claval
Bronze Level Poster
This review is not so much for the laptop itself but for the entire buying process. I found silly to review the components or the laptop in itself as there are plenty of information available online. You don't need another review from a random guy on a forum.
I placed my order on the 29th Nov, 2019 using the Black Friday promotion (around 50£ If I recall) and an Intel promotion (around 70£ again if I recall) using the finance that allows to repay the full price in the first year with 0% interests. A good deal in my opinion.
The delivery happened on 10th Dec, 2019. The full build took 12 days total, most of which the order was in "pre-processing" which I can guess that means it was in the queue to be prepared. It was expected as it is a busy time of the year.
The packages comes delivered in a much bigger box, completely surrounded by highly protective air-filled plastic. The laptop itself is inside its own classic "box-case". I'm highlighting this part for whoever would be concerned about the safety of the package during transport.
The laptop arrived already configured but needed anyway to have the nVidia driver installed.
I installed on it "Red Dead Redemption 2" that came with it as a promotion, and tried also "Titanfall 2" at the same time.
I also ran the benchmark "Firestrike" to assess temperatures and performances.
The average results for the benchmark was 14.000, an example here.
While playing both the games above I had bad experience with some random total system freeze. In some cases the PC would go down with a black screen and a buzzing sound produced by the speakers (not the CPU speaker, the actual audio card speakers) and in another it would just frame freeze and I was locked out of any control: mouse, touchpad or keyboard were completely disabled. The only option was to turn it off and on again.
After some research and a couple of topics here and a support request, I performed a clean re-install of the video drivers. You can read more about it on this forum's topic, here. That seems to have fixed the issue.
After dealing with that much more pressing matter, I started playing with some of my multiplayer games and had the unfortunate surprise of hearing every one of my teammates complain about hearing "jet engines" coming from my audio. I double checked and the problem seemed to be that no matter which headset I was plugging in, the PC would not detect it and keep using the on-board mic. That wouldn't normally be a problem but with this specific laptop, the fans are so loud that it was making impossible to have a conversation with others as the on-board mic is completely suffocated by the fans.
Again I performed several tests, spending even a bit of money on buying new hardware to test if it wasn't a problem with my current one, despite not having any issues with the previous laptop. You can read more in another topic's thread I created, here.
In the end, it was clear that there was an issue with the audio card as when using Bluetooth headsets, the sound of my voice was loud and clear and a minimum amount of noise.
So, PC specialist asked me to request an RMA. It was dispatched from my house on 7th Jan, 2020, received by them the 10th of the same month.
Disappointingly, despite their reassurance that it would jump at the top of the queue as much as possible, because it was a problem that was clearly present since the very beginning and not just something caused by a damage inflicted by myself, it was only checked upon on the 20th Jan, 2020. Nearly Two weeks after the RMA was initiated. I bothered the support a couple of time so I can't say if that was just the time it would have took, or if they made it a little bit faster even. Anyway the technician's report was as follows:
Now I finally receive back my laptop on 22nd Jan, 2020.
Upon receiving it, I started and tested it again and unfortunately I must say that the issue persist. The only thing that changed is that now I can see that the system detect an "external mic" and "external speakers" channel which means that for the applications that allows you to select a different channel than the default, you can circumvent the issue with the noise.
I've reached the conclusion that the problem with the noise not being filtered out by the mic must be due to a poor quality of the drivers or the hardware itself. Unfortunately the audio card is not one of those selection with more options, so this is something to keep in mind if ordering this model.
Now, what follows is a list of minor annoyance or mild ones that do not warrant a support request as they are more of a design flaws in the laptop itself and the case TongFang:
- The jack for the battery cable is positioned behind the laptop (on the side of the screen), coincidentally it forces the cable to lay in front of one of the exhaust that constantly blow out warm-to-hot air. While this is not a problem in the short run, over time this softening (due to the warm air) and re-hardening of the cable will bring it to become quite more prone to break and expose the internal wiring.
- Two keyboard keys already detached. I reattached them as it was just a matter of clips not holding them properly but it's not something nice to see.
- The space-bar trigger is in the centre of the bar and way smaller for the whole button. Which means that if you press the space bar on a corner of it, the action is not registered as the trigger does not go down.
- The software to manage the keyboard lighting and the "game" mode is definitely a low quality piece of software. As far as I've checked there is no compatible software to manage the different running modes (office, gaming and max performance) so you are stuck with it.
Edit(s):
- Despite ordering a custom thermal paste, there is no trace whatsoever of PC specialist applying it. You have to trust that they did not forgot / neglected to apply it. I remember that last time I ordered a custom PC (back when I was still living in Italy), they left in the box in which it was delivered, an empty tube and a receipt for the paste as a proof of having included it. Of course if someone wanted to just scam you out of it they could include an empty tube they have around but still, better than seeing nothing at all.
- The battery charger get incredibly hot, minutes after being in use. Which is not something that weird but I've had other chargers not warming up this much. Again, it was the only model available when purchasing this laptop.
I could be adding some more notes in case I forgot them in this first writing but the gist of it is that as product, it's not a bad one. For the price I paid for it (£1,279.00) I'm more than satisfied. The downsides are more related to the care in building and quality testing it before dispatching and the low quality of some parts (audio, cable, touchpad design, etc).
Hope this helps others make their choices.
I placed my order on the 29th Nov, 2019 using the Black Friday promotion (around 50£ If I recall) and an Intel promotion (around 70£ again if I recall) using the finance that allows to repay the full price in the first year with 0% interests. A good deal in my opinion.
The delivery happened on 10th Dec, 2019. The full build took 12 days total, most of which the order was in "pre-processing" which I can guess that means it was in the queue to be prepared. It was expected as it is a busy time of the year.
The packages comes delivered in a much bigger box, completely surrounded by highly protective air-filled plastic. The laptop itself is inside its own classic "box-case". I'm highlighting this part for whoever would be concerned about the safety of the package during transport.
The laptop arrived already configured but needed anyway to have the nVidia driver installed.
I installed on it "Red Dead Redemption 2" that came with it as a promotion, and tried also "Titanfall 2" at the same time.
I also ran the benchmark "Firestrike" to assess temperatures and performances.
The average results for the benchmark was 14.000, an example here.
While playing both the games above I had bad experience with some random total system freeze. In some cases the PC would go down with a black screen and a buzzing sound produced by the speakers (not the CPU speaker, the actual audio card speakers) and in another it would just frame freeze and I was locked out of any control: mouse, touchpad or keyboard were completely disabled. The only option was to turn it off and on again.
After some research and a couple of topics here and a support request, I performed a clean re-install of the video drivers. You can read more about it on this forum's topic, here. That seems to have fixed the issue.
After dealing with that much more pressing matter, I started playing with some of my multiplayer games and had the unfortunate surprise of hearing every one of my teammates complain about hearing "jet engines" coming from my audio. I double checked and the problem seemed to be that no matter which headset I was plugging in, the PC would not detect it and keep using the on-board mic. That wouldn't normally be a problem but with this specific laptop, the fans are so loud that it was making impossible to have a conversation with others as the on-board mic is completely suffocated by the fans.
Again I performed several tests, spending even a bit of money on buying new hardware to test if it wasn't a problem with my current one, despite not having any issues with the previous laptop. You can read more in another topic's thread I created, here.
In the end, it was clear that there was an issue with the audio card as when using Bluetooth headsets, the sound of my voice was loud and clear and a minimum amount of noise.
So, PC specialist asked me to request an RMA. It was dispatched from my house on 7th Jan, 2020, received by them the 10th of the same month.
Disappointingly, despite their reassurance that it would jump at the top of the queue as much as possible, because it was a problem that was clearly present since the very beginning and not just something caused by a damage inflicted by myself, it was only checked upon on the 20th Jan, 2020. Nearly Two weeks after the RMA was initiated. I bothered the support a couple of time so I can't say if that was just the time it would have took, or if they made it a little bit faster even. Anyway the technician's report was as follows:
Now I finally receive back my laptop on 22nd Jan, 2020.
Upon receiving it, I started and tested it again and unfortunately I must say that the issue persist. The only thing that changed is that now I can see that the system detect an "external mic" and "external speakers" channel which means that for the applications that allows you to select a different channel than the default, you can circumvent the issue with the noise.
I've reached the conclusion that the problem with the noise not being filtered out by the mic must be due to a poor quality of the drivers or the hardware itself. Unfortunately the audio card is not one of those selection with more options, so this is something to keep in mind if ordering this model.
Now, what follows is a list of minor annoyance or mild ones that do not warrant a support request as they are more of a design flaws in the laptop itself and the case TongFang:
- The jack for the battery cable is positioned behind the laptop (on the side of the screen), coincidentally it forces the cable to lay in front of one of the exhaust that constantly blow out warm-to-hot air. While this is not a problem in the short run, over time this softening (due to the warm air) and re-hardening of the cable will bring it to become quite more prone to break and expose the internal wiring.
- - I personally use a laptop stand like this but that shows just another design issue. The jack that fit inside the socket has no soft-locking mechanism and that cause it to detach and fall down easily as soon as you move it.
- Two keyboard keys already detached. I reattached them as it was just a matter of clips not holding them properly but it's not something nice to see.
- The space-bar trigger is in the centre of the bar and way smaller for the whole button. Which means that if you press the space bar on a corner of it, the action is not registered as the trigger does not go down.
- The software to manage the keyboard lighting and the "game" mode is definitely a low quality piece of software. As far as I've checked there is no compatible software to manage the different running modes (office, gaming and max performance) so you are stuck with it.
Edit(s):
- Despite ordering a custom thermal paste, there is no trace whatsoever of PC specialist applying it. You have to trust that they did not forgot / neglected to apply it. I remember that last time I ordered a custom PC (back when I was still living in Italy), they left in the box in which it was delivered, an empty tube and a receipt for the paste as a proof of having included it. Of course if someone wanted to just scam you out of it they could include an empty tube they have around but still, better than seeing nothing at all.
- The battery charger get incredibly hot, minutes after being in use. Which is not something that weird but I've had other chargers not warming up this much. Again, it was the only model available when purchasing this laptop.
I could be adding some more notes in case I forgot them in this first writing but the gist of it is that as product, it's not a bad one. For the price I paid for it (£1,279.00) I'm more than satisfied. The downsides are more related to the care in building and quality testing it before dispatching and the low quality of some parts (audio, cable, touchpad design, etc).
Hope this helps others make their choices.
Last edited:
