ShutterBug365
Bronze Level Poster
Review: Optimus X 17.3”
PCS
Having used PCS way back in 2012 to build my own laptop a Vortex 17.3” laptop it seemed obvious to return to PCS again when my mother needed a new laptop. The Vortex 7 years later is still going strong, with just the odd little niggle.
Pre-sales with them was just as I remembered from 2012, nothing too much trouble and always with a warm and friendly tone.
During the build process I did ring to find out why it was in testing for longer than it really should be and had a familiar conversation with a young lady their who having not found any notes on the system telephoned the testing department to a) have words and b) find out why. Cheerfully coming back to me to say it would be dispatched that day and it had indeed failed testing due to a webcam fault that needed the webcam replacing. What other PC manufacturer would give out this information and give it out willingly……
Delivery
Delivery by DPD on a Saturday, upgraded on the Friday when the lady at PCS advised it would be dispatched that day. I was getting earache and it was far more convenient for me to do all the setup at the weekend than on a Monday night. Packaging was excellent with the laptop box arriving well padded inside the larger transport box, no complaints whatsoever.
Laptop
The laptop looks and feels sleek, well made and solid whilst not being too heavy. The screen is firm to open without being a struggle, it can be done with one hand without any problems and without any bending of the screen. The keyboard is smooth, responsive and comfortable to use with a backlight that can be varied in colour via onboard software.
Screen quality looks good, it seems very sharp with zero dead pixels on arrival which is good. Time will tell and I will get around to calibrating it at some point (Photoshop) so that it produces good and accurate results. But it looks well balanced at first glance.
Temperatures wise it is in the 40’s for CPU occasionally peaking into the 50’s during installations etc. It is sat on a cooler, Havit from Amazon with 3 fans hitting the vents etc.
Nothing seems to phase it as you would expect, taking a RAW photography file into Photoshop, then on into the NIK Collection before adding a treatment and then back to Photoshop was completed in under 1 minute. Ok, would never be this in reality but I wanted to just test the physical in and out processing speed.
My mother seems very happy with it, the machine she came from was 10 years old and barely hanging in there and would not even do Photoshop -> NIK Collection and back out again in under 5 minutes and then would more than often crash instead.
Overall
Would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a 17” Photo editing laptop – it was the lowest model with that screen size and the only time it will really be put to the test is Photoshop and photo editing it was not purchased to game on apart from the most basic of basic.
PCS
Having used PCS way back in 2012 to build my own laptop a Vortex 17.3” laptop it seemed obvious to return to PCS again when my mother needed a new laptop. The Vortex 7 years later is still going strong, with just the odd little niggle.
Pre-sales with them was just as I remembered from 2012, nothing too much trouble and always with a warm and friendly tone.
During the build process I did ring to find out why it was in testing for longer than it really should be and had a familiar conversation with a young lady their who having not found any notes on the system telephoned the testing department to a) have words and b) find out why. Cheerfully coming back to me to say it would be dispatched that day and it had indeed failed testing due to a webcam fault that needed the webcam replacing. What other PC manufacturer would give out this information and give it out willingly……
Delivery
Delivery by DPD on a Saturday, upgraded on the Friday when the lady at PCS advised it would be dispatched that day. I was getting earache and it was far more convenient for me to do all the setup at the weekend than on a Monday night. Packaging was excellent with the laptop box arriving well padded inside the larger transport box, no complaints whatsoever.
Laptop
The laptop looks and feels sleek, well made and solid whilst not being too heavy. The screen is firm to open without being a struggle, it can be done with one hand without any problems and without any bending of the screen. The keyboard is smooth, responsive and comfortable to use with a backlight that can be varied in colour via onboard software.
Screen quality looks good, it seems very sharp with zero dead pixels on arrival which is good. Time will tell and I will get around to calibrating it at some point (Photoshop) so that it produces good and accurate results. But it looks well balanced at first glance.
Temperatures wise it is in the 40’s for CPU occasionally peaking into the 50’s during installations etc. It is sat on a cooler, Havit from Amazon with 3 fans hitting the vents etc.
Nothing seems to phase it as you would expect, taking a RAW photography file into Photoshop, then on into the NIK Collection before adding a treatment and then back to Photoshop was completed in under 1 minute. Ok, would never be this in reality but I wanted to just test the physical in and out processing speed.
My mother seems very happy with it, the machine she came from was 10 years old and barely hanging in there and would not even do Photoshop -> NIK Collection and back out again in under 5 minutes and then would more than often crash instead.
Overall
Would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a 17” Photo editing laptop – it was the lowest model with that screen size and the only time it will really be put to the test is Photoshop and photo editing it was not purchased to game on apart from the most basic of basic.
- Chassis: Optimus Series: 17.3"
- Display: Matte Full HD 60Hz 72% NTSC LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
- Processor (CPU): i7 9750H (2.6GHz, 4.5GHz Turbo)
- Memory (RAM): 16GB Corsair 2133MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 8GB)
- Graphics Card: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1650 - 4.0GB GDDR6 Video RAM
- M.2 SSD Drive: 500GB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe