Specs:
Lafité Silver Aluminium Chassis: 13.3" Matte Full HD IPS LED (1920 x 1080)
Intel® Core™ i7 Dual Core Processor i7-5500U (2.40GHz, 3.0GHz Turbo)
8GB KINGSTON SODIMM DDR3 1600MHz (1 x 8GB)
INTEL® HD GRAPHICS 5500 (Only with Intel® Core™ CPUs)
500GB SERIAL ATA III 2.5" HARD DRIVE WITH 32MB CACHE (7,200rpm)
Memory Card Reader Integrated 2 in 1 Memory Card Reader (SD, MMC)
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-7265 M.2 (867Mbps, 802.11AC) + BLUETOOTH
Keyboard Language LAFITÉ SERIES INTEGRATED UK KEYBOARD
Please note the following are my opinions and my experience with the laptop so far.
Background to me and my usage needs:
Currently a second year computer science student and always find myself with 10 different tabs on google chrome open, an IDE and maybe a webserver running at the same time. Sometime with a video or music in the background aswell.
What I like:
1) I love the all aluminium body, you feel like its a quality product that's been built to last. there are no creeks or flex on the keyboard like you may find on plastic body laptops. It's been assembled well by PCS, although the bit where the screen bezel meets the hinge is off at places by about a millimeter, but obviously this may not be the case for everyone or even a huge issue for some.
2) I actually like the keyboard, the key travel is good and you know when you have pressed a key, I'm getting fairly used to using it with minimal missed key presses.
3) The option to have a 720p camera is nice and although i've only played around with it for a few minutes, the picture output seems to fine, but obviously distorted when stretched to full screen.
4) Which leads me on to the gorgeous display. Many people who have reviewed the Lafite have praised the screen, and I can confirm it is gorgeous. I tackled the DPI scaling on win8.1 by going into (win key + s) and then if you search for dpiscaling you can change it system wide - which will get rid of blurry text.
Things I don't like:
1) the trackpad. This is a major let down, I'm disappointed PCS chose to fit the Lafite with such a sh*t trackpad. From its build quality to the functionality of the software. Two finger scroll is not even a scroll more like stagnated jumps up and down the page. There's also about half a millimeter play when pressing down the trackpad. So when you go to "tap to click" you've gotta compensate for this. I think if the software was anywhere decent and the trackpad didnt have the little bit of play it wouldnt have bothered me as much as it has. I dont always want to use an external mouse with my laptop and so the trackpad for me is essential. Sometimes, and I absolutely hate this, sometimes it doesnt register my taps at all and i have to either press down fully to register the click or try again. #firstWorldProblems -- but trust me after some time it does really get annoying. I'm seriously considering returning this laptop just because of how poor the trackpad is :/.
2) The fan can get pretty loud at times - but thats to be expected. Typical scenario in which this may occur is if you're installing some software. The temperature spikes and the fans kick in. I can live with this - but the trackpad, it's really got under my skin
.
3) Being right handed my palm rests quite close to if not on the track pad at times, meaning I have to raise my hand a little bit higher when typing in fear of accidentally registering a click. The sensitivity of the trackpad can be turned down but with it being iffy about registering clicks with sensitivity already pretty high I wont be turning it down.
Things which I would have liked:
Would have been nice to have a little LED on the caps lock key to indicate if caps lock was on - minor really.
Other
The battery - right so today I started fully charged, took it to University around 11am, where i was in a lab until 1pm and I was using the internet and a text editor - nothing really demanding. Thats pretty much it. It's been in sleep mode for the rest of the time. As of now the battery stands at 34% with 1hr 30mins left. So pretty decent 4ish hours*
The i7 it seems is enough and coupled with 8GB's of RAM running java applications is fine, although when you do have 10+ chrome tabs open with eclipse compiling some java code the fans kick in and I can only compare that sound to a hoover.
Arg, I really wish PCS could have supplied or given me the option to choose a different trackpad, I love this laptop but the trackpad is seriously ruining the experience for me.
For anyone interested I mentioned the word trackpad 10times :'(
Lafité Silver Aluminium Chassis: 13.3" Matte Full HD IPS LED (1920 x 1080)
Intel® Core™ i7 Dual Core Processor i7-5500U (2.40GHz, 3.0GHz Turbo)
8GB KINGSTON SODIMM DDR3 1600MHz (1 x 8GB)
INTEL® HD GRAPHICS 5500 (Only with Intel® Core™ CPUs)
500GB SERIAL ATA III 2.5" HARD DRIVE WITH 32MB CACHE (7,200rpm)
Memory Card Reader Integrated 2 in 1 Memory Card Reader (SD, MMC)
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-7265 M.2 (867Mbps, 802.11AC) + BLUETOOTH
Keyboard Language LAFITÉ SERIES INTEGRATED UK KEYBOARD
Please note the following are my opinions and my experience with the laptop so far.
Background to me and my usage needs:
Currently a second year computer science student and always find myself with 10 different tabs on google chrome open, an IDE and maybe a webserver running at the same time. Sometime with a video or music in the background aswell.
What I like:
1) I love the all aluminium body, you feel like its a quality product that's been built to last. there are no creeks or flex on the keyboard like you may find on plastic body laptops. It's been assembled well by PCS, although the bit where the screen bezel meets the hinge is off at places by about a millimeter, but obviously this may not be the case for everyone or even a huge issue for some.
2) I actually like the keyboard, the key travel is good and you know when you have pressed a key, I'm getting fairly used to using it with minimal missed key presses.
3) The option to have a 720p camera is nice and although i've only played around with it for a few minutes, the picture output seems to fine, but obviously distorted when stretched to full screen.
4) Which leads me on to the gorgeous display. Many people who have reviewed the Lafite have praised the screen, and I can confirm it is gorgeous. I tackled the DPI scaling on win8.1 by going into (win key + s) and then if you search for dpiscaling you can change it system wide - which will get rid of blurry text.
Things I don't like:
1) the trackpad. This is a major let down, I'm disappointed PCS chose to fit the Lafite with such a sh*t trackpad. From its build quality to the functionality of the software. Two finger scroll is not even a scroll more like stagnated jumps up and down the page. There's also about half a millimeter play when pressing down the trackpad. So when you go to "tap to click" you've gotta compensate for this. I think if the software was anywhere decent and the trackpad didnt have the little bit of play it wouldnt have bothered me as much as it has. I dont always want to use an external mouse with my laptop and so the trackpad for me is essential. Sometimes, and I absolutely hate this, sometimes it doesnt register my taps at all and i have to either press down fully to register the click or try again. #firstWorldProblems -- but trust me after some time it does really get annoying. I'm seriously considering returning this laptop just because of how poor the trackpad is :/.
2) The fan can get pretty loud at times - but thats to be expected. Typical scenario in which this may occur is if you're installing some software. The temperature spikes and the fans kick in. I can live with this - but the trackpad, it's really got under my skin
.3) Being right handed my palm rests quite close to if not on the track pad at times, meaning I have to raise my hand a little bit higher when typing in fear of accidentally registering a click. The sensitivity of the trackpad can be turned down but with it being iffy about registering clicks with sensitivity already pretty high I wont be turning it down.
Things which I would have liked:
Would have been nice to have a little LED on the caps lock key to indicate if caps lock was on - minor really.
Other
The battery - right so today I started fully charged, took it to University around 11am, where i was in a lab until 1pm and I was using the internet and a text editor - nothing really demanding. Thats pretty much it. It's been in sleep mode for the rest of the time. As of now the battery stands at 34% with 1hr 30mins left. So pretty decent 4ish hours*
The i7 it seems is enough and coupled with 8GB's of RAM running java applications is fine, although when you do have 10+ chrome tabs open with eclipse compiling some java code the fans kick in and I can only compare that sound to a hoover.
Arg, I really wish PCS could have supplied or given me the option to choose a different trackpad, I love this laptop but the trackpad is seriously ruining the experience for me.
For anyone interested I mentioned the word trackpad 10times :'(