vortex III 17inch mini review

Quango-uk

Quango-uk

Quango-uk

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26 Nov 2002
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Oxford
As Promised a mini review of my new Beast of a gaming Laptop

Vortex Series:17.3" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-3610QM (2.30GHz) 6MB
8GB SAMSUNG 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (2 x 4GB)
AMD® Radeon® HD 7970M - 2GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
60gig SSD for OS (my own old drive) windows7-64
750GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD7500BPKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
Intel 5.1 Channel High Definition Audio + SPDIF/MIC/Headphone Jack
GIGABIT LAN & KILLER™ 1102 WIRELESS GAMING 802.11N NETWORK CARD
3 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT AS STANDARD
£1,359 delivered

The Laptop looks really nice, It's not branded with logos so looks like a cool slab of slate. It feels nice, solid and robust.
All the drivers for it are on a disc they send with it. there is also some booklets in with it to help you set it up.

The keyboard feels nice the keys travel down quite a way also feels like a quality keyboard. The programmable backlit sections have quite a few options for colours and flashing sequences

The matte screen is very good no reflections indoors, but found the sun too bright to be able to use it outside, I could just manage to watch the tennis on it, but it was full sunlight at 1pm

The fans are very quiet, I can hear them when playing games (I.E The Secret World)
but its a quiet low noise, only noticeable with the sound off. I have owned a 17inch Asus and an Acer 18inch both with dedicated graphics cards and both were louder.

Speakers are good the thx software makes them sound better. They are crystal clear and loud for a laptop. The sub is not that powerful but I never expected to be.
My wife was on the phone and was trying to turn the tv down thinking the explosions and effects were coming from the telly

Boot up is quick, everything you do on it seems super fast.

It weighs 4k so its not a lightweight one but it does not bother me

All in all a very good laptop which I would recommend.
its also upgradable unless they change the cpu sockets I suppose.
I'm hoping this will last me a few years.

10/10 for me.
 
Certainly a beastly spec and I'm sure it will last you a good few years yet. Very very impressed with the 7970M card :)

Perhaps you should post up some pictures? There are a lot of people on this part of the forum who are interested in Clevo laptops recently.
 
yes it has firewire

played the secret world on it on battery and got about 1hour and 10 mins down to 7%
where it asked me to plug it in.

Im guessing web browsing on power saving mode would be double that.

Specification Snapshot:
3rd Gen Intel® Core™ CPUs
670M | 675M | HD7970M
NVIDIA® Optimus™
Backlit Keyboard
SuperSpeed USB 3.0
Premium Onkyo Speakers
Fingerprint Scanner
HDMI Output Connection
DVI Output Connection
2.0MP Webcam
BluRay Capable
Wireless Fitted as Standard
Bluetooth Option Available
Firewire Fitted as Standard
e-SATA Input Connection
9 in one card reader
 
Some pictures of the vortex 3 , they don't do it justice though, looks better in the flesh

The screen colours look more natural than my 24inch desktop one next to it.

Also took them with the light off at night to show the backlit keys

keyboard2.jpg


DSCN0091.jpg


DSCN0092.jpg


DSCN0097.jpg


DSCN0094.jpg
 
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yeah it is kinda big, the rubber feet it stands on makes it look bigger than it is. (that's a shadow under the laptop making it look big)

It's more of a extreme gaming laptop/desktop replacement imo, but it does sit on my lap ok.

I position the centre of the laptop on one leg and rest the edge of it on the other so as not to block the 2 fans underneath.

Think I will grab a laptop tray from argoose today.

It's also more powerful and quieter than my desktop machine.
 
Thanks for the review :) Looks really nice just curious how the screen compares to the Samsung gamer series 7 I have. How many nits or cd/m2 is the screen 1 nit = 1 cd/m2. Also how does the keyboard feel to type on and game ?
 
Typing is good imo, nice feel to the key strokes

However my wife does not like it much because the enter key is smaller than normal
and the space bars is shorter, which makes her make mistakes

She can type at over 70 words a minute so it frustrates her
and has a 12 inch dell for work and has no problems typing on it

Gaming is great at the moment I am playing "the secret world" on it on ultra settings in a window

As for the nits I have no idea. I know it has a 72% gamut screen Vs a 95% one on the 15 inch version.
 
Fallen god said:
Its basically desktop grade hardware, so it needs 2 huge fans and a lot of space inside the case to keep it from exploding.

Back lighting looks amazing BTW.
Click to expand...

I dunno... The Sony Z is significantly smaller and uses similar hardware (although it has a mini dock for the GPU). And a much better battery life (and more expensive).

It just seems massive!

Does it have switchable graphics or is that why the battery life is fairly poor?
 
Amp34 said:
I dunno... The Sony Z is significantly smaller and uses similar hardware (although it has a mini dock for the GPU). And a much better battery life (and more expensive).

It just seems massive!

Does it have switchable graphics or is that why the battery life is fairly poor?
Click to expand...

I think this model doesnt support the switchable graphics, mine does and with the intel 4000 i get around 4hours of battery life.

The big problem is the graphics cards, on mine as soon as I turn on my graphics card(there is a button for this) the cpu temp jumps by atleast 10-15c even if im not using it at all. Although this is getting better with the new die shrinks I think it is still a problem if you want to do some real gaming your going to push it to its limits, I currently hit 85c which is rather scary for my liking.
 
Will investigate, thanks. All though my needs aren't to demanding, pretty sure I'd survive with a dual core i5, will get the fastest one.
 
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