliantly with full settings.
Initially I went with 2 750GB hard drives but after watching a few youtube videos about SSDs I was hooked onto them. They are awesome and one of the best decisions I made about the laptop
. Its only a 120 GB SSD atm so I only put the OS, some software and games I'm currently playing onto it, old games I transfer to the HDD. Maybe if I feel its too full I grab a bigger one.The Nvidia 675 is brilliant. When I first ordered it I then looked at the reviews at the AMD Radeon 7970 and thought "Crap, I've made a mistake, I should have gotten that", but when I ran games on this gpu it ran really smoothly. Caused no problems and I was really happy about my decision later.
Saying this I dont really play demanding games, my current game collection just includes Dark Souls 2, Prototype and Final Fantasy XI.
The Chassis
The laptop looks sleak and nice. When I saw pictures of it I really thought it might be bulky or the materials used are gonna be different. I thought the keyboard was gonna be disproportionate to the rest of it (from pictures I saw), but when it came, I was so happy and it looked really nice, one I felt proud to own. I heard people had problems with the enter key being smaller than the average but I have had no problems with that at all. The backlight is a fine touch on a fine laptop.
Screen
The screen is one of the best things about the laptop, it is so bright and vivid and big! I chose Glossy screen because I just use it indoors and my last laptop was glossy screen and caused no problems whatsoever. Had one problem. there is a dead pixel towards the centre of the screen which annoys mecant really unsee it and was frustrating, I requested a RMA and it got approved
and they collected it today (coincidentally the day I write the review )Sound
If theres a negative about this laptop its the sound quality. I mean its not too bad but compared to other laptops ive had it could be slighly louder. I don't know If I got the settings wrong or the drivers mixed up but so far its been decent, nothing to boast about.
Overall
Overall the laptop is worth the price. It runs very fast and so far very reliably
Pros:
Speed
Looks Stylish
Vivid and Bright Screen
Backlit Keyboard
Weight
Cons:
Sound
a rogue pixel (not fault of PCS tho I dont think)
Size of adapter
Overall: 9.5/10 (the cons are so minor that put together they only take away 0.5 from total score)
Hope this review is helpful and hopefully I should get my laptop back problem free in the next week or so
Regards,
Harun
