Which gaming laptop?

[Arney11]

Hi there everyone! Hope someone can help.

I'm looking at buying a custom made gaming laptop from PCS, this will be the 3rd time I've brought from them with my Defiance that I brought 4 years ago needing to be replaced. I have narrowed it down to 3, all of them with the same specs which are as follows-

Intel i7 9750H six core
16gb corsair 2666mh RAM
Geforce RTX 2060
1 TB Samsung SSD

The 3 I've narrowed it down to are- the Optimus X, Recoil III, and the Defiance V RTX all 17.3ins and priced from £1350-£1450 with the above spec. Is there much difference between these 3? Is there anything that stands out from them? I can't really see much between them.

Also, does the spec seem ok? I'm looking to do gaming mainly and some video editing. I play games like Football Manager or Warhammer TW 2.


Many thanks!

Craig

 

[Deleted member 94250]

Optimus X has the lowest price for them because it has the lowest number of bells and whistles.
the keyboard is monocolour backlit and no lighting effects, just one block color. It's pretty thick, and has no thunderbolt ports.
The high refresh rate screen has pathetic colour ratio (45% NTSC is just sad) and the low refresh rate doesn't seem to be compatible with anything (it still worked when I bought mine. Exact same specs as you but with 512gb nvme ssd)
I didn't care about these and my budget was £1200 (I got £70 off for black friday, when i ordered).

For video editing you want minimum 72% NTSC which doesn't seem to work when you try to get the low refresh rate screen for optimus.

Keeping this in mind, toss out the Optimus X. Its a great bang for buck for gamers but if you do actual stuff that needs good quality display it's out.
Don't get me wrong. I love my machine. but it isn't gonna be right for you.

 

[Arney11]

Optimus X has the lowest price for them because it has the lowest number of bells and whistles.
the keyboard is monocolour backlit and no lighting effects, just one block color. It's pretty thick, and has no thunderbolt ports.
The high refresh rate screen has pathetic colour ratio (45% NTSC is just sad) and the low refresh rate doesn't seem to be compatible with anything (it still worked when I bought mine. Exact same specs as you but with 512gb nvme ssd)
I didn't care about these and my budget was £1200 (I got £70 off for black friday, when i ordered).

For video editing you want minimum 72% NTSC which doesn't seem to work when you try to get the low refresh rate screen for optimus.

Keeping this in mind, toss out the Optimus X. Its a great bang for buck for gamers but if you do actual stuff that needs good quality display it's out.
Don't get me wrong. I love my machine. but it isn't gonna be right for you.

That's a great help, thanks for the reply 🙂

Yeah, if I wasn't doing video editing then I'd have probably gone for the Optimus.

Thanks again!

 

[Scanian]

I haven't received my Defiance V yet so I won't argue on anything but the point where I really did my homework. If you can, downgrade the CPU to Intel i7 8750H and save yourself the money. There is practically no difference in performance between the two, and unlike the GPU, that is not likely to change by any driver updates. It is a whole lot of money for just the "9th gen." label IMO. And I am humble to anyone who knows more than me, put that is my advice.

 

[SpyderTracks]

I haven't received my Defiance V yet so I won't argue on anything but the point where I really did my homework. If you can, downgrade the CPU to Intel i7 8750H and save yourself the money. There is practically no difference in performance between the two, and unlike the GPU, that is not likely to change by any driver updates. It is a whole lot of money for just the "9th gen." label IMO. And I am humble to anyone who knows more than me, put that is my advice.

I would agree with this personally.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Hi there everyone! Hope someone can help.

I'm looking at buying a custom made gaming laptop from PCS, this will be the 3rd time I've brought from them with my Defiance that I brought 4 years ago needing to be replaced. I have narrowed it down to 3, all of them with the same specs which are as follows-

Intel i7 9750H six core
16gb corsair 2666mh RAM
Geforce RTX 2060
1 TB Samsung SSD

The 3 I've narrowed it down to are- the Optimus X, Recoil III, and the Defiance V RTX all 17.3ins and priced from £1350-£1450 with the above spec. Is there much difference between these 3? Is there anything that stands out from them? I can't really see much between them.

Also, does the spec seem ok? I'm looking to do gaming mainly and some video editing. I play games like Football Manager or Warhammer TW 2.


Many thanks!

Craig

Out of the 3 you listed, personally if it were me, I'd go with the Recoil. It's the one we get least complaints about on the forum, the cooling is much better than the Defiance (which is the only reason I'd avoid the defiance), and it still retains a good quality screen.

If I had the overall choice, I'd always go for the Vortex though above all others. It's got the best screen by quite a margin, thunderbolt which is quite handy for large data transfers or futureproofing, and good thermals. If you're budget will allow, I'd say it's worth pushing for that.

 

[Deleted member 94250]

I haven't received my Defiance V yet so I won't argue on anything but the point where I really did my homework. If you can, downgrade the CPU to Intel i7 8750H and save yourself the money. There is practically no difference in performance between the two, and unlike the GPU, that is not likely to change by any driver updates. It is a whole lot of money for just the "9th gen." label IMO. And I am humble to anyone who knows more than me, put that is my advice.

it's a 3-5% increase in performance - not worth the price hike obviously

 

[Scanian]

If I had the overall choice, I'd always go for the Vortex though above all others. It's got the best screen by quite a margin, thunderbolt which is quite handy for large data transfers or futureproofing, and good thermals. If you're budget will allow, I'd say it's worth pushing for that.

I don't understand. The specs for the VORTEX has only one option looking like this:

USB/Thunderbolt Options
1 x USB 3.1 PORT (Type C) + 2 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT

It says nothing about thunderbolt, so how do you know that the Vortex platform supports thunderbolt?

 

[Oussebon]

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In fairness, the info PCS provide about USB ports is clear as mud

Here they talk about USB 3.0 and 3.1, elsewhere they talk about 3.1 Gen 2 vs 3.1 (used to mean Gen 1, but not specified, except in the main laptop configurator where it means Gen 2)

But yeah, the USB C port is a Thunderbolt one for the Vortex.

 

[Scanian]

In fairness, the info PCS provide about USB ports is clear as mud

To say the least. Doing a quick search told me that the following laptop platforms has thunderbolt:

Lafité IV
Vortex IX
Octane VI

...and no others. PCS should really put this info in the configurator.

 

[Oussebon]

The top screenshot I posted is the configurator. It's just not mentioned again in the configurator.

 

[Scanian]

The top screenshot I posted is the configurator. It's just not mentioned again in the configurator.

I know, but what I meant is the configuration of USB/Thunderbolt itself. It's misleading.

 

[SpyderTracks]

I think this is definitely worth raising with PCS, I agree that further details about thunderbolt would be beneficial for general users. And clarity on USB versions.