Disclaimer: This is my new laptop but it is so far beyond my expectations I thought I had to do a full review on it!
When/Where/How Much?
So I bought this yesterday (June 29th, 2019) @ Best Buy in Monroe, LA! The normal $999 price was $200 off yesterday (sale appears to be over today) so I snagged it quick!
Best Buy
The Pro's
- Insanely Fast for a Sub-$1000 laptop - especially for a Sub-$1000 gaming laptop!
- Extremely light for a gaming laptop (only 5 lbs) where as most of it's competitors are 7-10+ lbs!
- Exceptionally sturdy build quality (even if it is all plastic) - there is no flex or weak spots I can find!
- The best cooling in a laptop, period! This thing has vents on top (above keyboard) to suck air in, exhaust vents on the back, both sides and the bottom!
- Almost now throttling of either the CPU or GPU under intense loads - due to the superior cooling!
- Large multi-touch trackpad with actual left/right buttons centered below keyboard (where it freaking should be)!
- Great hardware specs that beat most $1500+ Gaming Laptops:
- Intel 9th Gen Core I7-9750H (Overclockable) CPU
- Nvidia Geforce GTX 1650 GPU with 4GB Ram (Also Overclockable even though it is not the TI)
- 512GB Intel M.2 NVME SSD with a mind numbing Read/Write Speeds!
- 8GB DDR4 Dual Channel 2666 Mhz Ram that is a crap-ton faster than my other laptops with DDR4 Single Channel 2200 Mhz ram!
- Backlight, fully customizable, RGB Keyboard with it's own Firmware (not mechanical but also not a Software Keyboard) that has descent key travel/response and is ULTRA QUIET - NO CLICKING NOISES!
- Relatively small (for a gaming laptop) power brick!
- Dual Microphones!
- Tons of Custom Software Tools (preinstalled) that help you tweak/configure the laptop to get the best performance for your needs!
The Con's
- No Camera! Even though there is a huge bezel under the screen and a large enough bezel above screen!
- No USB-C/Thunderbolt Ports! It does have 3 USB Type A 3.1 Ports, a Full Sized HDMI Port and a Combo Headphone/Mic Jack!
- No Card Reader!
- Stereo Speakers aren't very loud and there seems to be NO BASS capability! All though they do fire out the side near the front so they should be louder - it's possible I haven't found the software to optimize the sound!
- Only 60 Hz Refresh Rate (Not Overclockable I tried) but it looks great in most Non-FPS games!
Benchmarks
This thing outperforms almost all other laptops with the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 and some of the other Intel 9th Gen I7-9750H cpu based laptops!
The Future
I am never satisfied with "Factory Specifications" so I have already ordered:
Crucial 32GB Kit (16GBx2) DDR4 2666 MT/s (PC4-21300) DR x8 SODIMM 260-Pin Memory - CT2K16G4SFD8266 - Gonna triple the memory and this memory should be a bit faster!
Seagate FireCuda 2TB Solid State Hybrid Drive Performance SSHD – 2.5 Inch SATA 6GB/s Flash Accelerated for Gaming PC Laptop - Frustration Free Packaging (ST2000LX001) - Stock M.2 NVME has Read speeds of 1.5Gb/s and Write speeds of 1GB/s so this drive should speed things up considerably - even though I am going to use it for my Games (not boot drive) since it is still part mechanical and part solid state!
Please let me know your thoughts and comments on this post, this laptop or me in general below! Thanks!
Update #1: Just upgrade the ram from 8GB Single Channel (1 stick) to 32 GB Dual Channel (2X16GB) and holy snowbunnies this thing went from Fast to Blistering! According to latest Benchmarks it is now outperforming $5,000 XEON-based servers and even $3,000+ gaming rigs!
I still have the faster hard drive I ordered but I took time off and left the cable to connect it in the box in my semi truck so will have to do a second update later today or tomorrow after I install new hard drive and get everything transferred over!
