PCSpecialist IONICO 15 Laptop Review (14900HX / RTX 4070)

1. Introduction2. Synthetic Benchmarks3. Game Benchmarks4. Thermals, Noise & Power5. Final Thoughts6. View All Pages

The IONICO 15 from PCSpecialist combines an Intel Core i9 processor with an Nvidia RTX 4070 Laptop GPU and sticks them in a relatively slim and portable 15” chassis. The display offers a 240Hz refresh rate and claimed 100% sRGB coverage, alongside 2TB of storage and 32GB DDR5 memory. Can this £1799 laptop from PCSpecialist keep cool enough to fulfil its potential?

Timestamps

00:00 Start
00:36 Pricing and Details
03:37 SSD confusion & performance
04:27 Full metal chassis, weight & build quality
05:24 RGB, keyboard & trackpad
06:32 Speakers & sound quality
07:32 Ports and connectivity
09:00 Power profiles and Benchmark results
13:05 Thermals, Power and Noise Analysis
16:08 Battery Life
16:33 Gaming Tests
21:31 Closing thoughts

Specification

• Chassis & Display – Ionico Series: 15.3″ Matte QHD 240Hz sRGB 100% LED Widescreen (2560×1600)
• Processor (CPU) – Intel® Core™ i9 24 Core Processor 14900HX (5.8GHz Turbo)
• Memory (RAM) – 32GB Corsair 5600MHz SODIMM DDR5 (2 x 16GB)
• Graphics Card – NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 4070 – 8.0GB GDDR6 Video RAM – DirectX® 12.1
• 1st M.2 SSD Drive – 2TB Solidigm P41+ Gen 4 M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 4125MB/sR, 3325MB/sW)**
• Memory Card Reader – Integrated Micro-SD Memory Card Reader
• AC Adaptor – 1 x 280W AC Adaptor
• Power Cable – 1 x 1.5 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
• Battery – Ionico Battery 99WH
• Sound Card – 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
• Bluetooth & Wireless – GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® Wi-Fi 6E AX211 (2.4 Gbps) + BT 5.3
• USB/Thunderbolt Options – 1 x THUNDERBOLT 4 + 1 x USB 3.2 (TYPE C) + 3 x USB 3.2
• Keyboard Language – IONICO 15 SERIES RGB BACKLIT UK KEYBOARD
• Operating System – Windows 11 Home 64 Bit – inc. Single Licence
• Notebook Mouse – INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
• Webcam – INTEGRATED IR+FHD Hybrid Webcam Windows Hello 4.0
• Warranty – 3 Year Standard Warranty (6 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)

**The original specification sent over to us by PCSpecialist is listed above and showed the SSD as being a Solidigm P41+ 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD. When the laptop arrived with us, it actually contained a 2TB SAMSUNG 990 PRO M.2, PCIe 4.0 NVMe (up to 7450MB/R, 6900MB/W). We are awaiting confirmation of the SSD model in retail units from PCSpecialist and will update the page when we have this information.

The core specs are confirmed with the following CPU-Z and GPU-Z screenshots:

We ran the IONICO laptop through our full set of benchmarks – three times in total. This was due to using three different power profile which applied differing PL1 and PL2 power limits to the CPU. The Cinebench R23 multi-core benchmark result shown above highlights that the increased power provided to the processor with the laptop using its ‘Turbo Profile' resulted in a significantly improved score of 29,659 points when compared to the result of 21,804 points when using the out of the box ‘Custom Profile 1'.

For full details of the power profiles and power limits, watch our full video review on YouTube.

Results in the Cinebench R23 single-core benchmark were all very close regardless of which power profile was selected. While the ‘Turbo Profile' still came out on top, the difference was much less when compared to a multi-core workload.

GPU performance when measured using 3DMark Time Spy was very similar to the almost identical specification found in the Gigabyte Aorus 16X reviewed on the channel some time ago. The RTX 4070 laptop GPU performs similarly to an RTX 4060 Ti desktop GPU.

Running the system memory through a benchmark test with AIDA64 resulted in roughly the same read and write speeds regardless of which profile was active on the laptop. Custom Profile 2 came out on top with read speeds of 86,756MB/s and write speeds of 73,576MB/s.

Rounding out the synthetic benchmarks tests with PC Mark 10 results again shows that the IONICO performs better when running with the ‘Turbo Profile' active, however the laptop fell slightly short of the results achieved by the Gigabyte machine in the content creation category.

Gaming on the IONICO 15 laptop was only very marginally affected by selecting an increased performance profile. 1% low and average FPS figures did increase in most of the titles we test but not by any substantial amount and would not be noticeable by most gamers using this laptop day to day.

Battery life wasn't great when tested using the Modern Office battery test within PC Mark 10. The IONICO achieved 255 minutes (4hr 15min) when running the out of the box settings and 50% screen brightness.

CPU Power consumption reveals the difference in power limits when changing between the three tested performance profiles. At idle, the i9-14900HX uses 10w of power regardless of profile, but this is where the similarities end. While, out of the box, the CPU is limited to and uses 75w of power during a Cinebench R23 multi-core benchmark, that figures jumps up to 102w in ‘Custom Profile 2' and 120w in the laptop's ‘Turbo Profile'.

The difference in power usage directly correlates to increases in CPU temperatures as expected. The processor did experience some thermal throttling when using both ‘Custom Profile 2' and the ‘Turbo Profile'. For more information on this watch our full video review on YouTube.

There's no doubt that GPU temperatures are high, with hot spot and memory figures hovering between 96-98C depending on the profile. That is technically in spec, but it is definitely getting a bit too close to the danger zone for comfort.

System noise was also almost identical regardless of power profile. The IONICO 15 laptop was measured at roughly 51-52dB when running through a 30 minute Cinebench R23 multi-core benchmark, so it does get fairly loud, like most laptops with a similar spec.

The IONICO 15 laptop impressed during synthetic benchmarks, particularly when looking at multi-threaded workloads which benefit from the 24 cores and 32 threads of the Core i9-14900HX CPU. Performance was enhanced in these scenarios by pushing more power to the processor by enabling the laptop's ‘Turbo Profile'.

However, this does come at the cost of significantly increased heat generation which saw thermal throttling occur in almost all cases – an issue which is almost expected in compact laptops with high end, power hungry processors. For more information on the differing power profiles and thermal performance, be sure to watch our full review on YouTube.

Gaming performance isn't bad at all, but could be better, with the laptop averaging 72 FPS across the 10 titles we tested when using the ‘out of the box' settings at native resolution. With that being said though, we do need to bear in mind that all games that we tested were running at maximum settings, so performance could be improved significantly with some settings tweaks – which is well worth doing considering this is an 8GB RTX 4070 Laptop GPU.

32GB of DDR5 system memory running at 5600MT/s is plenty for most users, so the lack of any vacant SODIMM slots is a minor gripe and not something that will concern most. The build quality and design of the IONICO 15 is also excellent, the all-metal chassis feels very premium and the screen hinges are robust and sturdy.

Finally, the pricing of £1799 (reduced from £1847) is acceptable for a machine with this amount of processing power. Anyone looking for a portable, compact laptop that can handle CPU intensive workloads with relative ease should be pleased.

You can purchase the IONICO 15 Laptop directly from PCSpecialist for £1799 HERE.

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Pros:

• Great CPU performance.
• Good build quality.
• Vibrant and fast screen.
• Excellent screen hinges.
• Solid gaming performance.

Cons:

• Poor battery life.
• CPU throttling in high performance based power profiles.
• Lacklustre audio quality.
• GPU does run hot.

KitGuru says: The IONICO 15 laptop is a well made, relatively portable laptop with a pretty impressive CPU. 

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