Defiance Series: 15.6" -- feasible desktop replacement you can carry around

SimCro

New member
The bottom line is that this machine is powerful enough for gaming or content creation and it's fairly portable.

It's dealt with everything I've thrown at it so far and is in the 83rd percentile on PassMark so I imagine it could deal with most contemporary games as well as some 3d modelling, video editing etc. The screen is decent, and one of the reasons I chose this over the cheaper Optimus models. I've hooked it up to two monitors, Ethernet, some speakers and various other peripherals via a USB-C dock and this works "out of the box" on Windows 10 and Ubuntu 18. (I can't comment on Thunderbolt). If I want to take it somewhere, I just unplug two cables and that's it!

The machine is not without its drawbacks. It's VERY loud under load; I'd suggest wearing headphones, ideally noise cancelling, for anything computationally intensive. The touchpad is functional but it looks and feels the same as the one on my five-year-old CLEVO chassis. Although I could get used to the keyboard, I wouldn't enjoy typing on it regularly. The layout and feel of the keys is awkward compared to the ThinkPad X1 Carbon I use for work. I'm not sure if I'd recommend as a machine for working on the go a lot.

This deserves its own paragraph: the speakers, or at least their placement, is abysmal. If I were an audiophile, my tears at being sonically violated may have fried my new laptop.

Compared to my old desktop replacement

I ordered the Defiance VII as a replacement for the Octane II laptop I bought five years ago. The Octane is a hefty 3.48kg and measures 40mm from the tabletop to its highest point, while the Defiance weighs 2.02kg and measures 25mm from the tabletop.

I cleaned out the Octane, replaced the thermal paste and got a Passmark score in the 70th percentile. This is still decent and owes partly to the desktop CPU socket in the old CLEVO chassis. Where I gained with the size reduction is swapping my 2TB HDD for a 2TB M.2 SSD as a secondary drive. The new machine is faster and potentially a bit quieter when moving lots of files.

I think I prefer this generation of gaming laptop. I'd be far less embarrassed to haul the Defiance out in a cafe (until the fans started).

Specs

Chassis & Display
Defiance Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD 144Hz 72% NTSC LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 Eight Core Processor 10875H (2.3GHz, 5.1GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair 2666MHz SODIMM DDR4 (1 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 2060 - 6.0GB GDDR6 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1
1st M.2 SSD Drive
500GB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3500MB/R, 3200MB/W)
1st M.2 SSD Drive
2TB INTEL® 660p M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 1800MB/sR | 1800MB/sW)
Memory Card Reader
Integrated Micro-SD Memory Card Reader
AC Adaptor
1 x 180W AC Adaptor
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre Cloverleaf UK Power Cable
Battery
Defiance Series Integrated 3 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (73WH)
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Sound Card
2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Wireless/Wired Networking
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® Wi-Fi 6 AX200 (2.4 Gbps) + BT 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options
1 x THUNDERBOLT 3 PORT + 3 x USB 3.2 PORTS
Keyboard Language
15" DEFIANCE SERIES UK KEYBOARD
Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00001]
 

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FerrariVie

Super Star
Congratulations on the new laptop. Post some pictures later, so that we can see the beast ;)

What makes you think that the screen on the defiance is better than the nova?
 

SimCro

New member
Congratulations on the new laptop. Post some pictures later, so that we can see the beast ;)

What makes you think that the screen on the defiance is better than the nova?

Sorry, I meant "better than the Optimus displays". The Nova looks like a powerful machine and better value but a bit too chunky for my tastes this time around.

I'll have this hooked up to external displays the vast majority of the time, so the 72% NTSC over the Nova's 45% it's just for that rare occasion when I choose to watch a film while travelling.
 
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FerrariVie

Super Star
Speakers on laptops are a major bane on a lot of different systems, almost seems to be a second thought by manufacturers.
Mainly on gaming focused laptops, even though I had a Dell Gaming 7559 (bought in 2016) that the sound was actually the best feature of the whole laptop. It had the speakers firing to the top, located close to the screen (above the keyboard) and even a small "subwoofer" on the bottom for bass. Not Macbook Pro level, but still quite good.

I don't miss it, though, as I'm using headphones 95% of the time.
 
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