Looking for a powerful gaming laptop without the need to dive deep into your pocket? Well, look no further than the ASUS FX502 because this – what should have been a ROG-branded laptop – offers an exceptionally fast GTX 1060 GPU paired with quad-core Intel Core i7-6700HQ processor for almost half the price of other similarly configured machines. But, of course, as with every other notebook with an impressive price/performance ratio, you will have to make a few sacrifices along the way.

For instance, the display uses a TN panel with overall poor viewing experience and the build quality may not suit everybody. On second thought, the latter doesn’t seem to be all that bad but in fact, it usefs generally the same design concept and materials as its more expensive ROG-branded GL502VS sibling. In addition, the provided GTX 1060 is paired with 3GB GDDR5 VRAM instead of 6GB but on contrary to our expectations, the GPU features all of the available 1280 CUDA cores. And as we all know, the 3GB version of the GTX 1060 sports fewer CUDA cores than the original version. This is not the case here, whatsoever. Find out more about this crazy bang for the bucks FX502 in the review below.

You can find some of the available configurations here: http://amzn.to/2jJBy7k

Contents

Retail package

Since this is not a ROG-branded laptop, ASUS ships the FX502 in a standard box that includes the usual user manuals, AC adapter, and power cord. There’s also a handy cable tie for your cable management addiction.

Design and construction

Although the notebook is listed as 2.2 kg in weight in ASUS’ official website, our unit weighed approximately 2.515 kg. Interestingly enough, when we lifted up the notebook it felt much lighter than it really is. One of the main reason for this sensation might be the impressively thin profile measuring at just 24.5 mm. While all of this sounds great on paper – a powerful and compact 15-incher at a great price – we are a bit skeptical of its cooling capabilities. We will check that out in the “Temperatures” section below.

The design concept of the notebook is generally the same as the one of the ASUS ROG GL502 – brushed aluminum lid and plastic all around. The lid itself is absolutely the same as the one on the GL502 but lacks all the fancy LED logo illumination and strips and the only thing you will find at the back is ASUS’ boring logo in the middle. The aluminum plate, which is also a huge fingerprint magnet, bends under pressure but not enough to produce the ripple effect on the LCD screen. Speaking of which, it carries the usual thick screen bezels we are used to seeing on ASUS laptops but the hinges stand out somehow. They feel pretty stealth, linear and offer easy opening with just one hand. And as for the bottom piece, it uses hard plastic surface, slightly rugged with interesting ornaments like the ones on the GL502 and even the grills are positioned similarly. Again, only the ROG logo is missing.

The sides are – as we already mentioned – quite thin but offer all the needed connectivity options. The left side holds the DC charging port, LAN, mini DisplayPort, HDMI and USB 3.0 while the right side has the SD card reader, 2x USB 3.0 connector and the 3.5 mm audio jack. As you can see, they are evenly distributed and won’t pose a problem while gaming or working in tight spaces. Finally, the back of the machine integrates only two big vent openings for pushing the hot air out.

Moving on to the interior, you will see a strong resemblance between recently released ASUS ROG gaming notebooks and the FX502. It’s made of plastic imitating brushed aluminum surface and surprisingly, fingerprints don’t stick as easily. The keyboard itself is in the usual ASUS ROG style with red LED illumination, highlighted WASD keys and no media control buttons. The keys feel clicky, stable and typing on this keyboard won’t take much time adjusting to it. However, we feel that the key travel is shorter than it should be for gaming. Sometimes the clicky feedback just isn’t enough for a comfortable gaming experience. We were also disappointed by the touchpad, which seemed to be really jumpy, inaccurate at times but at the same time felt stable (no wobbling) and the mouse clicks were clicky and responsive.

Disassembly, maintenance and upgrade options

The notebook doesn’t feature a dedicated service lid but its bottom piece is fairly easy to remove and gives easy access to all of the internals.

Storage upgrade options – 2.5-inch HDD, M.2 slot

As expected, the laptop offers a 2.5-inch 1TB HDD manufactured by HGST spinning at 7200 rpm as well as an M.2 PCIe NVMe-enabled SSD slot. Since we reviewed the very basic model, the latter was empty.

RAM

And here comes the big disappointment for some users. The motherboard integrates a soldered 8GB DDR4-2133 chip and offers only one free slot. You can only upgrade the machine with up to 24GB, which is an overkill for the general user and gaming, but if you are planning to use the machine for other purposes, this will be a deal-breaker.

Other components

The Wi-Fi card is located near the left cooling fan and it’s manufactured by Intel. The model is 8260NGW.

The battery is at its usual place and it’s rated at 42Wh

Cooling system

The cooling design seems conventional incorporating two cooling fans connected to the heat sinks using two heat pipes with a third one stitched in the middle. While this cooling system seems reliable on paper, the figures in our stress test speak for themselves.

Display quality

The notebook uses a TN type of panel manufactured by AU Optronics with model number B156HTN03.8, which features Full HD (1920×1080) resolution leading to a 0.18 x 0.18 mm pixel pitch and 142 ppi. It can be considered as “Retina” when viewed from a distance equal or greater than 60 cm.

The notebook’s display offers narrow viewing angles due to the use of a TN panel.

Surprisingly for a TN panel, the maximum recorded brightness is slightly above average – for this kind of panel, of course – and our equipment recorded 233 cd/m2 in the middle and 221 cd/m2 as average across the surface with just 10% deviation. The color temperature is really close to the optimal – 6700K but the contrast ratio seems pretty low – 310:1.

We also measured dE2000 in different parts of the screen and the maximum recorded value was 2.4. Anything above 4.0 is unwanted.

Color reproduction

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction of the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people in HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

In this case, the display covers merely 51% of all sRGB colors. This is insufficient for a good multimedia or gaming experience.

Below you will see practically the same image but with the color circles representing the reference colors and the white circles being the result. You can see main and additional colors with 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% saturation inside the sRGB gamut pre and post calibration.

We’ve created a profile with 140 cd/m2 luminance, D65(6500K) white point and 2.2 gamma.

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the Office & Web Design profile.

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the Gaming & Movie Nights profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle and the surrounding light conditions.

Gaming capabilities (Response time)

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and reverse.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 15 ms. That’s fairly fast response time for a notebook display.

PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse Width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

We were pleased to see that the display doesn’t use PWM at all. All brightness levels are flicker-free and thus, the display can be used for prolonged periods of time.

Blue light emissions

Installing of our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin, and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

You can see the levels of emitted blue light on the spectral power distribution (SDP) graph.

Conclusion

We will lie if we say that we weren’t disappointed by the image quality provided by the FX502VM. Quite frankly, we would have really appreciated if the laptop integrated a high-quality TN panel at the very least. We’ve tested on recently on the Acer Aspire F 15 and on the MSI PX60-6QE – laptops with much lower price tag.

Whereas this panel, provides a picture quality suitable for a really low-end everyday laptop. We have low sRGB coverage, extremely low contrast, fairly low maximum brightness and poor viewing angles. Some of the issues with color reproduction, gamma and low-light visibility can be fixed by installing our custom profiles but they can go so far. We do have to note, though, that the display doesn’t use PWM for regulating screen brightness making it harmless to your eyes.

If you are still considering the notebook despite the major flaw in the display department, we suggest spending a bit more on an external monitor. Even the most budget IPS solutions will be better than the built-in display for multimedia and gaming. And you won’t be losing the G-Sync feature as well because this laptop doesn’t support it unless you connect a G-Sync-enabled external monitor using the provided DisplayPort.

Buy our display profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package is meant for ASUS FX502VM configurations with 15.6″ AUO B156HTN03.8 (FHD, 1920 × 1080) TN screen, which can be found at Amazon: http://amzn.to/2kExHG8

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at bg.laptopmedia@gmail.com.

Read more about the profiles HERE.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office work / Web design

If your field is office work or web design, or you just want your monitor's color set to be as accurate as possible for the Internet color space, this profile will prove to be useful.

$4.96

Buy Now Checkout Added to cart

Gaming or Movie nights

We developed this profile especially for occasions on which you spend a lot of time in front of your monitor with some games or watching movies – it will be easier for you to discern fine nuances in the dark.

$4.97

Buy Now Checkout Added to cart

Health-Guard

This profile reduces the negative impact of pulsation and the blue spectrum, securing your eyes and body. You still get a pitch-perfect color image, albeit slightly warmer.

$4.98

Buy Now Checkout Added to cart

$9.99

Buy Now Checkout Added to cart

Sound

The sound quality is good and we didn’t notice any major distortions in low, mid and high frequencies.

Specs sheet

The specs sheet provided below is for this model only and may vary depending on your region or configuration.

Check Price

CPU	Intel Core i7-6700HQ (4-core, 2.60-3.50 GHz, 6MB cache)
RAM	8GB (1x 8096MB) – DDR4, 2133MHz
GPU	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (3GB GDDR5)
HDD/SSD	1TB HDD (5400 rpm)
Display	15.6-inch Full HD (1920×1080) TN, matte
Optical Drive	–
Connectivity	LAN 10/100/1000 Mbps, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0
Other features	3x USB 3.0 LED keyboard backlight HDMI mini DisplayPort RJ-45 SD card reader 3.5 mm jacks for microphone and headphones
Battery	4-cell, 64Wh
Thickness	24.5 mm (0.96″)
Weight	2.515 kg (5.54 lbs)

Software

The reviewed unit came with pre-installed Windows 10 (64-bit) but if you wish to perform a clean install of the OS, we suggest downloading all the latest drivers from ASUS’ offical support page.

Battery

For 15-inch gaming laptop, the FX502VM sports a relatively big battery rated at 64Wh. But since the notebook features the latest generation NVIDIA Pascal GPU, the integrated GPU of the processor is out of the equation and thus delivers subpar battery performance. However, since the laptop doesn’t feature the so-called G-Sync technology, which doesn’t get along with NVIDIA’s Optimus feature (switchable graphics), we suspect that you can still benefit from the G-Sync technology with an external monitor using the mini DisplayPort. You can see from the results below that the GTX 1060 sips quite a lot of energy even when performing simple tasks like web browsing or watching a movie.

All the tests were performed with the usual settings – Windows battery saving feature switched on, Wi-Fi constantly running and screen brightness set to 120 cd/m2.

Web browsing

In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.

The results are slightly below average even for a gaming laptop – 210 minutes (3 hours and 30 minutes).

Video playback

For every test like this, we use the same video in HD.

Similar, but lower result – 210 minutes (4 hours and 22 minutes). That should be more than enough for a full movie.

Gaming

We recently started using F1 2015’s built-in benchmark on loop in order to simulate real-life gaming.

It’s quite unlikely that you will start a gaming session without being close to a power source, but it’s good to know that you can play for more an hour – 88 minutes (1 hour and 28 minutes).

CPU – Intel Core i7-6700HQ

Intel Core i7-6700HQ represents the Skylake H family and it’s considered as a high-performance chip with high voltage – 45W TDP. This is a step down from its direct predecessor – Core i7-4700HQ but matches its short-lived predecessor Core i7-5700HQ. The Core i7-6700HQ has four cores ticking at 2.6GHz and can go up to 3.5 GHz for one active core and 3.1 GHz for four active cores. The silicon supports the so-called Hyper-Threading technology that emulates one virtual core for each physical and thus establishing a total of 8 threads.

Furthermore, the chip is manufactured using 14nm FinFET process and integrates Intel HD Graphics 530 GPU with 24 EU (Executable Units) clocked at 350 – 1050 MHz. The memory controller supports up to 64GB of DDR3 or DDR4 RAM at 1600 or 2133 MHz respectively. The CPU is suitable for heavy applications and gaming.

You can browse through our top CPUs ranking: http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-cpu-ranking/

Here you will find other useful information and every notebook we’ve tested with this processor: http://laptopmedia.com/processor/intel-core-i7-6700hq/

Fritz

Fritz is a chess benchmark that tests the computing capabilities of the CPU with various chess moves. The Intel Core i7-6700HQ managed to get 12.300 million moves per second. For comparison, one of the most powerful PCs, Deep(er) Blue, was able to squeeze out 200 million moves per second. In 1997 Deep(er) Blue even beat the famous Garry Kasparov with 3.5 to 2.5.

GPU – NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (3GB GDDR5)

NIVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1060 GPU aims to be the mid-tier graphics card from the Pascal generation offering similar or even better performance than last year’s flagship models like the GTX 970M and 980M. However, the GPU will be used in high-end laptop configurations.

The graphics card is based on the GP106 chip built on the 16nm FinFET manufacturing process from TSMC paired with up to 6GB GDDR5 VRAM clocked at 8000 MHz effective on a 192-bit interface but this particular model sports 3GB of GDDR5. On contrary to the desktop 3GB variant, this one utilizes the full 1280 CUDA cores intrinsic to the GP106. The GPU also features the same amount of CUDA cores as its desktop counterpart (1280) and it’s clocked at the same frequencies – 1506 – 1708 MHz.

Depending on the cooling solution, the GPU can be found in large 17 and 15-inch notebooks but some slimmed-down 14-inch notebooks are also an option. The TDP of the GPU is somewhat lower than the last generation GTX 970M.

Gaming tests

Temperatures

The extreme nature of the stress tests that we perform isn’t a good representation of a real-life use but at the same time it’s the best way to determine the cooling capabilities and the stability of the system in the long run.

We started off with 100% CPU load and we were pleased to see the notebook keeping relatively normal temperatures while utilizing the full clock speeds (3.1 GHz for four active cores).

Unfortunately, though, after turning on the GPU stress test as well, things went south really fast. The CPU reached dangerously high temperatures while the GPU’s frequency slowly decreased and the system shut down to prevent any damage due to the high inner temperatures. While we were expecting a bit hotter than usual casing considering the thin profile, of course, we actually didn’t expect the notebook to shut down by itself. So far we had only a handful of similar situations and mostly with pre-production samples.

While this seems alarming, just keep in mind that the extreme nature of this stress test forced a system shut down. This will never happen during normal gameplay but it’s a clear sign of failed cooling design, nonetheless. Also, since the system shut down before we were able to measure the surface temperatures, here’s a heat map during normal gameplay.

As you can see, the upper part of the keyboard tray between the hinges and the center of the keyboard gets hot. To be exact, the hottest point reached 54.0 °C. Regardless, the palm rest area remained cool.

Verdict

All in all, the FX502VM is a powerful gaming notebook with impressive hardware for the asking price but as with every performance-centric laptop, you will have to make some serious sacrifices along the way. And this time, it’s not about build quality. In fact, the FX502VM is quite on par with the recently reviewed ASUS ROG GL502VS as they both share the same design concept and materials. Also, the FX502VM is surprisingly thin and relatively portable. Yes, sure we would have really appreciated a more premium selection of materials but let’s not get too picky.

The real problem with the notebook is the unreliable cooling system, which keeps the internals hot under load, you can feel the interior getting warmer than usual and the system even shut down during our extensive stress test. Something we haven’t seen before on a gaming laptop, especially ASUS-made one. Probably the system shutdown won’t occur during normal usage and gaming but it will surely put stress on the hardware in the long run. Usually, more heat means less stability throughout the years.

Along with the cooling system, there’s a serious issue with the screen as well. ASUS used a lackluster TN panel to keep the costs low, which can be considered okay for some users but we really would have appreciated a better TN panel or a budget IPS solution at the very least. On the other hand, our equipment didn’t detect any PWM, which is of great importance. However, if you wish to use this notebook for gaming at home and work on the go, we suggest looking around for a basic external IPS monitor. You can find a bunch of alternatives here all of which are better than the built-in display.

So do we recommend the ASUS FX502VM? Well, it really depends on your needs. If the extremely good price/performance ratio is the most important factor then, yes, it’s really worth considering. But if you are looking for a more balanced solution, we suggest looking elsewhere.

You can find some of the available configurations here: http://amzn.to/2jJBy7k

Dell dropped a few new updates to its mainstream Inspiron lineup offering the new Intel 7th Generation Kaby Lake processors and more powerful discrete graphics cards. In this case, we will be reviewing the Inspiron 15 5567 laptop packing the highest specs from the lineup – Core i7-7500U, AMD Radeon R7 M445 with 2GB of GDDR5 VRAM, 16GB of DDR4-2400 RAM and crisp Full HD IPS panel. Interestingly, even the low-end configurations can be found with an IPS panel making it a really good alternative to the Ideapad 510. So the question is, whether the R7 M445 GPU will outperform the updated GeForce 940MX.

Also, we would like to assess the quality of the IPS panel and more importantly – whether the panel uses PWM for regulating screen brightness. But at this price range, it doesn’t really matter the panel’s properties, we will take it anyway. So what about usability, ergonomics, build quality and temperature management? We find out in the extensive review below.

You can find some of the available models here: http://amzn.to/2kZK0Nz

Contents

Retail package

The box contains all the usual stuff like AC cord, power adapter, user manuals and the laptop itself.

Design and construction

The whole design concept of the new Inspiron 5567 reminds us of the old Dell machines with the glossy lid and contrasting gray interior. We also have a fairly thin profile, relatively tight build and overall good input devices.

But first, let’s take a close look at the lid. It features glossy plastic finish with Dell’s logo in the middle but surprisingly, fingerprints and smudges are only visible under direct light. They don’t seem so visible as we expected. The material, though, is easily bendable without, however, causing ripples on the LCD screen when pressed in the middle. Opening it requires both hands at all time because the hinge appears to be overly tightened. Maybe since there’s a touch-enabled model, the hinge is more tightly pulled to eliminate the wobbling effect. The bottom piece is made of the usual black, slightly rough black plastic offering just a small vent opening in the middle for extra airflow.

The sides measure at just 23.3 mm making it one of the thinnest laptops in its class. Still, you will find all the needed ports and connectors, which are also evenly distributed. The left offers connectivity via RJ-45 for LAN, HDMI, 3.5 mm audio jack and two USB 3.0 connectors. And as for the right side, you will find there the SD card reader, a USB 2.0 and the optical drive.

Quite surprisingly, the interior successfully mimics brushed aluminum surface. We got fooled at first. The surface itself is pleasant to touch, doesn’t attract fingerprints and offers a fair amount of stability. It’s not susceptible to flexing or bending. We also have a big touchpad area with clicky and responsive mouse buttons. Overall, the touchpad experience is really good with the small exception of the slight wobbling that we noticed. It’s not that noticeable and doesn’t actually get in the way when using the touchpad so no need to worry here. The keyboard, on the other hand, was accepted with some mixed feelings. The LED illumination is missing, which is a standard for a mid-range laptop but expected to be missing in the lower-end versions. However, that wasn’t the biggest issue. It was more to the layout of the keys. They might be a bit too small to the taste of some users, which is compensated with more spacing between them. We got used to typing on it quite fast and we especially liked the clicky tactile feedback with a reasonable amount of key travel. So whether the keyboard keys are small or big enough for comfortable typing, it’s more of a subjective opinion.

Disassembly, maintenance and upgrade options

Sure, the notebook doesn’t have a dedicated service lid for easy access to the hardware but the bottom piece is super easy to remove anyway. You just need to unscrew all the bolts holding it. Also, make sure you remove the optical drive as well.

Storage upgrade options – 2.5-inch HDD

Since this is a low-end to mid-range laptop, we don’t expect anything more than a 2.5-inch drive slot. And that’s what we get here. The unit that we received sports a Toshiba 1TB HDD.

RAM

We were pleasnatly surprised by the two RAM slots that the motherboard offers. Usually, similarly-priced laptops have only one slot with another RAM chip soldered to the motherboard. In this case, however, our unit came with a single SK Hynix 16GB DDR4-2400 chip and the other slot remains free for upgrade.

Other components

The Wi-Fi module is located near the left hinge, right next to the RAM slots. It’s manufactured by Intel with model number 3165NGW.

The battery unit is placed right under the palm rest area and is rated at 42Wh.

Cooling system

At first glance, the cooling system seems modest but we suspect that the not so demanding nature of the hardware won’t pose a problem. You can see both chips using seperate heat sinks but sharing a heat pipe leading to the cooling fan.

Display quality

The notebook uses a Full HD IPS panel featuring a standard 1920 x 1080 resolution in a 15.6-inch diagonal which translates into 142 ppi and 0.18 x 0.18 mm pixel pitch. It’s manufactured by Samsung with model number SDC8B4F and can be considered as “Retina” when viewed from a distance equal or greater than 60 cm,

Viewing angles are excellent.

We’ve recorded a decent maximum brightness on the panel – 280 cd/m2 while the color temperature is really close to the optimal 6500K. The recorded contrast ratio is 990:1.

Color reproduction

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction of the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people in HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

The display covers about 58% of the sRGB color gamut suggesting that the used IPS panel panel here is budget-friendly.

Below you will see practically the same image but with the color circles representing the reference colors and the white circles being the result. You can see main and additional colors with 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% saturation inside the sRGB gamut pre and post calibration.

We’ve created a profile with 140 cd/m2 luminance, D65(6500K) white point and 2.2 gamma.

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the Office & Web Design profile.

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the Gaming & Movie Nights profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle and the surrounding light conditions.

Response time

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and reverse.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 32 ms.

PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse Width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

We were surprised to see that the panel doesn’t emit pulsating light and thus PWM isn’t used for regulating screen brightness. It can be used for long periods of time without causing unwanted eyestrain.

Blue light emissions

Installing of our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin, and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

You can see the levels of emitted blue light on the spectral power distribution (SDP) graph.

Conclusion

We are extremely happy with the presented IPS panel as it has wide viewing angles, above average sRGB color gamut coverage for the price range, high contrast ratio and it’s relatively bright enough for working in well-lit environments. On top of all, the panel doesn’t use PWM for regulating screen brightness making it safe to use for long periods of time.

Buy our display profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package is meant for Dell Inspiron 15 5567 configurations with 15.6″ SamsungB156HTN03.8 (FHD, 1920 × 1080) TN screen, which can be found at Amazon: http://amzn.to/2kVgWqs

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at bg.laptopmedia@gmail.com.

Read more about the profiles HERE.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office work / Web design

If your field is office work or web design, or you just want your monitor's color set to be as accurate as possible for the Internet color space, this profile will prove to be useful.

$4.96

Buy Now Checkout Added to cart

Gaming or Movie nights

We developed this profile especially for occasions on which you spend a lot of time in front of your monitor with some games or watching movies – it will be easier for you to discern fine nuances in the dark.

$4.97

Buy Now Checkout Added to cart

Health-Guard

This profile reduces the negative impact of pulsation and the blue spectrum, securing your eyes and body. You still get a pitch-perfect color image, albeit slightly warmer.

$4.98

Buy Now Checkout Added to cart

$9.99

Buy Now Checkout Added to cart

Sound

Generally, the sound quality is good and we didn’t notice any distortions in low and high frequencies.

Specs sheet

The specs sheet provided below is for this model only and may vary depending on your region or configuration.

Check Price

CPU	Intel Core i7-7500U (2-core, 2.70-3.50 GHz, 4MB cache)
RAM	16GB (1x 16384MB) – DDR4, 2400 MHz
GPU	AMD Radeon R7 M445 (2GB GDDR5)
HDD/SSD	1TB HDD (5400 rpm)
Display	15.6-inch Full HD (1920×1080) IPS, glossy
Optical Drive	Yes
Connectivity	LAN 10/100/1000 Mbps, Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.2
Other features	2x USB 3.0 1x USB 2.0 HDMI RJ-45 SD card reader 3.5 mm audio jack
Battery	3-cell, 42Wh
Thickness	23.3 mm (0.92″)
Weight	2.33 kg (5.14 lbs)

Software

We used a fresh install of the Windows 10 (64-bit) for the review and if you wish to perform a clean install yourself, we suggest downloading the latest drivers from Dell’s official website.

Battery

The battery unit is rated at 42Wh, which is present in all configurations, not for the higher spec-ed only. The charge provides more than enough work time away from the charger when it comes to web browsing but doesn’t look so impressive for video playback. It’s just on par with most laptops in this regard.

Of course, all tests were performed using the usual settings – Wi-Fi running, Windows battery saving feature turned on and screen brightness set to 120 cd/m2.

Web browsing

In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.

Way above average battery runtime – 455 minutes (7 hours and 35 minutes).

Video playback

For every test like this, we use the same video in HD.

Considerably lower but still good enough result – 315 minutes (5 hours and 15 minutes). That should be more than enough for a full movie.

Gaming

We recently started using F1 2015’s built-in benchmark on loop in order to simulate real-life gaming.

It’s quite unlikely that you will start a gaming session without being close to a power source, but it’s good to know that you can play for more two hours – 136 minutes (2 hours and 16 minutes).

CPU – Intel Core i7-7500U

The Core i7-7500U is part of the latest Intel Kaby Lake generation of CPUs built upon 14nm manufacturing process – or 14nm+ as the company markets – and should offer marginal performance gains over the Skylake generation while improving overall power efficiency. It’s a direct successor to the Core i7-6500U (Skylake) and Core i7-5500 (Broadwell) but opposed to previous architecture refreshes, the Kaby Lake Core i7-7500U is bringing much higher clock rates. Now the chip is clocked at 2.7 – 3.5 GHz (compared to the 2.5 – 3.1 GHz on the Skylake Core i7-6500U) and still adopting the 2/4 core/thread count using the HyperThreading technology with a maximum 4MB cache.

However, the Core i7-7500U’s TDP is still rated at 15W including the iGPU and dual-channel memory controller that supports DDR4-2133, LPDDR3-1866 and DDR3L-1600. And as far as the iGPU is concerned, it integrates a slightly improved Intel HD Graphics 620 clocked at 300 – 1050 MHz, which is slightly higher than the iGPU on the Core i5-7200U (300 – 1000 MHz).

You can browse through our top CPUs ranking: http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-cpu-ranking/

Here you will find other useful information and every notebook we’ve tested with this processor: http://laptopmedia.com/processor/intel-core-i7-7500u/

Fritz is a chess benchmark that tests the computing capabilities of the CPU with various chess moves. The Intel Core i7-7500U scored 6.700 million moves per second. In comparison, one of the most powerful chess computers, Deep(er) Blue, was able to squeeze out 200 million moves per second. In 1997 Deep(er) Blue even beat the famous Garry Kasparov with 3.5 to 2.5.

GPU – AMD Radeon R7 M445 (4GB GDDR5)

AMD’s Radeon R7 M445 is aimed for the entry-level notebooks and can be used for general multimedia and light gaming. The GPU is based on the Meso core on the 28 nm node, but unlike the higher-end R7 M460, the M445’s shaders are limited to 320 (maximum of 384). Along with the 320 shaders, the GPU offers 8 ROPs and 20 TMUs. The GPU itself operates at relatively low frequencies – 780 – 960 MHz.

The memory setup consists of 2 or 4GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 1000 MHz and it’s connected to the graphics processor using a 64-bit interface. All of this makes up for a performance identical to the refreshed NVIDIA GeForce 940MX GPU but the variant with DDR3 memory. If the 940MX is equipped with the beneficial GDDR5 VRAM, it should outperform the R7 M445 by 30-40%.

You can browse through our top GPUs ranking: http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-graphics-ranking/

Here you will find other useful information and every notebook with this GPU that we’ve tested: http://laptopmedia.com/video-card/amd-radeon-r7-m445-2gb-gddr5/

Gaming tests

Temperatures

This stress test doesn’t represent real-life usage since the general user won’t be able to reach such high load on the CPU and GPU at the same time for long periods of time. However, this method is good enough to assess the overall capabilities of the cooling system and how it will fare in the long run.

We were quite surprised by the effectiveness of the cooling system when it comes to CPU-intensive workload. The Core i5-7200U reached fairly low temperatures under full load and was able to utilize the maximum clock speeds of 3.1 GHz for a while before dropping down to 2.8-2.9 GHz. This is how Turbo Boost works on the new Kaby Lake processors. On top of that, we could barely hear the system running. The cooling fans weren’t spinning fast and thus almost no noise was emitted.

But after running the GPU stress test, things changed rapidly, excluding the CPU. It ran at 2.9 GHz stable but the GPU wasn’t able to keep up at times. At first, the R7 M445 kept its maximum operating frequency of 920 MHz and eventually went down to 780 MHz while reaching temperatures as high as 86 °C. These temperatures are usually intrinsic to gaming laptops. We suspect that not the cooling system is the problem here but probably the GPU being the culprit. Still, such workloads are not normal for this kind of laptop and the general user shouldn’t worry about thermal throttling or overheating.

Despite the high inner temperatures, the surface around the keyboard remained fairly cool with the only warm spots around the center of the keyboard and the upper part of the interior near the hinge.

Verdict

The Inspiron 5567 from Dell is probably one of the most balanced mid-range solutions currently on the market. It offers good build quality, excellent touchpad experience and a comfortable keyboard for typing, although the keys appear to be a bit small and will take some time getting used to.

Along with the cool aesthetics and build, the Inspiron 5567 offers excellent hardware configuration leading to balanced browsing times away from the charger and it’s also suitable conditionally for gaming. We do have to note here, though, that the GPU runs hot under load, which can cause shorter life span after years of usage.

Anyway, the highlight of the product is probably IPS panel. While a budget IPS solution, the display offers quite good picture quality for the asking price with above average sRGB, high contrast ratio, relatively high maximum brightness and no PWM across all brightness levels. Be careful when choosing your configuration because there are variants with TN HD panels as well.

The lower-priced configurations of the notebook make it a direct competitor of the Lenovo Ideapad 510 so it’s hard for us to recommend one over the other. Both laptops have absolutely identical performance, even though AMD’s solution sports GDDR5 memory, and offer similar picture quality. However, the absence of PWM and better battery life help the Inspiron 5567 take the lead in this one.

You can find some of the available models here: http://amzn.to/2kZK0Nz

Lenovo’s Y gaming series have gone a long way since the first notebook release and from now on, the OEM is branding its mid-range gaming laptops “Legion”. In this review, we will investigate how the 15-inch version has matured in terms of design, build quality, cooling system, performance, etc.

But for the first time ever, the 15-inch version will sell for a significantly lower price than before and more importantly, the Legion Y520 offers an IPS panel opposed to Dell’s and Acer’s similarly-priced gaming solutions – the Inspiron 7567 and the Aspire VX 15 (VX5-591G), respectively. However, we remain skeptical of the Y520’s cooling solution because it had some problems in the past including thermal throttling under heavy load and even overheating on the surface of the interior. Regardless, the Legion Y520 will start selling for about $900 and will probably turn out to be the best value gaming laptop for now. We will wait to see what ASUS has prepared with the GL553 but at least for now, the Y520 is a bang for the bucks. See why in the review below.

The notebook is still not available but will show up here with most of the available configurations: http://amzn.to/2kNCrMO

Contents

Retail package

We have to note that the unit we received was a testing sample and thus we are not sure how the final packaging will look like. We only got an AC adapter and power cord.

Design and construction

As we said earlier, the Y-series laptops have gone a long way and we must say that the Legion Y520 looks like a well-polished variant of the notebook. Some of the drawbacks seen in the previous Y700 or even the Y50 notebooks are no longer an issue here. While doing so, the laptop keeps a relatively low weight of around 2.5 kg and slim profile – 25.8 mm. But what about the rest?

With the price point going down, we expected the Legion Y520 to feature a different material for the shell. We weren’t wrong. The previous three generations of the notebook had brushed aluminum lid and bottom piece but now it’s all plastic. However, we were pleasantly surprised by the rigidness of the plastic. The lid bends ever so slightly under great force and doesn’t hold any grudge to the aluminum build from before. Moreover, the surface imitates carbon fiber making it grippy and we can even go with “premium” here while fingerprints are easier to clean aren’t as visible. Still there, though. The bottom piece also uses the same plastic finish as the lid retaining the rigidness and inheriting the big vent opening, from the previous versions, for the extra airflow at the bottom. We can see that the cloth filter returns from the older Y50, which we suggested to be removed because it builds up a lot of dust and actually limits the airflow. It seems that the issue with the dust is here as well but that’s easily fixed – just remove the cloth filter and clean your fans more frequently.

Going around the sides we see big changes and improvements. The first thing we noticed is the port placement. Up until last year, we’ve always seen some healthy port distribution but this time most of the connectors are placed on the right – where you usually use your mouse. Still, not a big deal because on the left you will still have the LAN port, DC charging connector, the 3.5 mm audio jack and one USB 2.0. While on the right, you will see the HDMI, two USB 3.0 connectors, SD card reader and the USB-C port, which was missing last year. The sides are made of black matte plastic and meet with the plastic bottom piece seamlessly. But probably the most notable and smart change is the new placement of the main exhaust vents. While last year’s Y700’s grills were positioned in front the screen hinge with the latter blocking the hot air, now we have a more open design. The vents are placed on the back so the screen hinge doesn’t obstruct normal airflow. We expect this to bring a significant change in the cooling capabilities of the notebook.

The interior keeps the soft-touch matte finish which is easy to clean and fingerprints are not as visible. The touchpad receives a total revamp, which is more than a welcome change. We never liked those wobbly touchpad surfaces and we considered them as one of the main drawbacks of the previous two versions. This time, Lenovo has gone the “old school” way with dedicated mouse buttons. This eliminates the unstable surface on the more affordable devices, which renders them unusable. However, we did find some small issues with the current design. For instance, since the mouse buttons are sharing one key cap, the middle can’t be pressed and turns looser towards the ends. Also, the touchpad area has significantly decreased but it’s much better now. The surface seems to register every move, tap or gesture accurately and responsively. We also think that the keyboard has been changed as well. There’s a noticeably longer key travel (Lenovo claims it’s 1.7 mm) and it’s excellent for typing and gaming. Well, at least compared to what the industry offers at this price range of machines. You will have to get used to the specific layout, though. As you can see in the photos above, the Numpad area has been moved to make room for bigger arrow keys (kudos for that) but there’s also no room left for the small Enter key for example. But this is a gaming laptop, after all, so the current layout will suit most gamers. It’s better like this than the other way around. Oh, and more thing – Lenovo finally includes the media control buttons!

Although some users link the premium build with aluminum, well they are wrong! The Legion Y520 proves that with impeccable build quality, premium feel achieved by using only plastic and robust construction. We’ve also seen several functional changes – more comfortable touchpad design than before, re-designed heat dispersing grills for better efficiency and overall improved keyboard. In addition, by excluding the aluminum from the build, Lenovo was able to cut down on the weight with the laptop now tipping the scale at 2.5 kg but the thickness hasn’t changed significantly – from 25.95 mm on the Y700 to 25.8 mm on the Y520.

Disassembly, maintenance and upgrade options

As usual, the notebook doesn’t offer a dedicated service cover but it’s also pretty easy to disassemble in order to access all of the internals. Here’s what we found inside.

Storage upgrade options – 2.5-inch HDD, M.2 slot

The reviewed unit shipped with one 2.5-inch Seagate 1TB HDD accompanied by a 512GB M.2 SK Hynix PCIe NVMe SSD. The latter comes in a 2280 size.

RAM

The motherboard supports two RAM slots, as usual, and they are hidden under a metal plate. Once removed you can access both slots. The reviewed unit sports two 8GB Samsung DDR4-2400 RAM chips. In theory, the notebook should be able to support up to 32GB (2x 16GB) RAM.

Other components

The Wi-Fi module is placed near the plate that covers the RAM chips. It’s an Intel 8265NGW.

The battery is located right under the palm rest area and it’s rated at 4Wh.

Cooling system

Unfortunately, the cooling system hasn’t changed from the previous two models. The cooling design still relies on two cooling fans stitched to each other and are connected to the heat sinks with two heat pipes. At least the heat dispersing grill is now at the back of the machine instead being placed between the hinges so we can expect some minor improvements thanks to the latter.

Display quality

The notebook’s display uses a Full HD (1920×1080) IPS (AH-IPS) panel (LG Philips LP156WF6-SPK3) in a 15.6-inch diagonal leading to a pixel density of 142 ppi and 0.18 x 0.18 mm pixel pitch. The screen can be considered as “Retina” when viewed from a distance equal or greater than 60 cm.

Viewing angles are excellent under 45-degree incline.

We were able to record a maximum brightness of 268 cd/m2 in the center of the screen and 261 cd/m2 as average across the surface while the maximum deviation is 16%. We also measured the average white balance of the screen and turned out to be pretty close to the optimal – 6700K but the contrast ratio seems to be a bit low – 670:1.

The maximum dE2000 that we were able to measure is 4.4 in the lower left corner. Since this display can’t be used for color-sensitive work, it won’t be an issue for most users but still, values above 4.0 are unwanted.

Color reproduction

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction of the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people in HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

The display is able to cover just 52% of the sRGB color gamut, which is unsatisfactory for an IPS display but more on that later in the conclusion.

Below you will see practically the same image but with the color circles representing the reference colors and the white circles being the result. You can see main and additional colors with 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% saturation inside the sRGB gamut pre and post calibration.

We’ve created a profile with 140 cd/m2 luminance, D65(6500K) white point and 2.2 gamma.

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the Office & Web Design profile.

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the Gaming & Movie Nights profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle and the surrounding light conditions.

Gaming capabilities (Response time)

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and reverse.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 15 ms.

PWM (Screen flickering

Pulse Width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

The bad news is that the display uses PWM from 0 to 99% brightness but the good news is that the frequency of the emitted light is pretty high (20.7 kHz) so only users with extra sensitive eyes will feel the negative impact from the flickers.

Blue light emissions

Installing of our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin, and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

You can see the levels of emitted blue light on the spectral power distribution (SDP) graph.

Conclusion

It’s apparent that the current IPS panel has numerous drawbacks like low sRGB coverage, low contrast ratio and mediocre maximum brightness but there’s one really important thing to consider here. With all the newly released budget gaming laptops with GTX 1050 and 1050 Ti, only the Legion Y520 – for now, of course – offers a crisp image thanks to the IPS panel. So considering the industry’s current standard, we are extremely happy to see that Lenovo has managed to fit an IPS panel into the tight budget. With this, the Legion Y520 takes an edge over some of the current offerings like the Acer Aspire VX 15 and Dell’s Inspiron 7567.

Moreover, users with extra sensitive eyes need to consider the recorded PWM from 0 to 99% screen brightness, although its frequency is exceptionally high – 20.7 kHz.

Buy our display profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package is meant for Lenovo Legion Y520 configurations with 15.6″ LG Philips LP156WF6-SPK3 (FHD, 1920 × 1080) IPS screen, which can be found at Amazon: http://amzn.to/2lboci0

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at bg.laptopmedia@gmail.com.

Read more about the profiles HERE.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office work / Web design

If your field is office work or web design, or you just want your monitor's color set to be as accurate as possible for the Internet color space, this profile will prove to be useful.

$4.96

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Gaming or Movie nights

We developed this profile especially for occasions on which you spend a lot of time in front of your monitor with some games or watching movies – it will be easier for you to discern fine nuances in the dark.

$4.97

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Health-Guard

This profile reduces the negative impact of pulsation and the blue spectrum, securing your eyes and body. You still get a pitch-perfect color image, albeit slightly warmer.

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Sound

The previous two versions of the notebook featured a subwoofer at the bottom of the chassis, which made the sound fuller but this time, the Legion Y520 doesn’t include it. Still, we didn’t notice any distortions in the high and low frequencies.

Specs sheet

The specs sheet provided below is for this model only and may vary depending on your region or configuration.

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CPU	Intel Core i7-7700HQ (4-core, 2.80-3.80 GHz, 6MB cache)
RAM	8GB (1x 8192MB) – DDR4, 2133MHz
GPU	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (4GB GDDR5)
HDD/SSD	512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD + 1TB HDD (5400 rpm)
Display	15.6-inch Full HD (1920×1080) IPS, matte
Optical Drive	–
Connectivity	LAN 10/100/1000 Mbps, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0
Other features	2x USB 3.0 1x USB 2.0 1x USB-C 3.1 (Gen 1) LED keyboard backlight HDMI RJ-45 SD card reader 3.5 mm combo audio jack
Battery	45Wh
Thickness	25.8 mm (1.01″)
Weight	2.5 kg (5.51 lbs)

Software

We received the pre-production unit with a pre-installed Windows 10 (64-bit) and we used it for the writing of this review. But if you wish to perform a clean install of your OS, we suggest downloading all the latest drivers from Lenovo’s official support page.

Battery

Unfortunately, the unit we received had a minor flaw in the cooling system – one or two of the cooling fans couldn’t stop spinning eve when the laptop was idle. This, of course, leads to extreme battery drainage so we weren’t able to conduct our usual battery tests. Still, we think the 45Wh battery unit will keep the lights on for a good amount of time. Well, at least for a 15-inch gaming laptop, but we can’t really make any predictions. Once we lay our hands on a final unit, we will do the usual battery tests.

CPU – Intel Core i7-7700HQ

The Core i7-7700HQ is Kaby Lake’s top-shelf direct successor of the Skylake Core i7-6700HQ offering slightly higher clock speeds on the almost identical architecture and TDP. While Intel markets Kaby Lake’s architecture as “14nm+”, the Core i7-7700HQ is still on the same 14nm node with the only significant update being in the iGPU department. That’s why the slightly altered clock speeds (2.8 – 3.8 GHz vs 2.6 – 3.5 GHz) bring not more than 10% increase in performance compared to the Core i7-6700HQ. We still have the supported Hyper-Threading technology with 4/8 – core/thread design, the same 45W TDP and 6MB cache.

However, the Kaby Lake generation boasts an updated video engine for the iGPU, although, its performance is just about the same. Branded as Intel HD Graphics 630, the GPU offers slightly higher clock speeds (350 – 1100 MHz vs 350 – 1050 MHz) compared to the Intel HD Graphics 530 and support for H265/HEVC Main10 profile at 10-bit color depth and the VP9 codec for full hardware acceleration. In addition, the HDCP 2.2 is also supported allowing Netflix’s 4K video streaming.

You can browse through our top CPUs ranking: http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-cpu-ranking/

Here you will find other useful information and every notebook we’ve tested with this processor: http://laptopmedia.com/processor/intel-core-i7-7700hq/

Fritz

Fritz is a chess benchmark that tests the computing capabilities of the CPU with various chess moves. The Intel Core i7-7700HQ managed to get 13.335 million moves per second. For comparison, one of the most powerful PCs, Deep(er) Blue, was able to squeeze out 200 million moves per second. In 1997 Deep(er) Blue even beat the famous Garry Kasparov with 3.5 to 2.5.

GPU – NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (4GB GDDR5)

NVIDIA’s GTX 1050 Ti for notebooks is almost identical to its desktop counterpart but offers different clock rates. What’s more, the Ti variant uses more CUDA cores than the standard GTX 1050 version – 768 vs 640 but both GPUs use the same GP107 chip, which differs from the other NVIDIA high-end solutions. The GP107 chip is manufactured by Samsung, not TSMC, and it’s built on the 14nm node on contrary to the 16nm from TSMC.

Anyway, the GTX 1050 Ti also offers significantly higher clock rates than the normal GTX 1050 versions well 1493 – 1620 MHz vs 1364 – 1493 MHz. This contributes to a significant performance boost over the standard version but the rest of the specs remain the same. The GPU offers 4GB of GDDR5 memory connected via 128-bit interface and transfer rates as high as 112 GB/s.

You can browse through our top GPUs ranking: http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-graphics-ranking/

Here you will find other useful information and every notebook with this GPU that we’ve tested: http://laptopmedia.com/video-card/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1050-ti-4gb-gddr5/

Gaming tests

Temperatures

We had some issues with the previous two generations when it comes to cooling and we are happy to say that the new Legion Y520 offers a big improvement in this regard but there’s still much work to be done. Probably the almost identical to the last two models thermal design is the culprit and we would have really appreciated a more conventional cooling solution.

However, the two-staged stress test that we usually perform isn’t a good representation of real-life use, because you can’t reach 100% CPU and 100% GPU load during normal gameplay or performing everyday tasks. Still, this method is a reliable way to assess the cooling capabilities of the system and its stability in the long run.

We started with 100% CPU stress test and the notebook was able to utilize the full 3.8 GHz performance of the Core i7-7700HQ for the first 30 seconds or so but then slowly went down to 3.4 GHz, which is still in the Turbo Boost range. Unfortunately, though, the CPU’s temperatures were higher than what we’ve expected – around 90 °C.

As expected, shortly after we turned on the GPU stress test, the CPU started throttling down to 800 MHz every few seconds and then returning back to 3.0 GHz. This is clearly thermal throttling because the CPU’s temperatures were cycling around 100 °C. The last two models suffered from the same problem and in our opinion, this time it’s not so severe. Interestingly enough, the GPU’s temperatures were pretty low considering the nature of the test – 74 °C and was able to maintain maximum operating frequency of 1670 MHz.

The good news is that the interior’s surface temperatures were pretty low compared to last year’s Ideapad Y700. The main reason for this is the moved heat dispersing grills at the back allowing a better airflow. As you can see on the heat map below, despite the high inner temperatures, only the right side – near the Numpad area – appears to be a bit warm. Nevertheless, we can’t say it will cause any discomfort during gaming.

Verdict

The new Legion Y520 shows great improvement in several key aspects compared to its predecessors. The weight has gone down thanks to the plastic construction, which, by the way, holds up pretty well and we don’t miss the brushed aluminum surface even a bit. In fact, the carbon-like finish of the surface gives it a more distinct look. Moreover, the keyboard receives a revamp making it more suitable for gaming and adds media control buttons. We also think the key travel is slightly longer now. Good words go for the touchpad as well. Instead of the wobbly surface from before, Lenovo has integrated a standard touchpad with dedicated mouse buttons and now works perfectly fine.

Probably the best key selling point of the Legion Y520 would be the included IPS panel. As we said earlier, most GTX 1050 and 1050 Ti models this year from Acer (recently reviewed VX 15 (VX-591G), Dell, etc. will ship with lackluster TN panels while being in the same ballpark in terms of pricing. This alone, probably makes the Y520 the best value laptop with GTX 1050 Ti currently on the market. Still, there are some considerable drawbacks of the panel like narrow sRGB coverage, low contrast ratio, not enough maximum brightness and the use of PWM from 0 to 99% brightness (our Health-Guard profile takes care of that, though). But then again, it’s way better than a TN display.

Finally, we would like to address the improvements and the remaining issues with the cooling system. The inner cooling design hasn’t changed at all – two cooling fans positioned right next to each other and two heat pipes connected to CPU and GPU sharing heat. The last two models – the Y50 and Y700 – offered identical cooling solution resulting in high inner and outer temperatures and even thermal throttling of the CPU. Unfortunately, the latter is still an issue with the Legion Y520, although, not as prominent. Also, temperatures across the interior are much lower than before due to the new vent placement assuring better airflow.

All in all, the Legion Y520 represents a tremendous improvement in the Y-series laptops and considering the pricing of both, the GTX 1050 and 1050 Ti models, we can easily say that it’s the best value notebook of all similarly-priced GTX 1050-powered machines. Sure, it costs a bit more than the Acer Aspire VX 15 but offers an IPS panel and a 1050 Ti GPU compared to the TN panel paired with a GTX 1050 on Acer’s end. The same comparison is valid for Dell’s Inspiron 7567.

The notebook is still not available but will show up here with most of the available configurations: http://amzn.to/2kNCrMO

You’ve probably heard about the Acer Predator 21X that was announced way back during IFA 2016 in Berlin but since then, the company has kept the curtains closed around this ambitious project. Until this year’s CES when the OEM announced that it will start shipping its first units sometime during Q1 of 2017. Luckily, we had the chance to snatch one of the early samples for a review, but unfortunately, the expected performance wasn’t reached when we tested the device. But judging by its cooling performance, it’s safe to say that it won’t fall too far behind a full-sized desktop machine integrating two GTX 1080 in SLI mode and a Kaby Lake quad-core processor.

However, we did our extensive display tests, we had the chance to test it out with some of the modern games, to tear it apart and see what makes it tick and also play around with the cool Tobii Eye Tracking technology, which is one of the main key selling points of the product along with a fast 120Hz 21-inch curved IPS display. But in the end, the Predator 21X is just a Bugatti in the world of laptops – an extremely expensive piece of machinery ($9 000), absurdly powerful, feature-packed and exotic. We also don’t expect Acer making a lot of money on this laptop since it won’t go into mass production and can only be ordered through your local retailer. Again, just like Bugatti Veyron is to Volkswagen.

The Predator 21X isn’t available yet, but you can regularly check here if it comes out: http://amzn.to/2kXcxWZ

Contents

Retail package

Our testing unit came in a huge box containing only the unit itself and two huge charging bricks. Yes, you read that right, not one but two AC adapters each weighing 1.250 kg. To put things in perspective, the two bricks put together weigh as much as one 15-inch gaming laptop. Even more than some.

Design and construction

In order to house all this impressive hardware and a 21-inch curved IPS display, it’s obvious that you will have to make a big compromise in terms of mobility. However, the Predator 21X takes it to the extreme. For instance, the profile measures at around 61 mm on the sides (in some areas less and in some even thicker) while the screen curve bumps up the size in the middle up to 86 mm. In addition, it weighs is just around how much a desktop configuration would – 9 kg.

As expected, the weight of this beast is compensated with extremely robust construction. The lid is covered in some kind of anodized thick aluminum plate and it’s not so easily bendable, despite its curved nature. Heck, the display itself is around 16 mm thick. In comparison, the XPS 13, for example, is slightly thinner than that. Anyway, along with the cool metal finish, you will find an illuminated Predator logo in the middle along with two LED-illuminated strips on the sides – typically in Predator style. Of course, the base is so heavy that opening the laptop with one hand is quite possible, although the hinges feel really tight. But perhaps extreme measures had to be taken in order to eliminate any chance of wobbling. Whereas the bottom piece is made of really high-quality plastic imitating anodized aluminum. You can see all the vents for the extra airflow, the main service lid and the subwoofer opening.

Along with all the cool-looking exhaust vents on the sides and the back, Acer has managed to squeeze in a ton load of connectors and ports. This time, they are really well-distributed. For instance, the left side integrates only two USB 3.0 ports, an SD card reader and the two 3.5 mm audio jacks for headset and external microphone. Whereas the right side offers you only two USB 3.0 connectors. What’s interesting, the rest of the ports are positioned on the back of the device giving you enough room on the sides for your peripherals. You can benefit from one HDMI, not one but two full-sized DisplayPorts, USB-C with Thunderbolt 3 support and an RJ-45 LAN port. Next, to the latter you will find the two DC connectors for charging. The back side also draws attention with the aggressive-looking and huge grills with metal shell and plastic ornaments in the middle.

Opening the lid reveals somehow familiar design concept. MSI’s GT83VR Titan SLI – keyboard near the front and a huge blank space near the screen hinges. On the left, you will notice the LED-illuminated cooling fan along with the power key. Right next to them is the second maintenance lid but more on that later. On both sides of the keyboard, you will also find two out of a total of six Dolby Digital Audio speakers each dedicated to reproducing high, medium and low frequencies for increased sound fidelity and quality. And we finally reach the keyboard. The keyboard is no ordinary laptop keyboard. It’s actually a full-sized desktop-grade keyboard featuring individual RGB LED backlight under each key and integrating Cherry MX Brown (Speed) switches with 4 mm key travel. Gamers familiar with the switches know them for their excellent clicky feedback halfway through the full key press. The peak force of the switch is 55 g and 45 g at the point of actuation. This design characteristic makes them an excellent middle ground between typing and gaming.

To the right of the keyboard, you will see the removable and rather small touchpad. Yep, it’s removable because flipping it around will give the set of Numpad keys, which aren’t mechanical. The touchpad itself uses an excellent low-resistance surface and proved to be extremely accurate and comfortable for use. The same goes for the mouse buttons and our only complaint would be the small trackpad surface. Right next to the touchpad you will find the LED status lights. While on the right, you will see 5 macro keys, which can be customized in several profiles. Each profile can change their functionality by pressing the key on the top.

In terms of design and build quality, we give the device a solid A+. Unfortunately, all of this comes at a big price. And we mean that literally. It’s not only absurdly expensive but it’s also really hefty. It can easily be a desktop replacement with a 21:9 aspect ratio high-quality curved IPS panel and a mechanical keyboard. So actually, you are just saving yourself the trouble of carrying around a monitor along with all the peripherals and instead you end up carrying an absurdly heavy laptop. The notebook weighs around 9 kg and when you add a total of 2.5 kg for the charging bricks, you get more than 11 kg of luggage.

Disassembly, maintenance and upgrade options

We have to note that the notebook isn’t designed to be taken apart. It’s really hard to do so but the OEM has provided two dedicated service lids for easy maintenance and upgrade. One of the hatches is positioned right above the keyboard while the bottom offers a bigger lid for most of the upgrade options.

Storage upgrade options – 2.5-inch HDD, 4x M.2 slots

The system is quite generous when it comes to storage configurations. The reviewed sample shipped with 1TB HGST HDD spinning at 7200 rpm, which was located under the keyboard lid.

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Removing the bigger hatch on the bottom will reveal four M.2 PCIe NVMe-capable connectors. In our case, the laptop had two Toshiba PCIe NVMe drives (this year’s Predators came with the same fast drives) with 512GB capacity working in RAID 0. But if that’s not enough for you, another set of M.2 slots are available for an upgrade. All connectors support the 2280 standard.

RAM

Since the motherboard holds up to 64GB DDR4-2400 RAM using four slots, two of them can be found under the bottom lid and two of them above the keyboard. The unit we reviewed had just 32GB of DDR4-2400 RAM using two 16GB sticks manufactured by SK Hynix.

Other components

The Wi-Fi module can be found under the big service cover right next to one of the M.2 slots. Of course, the card is Killer1535.

The battery, however, isn’t easily accessed and requires full disassembly of the notebook to be replaced if needed. It’s rated at 88.8Wh – practically the same as the one found in other Predator notebooks.

We also took the keyboard out so if dust gets stuck, it can be easily cleaned. The layout appears to be for a desktop-size system. Of course, the switches are Cherry MX Brown (Speed).

Cooling system

The full disassembly of the laptop is a huge pain. You have to remove all the screws around the bottom – including the ones under the service lid – and then gently pry up the whole keyboard tray. Be extra careful with the area around the screen hinges because the curved display obstructs the whole process of disassembly. Also, make sure you remove all the cables attached to the keyboard tray.

As expected, the cooling system looks quite extreme in order to keep up with the powerful hardware. There is a total of five fans – two for the intake positioned at the front, which rarely spin, only under full load, and three main fans right next to the two GPUs and CPU. As you can see, all heat sinks are connected with a decent amount of heat pipes. Here’s a gallery of the cooling design.

Display quality

It’s funny that Acer didn’t include this information in their marketing material because the display is actually really strong selling point not only for gamers but for content creators as well. We came to the conclusion that the display is not WLED-lit but uses the Blue LED + Quantum Dots combination for backlight. This allows for high maximum brightness, saturated colors and excellent contrast ratio since it’s an IPS type of matrix.

Anyway, the notebook uses the so-called UW-UXGA panel (read ultra-wide) with 2560 x 1080 resolution (21:9) aspect ratio manufactured by AUO with model number B210DAR01.0. The diagonal is way above what we are used to seeing – 21-inch so the pixel density is 132 ppi and the pixel pitch is 0.19 x 0.19 mm. It can be considered as “Retina” when viewed from a distance equal or greater than 64 cm.

There’s no noticeable color shift under various viewing angles.

We’ve also measured a maximum brightness of 369 cd/m2 in the middle of the screen and 326 cd/m2 as average across the surface leading to 20% deviation. The color temperature is 7000K and it’s slightly above the optimal 6500K. Colors will appear slightly colder than usual but nothing noticeable to the untrained eye. The contrast ratio is exceptionally high – 1200:1.

The maximum dE2000 color deviation on the surface of the screen is 5.4 which is above the accepted 4.0 range. Still, we have to take into account the big surface of the screen and its main focus on entertainment.

Color reproduction

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction of the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people in HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

The yellow dotted triangle represents the coverage of the display, which is almost all of the DCI-P3 standard. Anyway, the panel is able to reproduce 97% of the sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 (web/HDTV standard) in CIE1976 but its coverage goes way beyond that. It offers extremely saturated colors (we mean that in a good way) and the graphic shows that the red color is exceptionally punchy. This is a further confirmation of the used Quantum Dot technology. Quantum Dot doesn’t rely the conventional WLED type of backlight but instead uses a blue LED combined with crystal quantum dots that emit light with custom wavelength depending on their size.

Below you will see practically the same image but with the color circles representing the reference colors and the white circles being the result. You can see main and additional colors with 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% saturation inside the sRGB gamut pre and post calibration.

We’ve created a profile with 140 cd/m2 luminance, D65(6500K) white point and 2.2 gamma.

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with our Gaming profile.

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the Gaming & Movie Nights profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle and the surrounding light conditions.

Gaming capabilities (Response time)

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and reverse.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 12 ms. We are quite surprised by the fast response of the panel considering the nature of notebook IPS panels.

PWM (Screen flickering)

Unfortunately, the unit we’ve tested had problems with regulating screen brightness so we couldn’t lower it. This means that any attempts at measuring the PWM will be useless. There was no PWM at 100% screen brightness but we can’t confirm that there was no screen flickering at lower levels.

Blue light emissions

Installing of our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin, and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

You can see the levels of emitted blue light on the spectral power distribution (SDP) graph.

Due to the nature of the panel, you can see that the wavelength of the red spectrum is much longer than the blue light even without Health-Guard profile installed.

Tobii Eye Tracking technology

Along with the near-perfect image quality, the display also offers a brand new technology, which is coming to external monitors as well. We are talking about Tobii Eye Tracking and it can’t go unnoticed in the lower part of the screen bezel. The bar consists of micro projectors and camera sensors working thanks to a specially designed algorithm. The micro projectors take care of the reflection patterns NIR (Near-Infrared) of the eyes while the camera sensors capture high-frame-rate images of the reflection patterns. Then all the data is fed to the image-processing algorithm, which does all the number crunching resulting in super accurate eye tracking. The system sees where your eyes are gazing on the screen.

We were instantly amazed by how well the current implementation of the technology works but we found it inaccurate in some situations. For example, users with glasses won’t be able to fully utilize the technology, although it still works perfectly well in a dark room. The best part is that the Tobii Eye Tracking system already works with a number of AAA titles like Watch Dogs 2, Dying Light, Rise of the Tomb Raider, The Division, Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, etc. You can check them out here.

Conclusion

Again, we are surprised by the fact that Quantum Dot didn’t make it to the marketing materials while it’s clearly one of the key selling points of the product. It’s bright, it has high contrast ratio, excellent viewing angles, punchy and vibrant colors and its color gamut coverage goes way beyond the standard sRGB, although a small portion of the latter is missing. These properties make the display perfect for multimedia and gaming and with our profiles installed, the display might come in handy to users working with content creation on the go. On top of all, the panel offers 120 Hz refresh rate, which combined with the dual-GTX 1080 GPU setup will prove to be extremely beneficial to gamers. However, we are puzzled by the fact that G-Sync is missing from the specs sheet. Lately, it has become a standard for all upper-mid-range and high-end gaming laptops.

Buy our display profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package is meant for Acer Predator 21X configurations with 21″ AUO B210DAR01.0 (FHD, 1920 × 1080) IPS screen.

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at bg.laptopmedia@gmail.com.

Read more about the profiles HERE.

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Office work / Web design

If your field is office work or web design, or you just want your monitor's color set to be as accurate as possible for the Internet color space, this profile will prove to be useful.

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We developed this profile especially for occasions on which you spend a lot of time in front of your monitor with some games or watching movies – it will be easier for you to discern fine nuances in the dark.

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Health-Guard

This profile reduces the negative impact of pulsation and the blue spectrum, securing your eyes and body. You still get a pitch-perfect color image, albeit slightly warmer.

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Specs sheet

The specs sheet provided below is for this model only and may vary depending on your region or configuration.

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CPU	Intel Core i7-7820HK (4-core, 2.90 – 3.90 GHz, 8MB cache)
RAM	32GB (2x 16384MB) – DDR4, 2400MHz
GPU	2x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (8GB GDDR5X) SLI
HDD/SSD	2x 512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD (RAID 0) + 1TB HDD (7200 rpm)
Display	21-inch Quad HD (2560×1080) curved IPS (Quantum Dot), matte
Optical Drive	–
Connectivity	LAN 10/100/1000 Mbps, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0
Other features	4x USB 3.0 1x USB-C 3.1 (Thunderbolt 3) 2x DisplayPort HDMI RJ-45 SD card reader 2x 3.5 mm audio jacks for headphones and external microphone Dolby Audio with 6 dedicated loudspeakers + subwoofer mechanical keyboard with Cherry MX Brown switches and highly customizable LED backlight
Battery	88.8Wh
Thickness	61 – 86 mm (2.4 – 3.39″)
Weight	9 kg (19.84 lbs) + two charging bricks 1.25 kg each

CPU – Intel Core i7-7820HK

The Core i7-7820HK is part of Intel’s latest generation Kaby Lake processors sporting an improved 14nm+ manufacturing process allowing for slightly higher clock speeds and better efficiency, although the performance per clock hasn’t changed since this is practically the same microarchitecture as the one used for the previous Skylake chips.

Anyway, the Core i7-7820HK offers higher operating frequency than its Core i7-6820HK predecessor – 2.9 – 3.9 GHz (for four active cores the Turbo Boost frequency drops to 3.5 GHz or 3.7 GHz for two active cores) vs 2.7 – 3.6 GHz but keeps most of the features like Hyper-Threading, (4/8 core/thread design), 8MB LL cache, a dual-channel DDR4-2400 or DDR3L-1600 memory controller and a TDP of 45W including the iGPU. Speaking of which, the processor integrates an Intel HD Graphics 630 chip clocked at 350 – 1150 MHz.

The most noticeable feature of this processor is the unlocked multiplier for easy overclocking and usually, OEMs provide the needed software for doing so. In the end, the processor’s maximum frequency can be increased depending on the notebook’s cooling system.

You can browse through our top CPUs ranking: http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-cpu-ranking/

Here you will find other useful information and every notebook we’ve tested with this processor: http://laptopmedia.com/processor/intel-core-i7-7820hk/

Estimated performance

We used the results from Acer’s new Predator 17X with Core i7-7820HK with a normal profile and overclocked one. The normal operating frequency in multi-threaded applications is around 3.5 GHz but with the overclocking multiplier applied, the chip can go up to 3.8 GHz during non-stop workload with four active cores. We suspect that the chip can be pushed even further with the current cooling design from the Predator 21X.

GPU – 2x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (8GB GDDR5X) SLI

The GeForce GTX 1080 is the top-shelf GPU from NVIDIA’s Pascal generation (except for the Titan X Pascal, of course) built upon 16nm TSMC process, which is a huge leap over the last generation (Maxwell), which featured a 28nm node. Anyway, the new architecture allows better thermals, efficiency and considerably higher clock speeds than its direct predecessor the GTX 980. Also, for the first time, NVIDIA has made the difference between the desktop and the mobile variants of the Pascal GPUs mostly unnoticeable in real-life use, although there’s a slight difference according to synthetic benchmarks.

CUDA cores (2560), ROPs (64) and TMUs (213) are identical to the desktop variant of the GTX 1080 since they are based on the same GP108 chip including the memory controller, which is the highlight of the new graphics card because it features a next generation of GDDR5X memory developed by Micron allowing higher memory bandwidth on a 256-bit interface clocked at 10 000 MHz. However, there’s a small difference in the base clock speeds – 1566 – 1733 MHz for the laptop version and 1607 – 1733 MHz for the desktop variant. Both frequencies can be altered depending on the manufacturer and the cooling system’s performance.

The GPU’s power consumption is rumored to be around 165W making it suitable only for large 17 or 15-inch machines with high-performance cooling system. In addition, the graphics card delivers new and exciting features like DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.0b, HDR, Simultaneous Multi-Projection, refined H.265 video encoding, etc.

You can browse through our top GPUs ranking: http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-graphics-ranking/

Here you will find other useful information and every notebook with this GPU that we’ve tested: http://laptopmedia.com/video-card/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-8gb-gddr5x/

Estimated performance

Since the laptop was a pre-production unit, the usual benchmark and gaming tests showed subpar performance. We decided to make a fair estimate of how a dual-GTX 1080 SLI setup would perform based on results from a single-GPU system with GTX 1080. In other words, about 90% increase in performance without taking into account the overclocking profiles. Of course, 90% increase in performance over a single-GPU system is a best case scenario.

Verdict

It’s really hard to compare this laptop to anything currently available on the market. It’s definitely one of a kind. Yes, there are some alternatives with dual-GPU SLI configurations but nothing can come close to the feature-packed powerhouse Acer is currently offering. In addition, the unit we received had problematic SLI configuration that wasn’t able to even surpass the results of a GTX 1070 SLI system and thus all performance tests would have been useless. Also, no temperature tests and no battery tests. But close examination of the cooling system suggests that the laptop will have absolutely no problems with all three chips on board (the CPU and two GPUs). And, of course, we expect around 90% better performance than a single GTX 1080 setup.

Clearly, for a price of $9 000, the notebook will appeal only to enthusiasts and extravagant gamers due to the extraordinary powerful hardware and the slew of exciting features like mechanical Cherry MX Brown keyboard, overclocking capabilities, 21-inch curved IPS panel with Quantum Dot technology and Tobii Eye Tracking.

The former, however, came by surprise. The panel’s properties make it an excellent choice for entertainment but will also work for most content creators on the go. It won’t be as accurate as other external monitors but it will still do the job pretty well. By installing our custom-tailored profiles, however, the panel’s color accuracy will greatly improve while the gamma correction will do wonders during gaming and movie nights. The only considerable drawback here would be the absence of G-Sync, which is downright absurd not to include it. The provided DisplayPorts, though, can be used with an external G-Sync-enabled monitor.

Anyway, if you have $9 000 to spare for the very best possible gaming or multimedia experience in one place, Acer’s absurdly powerful and feature-packed Predator 21X would be the way to go. You will save yourself most of the peripherals that you’d normally carry with a desktop but you still have to take about 11 kg of luggage with you.

The Predator 21X isn’t available yet, but you can regularly check here if it comes out: http://amzn.to/2kXcxWZ

The updated extreme version of the Predator 17 is finally here! And the changes the GX-792 brings are well worth noting. The overclockable CPU this time is the brand new Intel Core i7-7820HK from the Kaby Lake generation paired with up to 64GB DDR4-2133 (no changes here) and NVIDIA’s top-shelf GeForce GTX 1080 GPU. This means considerably more horsepower under the hood and less heat – in theory – from the Pascal-based graphics card. We will make sure to check that out, especially while running titles at 4K resolution because the Predator 17X is one of the first to deliver enough performance to drive all those pixels.

As far as the design is concerned, it hasn’t changed at all. Although, the new one weighs slightly less but unnoticeable. Anyway, with all the good sides of the laptop’s design and build come the drawbacks as well. We discuss this further in the review below.

You can find some of the available configurations here: http://amzn.to/2lHLHjG

Contents

Retail package

The luxury box contains the usual user manuals, DVD with drivers, the huge power brick that weighs XXX g with the AC cord and the notebook itself.

Design and construction

The Predator 17X still weighs quite a lot tipping the scale at 4.5 kg while the side profile measures at 50 mm but it’s probably necessary in order to support absolutely the most powerful configuration a notebook can have – an overclockable quad-core high-voltage processor and a desktop-grade performance GPU stuck in a notebook. We sure hope that the cooling system will be able to perform just as well as it did last year with the GTX 980 and also provide enough headroom for overclocking the Core i7-7820HK.

Anyway, going back to the chassis. Acer still boasts about its super-stiff fiberglass/plastic construction, which turns out to be true. Even the lid isn’t susceptible to excessive bending while the keyboard area remains rock-solid. The single hinge design provides smooth and secure movements once more while the matte black finish doesn’t attract fingerprints and smudges that much. Even when we find one, it’s easy to get rid of it.

Opening the lid reveals a flashy RGB keyboard backlight and customizable LED around the edge of the touchpad making it impossible to lose it in the dark. In short, it has an identical keyboard, touchpad and macro keys design, layout and overall feel. The touchpad is responsive and accurate with clicky mouse buttons, although a bit smaller than they should be, while the keyboard is just excellent. Long key travel, clicky feedback with a little bit of stiffness at the beginning of the travel, but just the right amount.

And now to the everlasting downfall of all Predator-branded machines – the port distribution. The right side accommodates most of the connectors (USB-C (Thunderbolt 3), 2x USB 3.0, HDMI, LAN, DisplayPort) and appears to be overcrowded. If the working space is tight, all the cables sticking out may get in the way of normal mouse use. While the left offers only two USB 3.0 connections, the SD card reader and the 3.5 mm audio jacks for external microphone and a headset. And this time it’s not because of the optical drive like in the regular Predator 17 model because it’s missing. So it doesn’t even make sense! Or just the design/engineering team was too lazy to move the ports on the other side and used the same base unit.

Disassembly, maintenance, internals and upgrade options

The Predator 17X offers easy access to the most commonly upgraded hardware via the service lid. It hides a 2.5-inch drive, M.2 SSD slots and RAM chips. However, you can only reach two out of four RAM chip slots and in order to reach the other two, you need to perform a full disassembly and turn around the motherboard.

Storage upgrade options – 2.5-inch HDD, M.2 slot

The notebook holds three M.2 SSD slots and one 2.5-inch drive slot. The SSDs can be configured to work in RAID 0 array or use the latest PCIe NVMe standard. Unlike the Predator 17, the 17X offers two 2280 M.2 slots and an additional 22110, which you can hardly find on the market.

Our unit is equipped with Toshiba THNSN5256GPU7 256GB PCIe NVMe PCIe NVMe SSD with 256GB capacity and one 2.5-inch HDD with 1TB capacity spinning at 7200 rpm.

DISCLOSURE: The photos below show a Samsung SSD but those are taken from the previous version of the Predator 17X with GTX 980. Anyway, all the steps of the disassembly and the placement of the hardware is absolutely identical.

RAM

The motherboard holds four RAM slots two of which can be accessed via the service lid. The other two require a full disassembly. It’s compatible with up to 4x 16384MB (64GB) of DDR4-2400 RAM chips.

Other components

The battery unit is rated at 88.8Wh with 8 cells.

The Wi-Fi module is located near the right fan (or the left one if you turn it around).

Cooling system

The cooling system is probably the most exciting part of this notebook and for a very good reason too. It uses one fan up front used for the intake, distributes it to the storage M.2 sticks and RAM chips and then pushes it through the heatsinks and heat pipes. The other two fans located at the back lead the hot air out the back of the device. Speaking of the cooling fans, they are not ordinary fans with the usual propellers. The blades are made of metal and are just 0.1 mm thick making up for 15% better air flow or at least that’s what Acer claims. In any case, the effectiveness of the cooling design is proved in our extensive stress tests.

You can check our dedicated article regarding disassembly and upgrade here: http://laptopmedia.com/highlights/inside-acer-predator-17x-disassembly-internal-photos-and-upgrade-options/

Display quality

The new Predator 17X sports a familiar AUO B173ZAN01.0 IPS panel with 4K UHD resolution (3840×2160). We found the same one in this year’s Predator 17 UHD version. That’s great news because the panel is practically perfect for gaming, multimedia and even color-sensitive work.

The panel offers 255 ppi in a 17.3-inch diagonal and 0.1 x 0.1 mm pixel pitch. The screen can be considered as “Retina” when viewed from a distance equal or greater than 33 cm.

Viewing angles are perfect from a 45-degree angle.

We were able to measure a maximum brightness of 384 cd/m2 in the center of the screen and 369 cd/m2 as average value across the surface, which means just 12% deviation in the lower center. The color temperature is 7000K and seems to be pretty close to the optimal 6500K. The contrast ratio is excellent as well – 1080:1.

The maximum color dE2000 deviation across the surface of the panel is just 2.9 which is a good result considering that it’s considerably lower than 4.0. Values above 4.0 are definitely undesirable. This score is important to consider when planning to do some color-sensitive work.

Color reproduction

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction of the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people in HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

As we expected, the screen covers 100% of the sRGB and 100% of the Adobe RGB color spaces and almost covers the DCI-P3 in CIE 1976 gamut with 97%. What we didn’t notice before, though, is that this panel uses the Blue LED + Quantum Dots technology instead of the conventional WLED backlight. This is further proved by the spectral power distribution in the “Blue lights emission” section that shows less blue light and longer wavelength of red. That’s because the blue light goes through the red and green quantum dots, which are practically microscopic crystals emitting light with certain wavelength depending on their size. You can see how much of the colors the display can reproduce in the graph below. Look at the yellow dotted triangle.

Below you will see practically the same image but with the color circles representing the reference colors and the white circles being the result. You can see main and additional colors with 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% saturation inside the sRGB gamut pre and post calibration. The graph on the left is with stock profiling and the right uses the “Gaming and Movie Nights” profile.

The stock gamma curve suggests of slightly darker image but our “Office and Design Work” profile fixes that. There’s also a slight adjustment in the color temperature.

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the “Gaming and Movie Nights” profile.

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the Gaming & Movie Nights profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle and the surrounding light conditions.

Gaming capabilities (Response time)

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and reverse.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 26 ms.

PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse Width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

As expected, the display doesn’t use PWM for regulating screen brightness and can be used for long periods of time without affecting your eyes.

Blue light emissions

Installing of our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin, and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our specialized article on Blue Light.

You can see the levels of emitted blue light on the spectral power distribution (SDP) graph.

Buy our display profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package is meant for Acer Predtor 17 (G9-793), the previous G9-791 version and now the Predator 17X (GX-792) with 17.3″ AUO B173ZAN01.0 (UHD, 3840 × 2160) IPS, which can be found on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2lEBSTJ

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at bg.laptopmedia@gmail.com.

Read more about the profiles HERE.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office work / Web design

If your field is office work or web design, or you just want your monitor's color set to be as accurate as possible for the Internet color space, this profile will prove to be useful.

$4.96

Buy Now Checkout Added to cart

Gaming or Movie nights

We developed this profile especially for occasions on which you spend a lot of time in front of your monitor with some games or watching movies – it will be easier for you to discern fine nuances in the dark.

$4.97

Buy Now Checkout Added to cart

Health-Guard

This profile reduces the negative impact of pulsation and the blue spectrum, securing your eyes and body. You still get a pitch-perfect color image, albeit slightly warmer.

$4.98

Buy Now Checkout Added to cart

$9.99

Buy Now Checkout Added to cart

Sound

The loudspeakers, along with the subwoofer, provide enough clarity in the low and high frequencies.

Specs sheet

The specs provided below are for the tested model only and may differ from yours

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CPU	Intel Core i7-7820HK (4-core, 2.90 – 3.90 GHz, 8MB cache)
RAM	32GB (2x 16384MB) of DDR4-2133
GPU	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (8GB GDDR5X)
HDD/SSD	1TB HDD @7200rpm + 512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD
Display	17.3-inch – Ultra HD (3840×2160) IPS, matte + G-Sync
Optical drive	–
Features	4x USB 3.0 1x USB 3.1 Type-C programmable RGB LED keyboard backlight HDMI DisplayPort RJ-45 SD card reader 2x 3.5 mm jacks for microphone and headphones 6 programmable macro keys 4x built-in loudspeakers + subwoofer Native G-Sync support
Battery	8-cell 88.8Wh (6000 mAh)
Thickness	44.95 mm (1.75″)
Weight	4.50 kg (9.92 lbs)

Software

The notebook came with pre-installed Windows 10 (64-bit) but if you wish to perform a clean install of the OS, we suggest downloading the latest drivers from Acer’s official support page.

Battery

Since this is a hardcore gaming laptop with a GTX 1080 on board and a built-in G-Sync chip that eliminates the support for switchable graphics (NVIDIA’s Optimus technology), we don’t expect any ground-breaking results despite the huge 88Wh battery unit inside. We got subpar runtimes but somehow similar results compared to last year’s Predator 17X with GTX 980.

Of course, all tests were performed with the same settings as always – Wi-Fi turned on, Windows battery saving feature switched on and screen brightness set to 120 cd/m2.

Web browsing

In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.

Unsatisfying result even for a gaming notebook – 242 minutes (3 hours and 59 minutes).

Video playback

For every test like this, we use the same video in HD.

Slightly lower but similar result – 200 minutes (3 hours and 44 minutes). That should be more than enough for a full movie.

Gaming

We recently started using the built-in F1 2015 benchmark on loop for accurate real-life gaming representation.

It’s quite unlikely that you will start a gaming session without being close to a power source, but it’s good to know that you can play for about two hours – 111 minutes (1 hour and 51 minutes).

CPU – Intel Core i7-7820HK

The Core i7-7820HK is part of Intel’s latest generation Kaby Lake processors sporting an improved 14nm+ manufacturing process allowing for slightly higher clock speeds and better efficiency, although the performance per clock hasn’t changed since this is practically the same microarchitecture as the one used for the previous Skylake chips.

Anyway, the Core i7-7820HK offers higher operating frequency than its Core i7-6820HK predecessor – 2.9 – 3.9 GHz (for four active cores the Turbo Boost frequency drops to 3.5 GHz or 3.7 GHz for two active cores) vs 2.7 – 3.6 GHz but keeps most of the features like Hyper-Threading, (4/8 core/thread design), 8MB LL cache, a dual-channel DDR4-2400 or DDR3L-1600 memory controller and a TDP of 45W including the iGPU. Speaking of which, the processor integrates an Intel HD Graphics 630 chip clocked at 350 – 1150 MHz.

The most noticeable feature of this processor is the unlocked multiplier for easy overclocking and usually OEMs provide the needed software for doing so. In the end, the processor’s maximum frequency can be increased depending on the notebook’s cooling system.

You can browse through our top CPUs ranking: http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-cpu-ranking/

Here you will find other useful information and every notebook we’ve tested with this processor: http://laptopmedia.com/processor/intel-core-i7-7820hk/

Overclocking

We found out that via the PredatorSense app pre-installed on the machine, the CPU can be overclocked quite a bit. While the maximum operating frequency is 3.9 GHz for one active core, with the Turbo mode set the CPU can reach as high as 4.3 GHz, which is downright impressive. Of course, while four cores are active, the frequency drops to around 3.8 GHz, as you can see in our stress tests below, opposed to the 3.5 GHz without overclocking multiplier applied. The performance is significantly increased as you can see in the graph below.

GPU – NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (8GB GDDR5X)

The GeForce GTX 1080 is the top-shelf GPU from NVIDIA’s Pascal generation (except for the Titan X Pascal, of course) built upon 16nm TSMC process, which is a huge leap over the last generation (Maxwell), which featured a 28nm node. Anyway, the new architecture allows better thermals, efficiency and considerably higher clock speeds than its direct predecessor the GTX 980. Also, for the first time, NVIDIA has made the difference between the desktop and the mobile variants of the Pascal GPUs mostly unnoticeable in real-life use, although there’s a slight difference according to synthetic benchmarks.

CUDA cores (2560), ROPs (64) and TMUs (213) are identical to the desktop variant of the GTX 1080 since they are based on the same GP108 chip including the memory controller, which is the highlight of the new graphics card because it features the next generation of GDDR5X memory developed by Micron allowing higher memory bandwidth on a 256-bit interface clocked at 10 000 MHz. However, there’s a small difference in the base clock speeds – 1566 – 1733 MHz for the laptop version and 1607 – 1733 MHz for the desktop variant. Both frequencies can be altered depending on the manufacturer and the cooling system’s performance.

The GPU’s power consumption is rumored to be around 165W making it suitable only for large 17 or 15-inch machines with high-performance cooling system. In addition, the graphics card delivers new and exciting features like DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.0b, HDR, Simultaneous Multi-Projection, refined H.265 video encoding, etc.

You can browse through our top GPUs ranking: http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-graphics-ranking/

Here you will find other useful information and every notebook with this GPU that we’ve tested: http://laptopmedia.com/video-card/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-8gb-gddr5x/

Overclocking

Along with the CPU, the GPU is also affected by the Turbo mode in the PredatorSense app. The usual clock speeds are 1582 – 1771 MHz but after turning it on, the software bumps those digits up to the whopping 1732 – 1921 MHz and it’s able to maintain them even during heavy workload. This also translates into significantly higher performance according to the synthetic benchmarks. However, in real-life gaming tests, the performance difference isn’t as big.

Gaming tests

Temperatures

The 2 hours long stress test that we perform can’t be taken as a good representation of a real-life use but at the same time, it’s the best way to assess the cooling capabilities of the cooling solution and also to get a better grasp of how the system will perform in the long run. Without trying to spoil the surprise, we were downright amazed by the cooling performance, although, the design hasn’t been changed from the previous generation. Also, before we begin, we would like to point out that we used the so-called Turbo mode on the laptop, which means that the CPU and GPU are overclocked.

We started off with 100% CPU load for an hour and temperatures were slightly above from what we’ve expected but in return, the CPU was able to keep its clocks somewhere between 3.5 and 3.8 GHz. This is really impressive overclock performance under heavy workload.

After an hour had passed, we started the GPU stress test as well. The CPU’s temperatures went up only by a few digits, but the clock speeds dropped down to 3.1 – 3.3 GHz in order to give enough headroom for the GPU to perform, which stole the show. The GTX 1080 was able to run at its maximum overclocked frequency for a while (1921 MHz) but shortly after went down to 1835 MHz, which is still an impressive result. However, the higher clock speeds translated into high inner temperatures of the graphics chip reaching as high as 83 °C.

Despite the high inner temperatures, the cooling system was able to lead out the hot air and keep the surface of the interior cool. The upper part of the keyboard and near the hinge were the hottest points but barely going over 40 °C. We still want to remind you, though, that these temperatures and frequencies are achieved after more than two hours of heavy workload so, under normal circumstances, things will be way cooler. But as you can see, the cooling system performed excellently even under extreme conditions.

Verdict

Our opinion of the notebook stays the same. The Predator 17X is an expensive piece of equipment offering the very best features and hardware the current industry can offer. It has excellent build quality, good keyboard and touchpad, impeccable display, which is a nice upgrade from the only Full HD version of the previous model with GTX 980 (Predator 17X (GX-791), and, of course, a solid cooling system to support it all.

The latter hasn’t changed, but it’s so impressive that we could barely feel the heat coming from the inside even under continuous stress test with overclocked CPU and GPU. Speaking of overclocking, Acer has once again made it extremely easy for the user to take control over the Core i7-7820HK and NVIDIA’s top-shelf GeForce GTX 1080 via the PredatorSense app. Moreover, the laptop is able to utilize both chips to their fullest if the situation requires.

Once again, we would want to address the superb image quality the panel offers. We’ve already seen it in the previous two versions of the standard Predator 17 with UHD panel and its properties make it worth considering even for color-sensitive work and content creation on the go. If you decide to go for the latter, though, we suggest purchasing our custom profiles that will significantly improve color accuracy.

Yes, the price point may be a lot to choke on for most users, but trust us. It’s definitely worth it. The only drawback that you might want to consider is the bad port distribution, heavy chassis and short battery life. But the last two are inherent to almost all gaming laptops anyway.

You can find some of the available configurations here: http://amzn.to/2lHLHjG

When the first ASUS ROG GL552 notebook came out, it took the market by a storm. The upgraded version was also highly praised by the users due to its affordability and powerful hardware. It also offered probably the best cooling solution among its competitors but lacked the premium feel and design we are used to seeing from a ROG machine.

Well, those days are gone because the newly released ASUS ROG Strix GL553 laptop is actually pricier than the Lenovo Legion Y520 and Acer’s Aspire VX 15 while offering mostly the same hardware. Then why would it cost so much? Maybe the panel is going to offer much better picture quality than its rivals or the RGB keyboard backlight is essential for nowadays gaming community? We found out in the extensive review below.

You can find some of the available configurations here: http://amzn.to/2mcOXH4

Contents

Retail package

The laptop comes in a fancy, Strix-branded black box containing all the usual user manuals, AC adapter, power cord and the laptop itself.

Design and construction

The refreshed chassis is more in line with the recently reviewed ASUS ROG Strix GL502 with brushed aluminum lid, bright orange accent and plastic interior but at the same time, it strongly reminds us of the previous ROG GL552VW. Also, the new model cuts down on weight with about 100 grams while the profile is noticeably slimmed-down from 34.75 mm to 30 mm. It falls behinds the Lenovo Legion Y520 in terms of dimensions but stays competitive against Acer’s VX 15.

Anyway, let’s start with the lid. As we already pointed out, it’s made of brushed aluminum plate with bright orange LED-illuminated ROG logo and two stripes in the middle. The plate itself is quite flexible, bends under small pressure even causing ripples to appear on the LCD screen and it’s susceptible to fingerprints and smudges. The hinges, however, seem to be extra sturdy, stealth and perfectly tightened. Opening the laptop with one hand is possible and makes a satisfying magnetic snap when closing it. It’s a big improvement compared to the previously reviewed models. The bottom is totally revamped now continuing the Strix design concept with orange radiator peeking from the main exhaust vent on the left, orange silicone legs and no service hatch. Luckily, the whole bottom piece is easy to remove for maintenance.

The sides haven’t changed much and some users might still find the port placement a bit awkward because all connectors are placed towards the front edge. However, almost all ports are positioned on the left so cables won’t get in the way while gaming with an external mouse. We are referring to the RJ-45 port, HDMI, two USB 3.0 connectors, one USB-C 3.1 (Gen 1) and a 3.5 mm audio jack. Whereas on the right, you will find just one USB 2.0 connector and an optical drive. Up front, you will notice the orange stereo loudspeakers.

The interior is a mixed bag. The keyboard tray is made of plastic imitating brushed aluminum, which means that fingerprints and smudges will be quite visible. Also, we are not happy with the overall stability of the material. There’s a bit of flexing in the middle of the keyboard and the corners around the wrist rest area. The touchpad design hasn’t changed at all and it’s just as bad as before. It’s extremely wobbly and mouse clicks feel a bit too stiff. Still, it offers good gliding surface while being quite responsive. All gestures and swipes are registered correctly. On the other hand, the keyboard seems to be slightly modified and feels much better now. The key travel is 2.5 mm and feels awesome. It’s excellent for gaming and typing and the clicky feedback feels oddly satisfying, but there’s still no media control. In addition, the boring old red LED backlight has been replaced with a highly-customizable RGB LEDs with different effects and zones. And as for the layout, it’s practically the same standard design with slightly smaller than we would prefer arrow keys but they are also isolated and easy to reach.

To be honest, we expected better build quality for the asking price. The brushed aluminum lid and RGB backlit keyboard just don’t cut it. Even the Aspire VX 15 from Acer feels sturdier at a lower price. Not to mention the impeccable build quality of the Legion Y520, which is also made entirely out of plastic. However, the latter has its own drawbacks so it boils down to personal preference here.

Disassembly, maintenance and upgrade options

Even though the laptop doesn’t have a dedicated maintenance lid, the bottom piece comes off easily so you can clean in, upgrade it or repair it. Be careful, though, it might be easy but a bit tricky to detach the bottom piece – you have to remove the silicone cap located in the center as shown in the photos below. Then, you can unscrew the bolt and proceed by prying up the plastic plate.

Storage upgrade options – 2.5-inch HDD, М.2 SSD

The laptop offers the standard 2.5-inch HDD in 1TB flavor spinning at 7200 rpm from HGST. There’s also the M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD slot, which in our case is taken by an SK Hynix chip with 256GB capacity. The slot supports the standard 2280 size.

RAM

As usual, the motherboard holds two RAM slots, one of which is taken by an 8GB SK Hynix DDR4-2400 chip. The other slot remains free for upgrade.

Other components

The Wi-Fi module can be found next to the battery and it’s from Intel with model number 7265NGW.

The battery is placed between the hinges and it’s rated at 48Wh.

Cooling system

The cooling system hasn’t changed over the last generation and still relies on just two heat pipes and a single cooling fan with a huge radiator. Still, the cooling system did surprisingly good but, on the other hand, it had some trouble during heavy load.

Display quality

Instead of the usual LG panels on its multimedia-based and ROG laptops, ASUS is now relying on BOE panels for the GL553. Its model number is NV156FHM-N43 and can also be found in Acer’s high-end business laptop the TravelMate P658. Nonetheless, we’ve noticed small differences in some of the tests but they are mostly negligible.

Anyway, the panel offers Full HD (1920×1080) resolution in a 15.6-inch diagonal leading to 0.18 x 0.18 mm pixel pitch and pixel density of 142 ppi. The screen can be considered as “Retina” when viewed from a distance equal or greater than 60 cm.

Since the notebook uses an IPS panel, viewing angles are excellent.

The maximum recorded brightness is 336 cd/m2 in the center of the screen and 316 cd/m2 is the average value. This means that the maximum deviation is 12% in the lower right corner. The color temperature (6400K) seems to be pretty close to the optimal 6500K. The contrast ratio is 1060:1.

We’ve also measured the color deviation in different sectors of the screen. The highest value is 2.7, again in the lower-right part of the screen. Values above 4.0 are usually unwanted.

Color reproduction

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction of the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people in HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

The sRGB coverage is 92% and it’s excellent for multimedia purposes and gaming. Colors will appear vibrant and punchy.

Below you will see practically the same image but with the color circles representing the reference colors and the white circles being the result. You can see main and additional colors with 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% saturation inside the sRGB gamut pre and post calibration.

We’ve created a profile with 140 cd/m2 luminance, D65(6500K) white point and 2.2 gamma.

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the Office & Web Design profile.

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the Gaming & Movie Nights profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle and the surrounding light conditions.

Gaming capabilities (Response time)

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and reverse.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 36 ms. Demanding gamers will notice the so-called ghosting effect (blurred frames) during fast-paced racing games and first-person shooters.

PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse Width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

Unfortunately, the PWM is still present in this display but the good news is that the frequency is pretty high, which reduces the negative impact.

Blue light emissions

Installing of our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin, and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

You can see the levels of emitted blue light on the spectral power distribution (SDP) graph.

Conclusion

We are really happy with the display quality because, despite the shift from LG panels, ASUS managed to offer overall the same picture quality as before. We have high contrast ratio, high maximum brightness, wide sRGB coverage and relatively accurate color reproduction and color temperature. The only thing that needs fixing is the PWM, which is present from 0 to 99% brightness.

We suggest using our Health-Guard profile for eliminating PWM and reducing blue light emissions during long hours of gaming sessions during the night and our Office & Design Work and Gaming and Movie Nights profiles for better visibility in dark scenes and better color accuracy.

Buy our display profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package is meant for ASUS ROG Strix GL553VE configurations with 15.6″ BOE NV156FHM-N43 (FHD, 1920 × 1080) IPS screen, which can be found at Amazon: http://amzn.to/2mslPfc

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at bg.laptopmedia@gmail.com.

Read more about the profiles HERE.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office work / Web design

If your field is office work or web design, or you just want your monitor's color set to be as accurate as possible for the Internet color space, this profile will prove to be useful.

$4.96

Buy Now LoadingCheckout Added to cart

Gaming or Movie nights

We developed this profile especially for occasions on which you spend a lot of time in front of your monitor with some games or watching movies – it will be easier for you to discern fine nuances in the dark.

$4.97

Buy Now LoadingCheckout Added to cart

Health-Guard

This profile reduces the negative impact of pulsation and the blue spectrum, securing your eyes and body. You still get a pitch-perfect color image, albeit slightly warmer.

$4.98

Buy Now LoadingCheckout Added to cart

$9.99

Buy Now LoadingCheckout Added to cart

Sound

The sound quality is good and there are not noticeable distortions in the low and high frequencies.

Specs sheet

The specs sheet provided below is for the model used in this review. Hardware specification may vary depending on your region.

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CPU	Intel Core i7-7700HQ (4-core, 2.80 -3.80 GHz, 6MB cache)
RAM	8GB (1x 8192MB) – DDR4, 2400GHz
GPU	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (4GB GDDR5)
HDD/SSD	1TB HDD (7200 rpm)
Display	15.6-inch (39.62 cm.) – 1920×1080 (Full HD) IPS, matte
Optical drive	DVD burner
Connectivity	LAN 10/100/1000 Mbps, Wi-Fi 802.11a/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0
Other features	3x USB 3.0 1x USB-C 3.1 (Gen 1) 1x USB 2.0 3.5 mm audio jack LAN HDMI 1.4 card reader (SD, MMC, MS) customizable RGB keyboard LED backlight
Battery	4-cell 48Wh
Thickness	30 mm (1.18″)
Weight	2.5 kg (5.51 lbs)

Software

The unit we received had Windows 10 (64-bit) already installed but if you wish to get rid of all the bloatware and perform a clean install, we suggest downloading all the of the latest drivers from ASUS’ official support page.

Battery

In the battery department, the notebook offers a marginal upgrade from 47Wh unit to a 48Wh battery pack. But combined with the arguably more efficient Core i7-7700HQ, we were able to get about 14% better battery runtimes on the web browsing test, compared to the previous GL552VW laptop. It’s a welcomed improvement, nonetheless. And, as before, all tests were performed using the usual settings – Wi-Fi constantly running, screen brightness set to 120 cd/m2 and Windows battery saving feature turned on.

Web browsing

In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.

Pretty good result for a gaming laptop – 369 minutes (6 hours and 9 minutes).

Video playback

For every test like this, we use the same video in HD.

Slightly lower, but still a good result – 338 minutes (5 hours and 38 minutes).

Gaming

We recently started using F1 2015’s built-in benchmark on loop in order to simulate real-life gaming.

It’s quite unlikely that you will start a gaming session without being close to a power source, but it’s good to know that you can play for more an hour – 110 minutes (1 hour and 50 minutes).

CPU – Intel Core i7-7700HQ

The Core i7-7700HQ is Kaby Lake’s top-shelf direct successor of the Skylake Core i7-6700HQ offering slightly higher clock speeds on the almost identical architecture and TDP. While Intel markets Kaby Lake’s architecture as “14nm+”, the Core i7-7700HQ is still on the same 14nm node with the only significant update being in the iGPU department. That’s why the slightly altered clock speeds (2.8 – 3.8 GHz vs 2.6 – 3.5 GHz) bring not more than 10% increase in performance compared to the Core i7-6700HQ. We still have the supported Hyper-Threading technology with 4/8 – core/thread design, the same 45W TDP and 6MB cache.

However, the Kaby Lake generation boasts an updated video engine for the iGPU, although, its performance is just about the same. Branded as Intel HD Graphics 630, the GPU offers slightly higher clock speeds (350 – 1100 MHz vs 350 – 1050 MHz) compared to the Intel HD Graphics 530 and support for H265/HEVC Main10 profile at 10-bit color depth and the VP9 codec for full hardware acceleration. In addition, the HDCP 2.2 is also supported allowing Netflix’s 4K video streaming.

You can browse through our top CPUs ranking: http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-cpu-ranking/

Here you will find other useful information and every notebook we’ve tested with this processor: http://laptopmedia.com/processor/intel-core-i7-7700hq/

Fritz

Fritz is a chess benchmark that tests the computing capabilities of the CPU with various chess moves. The Intel Core i7-7700HQ managed to get 13.335 million moves per second. For comparison, one of the most powerful PCs, Deep(er) Blue, was able to squeeze out 200 million moves per second. In 1997 Deep(er) Blue even beat the famous Garry Kasparov with 3.5 to 2.5.

GPU – NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (4GB GDDR5)

NVIDIA’s GTX 1050 Ti for notebooks is almost identical to its desktop counterpart but offers different clock rates. What’s more, the Ti variant uses more CUDA cores than the standard GTX 1050 version – 768 vs 640 but both GPUs use the same GP107 chip, which differs from the other NVIDIA high-end solutions. The GP107 chip is manufactured by Samsung, not TSMC, and it’s built on the 14nm node on contrary to the 16nm from TSMC.

Anyway, the GTX 1050 Ti also offers significantly higher clock rates than the normal GTX 1050 versions well 1493 – 1620 MHz vs 1364 – 1493 MHz. This contributes to a significant performance boost over the standard version but the rest of the specs remain the same. The GPU offers 4GB of GDDR5 memory connected via 128-bit interface and transfer rates as high as 112 GB/s.

You can browse through our top GPUs ranking: http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-graphics-ranking/

Here you will find other useful information and every notebook with this GPU that we’ve tested: http://laptopmedia.com/video-card/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1050-ti-4gb-gddr5/

Gaming tests

Temperatures

The usual stress tests that we perform take things to the extreme and thus we cannot compare it to real-life use. The average user won’t be able to reach 100% CPU load + 100% GPU load for such long periods of time, but it’s still a good way to assess the overall stability of the system and the effectiveness of the cooling design. In our previous reviews of the GL552, the laptop did great with virtually no heat on the surface of the keyboard and no thermal throttling. Let’s see how the successor will fare.

We started off with 100% CPU load for an hour and the notebook was able to utilize the full performance of the chip at 3.3 GHz and fairly low temperatures – around 79-80 °C.

However, after turning on the GPU stress test, things started to go south. At first, the GPU ran at over 1700 MHz and slowly clocked down to 1695 MHz while the temps were considerably higher than what we’ve expected them to be. For instance, the Legion Y520, which has a bad cooling design, didn’t allow temperatures of the GPU go above 74 °C while the GL553’s GTX 1050 Ti was running hot at 82 °C. Interestingly enough, the CPU’s temperatures were relatively low but the workload still caused the Core i7-7700HQ to throttle at 1.5-1.8 GHz. Quite similar to the Legion Y520 scenario.

We do have to note two things here. First, the previous versions of the GL552 didn’t break a sweat during this test, but with the new hardware, clearly the GL553 has some issues with the cooling performance. And secondly, the thermal throttling that occurred with the GL553 is far less severe compared to the Legion Y520, because the latter had to downclock its CPU at 800 MHz at times. The GL553, on the other hand, was still able to keep higher and more stable clock speeds of the CPU.

Quite surprisingly, despite the inner temperatures, the surface around the keyboard was absolutely cool. This is really good news for the general users because they don’t need to worry about overheating during long hours of gaming.

Verdict

Let us put it this way, if you have the extra cash, we strongly recommend going for the ASUS ROG GL553VE instead of the recently reviewed Lenovo Legion Y520 or Acer Aspire VX 15 (VX5-591G). We still have to do a review of the GTX 1050 Ti version of the VX 15 to be fair, but our opinion of the Legion Y520 remains – it’s still the best one considering the value. However, the GL553VE excels with a crisp IPS panel, far superior to the one we’ve tested on the Legion Y520 and offers a customizable RGB keyboard with overall better feel and comfort and more importantly – far better cooling solution.

However, there are some trade-offs that need to be considered. For example, the build quality is questionable, the touchpad is bad and the port placement might be considered slightly inconvenient for some. And even though the cooling design is more effective than the one on the Legion Y520 with absolutely no heat dispersed on the surface, we noticed some thermal throttling during heavy load. The issue will not be present during normal usage and gameplay but should be considered as a drawback in the long run.

Finally, we would like to address the battery. We doubt that the marginal increase in capacity has led to an approximately 14% improvement over the last generation but it’s definitely a step in the right direction. It’s not bad for a gaming laptop, at all.

All in all, the GL553VE is definitely an improvement over the last generation and it also holds an edge over the Lenovo Legion Y520 and the Aspire VX 15 with some of the features, but as usual, everything comes at a price. And the GL553VE costs more than we expected.

You can find some of the available configurations here: http://amzn.to/2mcOXH4

Alienware is a love it or hate it brand. It has built its name on solid ground offering the most premium gaming notebooks you can get. The company dared to stick the most insane hardware inside and still make it look cool. However, times are changing and the biggest names in the industry want to get a piece of the pie. ASUS, Acer, Lenovo, MSI all of them now have their own versions of an absurdly powerful gaming notebooks while still being competitive in terms of pricing. So why are Alienware notebooks still sensibly pricier than its competitors?

If we call Alienware the Apple in the gaming industry, we wouldn’t be wrong. It’s all about the feel of the product, because the hardware isn’t the whole thing the user interacts with. The company proves that with its latest top-shelf 17-inch model, the Alienware 17 R4. It gathers the best and the latest (well, excluding the CPU because they still haven’t updated it to Kaby Lake) of what the industry offers and puts it in a sleek new body while retaining some of the usual Alienware characteristics.

You can find some of the available configurations here: http://amzn.to/2lvLKmj

Contents

Retail package

The notebook comes in a luxurious big, black, Alienware-branded box containing the usual user manuals, the huge and clunky charging brick and the laptop itself.

Design and construction

This year’s 17-inch model receives a total revamp while staying true to its Alienware roots. The notebook will appeal the common gamer as well as to users with more minimalistic and strict taste. And in combination of smart design decisions and excellent choice of materials, we are starting to see why it costs more than its rivals.

As usual, the lid offers slightly decorated anodized aluminum cover that feels rock solid and Alienware’s illuminated logo in the top center. The top edge is covered in plastic so it doesn’t disrupt the Wi-Fi signal as the antennas are in there. Opening the lid brings you that moment of satisfaction when unwrapping your new tech for the first time, thanks to the magnetic snap. This assures the lid stays closed. The hinges are perfectly tightened and allow opening the laptop with just one hand. The weight appears to be well-distributed. A nice finishing touch is the LED-illuminated edges of the lid along with the bottom LED strips at the bottom of the base. The bottom piece is strikingly familiar – the old Alienware 17 looked almost identical – aluminum cover with huge metal vent openings.

The new chassis carries improvement in terms of dimensions as well. Coming from last year’s 34.4 mm, this Alienware 17 R4 feels noticeably leaner with just 29.9 mm profile. However, the R4 has gained weight (from 3.7 kg to 4.4 kg). Just wait until you see how the cooling system looks like and you will understand why it’s so heavy. Anyway, all of the connectors are evenly distributed – on the left you will find one USB 3.0, one USB-C 3.0 connector as well and two 3.5 mm jacks for headphones and external microphone. The right offers just one USB 3.0 for easier access. The back packs the rest of the connectors including LAN, mini DisplayPort, HDMI, USB-C Gen 2 supporting DisplayPort and Thunderbolt 3 and the SD card reader.

Now let’s talk about exhaust vents. The back bulge holds huge heat pipes and radiators for dispersing the heat. The airflow is driven by two big fans and the sides play a role in the cooling as well. The right fan draws cool air from the outside thanks to the vent opening on the right while the left fan spins in the opposite direction pushing the hot air not only from the back, but from the left side as well. Our stress tests confirm the effectiveness of the current design.

When you open the laptop, you will see mostly familiar design choices. We would have appreciated if the keyboard was moved down closer to the palm rest area so we wouldn’t feel the heat so much but on the other hand, your palms will rest comfortable on the big wrist rest area. We liked the added stability to the tray, because we noticed serious flexing in last year’s model. In general, but the touchpad and keyboard remain the same. Long key travel, customizable RGB illumination with separate zones, and 6 programmable macro keys. Still no media control, though. The ergonomic shape and overall fell of the keyboard will prove useful for typing and gaming. It’s hard to miss the LED-illuminated futuristic touchpad – excellent gliding surface, accurate, responsive and slightly mushy dedicated mouse buttons.

What stands out from the matte, black, soft-touch plastic interior is the glossy strip on the top of the keyboard along with the LED-backlit power button in the shape of the logo. In addition, the bottom bezel of the screen looks slightly bigger than usual and that’s because it houses the latest Tobii eye-tracking sensors for more immersive gameplay. We will get to that later.

The whole minimalistic and strict design makes the laptop stand out in the crowd of aggressive-looking gaming laptops these days. It’s a bit of fresh air with extra attention to details. The build quality itself is impeccable and combines premium materials for extra durability and good feel. It’s also noticeably thinner than before but the added weight from last year kind of ruins it.

Disassembly, maintenance and upgrade options

Unlike last year’s Alienware, which was extremely hard to disassemble, the 17 R4 offers easy but time-consuming access to the internals and upgrade options. For the most commonly upgraded hardware, you only need to remove the bottom aluminum cover. This will grant you access to the Wi-Fi card, two M.2 PCIe NVMe-enabled SSD slots, one 2.5-inch HDD and two RAM slots.

But if you need to access the cooling system for some spring cleaning or for a battery replacement, well then you have to ready yourself with some patience. First, remove all the screws around the black plate and then remove the two screws near the rear vent openings. Gently pull out the plastic rear of the notebook and proceed with the newly discovered screws. Detach all the cables that might get in the way of prying it up. Also, the two Wi-Fi antennas are attached right next to the screen hinge and go along the bottom LED strips. Just unscrew both antennas and you are good to go.

Storage upgrades – 2.5-inch HDD/SSD, 2x M.2 SSD

The tested configuration shipped with a 2.5-inch HDD from HGST spinning at 7200 rpm combined with a 256GB PCIe NVMe SSD from Toshiba. The other M.2 SSD slot is available for an upgrade.

RAM

After a full disassembly of the machine, we found out that the motherboard holds only two RAM slots, which is two slots short compared any other high-end gaming laptop currently on the market. This means only 32GB of DDR4-2666 RAM, which should be more than enough for the common user and gamer. However, if you plan to do some video editing on the go with the Alienware 17 R4, consider this shortcoming.

Other components

The Wi-Fi module can be found near the left (with the bottom facing upwards) cooling fan and it’s Killer 1535.

As usual, the battery is located right under the palm rest area and we were surprised to see a monstrous 99Wh battery pack, which, by the way, is the largest allowed on a mobile device that can be carried on an airplane.

Cooling system

The cooling system seems pretty solid as you can see for yourself in the photos below. There are two big heatsinks for the CPU and GPU and three heat pipes connecting them to the cooling fans. What seemed to intrigue us was the cooling method. The right fan draws cool air from the outside and pushes it into the system while the right fan spins in the opposite direction catching the hot air and leading it out. This is done using openings on the left and right side of the laptop. The rear radiators, however, contribute the most for dissipating the heat.

Display quality

The Alienware 17 R4 comes in different screen configurations and it really depends on your usage and type of needs. You can go for the standard Full HD version that doesn’t feature Tobii’s Eye Tracking technology but offers an IPS display with better viewing angles. The second variant is the UHD option, which goes along with the Tobii Eye Tracking but excludes the much-needed G-Sync option. The latter is also absent in the Full HD model. However, the sweet spot, in our opinion, is the display we are currently reviewing. It has Tobii Eye Tracking, it has QHD resolution (the sweet spot for NVIDIA’s Pascal-based GPUs) and supports G-Sync and has exceptionally fast refresh rate of 120Hz, which will be very useful to hardcore gamers. Be aware, though, this variant comes with a TN panel, but before you think this is a deal-breaker for you, just wait to see the results from our tests. It’s definitely not your ordinary TN panel.

The notebook comes equipped with a TN AUO B173QTN panel with QHD (2160×1440) resolution in a 17.3-inch diagonal offering 0.15 x 0.15 mm pixel pitch and 170 ppi of pixel density. It can be considered as “Retina” when viewed from a distance equal or greater than 50 cm.

The interesting thing about this TN panel is that it offers good viewing angles in horizontal tilt but the color shift is noticeable when tilted towards you, as you can see from the image below. It sure doesn’t offer the excellent viewing angles the standard IPS panel would, but in this case, the color shift isn’t very noticeable. Quite impressive for a TN panel.

More surprises here. The panel is actually incredibly bright. It’s so bright that it’s comparable to some high-end UHD IPS IGZO displays and even beats the standard Full HD IPS panels we are used to seeing in high-end 17-inch laptops. The maximum brightness in the center of the screen is 410 cd/m2 while the average across the surface is 377 cd/m2 with around 15% deviation. The latter isn’t alarming but should be taken into consideration considering the price point of the product. The color temperature is 7800K so colors will appear a bit colder than usual. This isn’t necessarily bad but we found that the as we go along the grayscale below 100% RGB, the color temperature starts to rise significantly. For example, at 75% RGB, the CCT (Correlated Color Temperature) is almost 10000K and continues to rise as we go below 75% RGB. The issue can be resolved by using our custom profiles. Unfortunately, here’s where the TN panel drags behind the IPS alternatives – it offers only 650:1 contrast ratio, which isn’t all that bad for a TN panel but it’s low considering the class of the laptop.

The maximum dE2000 (color deviation) compared to the center of the screen at 100% RGB is 3.9 in the lower right corner. Values above 4.0 are unwanted.

Color reproduction

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction of the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people in HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

We were surprised to see such wide sRGB coverage from a TN panel. Our hardware confirmed 93% sRGB coverage in CIE1976, which is enough for multimedia and gaming.

Below you will see practically the same image but with the color circles representing the reference colors and the white circles being the result. You can see main and additional colors with 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% saturation inside the sRGB gamut pre and post calibration.

We’ve created the Office and Design Work profile with a target luminance of 140 cd/m2, D65(6500K) white point and 2.2 gamma.

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the Office & Web Design profile.

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the Gaming & Movie Nights profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle and the surrounding light conditions.

In this regard, the display appears to be well calibrated and it’s excellent for multimedia purposes and gaming. However, there’s a considerable deviation in the gamma curve at around 1.9. Our Gaming and Movie Nights profile takes care of that.

Gaming capabilities (Response time)

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and reverse.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 12 ms. This is an excellent result for a gaming laptop so even hardcore gamers will find it hard to notice the 12 ms response time.

PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse Width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

We are pleased to see that the laptop’s screen doesn’t use PWM for regulating screen brightness and will be suitable for long hours of work/gaming.

Blue light emissions

Installing of our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin, and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our specialized article on Blue Light.

You can see the levels of emitted blue light on the spectral power distribution (SDP) graph.

Conclusion

The display won’t appeal to everyone and some users might consider the use of TN panel on such high-end laptop a huge deal-breaker. However, our thorough tests suggest otherwise. The display’s only real weakness is the color shift in front tilt and low contrast ratio. Anything else is on par or even better than most IPS panels currently used for notebooks. As a gamer, you can benefit from the crisp resolution, wide sRGB coverage, well-calibrated NBS, super-fast response time (12ms) and refresh rate (120Hz) paired with the much-needed G-Sync chip and, of course, the exceptionally high maximum brightness. The absence of PWM is another great plus if you plan on spending hundreds of hours in front of the screen.

In our opinion, this particular configuration with the QHD TN panel is the best one you can get compared to the standard FHD variant and the UHD panel. Of course, if you are planning on using the notebook mainly for content creation, video edit or another type of color-sensitive work, the UHD model with IGZO IPS panel will be a more suitable fit for you. You can take a closer look at the panel in our previous Alienware 17 R3 review.

Buy our display profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package is meant for Alienware 17 R3 with 17.3″ AUO B173QTN (QHD, 2160 × 1440) TN, which can be found on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2m2VEc8

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at bg.laptopmedia@gmail.com.

Read more about the profiles HERE.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office work / Web design

If your field is office work or web design, or you just want your monitor's color set to be as accurate as possible for the Internet color space, this profile will prove to be useful.

$4.96

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Gaming or Movie nights

We developed this profile especially for occasions on which you spend a lot of time in front of your monitor with some games or watching movies – it will be easier for you to discern fine nuances in the dark.

$4.97

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Health-Guard

This profile reduces the negative impact of pulsation and the blue spectrum, securing your eyes and body. You still get a pitch-perfect color image, albeit slightly warmer.

$4.98

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$9.99

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Sound

The notebook’s sound is excellent and we noticed only small distortions in high frequencies.

Specs sheet

The specs sheet provided below is for this model only and may vary depending on your region or configuration.

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CPU	Intel Core i7-6820HK (4-core, 2.70-3.60 GHz, 6MB cache)
RAM	16GB (2x 8192MB) – DDR4, 2666MHz
GPU	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (8GB GDDR5X)
HDD/SSD	256GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD + 1TB HDD (7200 rpm)
Display	17.3-inch QHD (2560×1440) TN, matte
Optical Drive	–
Connectivity	LAN 10/100/1000 Mbps, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0
Other features	2x USB 3.0 1x USB-C 3.0 1x USB-C 3.1 (Gen 2 + Thunderbolt + DisplayPort) Alienware Graphics Amplifier port HDMI 2.0 RJ-45 SD card reader 2x 3.5 mm audio jacks for headset and external microphone customizable RGB LED keyboard backlight + touchpad LED + chassis LED control
Battery	99Wh
Thickness	29.9 mm (1.18″)
Weight	4.42 kg (9.74 lbs)

Software

The provided laptop offered a pre-installed Windows 10 (64-bit) and we used it for our review. But if you wish to perform a clean install of the OS without the bloatware, we suggest downloading all the latest drivers from Dell’s official website.

Battery

At first, we were really glad to see that GPU-Z is recognizing the integrated HD Graphics 530 of the Core i7-6820HK because we thought it is going to be the main driver for web browsing and light tasks. However, after running the usual tests, the results don’t seem to support this theory. We expected impressive battery runtimes due to the monstrous 99Wh battery unit stuck inside, but instead, we got subpar scores on both – the video playback and web browsing tests. This means only one thing, the laptop relies on the discrete GPU for all tasks while the iGPU remains unused. Probably the G-Sync technology is the one to blame here, as always. It doesn’t get along with NVIDIA’s Optimus (switchable graphics) feature.

Web browsing

In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.

Unsatisfying result even for a gaming notebook – 267 minutes (4 hours and 27 minutes).

Video playback

For every test like this, we use the same video in HD.

Slightly lower but similar result – 221 minutes (3 hours and 41 minutes).

Gaming

We recently started using the built-in F1 2015 benchmark on loop for accurate real-life gaming representation.

It’s quite unlikely that you will start a gaming session without being close to a power source, but it’s good to know that you can play less than an hour away from the plug – 54 minutes.

CPU – Intel Core i7-6820HK

Intel Core i7-6820HK represents the Skylake H family and it’s considered a high-performance chip with relatively high consumption – 45W TDP, which matches its little sibling i7-6700HQ. The Core i7-6820HK has four cores ticking at 2.7GHz and can go up to 3.6 GHz for one active core, 3.4GHz for two active cores and 3.2 GHz for four active cores. It has 8 MB Intel Smart Cache, which is the other notable difference when compared to 6700HQ (with 6MB Smart Cache). The silicon supports the so-called Hyper-Threading technology that emulates one virtual core for each physical, thus establishing a total of 8 threads.

Furthermore, the chip is manufactured using a 14nm FinFET process and integrates Intel HD Graphics 530 GPU with 24 EU (Executable Units) clocked at 350 – 1050 MHz. The memory controller supports up to 64GB of DDR3 or DDR4 RAM at 1600 or 2133 MHz respectively. The CPU is suitable for heavy applications and gaming.

You can browse through our top CPUs ranking: http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-cpu-ranking/

Here you will find other useful information and every notebook we’ve tested with this processor: http://laptopmedia.com/processor/intel-core-i7-6820hk/

Fritz

Fritz is a chess benchmark that tests the computing capabilities of the CPU with various chess moves. The Intel Core i7-6820HK managed to get 14.671 million moves per second. In comparison, one of the most powerful chess computers, Deep(er) Blue, was able to squeeze out 200 million moves per second. In 1997 Deep(er) Blue even beat the famous Garry Kasparov with 3.5 to 2.5.

GPU – NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (8GB GDDR5X)

The GeForce GTX 1080 is the top-shelf GPU from NVIDIA’s Pascal generation (except for the Titan X Pascal, of course) built upon 16nm TSMC process, which is a huge leap over the last generation (Maxwell), which featured a 28nm node. Anyway, the new architecture allows better thermals, efficiency and considerably higher clock speeds than its direct predecessor the GTX 980. Also, for the first time, NVIDIA has made the difference between the desktop and the mobile variants of the Pascal GPUs mostly unnoticeable in real-life use, although there’s a slight difference according to synthetic benchmarks.

CUDA cores (2560), ROPs (64) and TMUs (213) are identical to the desktop variant of the GTX 1080 since they are based on the same GP108 chip including the memory controller, which is the highlight of the new graphics card because it features the next generation of GDDR5X memory developed by Micron allowing higher memory bandwidth on a 256-bit interface clocked at 10 000 MHz. However, there’s a small difference in the base clock speeds – 1566 – 1733 MHz for the laptop version and 1607 – 1733 MHz for the desktop variant. Both frequencies can be altered depending on the manufacturer and the cooling system’s performance.

The GPU’s power consumption is rumored to be around 165W making it suitable only for large 17 or 15-inch machines with high-performance cooling system. In addition, the graphics card delivers new and exciting features like DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.0b, HDR, Simultaneous Multi-Projection, refined H.265 video encoding, etc.

You can browse through our top GPUs ranking: http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-graphics-ranking/

Here you will find other useful information and every notebook with this GPU that we’ve tested: http://laptopmedia.com/video-card/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-8gb-gddr5x/

Overclocking

A bit of digging revealed several interesting findings of the Alienware 17 R4. For starters, the CPU is clocked at lower than usual frequency and the same goes for the GPU. On the Predator 17X, we were able to push the GTX 1080 at more than 1900 MHz thanks to the PredatorSense software. The CPU was also available for overclocking. On the Alienware 17 R4, however, this is possible only with a third-party software – MSI Afterburner would be a good place to start. Unfortunately, the CPU can only be clocked through the BIOS settings.

Anyway, we tried to clock the GPU at 1930-1940 MHz and we were able to run a few benchmarks and gaming tests without a problem. So overclocking is still possible, just make sure you don’t go above this point. For the record, the Predator 17X’s GTX 1080 was clocked at 1921 MHz.

Gaming tests

Temperatures

The usual stress tests that we perform can’t represent real-life use, but it’s still a good way to make an approximate assessment of the cooling system’s capabilities and stability in the long run.

We started the CPU stress test and noticed two things – the CPU is clocked at lower than usual frequencies and doesn’t goo above 3.1 GHz with four active cores during full load. This is strange because clearly, the cooling system can take a lot more than this. Just look at the CPU temperatures under full load – 65-70 °C. This is comparable to some desktop PCs.

After turning on the GPU stress test, we noticed something interesting going on there. The CPU periodically resides to around 2.7 GHz, which is the base clock speed of the chip, and when the cooling system catches up, it goes back to 3.1 GHz. The CPU’s temperatures rose to around 95 °C – pretty normal considering the nature of the stress test, but we were surprised by the high temperature of the GPU – 81 °C, considering the clock speeds, of course. For comparison, the Predator 17 X’s GTX 1080 was clocked at more than 100 MHz higher and kept the same temperature.

Temperatures on the surface are considerably higher than the ones of the Predator 17 X but still in the range of what’s considered to be normal. During normal use or long hours of gaming, the heat map below will look quite different. Keep in mind, though, that the center of the keyboard gets a bit warm.

Verdict

This year’s Alienware 17 R4 offers something for all types of gamers and users. With the main difference being in the display department, the notebook will appeal to hardcore gamers, content creators and to those who like to keep it modest with a Full HD screen. However, the version we reviewed is the only one equipped with G-Sync and offers 120 Hz refresh rate and despite the use of TN panel, the display offers superb image quality. The only serious drawback is the limited contrast ratio. So again, if you are into flawless image quality, go for the UHD version with IGZO IPS panel, but otherwise, we strongly recommend sticking to the QHD variant that we reviewed. The benefits from a gamer’s standpoint are countless.

Anyway, enough with the screen. Let’s focus on what the Alienware does better than its competitors for the considerably higher price tag. Compared to the Predator 17 X, for example, the Alienware alternative is more portable, has arguably more sophisticated design, which should appeal to a broader user base, roughly the same build quality and integrates the Tobii Eye Tracking technology for more immersive gaming experience. Anything other than that makes it on par with its rival.

For a laptop at this scale, though, we have some complaints. For starters, the CPU and GPU are overclockable and the cooling system is fully capable of handling the extra clock speeds but Alienware hasn’t provided an easy overclocking setup like the one we found on the Acer Predator 17 X. The GPU requires a third-party software while the CPU is only overclockable via the BIOS settings. Moreover, the CPU is clocked slightly lower than expected, which makes us wonder why Alienware played it so safe with the new model. Finally, the model sports only two RAM slots limiting the maximum amount of RAM to 32GB of DDR4-2400. This should be more than enough for gamers and the general user, but will be a deal-breaker for users wanting a solid workstation on the go for tasks requiring more memory.

In the end, the Alienware 17 R4 should be your premium gaming choice only if you are looking for the best possible gaming experience, otherwise, the Predator 17 X will do just about the same for a little bit less cash. But when you think about it, Alienware has always been Apple in the gaming industry for better or worse and if you decide to go with the new Alienware 17 R4, we don’t judge you. Not at all because it’s one hell of a gaming laptop.

You can find some of the available configurations here: http://amzn.to/2lvLKmj

A few months back we reviewed the Lenovo Ideapad 110 and prior to that, the Ideapad 100. Both laptops are part of the ultra-low budget lineup from Lenovo offering very basic features and usability. Now, we have the Ideapad V110’s review ready, which is basically the same notebook with identical aesthetics, input devices, upgrade options etc. But there’s one thing that promises big changes – the new Apollo Lake chip. The unit we are reviewing sports the brand new Intel Pentium N4200, which we had the chance to test a few months before the official release but it was a pre-production sample so the results were inconclusive.

Anyway, there are configurations with more powerful processors from Intel’s Core family as well as even more affordable Celeron alternatives. The notebook itself has its strong points, mostly relying on the new processor sporting totally new architecture and as usual, there are some considerable weak points. It’s still hard to get picky, though, considering the absurdly low price tag of the notebook. If it’s available in your region, you can find it for as low as €200-250, just like its predecessors the Ideapad 110 and Ideapad 100.

You can find some of the available models here: http://amzn.to/2msRH2h

Contents

Retail package

The modest package comes with the AC cord, power adapter, user manuals and the notebook itself.

Design and construction

As we already pointed out, the chassis is almost identical to the Ideapad 110 with some changes made to the sides since the Pentium N4200 requires a standard cooling solution that includes a fan and a heat sink, while the previously reviewed model with Pentium N3710 relied on a passive cooling design.

The lid retains the smooth, smudge magnet, yet grippy, surface but the plastic plate feels slightly more rigid than before. Bending the middle still causes ripples to appear on the LCD screen but twisting it isn’t very easy. Once again, the lid’s hinge is overly tightened and cannot be lifted with one hand and even with a tightly pulled hinge, we noticed some inconsistency in small movements, a slack. And as for the bottom piece, it uses the same finish and offers two big vent openings for extra airflow for the hardware.

The sides of the machine remain mostly unchanged from the Ideapad 110, but some of the ports have been moved. For instance, the left side accommodates a few connectors less – one LAN port, HDMI, USB 3.0 and USB 2.0. There’s also the big grill for cooling and right next to it you will find the DC charging connector. No more awkward placing. And as for the right side, you will find the optical drive and the 3.5 mm audio jack. The SD card reader is positioned up front near the left edge. All ports are crammed up in a fairly thin design – 24 mm, which is a slight increase compared to the older Ideapad 110 (22.9 mm). Barely noticeable, though.

Probably the most familiar aspect of the laptop is the interior. We are happy to see the same AccuType keyboard with fairly short key travel compensating with clicky and responsive feedback. It’s generally a good keyboard and will fit most users. The touchpad is also meant for the non-pretentious users as it’s gliding surface is a bit rough and small while mouse clicks are slightly stiff. It’s responsive and accurate, nonetheless. What’s missing here is a bit more stability in the center of the keyboard tray. Even if lightly pressed, the surface sinks in quite a lot.

Since this is an entry-level machine, some of the cons can be ignored, like the short key travel, small touchpad or the suspicious hinge movements. However, the spongy keyboard area might get in the way of some users and consider the build quality poor. Still, the laptop compensates with fairly small dimensions and low weight (1.9 kg) making it a decent low-budget portable solution.

Disassembly, maintenance and upgrade options

Quite expectedly, the notebook doesn’t offer a dedicated service cover so you need to take off the bottom plate in order to access the internals. Make sure you’ve removed the optical drive before proceeding.

Storage upgrade options – 2.5-inch HDD

Of course, the notebook doesn’t offer an M.2 SSD slot and relies only on the 2.5-inch HDD. If you wish to expand your storage, the only way of doing so is to replace the optical drive with a caddy so you can stick a 2.5-inch HDD inside.

RAM

The motherboard holds only one RAM slot, which is taken by a 4GB DDR3L-1600 SK Hynix chip in our reviewed sample.

Other components

The Wi-Fi module is placed right next to the RAM chip slot.

The battery is located right between the screen hinges and requires some unscrewing before it can be takne off. It’s rated, like before, at 24Wh

Cooling system

The cooling design is simple yet effective considering the undemanding Pentium N4200 CPU.

Display quality

The Ideapad V110 offers an HD (1366×768) TN display manufactured by BOE with model number NT156WHM-N42 making up for 100 ppi and 0.253 x 0.253 mm pixel pitch. It can be considered as “Retina” when viewed from a distance equal or greater than 86 cm.

Viewing angles are bad, as expected, due to the TN panel.

However, we were pretty surprised by the high maximum brightness that the panel offers. Usually, laptops offering low-end TN panels don’t go higher than 190-200 cd/m2 but this one scored 247 cd/m2 in the center of the screen and 240 cd/m2 as average across the surface with only 8% deviation in the lower right corner. We did notice something wrong with the color temperature, though. At maximum brightness level, the color temperature is a bit warmer than usual – 5900K but as we go along the grayscale, the color temperature gets a lot colder with CCT (correlated color temperature) even reaching 8500K at 75% RGB. Our profiles fix this. We’ve also recorded a contrast ratio of just 300:1.

The color deviation dE2000 to the center of the screen reaches only 1.8, which is an excellent result because values above 4.0 are unwanted.

Color reproduction

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction of the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people in HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

The yellow dotted triangle in the graph below represents the display’s sRGB color gamut coverage, which is just 49%.

Below you will see practically the same image but with the color circles representing the reference colors and the white circles being the result. You can see main and additional colors with 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% saturation inside the sRGB gamut pre and post calibration.

We’ve created a profile with 140 cd/m2 luminance, D65(6500K) white point and 2.2 gamma.

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the Office Work & Web Design profile.

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the Gaming & Movie Nights profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle and the surrounding light conditions.

Response time

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and reverse.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 12.5 ms.

PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse Width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

Unfortunately, the display uses PWM and the low frequency (220 Hz) of the emitted light can be considered as “aggressive”.

Blue light emissions

Installing of our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin, and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

You can see the levels of emitted blue light on the spectral power distribution (SDP) graph.

Conclusion

We really can’t get too picky when it comes to low-end laptops with TN displays but some of the drawbacks are apparent – narrow sRGB coverage, low contrast, poor viewing angles and aggressive PWM. But to be honest, that’s what the industry offers at this price range. We can’t miss mentioning, though, the higher than usual maximum brightness that can come in handy to some users.

Some of the issues with color accuracy, suboptimal color temperature and PWM can be easily fixed by installing one of our profiles.

Buy our display profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package is meant for Lenovo Ideapad V110 configurations with 15.6″ NT156WHM-N42 (HD, 1366 x 768) TN screen, which can be found at Amazon: http://amzn.to/2me8Jhs

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at bg.laptopmedia@gmail.com.

Read more about the profiles HERE.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office work / Web design

If your field is office work or web design, or you just want your monitor's color set to be as accurate as possible for the Internet color space, this profile will prove to be useful.

$4.96

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Gaming or Movie nights

We developed this profile especially for occasions on which you spend a lot of time in front of your monitor with some games or watching movies – it will be easier for you to discern fine nuances in the dark.

$4.97

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Health-Guard

This profile reduces the negative impact of pulsation and the blue spectrum, securing your eyes and body. You still get a pitch-perfect color image, albeit slightly warmer.

$4.98

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$9.99

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Sound

There are noticeable distortions in low and high frequencies while the maximum volume is kind of low.

Specs sheet

The specs sheet provided below is for this model only and may vary depending on your region or configuration.

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CPU	Intel Pentium N4200 (4-core, 1.10-2.50 GHz, 2MB cache)
RAM	4GB (1x 4096MB) – DDR4, 2133MHz
GPU	Intel HD Graphics 505
HDD/SSD	1TB HDD (5400 rpm)
Display	15.6-inch HD (1366×768) TN, matte
Optical Drive	Yes
Connectivity	LAN 10/100/1000 Mbps, Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.1
Other features	1x USB 3.0 1x USB 2.0 HDMI RJ-45 SD card reader 3.5 mm combo audio jack
Battery	24Wh
Thickness	24 mm (0.94″)
Weight	1.9 kg (4.19 lbs)

Software

We used a fresh install of Windows 10 (64-bit) for the writing of this review. If you wish to do the same, we suggest downloading the latest drivers from Lenovo’s official website.

Battery

With the new Goldmont architecture used for the making of modern Apollo Lake processors, Intel promised a significant improvement in performance and power efficiency. Well, they delivered. The old Ideapad 110 notebook, which had a passive cooling solution for the Pentium N3710, offered fairly low battery runtime while the new Pentium N4200 processor runs on standard fan-based cooling design and beats its predecessor in terms of efficiency by 30-33% as both systems use the same battery rated at 24Wh. This is definitely a win in our books.

Of course, all tests were performed using the same configuration as always – Wi-Fi turned on, Windows battery saving feature switched on and screen brightness set to 120 cd/m2.

Web browsing

In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.

As we already said, the notebook scored pretty well in our web browsing battery test – 251 minutes (4 hours and 11 minutes).

Video playback

For every test like this, we use the same video in HD.

Surprisingly, the notebook scored better in the video playback test – 261 minutes (4 hours and 21 minutes).

Gaming

For accurate simulation, we used the Metro Last Light benchmark running on loop with graphic settings set to minimum.

This test got the most of the battery since it’s the most demanding one – 113 (1 hour and 53 minutes).

CPU – Intel Pentium N4200

The Pentium N4200 is a low-end quad-core CPU manufactured in 14nm process part of the so-called Goldmont architecture but its part of the Apollo Lake generation of entry-level chips. The Goldmont architecture is the first totally revamped platform in a few years that promises significant performance and efficiency gains.

The chip integrates four cores clocked at 1.1 GHz but can go up to 2.5 GHz using Intel’s Burst technology. However, the latter strongly depends on the cooling performance, so if implemented right, the chip can maintain the speeds for relatively long periods of time.

Along with the four CPU cores, the chip integrates a reworked Intel HD Graphics 505 (Apollo Lake) GPU based on Intel’s Gen9 architecture supporting DirectX 12. Intel’s Gen9 architecture can be found in the last two generations Skylake and Kaby Lake Intel processors. The TDP of the chip is 6W including the iGPU and the memory controller, which supports dual-channel DDR3L/LPDDR3/LPDDR4 running at 1866 or 2400 MHz.

You can browse through our top CPUs ranking: http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-cpu-ranking/

Here you will find other useful information and every notebook we’ve tested with this processor: http://laptopmedia.com/processor/intel-pentium-n4200/

Fritz

Fritz is a chess benchmark that tests the computing capabilities of the CPU with various chess moves. The Intel Pentium N4200 managed to get 3.675 million moves per second. For comparison, one of the most powerful PCs, Deep(er) Blue, was able to squeeze out 200 million moves per second. In 1997 Deep(er) Blue even beat the famous Garry Kasparov with 3.5 to 2.5.

GPU – Intel HD Graphics 505 (Apollo Lake)

Intel’s HD Graphics 505 is found in the low-end Apollo Lake chips and it’s based on the company’s Gen9 architecture, which is also found in Skylake and Kaby Lake processors. The GPU offers 18 EUs (Execution Units) clocked at up to 750 MHz, although the base frequency is 300 MHz. Since the GPU doesn’t rely on dedicated memory, it uses the available one installed on the system using a dual-channel 64-bit controller – DDR3L/LPDDR3-1866/LPDDR4-2400. Other notable features include the support for DirectX 12 API.

The low power consumption (6W TDP) of the whole SoC, for example, the Pentium N4200, makes it a good fit for low-end systems with thin and light design. The TDP can be altered and reduced to 4W, which will also affect performance.

You can browse through our top GPUs ranking: http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-graphics-ranking/

Here you will find other useful information and every notebook with this GPU that we’ve tested: http://laptopmedia.com/video-card/intel-hd-graphics-505-apollo-lake/

Temperatures

The two-staged stress test doesn’t represent real-life use since the general user won’t be able to maintain such heavy workload for long periods of time but it’s still a good way to assess the overall stability of the system in the long run.

We started with 100% CPU load for an hour and it seems that the conventional cooling design assures good temperatures under load and allows the CPU to stretch its “legs” to the full extent by utilizing the 2.5 GHz clock speeds for a while before going down to 1.6-1.7 GHz.

Interestingly, after we switched on the GPU stress test, the CPU’s frequency didn’t go below 1.1 GHz while still giving enough headroom for the iGPU to perform. There wasn’t even noticeable change in temperatures.

Of course, the Pentium N4200 isn’t powerful enough to generate so much heat as you can see on the heat map below.

Verdict

Some of the issues from the last generation Ideapad 110 have not be resolved but the new Pentium N4200 makes the working experience on the Ideapad V110 much better than before. The performance increase isn’t marginal as we are used to seeing while the battery life has been largely improved and again, all thanks to the new Apollo Lake chip.

As we mentioned above, some of the drawbacks like spongy keyboard, slightly unstable hinge and stiff mouse buttons are still present with the V110. Still, the input devices offer good usability overall. And as far as the display is concerned, it carries the usual drawbacks that low-end TN panels have but we do have to give credit to the higher than usual maximum brightness. Luckily, the aggressive PWM, imbalanced white point and color accuracy can be fixed by installing our profiles.

In the end, the Ideapad V110 can still be considered as one of the most reliable and affordable everyday solutions on the market. The new Pentium N4200 definitely makes it worthwhile but don’t expect anything more than just browsing, working and general multitasking on the machine.

You can find some of the available models here: http://amzn.to/2msRH2h