wittyusername
Member
Hi! My order of a PCS Lafite 13.3" ultrabook arrived just over a week ago. Here's a review with some of my thoughts about it so far.
Specs:
I'll try and list all the interesting features, in no particular order.
Screen: This is the main reason I got this laptop - it was one of the only 1080p IPS screens in this price range. It's great - the colours are much more saturated than non-IPS panels (in a good way), the viewing angles are wide, and the resolution is incredible - it's really worth the difference compared to 1366x768. Also, the backlight is very bright - I haven't needed to turn it up past about 40% yet.
A side view to demonstrate the viewing angles. You can still see it at wider angles than this though.
Battery life: Also very impressive. I've used it for about 5 hours or so comfortably without the charger, although I haven't run it all the way down and timed it at the same time yet, so although it will certainly run for longer, I don't know exactly _how_ long.
Performance: I imagine this is mostly down to the SSD, but application load and boot times are all very quick (e.g. ~1-2s to open chrome). My main use-case is for programming though, and it's certainly adequate for things like building the Linux kernel. So basically, don't use it as an AOSP build machine or anything, but it's fine for almost anything else (and loads better than anything without an SSD).
Noise/Ventilation: From the picture on the PCS website, I was worried that the only ventilation was the grille on the bottom of the laptop, which would obviously be blocked when placed on anything soft. Luckily, this is not the case - there is a macbook-style vent in the hinge which is extremely effective.
The low-power CPU means that I can be compiling with all 4 (hyper-) cores at 2.5GHz, and it still stays fairly cool. The fan also stays off when not doing CPU-intensive stuff, which means it is completely silent.
Linux support: I had very few problems, surprisingly. The AC-9265 wireless card and graphics both worked straight away, on Debian Testing. I haven't tested the webcam or SD card reader, so don't know about them.
The touchpad, on the other hand, has no linux support. This means it is in PS/2 mouse emulation mode, so no two-finger scrolling, etc. The basic function still works though so it's not the end of the world.
Keyboard: No issues. It's not exactly thinkpad-quality, but it feels solid due the aluminum body, and the travel is decent, unlike a lot of super-thin ultrabooks which only seem to have about 0.5mm of travel. So basically nothing special, but also nothing really bad either, and perhaps even better than some of the competition.
Touchpad: This is without doubt the worst part of the whole laptop. Even in Windows, where there a proper driver, clicks are often not registered; right and middle-clicks (two and three fingers) are particularly elusive.
For left-clicks, you can just press the touchpad down instead of tapping, although this gets fatiguing. For right and middle clicks, you have to tap with two or three fingers at once - clicking with that many fingers doesn't work.
You can also right-click by pressing the right-hand side though.
Things like drag-and-drop are also difficult - sometimes you can click with one finger and scroll with the other, but sometimes it will go completely insane while doing this.
Two-finger scrolling is not smooth, and if you scroll too slowly, it registers as a click. There's also a 'scroll zone' on the right which is a lot more consistent, although I can't find a way to disable it, which seems silly given that two-finger scrolling is also possible.
There's also about 1-2mm of play, so to click, you have to press down the 2mm first, and _then_ actually click the button.
Having said all this, it's fundamentally usable, as long you're willing to put up with it occasionally not doing anything you want...luckily the rest of the laptop is good enough that it compensates.
Build Quality: It really is all aluminium, so it feels very solid - maybe not macbook-level, but certainly better than a lot of plastic laptops. The main body (i.e. the keyboard part, not the screen part) is made of two separate bits of aluminium - one is the base, which you can unscrew to access the internals. The tolerances around the edge where these two parts join are a bit off - you can feel the rim sticking out past the base by about 0.1-0.3mm. However, this is pretty superficial, and doesn't seem to impact the actual stiffness or strength of it. Furthermore, this is on the bottom of the laptop so I don't really notice it in use.
Summary: I'm really pleased with this laptop overall (despite my rant about the touchpad...). There was no other brand offering this spec at the price I paid - the closest I think was the Lenovo Yoga 2 13, at £550 with an i3 and no SSD. A macbook with a 256GB SSD (I couldn't get away with less) would have been >£1000. Dell outlet had some for a similar price, but again, with only 120GB SSDs.
So I've managed to get a machine which is better-specced in almost every way compared to my previous laptop, for considerably less money than the competition. It's hard to argue with that.
I would also like to applaud PCS for providing an option for their machines to come without Windows licenses - this is where quite a lot of the saving came from, and was ideal for me.
Specs:
- Intel i5-5200u CPU
- 8GB RAM
- 240GB Kingston V300 SSD
- AC-7265 WiFi
- 1080p IPS 13.3" display
- Price: £550 (I had a £15-off code, and already had a Windows license which saved £79).
I'll try and list all the interesting features, in no particular order.
Screen: This is the main reason I got this laptop - it was one of the only 1080p IPS screens in this price range. It's great - the colours are much more saturated than non-IPS panels (in a good way), the viewing angles are wide, and the resolution is incredible - it's really worth the difference compared to 1366x768. Also, the backlight is very bright - I haven't needed to turn it up past about 40% yet.
A side view to demonstrate the viewing angles. You can still see it at wider angles than this though.
Battery life: Also very impressive. I've used it for about 5 hours or so comfortably without the charger, although I haven't run it all the way down and timed it at the same time yet, so although it will certainly run for longer, I don't know exactly _how_ long.
Performance: I imagine this is mostly down to the SSD, but application load and boot times are all very quick (e.g. ~1-2s to open chrome). My main use-case is for programming though, and it's certainly adequate for things like building the Linux kernel. So basically, don't use it as an AOSP build machine or anything, but it's fine for almost anything else (and loads better than anything without an SSD).
Noise/Ventilation: From the picture on the PCS website, I was worried that the only ventilation was the grille on the bottom of the laptop, which would obviously be blocked when placed on anything soft. Luckily, this is not the case - there is a macbook-style vent in the hinge which is extremely effective.
The low-power CPU means that I can be compiling with all 4 (hyper-) cores at 2.5GHz, and it still stays fairly cool. The fan also stays off when not doing CPU-intensive stuff, which means it is completely silent.
Linux support: I had very few problems, surprisingly. The AC-9265 wireless card and graphics both worked straight away, on Debian Testing. I haven't tested the webcam or SD card reader, so don't know about them.
The touchpad, on the other hand, has no linux support. This means it is in PS/2 mouse emulation mode, so no two-finger scrolling, etc. The basic function still works though so it's not the end of the world.
Keyboard: No issues. It's not exactly thinkpad-quality, but it feels solid due the aluminum body, and the travel is decent, unlike a lot of super-thin ultrabooks which only seem to have about 0.5mm of travel. So basically nothing special, but also nothing really bad either, and perhaps even better than some of the competition.
Touchpad: This is without doubt the worst part of the whole laptop. Even in Windows, where there a proper driver, clicks are often not registered; right and middle-clicks (two and three fingers) are particularly elusive.
For left-clicks, you can just press the touchpad down instead of tapping, although this gets fatiguing. For right and middle clicks, you have to tap with two or three fingers at once - clicking with that many fingers doesn't work.
You can also right-click by pressing the right-hand side though.
Things like drag-and-drop are also difficult - sometimes you can click with one finger and scroll with the other, but sometimes it will go completely insane while doing this.
Two-finger scrolling is not smooth, and if you scroll too slowly, it registers as a click. There's also a 'scroll zone' on the right which is a lot more consistent, although I can't find a way to disable it, which seems silly given that two-finger scrolling is also possible.
There's also about 1-2mm of play, so to click, you have to press down the 2mm first, and _then_ actually click the button.
Having said all this, it's fundamentally usable, as long you're willing to put up with it occasionally not doing anything you want...luckily the rest of the laptop is good enough that it compensates.
Build Quality: It really is all aluminium, so it feels very solid - maybe not macbook-level, but certainly better than a lot of plastic laptops. The main body (i.e. the keyboard part, not the screen part) is made of two separate bits of aluminium - one is the base, which you can unscrew to access the internals. The tolerances around the edge where these two parts join are a bit off - you can feel the rim sticking out past the base by about 0.1-0.3mm. However, this is pretty superficial, and doesn't seem to impact the actual stiffness or strength of it. Furthermore, this is on the bottom of the laptop so I don't really notice it in use.
Summary: I'm really pleased with this laptop overall (despite my rant about the touchpad...). There was no other brand offering this spec at the price I paid - the closest I think was the Lenovo Yoga 2 13, at £550 with an i3 and no SSD. A macbook with a 256GB SSD (I couldn't get away with less) would have been >£1000. Dell outlet had some for a similar price, but again, with only 120GB SSDs.
So I've managed to get a machine which is better-specced in almost every way compared to my previous laptop, for considerably less money than the competition. It's hard to argue with that.
I would also like to applaud PCS for providing an option for their machines to come without Windows licenses - this is where quite a lot of the saving came from, and was ideal for me.