2 X 17.3" Vortex IV Gaming Laptops

Specification:
Chassis & Display: Vortex Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU): Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-4710MQ (2.50GHz) 6MB
Memory (RAM): 4GB KINGSTON HYPER-X IMPACT 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (1 x 4GB)
Graphics Card: AMD® Radeon® R9 M290X - 4GB DDR5 Video RAM (Special Offer)
2nd Graphics Card: NONE
Memory - Hard Disk: 1TB SERIAL ATA II 2.5" HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB CACHE (5,400rpm)
2nd Hard Disk: NONE
RAID: NONE
mSATA SSD Drive: NONE
2nd mSATA SSD Drive: NONE
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive: 8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
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
Sound Card: Intel 5.1 Channel High Definition Audio + SPDIF/MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless: GIGABIT LAN & KILLER™ 1202 WIRELESS GAMING 802.11N + BLUETOOTH 4.0
Wireless Router/HomePlugs: NONE
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 & 230W AC Adaptor
Keyboard Language: INTEGRATED BACKLIT UK KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD
Operating System: NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED

PRICE: £862.00 / £861.00

First of all, I would like to apologise for my English as it's not my first language. If there is anything that
I did not explain clearly please feel free to leave me a comment, I will try my best to answer any questions.

I actually purchased two of these laptop, because my brother tried the first one and he loves it so much, he actually "stole" mine so I have to order
a second one.

The first one (ordered on 04/08/2014 [Mon], arrived on 11/08/2014 [Mon]), only required 4 working days.
The second one (ordered on 22/08/2014 [Fri]. arrived on 28/08/2014 [Thurs]), only required 4 working days.

Much quicker than I expected, I was amazed by the speedy building service from the team:
Million Thanks to: Alex Sheard, Jonathon Brown, Anthony Cunliffe, Mohammad Akhtar, Ben Alderson and James Dransfiled

Here is the quick summary of my laptop:
Pros:

• The laptop itself is very sturdy, it feels much better than it shown on the picture.
• Amazing display, especially when you're watching video or playing games on 1080p.
• Speaker is pretty decent, clear and loud but don't expect too much punchy bass from the built-in subwoofer.
• Two hard-drive bays. I upgrade a samsung SSD by myself and used it to run the OS. Thanks to the i7 processor and
  hyperx ram, the laptop runs almost instantly on everything.
• The ventilation is absolutely amazing, I tried to leave the laptop stay on for roughly 56 hours, the bottom and the sides of laptop did not heat up
  at all. You can only feel a little bit of heat when you are playing heavily graphic demand games.
• The laptop is very quiet, only a small amount of hiss sound when playing games [unnoticeable].
• The backlit keyboard is very convenient when typing in dark, plus the adjustable colour keyboard is quite amusing.
• Although I've heard a lot of negatives feedbacks about the AMD graphics card, but the price is really a bargain so I thought to give it a try, and it turns out
  to be much much better than I expected. I've play several games such as (Far Cry 3, GTA4, Sleeping Dogs etc) on very high settings, and
  all of them run very smooth without any problem.
• SuperSpeed 3.0 usb is very quick in transferring large files.
• The Intel 5.1 channel high definition sound card is superly good. The sound it pumped out is very powerful and loud when using headphone. I used to need to turn the volume up to
  nearly 60/70% on my previous laptop but now it only required 20/30% to get equivalent loudness.

Cons:

• When I ordered the laptops, I did inform pcspecialist that I'm going to use Windows 7 but they insist to send me the drivers cd of Windows 8, both of them! Although you can download
  Windows 7 drivers from the website but I still don't understand why.
• Speaking of drivers, some of them are kind of confusing. For instances, 1.) There are two version of drivers for the wireless card, the version One actually couldn't work and it took me forever to fix it
  as the Qualcomm driver could not just uninstalled using the normal way. 2.) I did not order Sound Blaster X-Fi 3 but they put a sticker on my laptop so I'm not sure whether I should install the
  sound blaster driver or not.
• Giant AC adapter, but I guess this is what you expected to run a powerful machine.
• The position of the touchpad is a bit awkward, as you can see the picture below, when you are typing your wrist is rest
  on it, the cursor is moving around or even worse when you accidentally click on something. It has been couple of weeks now and I still not quite used to it yet.
• I'm very disappointed by the fingerprint scanner, it does not work all the time. I did a test on it, 6 out of 20 times it won't work. Picture below shows the drivers are installed correctly but it can't detect fingerprint device.
  This happened to both of the laptops. I sent a message to pcspecialist (15/08/2014), and they replied (20/08/2914) which it did not really helped. But they did told me to phone them for further help.
• The printscreen key does not work as well.
• The keyboard is very difficult to clean as you can see from the picture below.

Summary:
Overall I'm very satisfied with my purchased, high end quality laptop with low price, I will definitely come back to Pcspec in the future.


View attachment 5521Specification:

Hi csLian seems like a fair review, I can identify with several of the pros and cons you mention and I don't know what your first language is, but you're English is very impressive too !

Just regarding the sound blaster x-fi mb3 software, it's an audio processing package, not actually a driver. It's worth installing as does make quite an improvement to the sound quality.

daveeb said:

Hi csLian seems like a fair review, I can identify with several of the pros and cons you mention and I don't know what your first language is, but you're English is very impressive too !

Click to expand...

Thank You for your time and the complement.

SpyderTracks said:

Just regarding the sound blaster x-fi mb3 software, it's an audio processing package, not actually a driver. It's worth installing as does make quite an improvement to the sound quality.

Click to expand...

Oh really? I didn't know that, I will give it a try and see how it goes, thank you for the info. unk:

Thanks for your review, I'll be getting my Vortex IV early next week, cannot wait to fiddle with the light up keyboard. Is there a shortcut button FN to disable to trackpad? I'll be using a mouse pretty much all the time with it so having that disabled will solve the issue of the wrist moving the mouse whilst typing.

Mingram said:

Thanks for your review, I'll be getting my Vortex IV early next week, cannot wait to fiddle with the light up keyboard. Is there a shortcut button FN to disable to trackpad? I'll be using a mouse pretty much all the time with it so having that disabled will solve the issue of the wrist moving the mouse whilst typing.

Click to expand...

Yes, Fn and F1 disables the trackpad.

SpyderTracks said:

Yes, Fn and F1 disables the trackpad.

Click to expand...

Thank you!