I'll do a review of my experience with the laptop so far.
The specs:
Cpu: I5-5200u
Ram: 8gb ram
Storage: 120GB samsung 850 evo ssd
Wireless: AC-7265
Keyboard: usa
Operating system: none
Order until delivery time: 9 working days (Netherlands)
Purchase Price: €776
What's in the package??
First of all i'm really impressed by the quality of the packaging it came in. It came in a very sturdy big box. After I opened it I found a smaller box, packed in inflated plastic bags, not the cheap thin ones, but the sturdy stiff ones.
Inside the smaller box was the laptop, it was held in place by 2 white foam's and a piece of carton under it. In the box was also a manual, driver cd, the cd and manual of the samsung ssd and the power supply unit, which is very small! The power cable Pcs provided is very thick though, it probably weighs about twice as much as the entire power supply. the length of the cables is plenty, I'd guess 3m.
I weighed the device and it was 1.42 kilo's.
The laptop was covered in 2 plastic protector things, one on the screen and one around the touch pad area.
Exterior design.
The laptop looks very sleek, its all aluminum as far as I can tell, it feels very sturdy but it does flex near the keyboard and around the screen. The hinge is sturdy, I can't open the laptop with one hand, at least not easily (positive in my opinion). The laptop comes without any names on it, the only thing on the laptop is the Intel core i5 sticker on the front. It also has 2 stickers on the underside, both containing some sort of numbers which I can't make any sense of but its probably for pcs to be able to identify the laptop.
There are 3 white leds on the top right of the chassis above the keyboard. from left to right they indicate Wifi, charging and the power state. There is also a reset 'button', there is a very tiny hole in the left side of the laptop that states Reset, if the laptop would ever freeze I suppose you can use a paper clip to reset it there.
There are some minor remarks about the unit I got, there's a small edge on the left hand top corner of the screen. It has a small dent right under the shift key and the touch pad is kind of wobbly and sticks out in the left hand lower corner.
The screen.
I'm very impressed with this matte 1080p screen, it has a very nice finish. It is bright and seems to have good contrast. I can't see any back light bleeding but it does have (this was to be expected) IPS glow, but nothing serious. The colours on this display look very good to me although I'm not an expert on this sort of thing. I did notice that text was very unsharp, but this was due to windows setting the DPI scaling to 150%, once I brought it back to 125% it looked very sharp.
Input devices.
I'm very pleased by the keyboard, since I live in Holland i'm used to having a USA keyboard. The difference between the UK and USA keyboard is the size of the left hand shift key and the enter key. The usa keyboard has the wide shift key and the low and wide enter key. Above the enter key are the \ and | keys. The UK keyboard has these next to the left hand shift key as far as I know. I'll add a picture of it later If somebody wants to see it.
In my opinion the keyboards key travel is good and it responds well. It has good feedback so you know when you've hit the key.
The track pad is not so good in my opinion. I must say beforehand that I've never used a track pad that I liked except for the macbook ones, so I might be too picky. Anyways, the reason I don't really like it is because it doesn't track my movements when I start around the edges. moving from the middle to the edge it will work all the way, but starting at the edge will produce nothing. I really haven't figured out how to scroll correctly either, sometimes it scrolls as it should, but often it would resize the windows that i'm in too. But I guess I'm currently in the "you are not using it right" situation. And lastly, maybe because in my unit the track pad seems to have space, I have to press the left click pretty far down for it to actually 'click'. This results in some missed clicks, which can be annoying. The click is very loud though, which is nice in my opinion.
The track pad does track your movement well, it's very accurate in my opinion so thats good.
Battery life.
I've only had it for a day but I must say that this is what surprised me the most. I'm currently running windows 10 which is beta software but battery life seems to be fantastic. Pcs promises 7,5 hours and I'm pretty sure that with the final release of windows 10 it will manage, and probably already in windows 8. Today though it quit on me after a very impressive 6 hours and 45 minutes. This was with the display turned down, but not all the way to the maximum. I'm a student and did quite some note taking on it, installed office and browsed the web for most of the time.
Webcam, sound and microphone.
The webcam is good in my opinion. Don't expect any earth shattering performance though, the image it produces is distorted and it doesn't have very lively colours. But it will do just fine for me.
The microphone is what you expect from a laptop, you can be heard clearly but don't expect too much. What I really like about the microphone though is that it is placed next to the webcam, so anyone on the other side can't hear you type and click.
The speakers did impress me though, although the volume isn't very high. The sound it produced was very clear and to me it seemed to have a good range and quality was very good overall. It lacks bass though, but this is something almost all laptop speakers suffer from.
Performance.
Although I haven't really pushed this laptop yet everything seems to be working very smooth. I've never heard the fan kick in when normally operating the machine. But I had to know, so I ran Prime95 which pushes the processor to 100%. It seems that there is a fan in there somewhere, but its bearably audible. I ran the test for about 5 minutes and the chassis barely warmed up. I'll do a longer test later though and let you guys know if it gets any warmer.
Overall I'm very happy about this laptop, there are no issues that I absolutely can't live with.
So there it is, if there are any questions feel free to ask and I'll explore.
Update:
After about a week of using it I came to the conclusion that the battery life really is the real deal. So 7 hours easily with light work going on. There is also a drawback though and that is recharge time.. it takes FOREVER.. So better not let your companion run dry or you will be sitting at the desk for quite some time before you are fully mobile again.
Oh yea, did I mention the cable they provided? yea I did, you'd be able to charge a car with this bad boy.. No point in lugging this thing around so I'll be buying a new thin one soon.
The body is good, although after just about a week it starts to show some stripes were the rubbers on the display touch the body. I also noticed that the Ethernet port cover is made from plastic and the colour is slightly off (normally not visible). The hinge of the display is plastic too, although the colour on the hinge perfectly matches with the rest of the body.
The display in this unit is absolutely amazing! I changed the DPI settings again, this time I've set it to 100% as microsoft windows doesn't scale down some programs at 125%. At 100% everything is exactly the same size and very sharp.
My touchpad sticks out slight on the bottom left corner, I checked what was causing it and it seems there is a plastic spring pushing it upwards just a little too much. There is at least one more person with this issue. It does not affect the touchpad in any way whilst using it. But it does look a little cheap and this shouldn't have happened.
The specs:
Cpu: I5-5200u
Ram: 8gb ram
Storage: 120GB samsung 850 evo ssd
Wireless: AC-7265
Keyboard: usa
Operating system: none
Order until delivery time: 9 working days (Netherlands)
Purchase Price: €776
What's in the package??
First of all i'm really impressed by the quality of the packaging it came in. It came in a very sturdy big box. After I opened it I found a smaller box, packed in inflated plastic bags, not the cheap thin ones, but the sturdy stiff ones.
Inside the smaller box was the laptop, it was held in place by 2 white foam's and a piece of carton under it. In the box was also a manual, driver cd, the cd and manual of the samsung ssd and the power supply unit, which is very small! The power cable Pcs provided is very thick though, it probably weighs about twice as much as the entire power supply. the length of the cables is plenty, I'd guess 3m.
I weighed the device and it was 1.42 kilo's.
The laptop was covered in 2 plastic protector things, one on the screen and one around the touch pad area.
Exterior design.
The laptop looks very sleek, its all aluminum as far as I can tell, it feels very sturdy but it does flex near the keyboard and around the screen. The hinge is sturdy, I can't open the laptop with one hand, at least not easily (positive in my opinion). The laptop comes without any names on it, the only thing on the laptop is the Intel core i5 sticker on the front. It also has 2 stickers on the underside, both containing some sort of numbers which I can't make any sense of but its probably for pcs to be able to identify the laptop.
There are 3 white leds on the top right of the chassis above the keyboard. from left to right they indicate Wifi, charging and the power state. There is also a reset 'button', there is a very tiny hole in the left side of the laptop that states Reset, if the laptop would ever freeze I suppose you can use a paper clip to reset it there.
There are some minor remarks about the unit I got, there's a small edge on the left hand top corner of the screen. It has a small dent right under the shift key and the touch pad is kind of wobbly and sticks out in the left hand lower corner.
The screen.
I'm very impressed with this matte 1080p screen, it has a very nice finish. It is bright and seems to have good contrast. I can't see any back light bleeding but it does have (this was to be expected) IPS glow, but nothing serious. The colours on this display look very good to me although I'm not an expert on this sort of thing. I did notice that text was very unsharp, but this was due to windows setting the DPI scaling to 150%, once I brought it back to 125% it looked very sharp.
Input devices.
I'm very pleased by the keyboard, since I live in Holland i'm used to having a USA keyboard. The difference between the UK and USA keyboard is the size of the left hand shift key and the enter key. The usa keyboard has the wide shift key and the low and wide enter key. Above the enter key are the \ and | keys. The UK keyboard has these next to the left hand shift key as far as I know. I'll add a picture of it later If somebody wants to see it.
In my opinion the keyboards key travel is good and it responds well. It has good feedback so you know when you've hit the key.
The track pad is not so good in my opinion. I must say beforehand that I've never used a track pad that I liked except for the macbook ones, so I might be too picky. Anyways, the reason I don't really like it is because it doesn't track my movements when I start around the edges. moving from the middle to the edge it will work all the way, but starting at the edge will produce nothing. I really haven't figured out how to scroll correctly either, sometimes it scrolls as it should, but often it would resize the windows that i'm in too. But I guess I'm currently in the "you are not using it right" situation. And lastly, maybe because in my unit the track pad seems to have space, I have to press the left click pretty far down for it to actually 'click'. This results in some missed clicks, which can be annoying. The click is very loud though, which is nice in my opinion.
The track pad does track your movement well, it's very accurate in my opinion so thats good.
Battery life.
I've only had it for a day but I must say that this is what surprised me the most. I'm currently running windows 10 which is beta software but battery life seems to be fantastic. Pcs promises 7,5 hours and I'm pretty sure that with the final release of windows 10 it will manage, and probably already in windows 8. Today though it quit on me after a very impressive 6 hours and 45 minutes. This was with the display turned down, but not all the way to the maximum. I'm a student and did quite some note taking on it, installed office and browsed the web for most of the time.
Webcam, sound and microphone.
The webcam is good in my opinion. Don't expect any earth shattering performance though, the image it produces is distorted and it doesn't have very lively colours. But it will do just fine for me.
The microphone is what you expect from a laptop, you can be heard clearly but don't expect too much. What I really like about the microphone though is that it is placed next to the webcam, so anyone on the other side can't hear you type and click.
The speakers did impress me though, although the volume isn't very high. The sound it produced was very clear and to me it seemed to have a good range and quality was very good overall. It lacks bass though, but this is something almost all laptop speakers suffer from.
Performance.
Although I haven't really pushed this laptop yet everything seems to be working very smooth. I've never heard the fan kick in when normally operating the machine. But I had to know, so I ran Prime95 which pushes the processor to 100%. It seems that there is a fan in there somewhere, but its bearably audible. I ran the test for about 5 minutes and the chassis barely warmed up. I'll do a longer test later though and let you guys know if it gets any warmer.
Overall I'm very happy about this laptop, there are no issues that I absolutely can't live with.
So there it is, if there are any questions feel free to ask and I'll explore.
Update:
After about a week of using it I came to the conclusion that the battery life really is the real deal. So 7 hours easily with light work going on. There is also a drawback though and that is recharge time.. it takes FOREVER.. So better not let your companion run dry or you will be sitting at the desk for quite some time before you are fully mobile again.
Oh yea, did I mention the cable they provided? yea I did, you'd be able to charge a car with this bad boy.. No point in lugging this thing around so I'll be buying a new thin one soon.
The body is good, although after just about a week it starts to show some stripes were the rubbers on the display touch the body. I also noticed that the Ethernet port cover is made from plastic and the colour is slightly off (normally not visible). The hinge of the display is plastic too, although the colour on the hinge perfectly matches with the rest of the body.
The display in this unit is absolutely amazing! I changed the DPI settings again, this time I've set it to 100% as microsoft windows doesn't scale down some programs at 125%. At 100% everything is exactly the same size and very sharp.
My touchpad sticks out slight on the bottom left corner, I checked what was causing it and it seems there is a plastic spring pushing it upwards just a little too much. There is at least one more person with this issue. It does not affect the touchpad in any way whilst using it. But it does look a little cheap and this shouldn't have happened.
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