New Vyper 15.6" Gaming PC (Review)

becnas

New member
Last week I received my new custom gaming laptop, of which I am now going to leave a short(ish) review and my thoughts on the product.

First off I will say that my overall experience with PC thus far has been overwhelmingly positive. I'll admit a high level of skepticism prior to my purchase, simply because reading reviews can be so terrifying if you stumble across one or more bad reviews amongst the good ones. However, I can't fault them at all so far and hope the pleasing service continues on this positive trajectory. One of my initial expectations was that it would take a long time for my computer to be built and arrive and communication would be poor - I was pleasantly surprised to be wrong on both fronts. The whole thing took 6 days from order process straight through to dispatch and the communication via email and the PCSpecialist online account interface was prompt, efficient and very helpful. My expensive new toy came very securely packaged within an outer box, inflated shock absorptive pads and an inner styrofoam mould to keep it from sustaining damage in transit.

To give an overview of the product, the following were my chosen customisations:
Chassis & Display Vyper Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD 45% NTSC LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™ i7 Six Core Processor 8750H (2.2GHz, 4.1GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM) 16GB Corsair 2133MHz SODIMM DDR4 (1 x 16GB)
Graphics Card NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1060 - 6.0GB GDDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1
1st Storage Drive 500GB Samsung 860 2.5" EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 550MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
1st M.2 SSD Drive 500GB SAMSUNG 970 EVO M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3400MB/R, 2300MB/W)
Memory Card Reader Integrated 2 in 1 Memory Card Reader (SD, MMC)
AC Adaptor 1 x 150W AC Adaptor
Battery Vyper Series 46WH Lithium Ion Battery
Power Cable 1 x 1 Metre Cloverleaf UK Power Cable
Thermal Paste STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-9560 M.2 (1.73Gbps, 802.11AC) +BT 5.0
Change to: GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-9260 M.2 (1.73Gbps, 802.11AC) +BT 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options 1 x USB 3.1 PORT (Type C) + 2 x USB 3.1 PORTS + 4 x USB 2.0 PORT
Keyboard Language PER-KEY RGB BACKLIT UK MECHANICAL KEYBOARD
Operating System Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence


Here are some of my thoughts on both the overall build, its performance and some of its features:


Build quality

The Vyper exterior build and outer appearance are (see photos) really nothing to write home about. It's simple to the max, doesn't scream 'expensive gaming laptop' nor wow you with fancy decorative features - not that I was really looking for that anyway. The chassis is more or less plastic all over and while it has a relatively pleasing seamless appearance and feel to it, I do feel I will need to be that little bit more careful with this computer than my previous laptops which had more of a sturdier feel to them. In particular, the screen area could be fairly susceptible to damage if (god forbid) the top part of the laptop were to come into any trauma as there is some definite flex from the start. Also the screen hinge works perfectly up until about a 45-50 degree angle, at which point it seems to wave a little white flag and go a bit pathetic on you... Some could say this offers the 'soft close' effect but since this is a laptop and not a chest of drawers it's not necessarily as desirable a feature. So long as you're not like me and tend to half close the screen when away from the desk or waiting for lengthy downloads while sleeping, it'll probably be fine.

Keyboard

My first thoughts with this keyboard were 'Oh god, this was a mistake' and I'll tell you for why - I have never had tactile keys before and the initial experience was... strange. There's so much more feedback than I am used to with laptops, kind of half way between those awful sticky USB keyboards for PCs and the super responsive light-touch keys on something like a macbook. So all the smooth, responsiveness with the definite 'click' when pressed. If you're not used to it, it's a weird sensation AND a weird sound. While I've gotten used to the keyboard function a lot more over this week, I would still hesitate to use it in public simply because the incessant click-click-clicking, while it has become kind of pleasing to my ears, could definitely be annoying to others. Thankfully as this is a gaming laptop and I use controllers 90% of the time, the keyboard usage will probably be minimal even if others are around. Besides that, the per key RGB is wonderful for both aesthetics and functionality, really jazzes up an otherwise overwhelmingly plain appearing laptop.

Sound

Not much I can say about this, mediocre audio performance that I can't complain too much about in a laptop. Whack a pair of speakers on and you'll be fine if playing games with decent dialogue or SFX.

Graphics/Visuals

The screen is crisp and clear. Since getting it I've been playing the new Assassins Creed Odyssey game on high/v high setting and have found the visuals to be great, highly consistent graphics performance and very immersive for a 15.6" screen and the matte screen does a moderately good job of reducing glare. The inbuilt NVIDIA experience app makes optimising graphics for games very straightforward. I hope to use this laptop for VR gaming in the new year and am sure the 1060 will cope with that as well as it has everything else I've thrown at it so far.

Performance

I have yet to run into any issues with performance so far. It runs relatively demanding games under high settings with impressive ease and has been a joy to use. The rear facing heat sinks/fans do a good job in keeping the laptop cool (in combination with a coolmat), avoiding burning your hands, and the fan boost is a nice addition for those extra demanding programs/games. A few drawbacks to the fan feature(s) is A) The fan boost always turns on unnecessarily at startup and B) both basic fan settings and fan boost have a slightly screamy sound compared to my previous laptops which have been more of a deeper (albeit angry sounding) whir. Like the keys, I'm getting used to the sound when it kicks in, I can't say it's enjoyable, but it's tolerable.

Misc comments
The touchpad feels a bit tentative - I can't fault the sensitivity, responsiveness and the ability to deactivate it when gaming, but when clicking it has a rather weak feel to it that makes me question its long term function if it were used a lot (either in gaming, browsing or editing).
Bootup is nice and quick thanks to the SSD drive, overall speed of response in all uses has been good.
Getting 2x codes for AC and C.O.D 4 was a nice addition to my purchase, thanks to the Samsung SSDs and i7 processor. I've thoroughly enjoyed playing the former over the last week, and PCSpecialist emailed the redeemable codes over promptly.

EDIT: Unable to add photos at this time due to PCS site not processing the upload requests properly...
 
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