PCSpecialist Vortex IV 770XS Review

1. Introduction2. PCSpecialist Vortex IV 770XS (Packaging & Accessories)3. PCSpecialist Vortex IV 770XS4. PCSpecialist Vortex IV 770XS (Super High Res Gallery)5. Testing Methodology & Configuration6. SiSoft Sandra7. PCMark 78. PCMark 89. Cinebench R11.5 64 bit10. Unigine Heaven Benchmark11. Unigine Valley Benchmark12. 3DMark Vantage13. 3DMark 1114. 3dMark15. SSD & HDD Performance16. USB 3.0 Bandwidth Testing17. BluRay Playback18. MKV 1080p Playback performance19. GRID 220. Tomb Raider21. Max Payne 322. Dirt ShowDown23. Thermal Dynamics24. Acoustics Performance25. Power Consumption26. Battery Life27. Closing Thoughts28. View All Pages

If you like to game on the move then the PCSpecialist Vortex IV 770XS will be a review you won't want to miss today. This 17.3 inch system ships with a 1080p matte LED display, 4th generation Intel Core i7 4700MQ processor, 16GB of Kingston Hyper X memory and a dual SSD/HDD drive configuration.

With a bluray drive, Killer 1202 WiFi and Nvidia GTX780M discrete graphics rounding out the hardware specifications, is this the sub £1,500 gaming laptop you need to shortlist?

With a checklist of hardware components like this and our previous experiences with PCSpecialist we have high hopes for this system today.

Vortex IV 770SX Specifications:
Display: 17.3 inch Matte Full HD LED Display (1920×1080)
CPU: 4th Gen Intel Core i7 4700MQ
GPU: 3GB Nvidia GTX 780M
Memory: 16GB Kingston HyperX 1600mhz
SSD: 120GB Kingston HyperX 3k
HDD: 750GB WD Scorpio Black HDD (7,200rpm)
ODD: 4x BluRay ROM/8x DVD-RW Combi
Network: Gigabit LAN/Killer 1202 Wireless/Bluetooth
Features: USB 3.0, 2MP Webcam, 9 in 1 MCR, BackLit Keyboard, DisplayPort
Warranty: 3 year Silver
Price: £1,449 inc VAT & Delivery.


The PCSpecialist Vortex IV 770XS ships in a plain brown box, which is a generic box connected to the Clevo brand.

Inside the box is a power supply with UK plug, user manual and driver/software disc. The battery is a 5,200 mAh model which seems a little underpowered for such a beefy system specification. More on this later in the 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.

On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source.











The Windows Experience Index is a rather lacklustre rating tool, but it gives a rough indication of overall performance. This system scores very highly, limited by the graphics performance at 7.1.

A clean software install and pretty much what we would expect from the team at PCSpecialist. We installed START8 ourselves.


An overview of the system in CPUz and GPUz. The 4th generation Intel Core i7 4700MQ is a Quad core processor with Hyperthreading, to give a total of 8 logical cores. It has 6 MB of Level 3 cache. This processor is equipped with the capable integrated HD4600 graphics. You can read more on this processor over here.

To further enhance performance however, PCSpecialist have installed an Nvidia GTX780M, which is a high end discrete mobile GPU. It is built on the 28nm process and has 32 ROP's and 128 TMU's. There is 4GB of GDDR5 memory onboard running at 1,250mhz (5Gbps effective) – this is connected via a 256 bit memory interface. The core is running at 771mhz with a boost speed of 797mhz.

The memory is running at 1,600mhz with 9-9-9-27 1T timings.

We can tell by the specifications that this card will be able to handle the latest Direct X 11 titles with good image quality at full 1080p resolutions.

Comparison Systems (for specific synthetic test compares):
MSI GE40-20C Dragon Eyes Laptop (Intel Core i7-4702MQ)
PCSpecialist Inferno 11.6 inch (Intel Core i7 3630QM)
MSI GX60 (AMD A10 4600M)
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (featuring Core i5 3427U)
Lenovo ThinkPad Edge S430 (featuring Core i5 3210M)
PC Specialist Vortex III HD72 (featuring Core i7 3610QM).
Asus G74SX-91013Z (featuring Core i7 2360QM).
Dell XPS 14z (featuring Core i7 2640M).
AlienWare M18X (featuring Core i7 2960XM Extreme Edition).
MSI CX640 (featuring Core i5 2410M).
Intel Core i7 2600k desktop processor.
Intel Core i5 2500k desktop processor.

Software:
3DMark
3DMark 11
PCMark 7
Cinebench 11.5 64 bit
FRAPS Professional
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
Unigine Valley
SiSoft Sandra
CrystalDiskMark
ATTO Disk Benchmark
Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra 12
Cyberlink MediaEspresso
GRID 2
Metro Last Light
Tomb Raider (2013)

Technical Monitoring and Test Equipment:
Asus USB BluRay Drive
Lacie 730 Monitor (Image Quality testing)
Thermal Diodes
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Extech digital sound level meter & SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter
Nikon D3X with R1C1 Kit (4 flashes), Nikon 24-70MM lens.

Game descriptions are taken with courtesy from Wikipedia.

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

There is no doubt that the new 4700MQ is a formidable processor, scoring close to the top of our chart in the Arithmetic test. System memory bandwidth is excellent also, scoring around 20GB/s.

PCMark 7 includes 7 PC tests for Windows 7, combining more than 25 individual workloads covering storage, computation, image and video manipulation, web browsing and gaming. Specifically designed to cover the full range of PC hardware from netbooks and tablets to notebooks and desktops, PCMark 7 offers complete PC performance testing for Windows 7 for home and business use.


The system scores 6,240 points, which is very healthy. We look at the newer version of this benchmark on the next page.

PCMark 8 is the latest version in the popular series of PC benchmarking tools. Improving on previous releases, PCMark 8 includes battery life measurement tools and new tests using popular applications from Adobe and Microsoft. Whether you are looking for long battery life, or maximum power, PCMark 8 helps you find the devices that offer the perfect combination of efficiency and performance for your needs.



The system scores 3,883 points in the latest version of PCMark 8.

CINEBENCH R11.5 64 Bit is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more.

CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It’s completely free.


Well we finally have a mobile processor that has relegated the Core i7 2960 XM in the Alienware M18x into second place. A score of 6.97 points is higher than the desktop Core i5 2500k. Impressive!

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

We configured Unigine to use the settings detailed above, at 1080p.


The system averaged almost 54 frames per second at this high image quality settings at 1080p. Very impressive results again.

Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark.

The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird’s-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal.

This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user.

We tested at the native 1920×1080 resolution of the screen.


The system scores an average of 62.4 frames per second at 1080p. No problems maintaining smooth frame rates with these Direct X 11 benchmarks.

Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.


The system scores 27,428 points in this older Direct X 10 benchmark. A promising start.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance.

Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

The system scores 7,713 points in this Direct X 11 benchmark. This is a good indication that the system will be able to power last years Direct X 11 titles with high settings.

3DMark is an essential tool used by millions of gamers, hundreds of hardware review sites and many of the world’s leading manufacturers to measure PC gaming performance.Futuremark say “Use it to test your PC’s limits and measure the impact of overclocking and tweaking your system. Search our massive results database and see how your PC compares or just admire the graphics and wonder why all PC games don’t look this good.

To get more out of your PC, put 3DMark in your PC.”


The latest Direct X 11 benchmark is demanding. The system scores just over 4,800 points. We expect good Direct X 11 gaming performance with the latest games.
We test the performance of the Kingston HyperX 3K SSD and the WD Scorpio 750GB HDD on this page.

The Kingston drive scores well in both compressible and incompressible tests, averaging between 400 MB/s and 450 MB/s in the sequential read test.

The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.

The Kingston SSD scores well in the ATTO Benchmark as well scoring close to 550 MB/s in the sequential read test and 525 MB/s in the sequential write test. The mechanical 2.5 inch drive isn't quite as impressive, peaking around 125 MB/s in the sequential read test and around 115 MB/s in the sequential write test.

We test the USB 3.0 performance on the PC Specialist Vanquish Enforcer system with one of our fastest portable flash drives – the Patriot SuperSonic Magnum 256GB. We reviewed this back in February, check it out over here.

These are really strong results, and as good as we have seen when paired up with the latest Z87 desktop motherboards. This actually shows the limitations of the 7,200 rpm 2.5 inch internal Western Digital Scorpio drive listed on the last page.

The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.

The ATTO Disk Benchmark mirrors the good results of Crystalmark although write performance always seems significantly lower.

Our good friends at Cyberlink kindly supplied the software for our BluRay and conversion tests.

Cyberlink PowerDVD 13 Ultra is one of the finest solutions for the BluRay experience on Windows and we found this software to work perfectly with this chipset.
We tested with The BluRay Disc of The Hobbit: An UnExpected Journey.

No performance concerns watching 1080p BluRay movies, utilising only 11 percent CPU time overall.

The Matroska Media container is a very popular, open standard Multimedia container which is usually found as .MKV files. It is a very popular format in enthusiast circles and can be played directly in Windows Media Player with suitable codecs installed. We use the Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP).

We ripped our BluRay disc of AVATAR to 1080P MKV and use Windows Media Player to playback the file.

The system has plenty of cycles left over for multitasking duties, even when handling a 1080p MKV file.

Grid 2 is the sequel to the racing video game Race Driver: Grid.  It was developed and published by Codemasters. The game includes numerous real world locations such as Paris, numerous United States locations, and many more, and also includes motor vehicles spanning four decades. In addition, it includes a new handling system that developer Codemasters has dubbed ‘TrueFeel’, which aims to hit a sweet spot between realism and accessibility.

We used a resolution of 1920×1080 with 8 MSAA and the ULTRA preset.

The system averages close to 50 frames per second at these high settings, which is excellent.

After a delayed release from late 2012 to March 2013, the game received much anticipation and hype.

Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far.

We opted for the native resolution of the panel (1080p) with the ‘Ultimate' preset option. The screenshot above shows integrated Intel HD4600 graphics, but the Nvidia GTX780m was in operation when we played the game.

The system scored well in this test, averaging 38 frames per second at 1080p with the ‘Ultimate' preset. The frame rate only dropped below 30 fps a couple of times, although it was still perfectly smooth.

Max Payne 3 is a third-person shooter in which the player assumes the role of its titular character, Max Payne. Max Payne 3 features a similar over-the-shoulder camera as its predecessors, with the addition of a cover mechanic, while also retaining much of the same run-and-gun style of gameplay. Max Payne 3 also marks the return of bullet-time in action sequences, for which the franchise is notable.

In bullet-time it is possible to see every bullet strike an enemy in detail. New to the series is a “Last Stand” mechanic, which gives the player a grace period after losing all health during which time the player may kill the enemy that wounded them in order to continue playing, however this mechanic is only usable if the player has one or more bottles of painkillers in their possession.

We tested at 1080p with the image quality settings shown above.

Smooth frame rates at these settings, averaging over 50 fps and dropping to 35 fps in one location.

Dirt Showdown is the latest title in the franchise from Codemasters, based around the famous Colin McRae racing game series, although it no longer uses his name, since he passed away in 2007.

We configured the game to run at 1080p with the ultra preset and 4x MSAA.

Again, with these high image quality settings, the game is perfectly smooth, averaging 50 frames per second and maintaining a >30fps variable at all times.

The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 24c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes.Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature.

We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic.

The cooling system works hard when loaded, with both fans spinning high when the temperatures increase.

We attached five diodes to the back of the chassis and measured the temperature (Celcius) after one hour of intensive work and gaming.

The underside of the machine gets very warm to the touch, especially at the rear of the chassis. There are big exhaust vents at the rear of the machine to expel the hot air from both GPU and CPU, but the smaller vents on the underside do radiate quite a lot of heat under load too.

Not an ideal system to be using long term on your lap during those intensive gaming sessions.

We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the chassis and 4 foot from the ground with our Extech digital sound level meter to mirror a real world situation.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refrigerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet take off/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

The system is reasonably quiet when idle, however under extended load when playing a game for instance, the fans kick in hard, spinning fast. At full load the system is clearly audible.

We measured power consumption via a calibrated meter plugged in between the laptop and wall socket.

Power is measured when the system is resting at idle and then when loaded with the last ‘combined test’ in 3DMark 11, which replicates a real world gaming situation.

Power consumption at idle is only around 35 watts. Under gaming load this rises to around 160 watts.

To test today, we are putting the machine through a variety of ‘real world’ situations, mirroring the real world usage of a potential customer.

One as a media movie lover on the move (wearing headphones), a person wanting to watch high definition media on a train journey or bus with screen brightness two notches from maximum.

Second as a businessman, with screen brightness around half way. Wireless was enabled. A mixture of checking, answering emails using Microsoft Office and editing pictures in Adobe Photoshop.

Lastly as a gamer, playing Left4Dead until the machine turned itself off.

Battery life is not wonderful, under most circumstances it would be expected that the Vortex IV 770XS would last between 2 and 3 hours. Considering the power on tap however the results are not too bad.
The PCSpecialist Vortex IV 770XS is a desktop replacement system with plenty of power available for a myriad of tasks. Due to the sheer size and weight of the Clevo chassis this system is clearly designed to be used on a table or desk.

The Clevo chassis takes a ‘brute force' approach to the design, rather than simply opting for a sexy appearance to attract a specific audience. The only person who would consider this a sexy looking machine would be someone who collects Military tank models.

The internal cooling system for instance is immense, circulating a huge amount of cool air across the hot running components. When you have adopted a high end Intel Core i7 Quad core processor and discrete Nvidia GTX780m graphics card this is very important.

Especially if the system builder doesn't want to be dealing with a raft of RMA's.

We have no complaints in regards to the performance of the Vortex IV 770XS system. The new Haswell 4770MQ is a powerhouse mobile processor, offering similar rendering performance as the desktop Core i7 2600k at reference clocks. It has knocked the mega cost Core i7 2960 Extreme Edition (in the Alienware M18x) off the top spot in our tests today.

The Nvidia GTX780m is the joint star of the show. This discrete graphics card can power through the latest games at 1080p with the image quality settings maxed. Many of the latest Direct X 11 titles we tested could also run perfectly smoothly with high levels of anti aliasing enabled, highlighting class leading shader performance. With 4GB of GDDR5 memory onboard, this card is built to handle demanding high resolution settings.

PCSpecialist have not made any configuration errors with the machine. They are using a nippy 120GB Kingston HyperX 3K solid state drive for boot/Windows OS duties alongside a 750GB Western Digital Scorpio 2.5 inch drive for storage. With 16GB of quality Kingston DDR3 memory installed, the system is always responsive regardless of the task.

Onboard sound is surprisingly good, however not in the same league as the built in audio on the Alienware M18X which we reviewed some time ago. No onboard sound system has came close to this Alienware system, but the PCSpecialist Vortex IV 770XS manages a somewhat distant second.

There are some negative points i have to mention. I do not like this Clevo keyboard at all, it feels spongy and while it is nicely backlit I was never happy using it for any length of time. The single height return key caused me a lot of problems as well, but I have never liked a single height return key in the past and avoid them when possible. The trackpad is also no better than average. As a desktop replacement however, you could easily hook in a mechanical keyboard and high grade mouse and perhaps even a 24 inch screen for gaming.

As we would expect this system isn't the quietest, emitting a reasonably high level of noise when both processor and graphics card are pushed hard under load. The dual fan system works hard to maintain a good thermal curve and it does succeed. The temperatures never rose above 80c, which is commendable in such a high performance system.

The quality of the screen is quite good, although we have seen better IPS panels in recent months. Small text is nicely rendered, colour reproduction is reasonably good and the matte finish does reduce rear view reflections. The matte finish however isn't conducive to a great 1080p media playback experience, contrast levels could be better and colours don't pop and zing like they do with the best screens on the market. It isn't a bad screen by any stretch, but it left me wanting more.

Overall we are impressed with this system and more so due to the very competitive asking price of £1,449 inc vat and delivery. You can pick your own up via this link.

Pros:

• extremely powerful laptop.
• This Haswell processor matches the desktop 2600k
• Nvidia GTX780M is a frame eating monster.
• good onboard audio.
• 1080p resolution.
• competitively priced.
• SSD and HDD combo works well.
• backlit keyboard.

Cons:

• A little loud under load.
• Keyboard is disappointing and has a single height return key.
• trackpad is average at best.
• battery life.

Kitguru says: A powerhouse machine and a great desktop replacement.

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