Preface: There doesn't seem to be an area for this sort of thing, so I suppose here will do, feel free to move or delete etc. Looking back over what I’ve read it could be a little negative, but that’s only because I’m highlighting things I remember as going wrong etc. Anything I haven’t mentioned is probably good, and I am very happy with the purchase overall. If you don’t want to read the wall of text, I did put a very brief summary at the end.
So I’ve had my 17.3" Skyfire II for coming up to 3 years now, which I believe is the same (or vastly the same) chassis as the Skyfire III (please correct me if I’m wrong because it could potentially make a lot of this write up redundant).
The link to my previous review is here, if anybody wants to read it. To respond to the points I brought up in the review that were unresolved, I’m now used to the keyboard and it is still really nice to use. I also have yet to find a caps lock or number lock light, so after 3 years I’m reasonably certain that it doesn’t exist. Going back to the practicality point, it is an absolute monster to carry about anywhere – walking 40 minutes up a hill with it to university was pretty awful, but I think anybody sensible wouldn’t be doing that...
One major downside is that it is literally impossible to game without the power supply plugged in, it throttles so ridiculously that you may as well be playing on integrated graphics. Seems to be something nvidia hardcoded in and I haven’t found a way around it. Friends with more midrange graphics cards get better performance on battery than I do.
Onto my experience over the 3 years – probably what a lot of people are interested in is the performance. I have added a 256GB SSD and an extra 4GB RAM, the processor and graphics card remains the same. I don’t get much time for triple A titles at the moment, but the ones I do play I usually get pretty solid FPS on medium-high graphics, depending on the game. There is a heat issue, with framerate drop from time to time (not often), as it throttles back then up to speed again. I have cleaned out the fan to an extent, but that didn’t help a huge amount. It’s not a massive issue at any rate.
The screen has no dead pixels and is as good as new in my opinion, keyboard is the same, still working perfectly, and the touchpad is also just as solid as it was when new. Nothing much I can say about those.
Onto the slightly more bad things – around two years in my power supply gave up, decided to make a massive flash and take out the fuse for the house, at which point I decided not to plug it in again and buy a new one. PCS didn’t have any in stock at the time so I bought one elsewhere, but they were quick to reply and quote me a price.
Probably a year or so after I got the laptop, the touch lights under the screen on the left of the power button stopped working all the time, i.e. the turbo boost button and the others. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t, but again, it doesn’t affect me. No reason that it couldn’t happen to the wifi light and disk drive buttons as well though as far as I see it.
The worst thing that has happened – around 2 months ago the left channel of my sound output (for headphones etc) stopped working, which really made me think about upgrading to something else, as I use headphones all the time. In the end I bought an external USB DAC which has worked fine for now, but that wasn’t ideal.
Oh and the battery life I suppose – I rarely use my laptop without the power supply plugged in so as you can imagine, the life has pretty much tanked. I get about an hour until it hits “40%”, at which point it will die. Pretty much expected as far as I see it.
I think that’s everything with regards to my experience over the past 3 years. In terms of PCS support, I’ve found their responses quick and service good, even though I would now have to pay as I’m well out of warranty. I feel that the odd failures I’ve had are part of wear and tear on the laptop, but I’m hopefully that nothing too catastrophic will go wrong for a while. No regrets on the purchase - fully recommended if you can live past the issues I described.
In summary:
Good – performance, general quality (screen, keyboard, touchpad)
Bad – Odd, minor(ish) failures, battery life, gaming on battery power
Any questions please ask!
So I’ve had my 17.3" Skyfire II for coming up to 3 years now, which I believe is the same (or vastly the same) chassis as the Skyfire III (please correct me if I’m wrong because it could potentially make a lot of this write up redundant).
The link to my previous review is here, if anybody wants to read it. To respond to the points I brought up in the review that were unresolved, I’m now used to the keyboard and it is still really nice to use. I also have yet to find a caps lock or number lock light, so after 3 years I’m reasonably certain that it doesn’t exist. Going back to the practicality point, it is an absolute monster to carry about anywhere – walking 40 minutes up a hill with it to university was pretty awful, but I think anybody sensible wouldn’t be doing that...
One major downside is that it is literally impossible to game without the power supply plugged in, it throttles so ridiculously that you may as well be playing on integrated graphics. Seems to be something nvidia hardcoded in and I haven’t found a way around it. Friends with more midrange graphics cards get better performance on battery than I do.
Onto my experience over the 3 years – probably what a lot of people are interested in is the performance. I have added a 256GB SSD and an extra 4GB RAM, the processor and graphics card remains the same. I don’t get much time for triple A titles at the moment, but the ones I do play I usually get pretty solid FPS on medium-high graphics, depending on the game. There is a heat issue, with framerate drop from time to time (not often), as it throttles back then up to speed again. I have cleaned out the fan to an extent, but that didn’t help a huge amount. It’s not a massive issue at any rate.
The screen has no dead pixels and is as good as new in my opinion, keyboard is the same, still working perfectly, and the touchpad is also just as solid as it was when new. Nothing much I can say about those.
Onto the slightly more bad things – around two years in my power supply gave up, decided to make a massive flash and take out the fuse for the house, at which point I decided not to plug it in again and buy a new one. PCS didn’t have any in stock at the time so I bought one elsewhere, but they were quick to reply and quote me a price.
Probably a year or so after I got the laptop, the touch lights under the screen on the left of the power button stopped working all the time, i.e. the turbo boost button and the others. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t, but again, it doesn’t affect me. No reason that it couldn’t happen to the wifi light and disk drive buttons as well though as far as I see it.
The worst thing that has happened – around 2 months ago the left channel of my sound output (for headphones etc) stopped working, which really made me think about upgrading to something else, as I use headphones all the time. In the end I bought an external USB DAC which has worked fine for now, but that wasn’t ideal.
Oh and the battery life I suppose – I rarely use my laptop without the power supply plugged in so as you can imagine, the life has pretty much tanked. I get about an hour until it hits “40%”, at which point it will die. Pretty much expected as far as I see it.
I think that’s everything with regards to my experience over the past 3 years. In terms of PCS support, I’ve found their responses quick and service good, even though I would now have to pay as I’m well out of warranty. I feel that the odd failures I’ve had are part of wear and tear on the laptop, but I’m hopefully that nothing too catastrophic will go wrong for a while. No regrets on the purchase - fully recommended if you can live past the issues I described.
In summary:
Good – performance, general quality (screen, keyboard, touchpad)
Bad – Odd, minor(ish) failures, battery life, gaming on battery power
Any questions please ask!