Hey guys,
This is my review of the Defiance III from PCSpecialist - let me know if you have any questions and i'll endevour to answer back.
The Defiance III from PCSpecialist is a gaming laptop through and through, built to rival any of the big boys on the market such as the MSI GT72VR and 2017 Acer Predator. Customers can pick and choose the parts they feel will benefit them the most; want a 1080p gaming laptop? the i5 with the 1060 is your winner, want something that's gonna last you for a few more years perhaps taking into account the new 3k/4k bump in resolution, then they've got your covered. The RAM offering is vast, there is a large number of options for the processor and a choice between the Nvidia 1060 and 1070 in the graphics department...
I ordered:
- Intel i7 - 7700HQ
- 16gb 2133mhz DDR4
- Nvidia GTX 1070
- 1 TB HDD 7200rpm Hard drive
Initial Impressions:
First things first - build took 7 days from payment to dispatch. According to the PCspecialists flow chart shown on the account page, this was "average" with the Pre-production stage taking the longest period with a total of 4 days from start to finish. Unfortunately during this period the price of the parts on PCSpecialist actually went down and once i'd factored in that i'd used the Finance option this actually calculated at a reduction of the quote by £50. Be aware, once you've confirmed the order based on your quote this is essentially locked in. I queried this with PCspecialist as I wanted to establish the actual stage of build (at this stage it was still Pre-prod; which presumably meant they were sourcing the parts) I requested that they add a SSD drive to make up the cost reduction in parts on the new quote. Unfortunately I got push back on this, I understand that they issue the build requirements at the cost that was agreed but if a build isn't actually on the bench I don't see why they can't factor in the total time taken and if things drop in price offer something a little extra. I'm ultimately left with the Delta between my original quote and the one i produced a week later - existing parts rarely go up in price, and if this happened at PCworld/Local supermarket you'd be well within your rights to take it back and get a refund and buy it at the lower price. I'm just sayin....Real world - PCSpecialist shouldn't expect customers to fill this gap when something has yet to be built or even delivered. With that out the way... Let's talk Product!
Keyboard - Backlit for extra impact; this is really a non-functional bonus of the build; users can set up the backlight to vary in colour and combine 3 separate colours how they see fit - it's great to be able to type in a darkened room and the actual light given off is quite subtle, you're not going to get a light show unless you set it up to flash or glow in a specific way. But! There is a problem with the Clevo software supplied for Windows 10. Once installed the software allows users to customise the colours and settings, but no matter what I tried the colour would always use a fade in/fade out every 5 seconds; this was a really annoying feature/bug - i'd read on forums that a full shut down and restart would resolve the problem; I attempted this to no avail; I eventually just uninstalled the software and kept the default blue backlight. This is all you really need, but the lasting impression was that the software is a bit naff and clearly there is a dependency on Clevo to resolve and distribute this driver/software accordingly. The actual keys are your traditional chicklet spring based affair, there is a good press point on the keys, satifisfying if not earth shattering ,as long as the keys don't feel like they're going to shoot off i'm a fairly happy camper. Noise generated from key taps is low.
Trackpad - Matte aesthetic; easy to use - Nice and big to boot; functionally trackpads don't differ massively from build to build in my opinion, double touch acts as a scroll bar and the two seperate buttons make it easier to specify the action required. The finger print scanner is a bit hit and miss. I initially used it on first setting up Windows and it seemed to work on the second or third try on average, but it requires the user to VERY slowly move their finger over the pad to ensure it can read accurately; it really reminded me of the old Samsung Note 4/Galaxy S6 range of phones that had the same requirement; it eventually just becomes easier to quickly tap in your pin. Don't buy this laptop on the principle that it's got a finger print scanner, its simply not reliable enough.
Case: Aluminium and plastic blend - at 3.2 kg in weight, metrics are one of those things that when reading over them i'm given to believe that unless you have something of similar relative weight to try in the hand, you're eyes just phase over the values. In this instance it's worth reading the numbers again and trying a few things on the weighing scales to get an idea. This is a heavy laptop - If your planning on taking this thing to meetings i'd advise you get a decent rucksack as sliding this laptop into a shoulder bag is going to be great for building those muscles but it's not ideal for running from meeting to meeting. In the whole - this laptop has a lot of lovely parts in it, but that equates to a heavy machine. In the main, the laptop is comprised of aluminium metal including the lid (but not the screen bezel), the top and bottom of the main shell below the keyboard is all metal; the keyboard section is made of plastic nested within the metal shell. Overall it feels very professional with nice clean lines and I appreciate the general metal areas as they create a much sturdier feel vs. full plastic bodies. I certainly haven't done any "bend" tests that professional review sites conduct to establish the ease at which something can be broken; to be honest i'm quite careful with my tech and don't think its necessary given there are no creaks and crunches when opening the laptop screen. The back of the case is fixed to the shell with roughly 12 screws. When i first got it I was a bit confused about how one went about actually seperating the back from the body without grips or a specific port with which to tug the thing off, however after I unscrewed the full back and got hold off the back (where the screen section meets the body) i was able to get the back removed. The setup internally is very easily navigated. The drives are stacked so there was a bit more unscrewing to get the HDD drive out carefully and pop in an SDD drive before putting the HDD back on top (oo er) and screwing the fixture back in. There are two M.2 slots for adding even more hard drives. There are plenty of options. Once everything was in, I just had to fix the back of the case back onto the main body, which has a satisfactory click as the plastic pegs click back into place and rescrew the thing back on.
Screen: Resolution 2880 x 1620 - I opted for the 3K upgrade; This omits the gsync functionality offered with the standard 1080 offering. My advice - do it! Yes it's a concession, but the crispness you get from a 3K screen is worth it on a screen this size, but yes, i get it, you're going to have to put up with standard vsync settings. Given, I haven't tried tried Gysnc - I use a Freesync monitor (AMDs equivalent) on my desktop, and while I love the excellent refresh rates, i have read that Gsync is superior - you just have to see the 3K screen. This explicitly links back to performance too, which i'll cover in a bit. Windows 10 has gotten better at setting the size of icons, text and buttons relatively to the screen resolution set, which means its no longer a case of squinting at the screen on 3K-4K plus screens to try and work out what you're clicking on. Colour reproduction is very good, i was particularly impressed with the blacks when looking at images - one minor negative point is light bleed. I don't think you can read a laptop review worth it's salt on PCSpecialist site that doesn't specify an issue with light bleed. The top left hand corner and the bottom right are the key areas affected. This may differ from build to build but it's an annoyance none the less. At least there are no dead pixels. Nobody wants dead pixels.
Hardware & Performance: Desktop power on a laptop. The processor may power a lot of the logic, physics and AI of a game, but its the GPU thats doing the majority of the heavy lifting and the 1070 is a beast in this regard. There is a slight deficit when comparison to the 1070 desktop counterpart, but i hardly think you'd notice it unless you're monitoring those frames. The 3k screen really comes into it's own at this point, it feels like a perfect match with the 1070 powering the 2880-1620 screen. Power intensive games like The Witcher 3 on ultra with Hairworks on run between 40 fps - 60 fps with VSYNC enabled. This feels consistently smooth from game to game and at 3k it just looks beautiful with next to no aliasing on a screen of this size. This is gaming on the go.
Conclusion; Well made and easily upgradeable, this powerful laptop will easily replace a desktop equivalent if you've got gaming in mind. Bear in mind the heavy nature of this size of laptop if you plan to cart it around with you for business meetings, but if you want performance from your laptop no matter where you are, this laptop has it in spades.
This is my review of the Defiance III from PCSpecialist - let me know if you have any questions and i'll endevour to answer back.
The Defiance III from PCSpecialist is a gaming laptop through and through, built to rival any of the big boys on the market such as the MSI GT72VR and 2017 Acer Predator. Customers can pick and choose the parts they feel will benefit them the most; want a 1080p gaming laptop? the i5 with the 1060 is your winner, want something that's gonna last you for a few more years perhaps taking into account the new 3k/4k bump in resolution, then they've got your covered. The RAM offering is vast, there is a large number of options for the processor and a choice between the Nvidia 1060 and 1070 in the graphics department...
I ordered:
- Intel i7 - 7700HQ
- 16gb 2133mhz DDR4
- Nvidia GTX 1070
- 1 TB HDD 7200rpm Hard drive
Initial Impressions:
First things first - build took 7 days from payment to dispatch. According to the PCspecialists flow chart shown on the account page, this was "average" with the Pre-production stage taking the longest period with a total of 4 days from start to finish. Unfortunately during this period the price of the parts on PCSpecialist actually went down and once i'd factored in that i'd used the Finance option this actually calculated at a reduction of the quote by £50. Be aware, once you've confirmed the order based on your quote this is essentially locked in. I queried this with PCspecialist as I wanted to establish the actual stage of build (at this stage it was still Pre-prod; which presumably meant they were sourcing the parts) I requested that they add a SSD drive to make up the cost reduction in parts on the new quote. Unfortunately I got push back on this, I understand that they issue the build requirements at the cost that was agreed but if a build isn't actually on the bench I don't see why they can't factor in the total time taken and if things drop in price offer something a little extra. I'm ultimately left with the Delta between my original quote and the one i produced a week later - existing parts rarely go up in price, and if this happened at PCworld/Local supermarket you'd be well within your rights to take it back and get a refund and buy it at the lower price. I'm just sayin....Real world - PCSpecialist shouldn't expect customers to fill this gap when something has yet to be built or even delivered. With that out the way... Let's talk Product!
Keyboard - Backlit for extra impact; this is really a non-functional bonus of the build; users can set up the backlight to vary in colour and combine 3 separate colours how they see fit - it's great to be able to type in a darkened room and the actual light given off is quite subtle, you're not going to get a light show unless you set it up to flash or glow in a specific way. But! There is a problem with the Clevo software supplied for Windows 10. Once installed the software allows users to customise the colours and settings, but no matter what I tried the colour would always use a fade in/fade out every 5 seconds; this was a really annoying feature/bug - i'd read on forums that a full shut down and restart would resolve the problem; I attempted this to no avail; I eventually just uninstalled the software and kept the default blue backlight. This is all you really need, but the lasting impression was that the software is a bit naff and clearly there is a dependency on Clevo to resolve and distribute this driver/software accordingly. The actual keys are your traditional chicklet spring based affair, there is a good press point on the keys, satifisfying if not earth shattering ,as long as the keys don't feel like they're going to shoot off i'm a fairly happy camper. Noise generated from key taps is low.
Trackpad - Matte aesthetic; easy to use - Nice and big to boot; functionally trackpads don't differ massively from build to build in my opinion, double touch acts as a scroll bar and the two seperate buttons make it easier to specify the action required. The finger print scanner is a bit hit and miss. I initially used it on first setting up Windows and it seemed to work on the second or third try on average, but it requires the user to VERY slowly move their finger over the pad to ensure it can read accurately; it really reminded me of the old Samsung Note 4/Galaxy S6 range of phones that had the same requirement; it eventually just becomes easier to quickly tap in your pin. Don't buy this laptop on the principle that it's got a finger print scanner, its simply not reliable enough.
Case: Aluminium and plastic blend - at 3.2 kg in weight, metrics are one of those things that when reading over them i'm given to believe that unless you have something of similar relative weight to try in the hand, you're eyes just phase over the values. In this instance it's worth reading the numbers again and trying a few things on the weighing scales to get an idea. This is a heavy laptop - If your planning on taking this thing to meetings i'd advise you get a decent rucksack as sliding this laptop into a shoulder bag is going to be great for building those muscles but it's not ideal for running from meeting to meeting. In the whole - this laptop has a lot of lovely parts in it, but that equates to a heavy machine. In the main, the laptop is comprised of aluminium metal including the lid (but not the screen bezel), the top and bottom of the main shell below the keyboard is all metal; the keyboard section is made of plastic nested within the metal shell. Overall it feels very professional with nice clean lines and I appreciate the general metal areas as they create a much sturdier feel vs. full plastic bodies. I certainly haven't done any "bend" tests that professional review sites conduct to establish the ease at which something can be broken; to be honest i'm quite careful with my tech and don't think its necessary given there are no creaks and crunches when opening the laptop screen. The back of the case is fixed to the shell with roughly 12 screws. When i first got it I was a bit confused about how one went about actually seperating the back from the body without grips or a specific port with which to tug the thing off, however after I unscrewed the full back and got hold off the back (where the screen section meets the body) i was able to get the back removed. The setup internally is very easily navigated. The drives are stacked so there was a bit more unscrewing to get the HDD drive out carefully and pop in an SDD drive before putting the HDD back on top (oo er) and screwing the fixture back in. There are two M.2 slots for adding even more hard drives. There are plenty of options. Once everything was in, I just had to fix the back of the case back onto the main body, which has a satisfactory click as the plastic pegs click back into place and rescrew the thing back on.
Screen: Resolution 2880 x 1620 - I opted for the 3K upgrade; This omits the gsync functionality offered with the standard 1080 offering. My advice - do it! Yes it's a concession, but the crispness you get from a 3K screen is worth it on a screen this size, but yes, i get it, you're going to have to put up with standard vsync settings. Given, I haven't tried tried Gysnc - I use a Freesync monitor (AMDs equivalent) on my desktop, and while I love the excellent refresh rates, i have read that Gsync is superior - you just have to see the 3K screen. This explicitly links back to performance too, which i'll cover in a bit. Windows 10 has gotten better at setting the size of icons, text and buttons relatively to the screen resolution set, which means its no longer a case of squinting at the screen on 3K-4K plus screens to try and work out what you're clicking on. Colour reproduction is very good, i was particularly impressed with the blacks when looking at images - one minor negative point is light bleed. I don't think you can read a laptop review worth it's salt on PCSpecialist site that doesn't specify an issue with light bleed. The top left hand corner and the bottom right are the key areas affected. This may differ from build to build but it's an annoyance none the less. At least there are no dead pixels. Nobody wants dead pixels.
Hardware & Performance: Desktop power on a laptop. The processor may power a lot of the logic, physics and AI of a game, but its the GPU thats doing the majority of the heavy lifting and the 1070 is a beast in this regard. There is a slight deficit when comparison to the 1070 desktop counterpart, but i hardly think you'd notice it unless you're monitoring those frames. The 3k screen really comes into it's own at this point, it feels like a perfect match with the 1070 powering the 2880-1620 screen. Power intensive games like The Witcher 3 on ultra with Hairworks on run between 40 fps - 60 fps with VSYNC enabled. This feels consistently smooth from game to game and at 3k it just looks beautiful with next to no aliasing on a screen of this size. This is gaming on the go.
Conclusion; Well made and easily upgradeable, this powerful laptop will easily replace a desktop equivalent if you've got gaming in mind. Bear in mind the heavy nature of this size of laptop if you plan to cart it around with you for business meetings, but if you want performance from your laptop no matter where you are, this laptop has it in spades.
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