PCSpecialist Vortex IV 770XS Review

Inside, the laptop is protected between two thick pieces of foam. The screen and lid are covered in protective plastic which needs removed before first use.

The laptop finish is quite nice, resembling high grade aluminium. It does attract fingerprints easily on all surface and I found myself wiping it regularly during the review process. Being a 17 inch laptop it is not the most portable of machines you could buy and is also very thick.

Underneath the laptop there are vents in all areas to ensure there is plenty of air circulating. The battery slot is at the front of the chassis and clips into place easily enough. We will have a look inside, shortly.


The left side of the laptop has the bluray drive, alongside a USB port and the audio connectors. The right side has an IEEE 1394 firewire port, a GB lan connector, 2 USB 3.0 ports, an eSATA/USB hybrid port and an SD card reader. The rear has the power connector, HDMI and DisplayPort connectors. There are two very substantial cooling vents on either side with copper heatsinks clearly visible.

The Vortex IV 770XS is well built, based around a Clevo chassis. The two hinges support the lid well and there is no unwanted movement when it is locked in position.

The onboard ONYKO audio is well above average for a laptop, exhibiting decent volume levels and even a modicum of bass response. That said, hooking in a dedicated speaker setup would surely maximise gaming and media playback, but for an ‘on the move' solution it is acceptable.

The keyboard is full sized and features a full numpad at the right. It is backlight and lights up violet in dark conditions. Sadly the keyboard experience is less than stellar and very poor after using the latest Lenovo ThinkPad X1 laptop which we reviewed several weeks ago. There is little, if any tactile feedback during use. There are a lot of FN key commands for screen brightness, wifi and sound, most of which are connected to the F1 series of keys.

There is a little keyboard flex in the middle but it isn't really detrimental to the operation of the laptop.

It was disappointing to see that the return key is only single height. I personally find this a huge issue as I found myself hitting the # key on a regular basis.

The trackpad is distinctly average and not in the same league as the ThinkPad X1 unit. We do like the texturing on the buttons and the fingerprint reader placed between the buttons, useful if you hate having to key in a password on boot up.

The system power button is positioned top right, just above the keyboard. Next to this is a row of icons which detail hard drive activity and key lock status. There is also a handy airplane mode which completely disables Wi-Fi.

The matte finish on the screen is very useful as it does kill a lot of the reflections behind the user. A matte screen isn't quite as appealing however when viewing high definition media playback as the contrast levels aren't as good. The screen quality is reasonable although at wide vertical or horizontal viewing there is colour degradation. Small text is legible and sharpness is good.

Like many Clevo chassis, there is little to comment on in regards to unusual design. They are fairly bland and chunky, but reliable. PCSpecialist have not modified the design in anyway, such as adding their own stickers or company logo on the lid.

No concerns with the build quality of the Vortex IV 770XS. The battery, hard drive and Solid State drive are all at the front of the unit and the i7 processor and Nvidia discrete graphics card are placed right and left, at the rear. Both of these get a dedicated fan cooler on either side of the chassis, connected via substantial heatpipes.

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