Spec with total price £1112:
Chassis & Display
Recoil Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD 60Hz 72% NTSC LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 Six Core Processor 8750H (2.2GHz, 4.1GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM)
8GB Corsair 2400MHz SODIMM DDR4 (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1060 - 6.0GB GDDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1
1st Hard Disk
2TB SEAGATE 7mm SERIAL ATA III 2.5" HARD DRIVE WITH 128MB CACHE (5,400rpm)
1st M.2 SSD Drive
250GB WD Black™ M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 3000MB/s R | 1600MB/s W)
AC Adaptor
1 x 180W AC Adaptor
Battery
Recoil II Series 46WH Lithium Ion Battery
Thermal Paste
COOLER MASTER MASTERGEL MAKER THERMAL COMPOUND
Sound Card
2 Channel High Def. Audio + SoundBlaster™ Cinema 5
Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-9560 M.2 (1.73Gbps, 802.11AC) +BT 5.0
USB Options
1 x USB 3.1 PORT (Type C) + 2 x USB 3.1 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Notebook Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 1MP HD WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Dead Pixel Guarantee
30 Day Dead Pixel Guarantee Inc. Labour & Carriage Costs
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 3 to 5 working days
Timings
01/09/18: Ordered system.
13/09/18: System arrives. Delay mainly due to failure in testing and diagnosis and part replacement although it was a few days before the build started.
13/09/18: System returned. Multiple dead pixels on panel covered under dead pixel guarantee.
20/09/18: Back with me again. Dead pixels gone but larger than standard backlight bleed present in new panel. Also returned with 150W charger instead of 180W.
I'm very busy now and need the system so that is why there is a delay here.
08/10/18: Sent in. Panel replaced again and new one has little backlight bleed. Charger changed back to correct one.
15/10/18: Back with me. Everything seems fine.
Phone and email support have been very helpful throughout. I suggest anyone uses phone support if they want a response quickly though as email response times are very variable.
Main review
Overall I'm very happy with the laptop. It does everything I need it to do and more so will hopefully last a good while.
Chassis: It is very portable in dimensions and with the combination of solid feeling plastic and fingerprint magnet aluminium it feels solid. The laptop weighs only 2.13kg but the charger with cable weighs a total of 0.8kg so almost 3kg if you carry the lot. The laptop should be used on hard, flat, clean surfaces as the air intake is on the bottom.
Display: A very nice matte IPS panel. Good colour, viewing angles, black and white levels. Given that I am on my 3rd panel I can't conclude that these panels are of consistently good quality though. The backlight bleed is still a little more than I might like but it's very rarely noticeable unlike on the previous panel.
Interface: The keyboard may split opinion. It even splits my own opinion. It is actually very nice to type and game on with my typing speed above other laptops and close to a basic desktop keyboard. The noise isn't that loud although louder than other laptops. It certainly is a different sound though, a high pitched click compared to a dull thud on pure membrane boards. The keys are very inconsistent. Some register before the click and some after. The spacebar has quite a lot of travel before click and registration so needs quite a push compared to other keys and I still find it difficult to hit it right every time. The backlight is very nice and can be configured to loads of different patterns. I just use a plain colour on low brightness.
The trackpad is very good. It is a decent size with the buttons integrated in the bottom half. Unlike other laptops I have used with buttons in the touch surface, I have had no problems with unintentional gestures and the gestures work well. The one issue with the trackpad is it is not supported by the current Linux kernel so requires a kernel patch that can be found from these forums to enable it.
Input/Output: Decent selection of ports in sensible places. Slightly disappointing that the usb 3 and usb c ports are only running the original usb 3.0 standard but that is fast enough for most things. More of an issue is the SD reader as it only uses usb 2.0 which is useless for large photos so I just use a cheap usb 3 reader.
Audio/Video: The speakers are better than expected but they are dual downward firing laptop speakers so don't expect a bassy or rich sound. Headphone out and microphone in obviously sound fine. The inbuilt microphone seems decent enough for my use of occasional video calls. The webcam is 720p but is quite grainy and terrible in lower light but definitely useable. A £15 usb 720p webcam is massively better. This seems to be common in all laptops.
Thermals and noise: For the amount of performance packed into a small body the maximum temperatures reached were very impressive. Under full CPU and GPU load, the temperatures stayed within a very acceptable range. The fan noise at these temperatures does get rather loud but not as unbearable as I imagined. Under light load (writing this with a few tabs open with one playing video) the fan does not spin up and as I have not accessed the hdd in a while it is not spinning either so the laptop is basically silent. When plugged in the fan switches to a slightly more aggressive profile so does spin slowly when doing not much but not loudly. After long stress tests, the top of the keyboard did get warm but not uncomfortably so. My mouse hand to the right of the laptop did get quite warm but not too bad, it'll be good in winter.
Battery: The battery is not great. Using very lightly with Windows you might get 3-4 hours. Do much more and it will drop quickly. You definitely have to carry the charger. Performance is significantly reduced on battery too though this might be in part due to many settings that can be changed.
Performance (finally): I can't really comment on this much. CPU heavy video encoding was very fast and gaming is just below (because it's a laptop) what you would expect for a GTX1060. Everything launches very quickly off the SSD. RAM is adequate for now but I chose 1 stick so it would be an easy upgrade in the future.
If anyone wants benchmarks just ask and I'll download and run them.
Overall a great laptop but with a few things to consider. Feel free to ask anything. Congratulations to anyone who read the big wall of text.
Chassis & Display
Recoil Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD 60Hz 72% NTSC LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 Six Core Processor 8750H (2.2GHz, 4.1GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM)
8GB Corsair 2400MHz SODIMM DDR4 (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1060 - 6.0GB GDDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1
1st Hard Disk
2TB SEAGATE 7mm SERIAL ATA III 2.5" HARD DRIVE WITH 128MB CACHE (5,400rpm)
1st M.2 SSD Drive
250GB WD Black™ M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 3000MB/s R | 1600MB/s W)
AC Adaptor
1 x 180W AC Adaptor
Battery
Recoil II Series 46WH Lithium Ion Battery
Thermal Paste
COOLER MASTER MASTERGEL MAKER THERMAL COMPOUND
Sound Card
2 Channel High Def. Audio + SoundBlaster™ Cinema 5
Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-9560 M.2 (1.73Gbps, 802.11AC) +BT 5.0
USB Options
1 x USB 3.1 PORT (Type C) + 2 x USB 3.1 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Notebook Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 1MP HD WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Dead Pixel Guarantee
30 Day Dead Pixel Guarantee Inc. Labour & Carriage Costs
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 3 to 5 working days
Timings
01/09/18: Ordered system.
13/09/18: System arrives. Delay mainly due to failure in testing and diagnosis and part replacement although it was a few days before the build started.
13/09/18: System returned. Multiple dead pixels on panel covered under dead pixel guarantee.
20/09/18: Back with me again. Dead pixels gone but larger than standard backlight bleed present in new panel. Also returned with 150W charger instead of 180W.
I'm very busy now and need the system so that is why there is a delay here.
08/10/18: Sent in. Panel replaced again and new one has little backlight bleed. Charger changed back to correct one.
15/10/18: Back with me. Everything seems fine.
Phone and email support have been very helpful throughout. I suggest anyone uses phone support if they want a response quickly though as email response times are very variable.
Main review
Overall I'm very happy with the laptop. It does everything I need it to do and more so will hopefully last a good while.
Chassis: It is very portable in dimensions and with the combination of solid feeling plastic and fingerprint magnet aluminium it feels solid. The laptop weighs only 2.13kg but the charger with cable weighs a total of 0.8kg so almost 3kg if you carry the lot. The laptop should be used on hard, flat, clean surfaces as the air intake is on the bottom.
Display: A very nice matte IPS panel. Good colour, viewing angles, black and white levels. Given that I am on my 3rd panel I can't conclude that these panels are of consistently good quality though. The backlight bleed is still a little more than I might like but it's very rarely noticeable unlike on the previous panel.
Interface: The keyboard may split opinion. It even splits my own opinion. It is actually very nice to type and game on with my typing speed above other laptops and close to a basic desktop keyboard. The noise isn't that loud although louder than other laptops. It certainly is a different sound though, a high pitched click compared to a dull thud on pure membrane boards. The keys are very inconsistent. Some register before the click and some after. The spacebar has quite a lot of travel before click and registration so needs quite a push compared to other keys and I still find it difficult to hit it right every time. The backlight is very nice and can be configured to loads of different patterns. I just use a plain colour on low brightness.
The trackpad is very good. It is a decent size with the buttons integrated in the bottom half. Unlike other laptops I have used with buttons in the touch surface, I have had no problems with unintentional gestures and the gestures work well. The one issue with the trackpad is it is not supported by the current Linux kernel so requires a kernel patch that can be found from these forums to enable it.
Input/Output: Decent selection of ports in sensible places. Slightly disappointing that the usb 3 and usb c ports are only running the original usb 3.0 standard but that is fast enough for most things. More of an issue is the SD reader as it only uses usb 2.0 which is useless for large photos so I just use a cheap usb 3 reader.
Audio/Video: The speakers are better than expected but they are dual downward firing laptop speakers so don't expect a bassy or rich sound. Headphone out and microphone in obviously sound fine. The inbuilt microphone seems decent enough for my use of occasional video calls. The webcam is 720p but is quite grainy and terrible in lower light but definitely useable. A £15 usb 720p webcam is massively better. This seems to be common in all laptops.
Thermals and noise: For the amount of performance packed into a small body the maximum temperatures reached were very impressive. Under full CPU and GPU load, the temperatures stayed within a very acceptable range. The fan noise at these temperatures does get rather loud but not as unbearable as I imagined. Under light load (writing this with a few tabs open with one playing video) the fan does not spin up and as I have not accessed the hdd in a while it is not spinning either so the laptop is basically silent. When plugged in the fan switches to a slightly more aggressive profile so does spin slowly when doing not much but not loudly. After long stress tests, the top of the keyboard did get warm but not uncomfortably so. My mouse hand to the right of the laptop did get quite warm but not too bad, it'll be good in winter.
Battery: The battery is not great. Using very lightly with Windows you might get 3-4 hours. Do much more and it will drop quickly. You definitely have to carry the charger. Performance is significantly reduced on battery too though this might be in part due to many settings that can be changed.
Performance (finally): I can't really comment on this much. CPU heavy video encoding was very fast and gaming is just below (because it's a laptop) what you would expect for a GTX1060. Everything launches very quickly off the SSD. RAM is adequate for now but I chose 1 stick so it would be an easy upgrade in the future.
If anyone wants benchmarks just ask and I'll download and run them.
Overall a great laptop but with a few things to consider. Feel free to ask anything. Congratulations to anyone who read the big wall of text.
