This is the best performing gaming laptop with RTX 2060 graphics that I’ve tested so far, it’s known as the MAX-17 from Eluktronics in the US, and sold here in Australia as the Vapor 17X from Aftershock. You can customize it when ordering.
The build quality feels nice, it’s got a black magnesium alloy finish on both the lid and interior, and no sharp corners or edges. The weight is listed at 2kg but mine was closer to 2.3kg or 5lb, then under 3.2kg or 7lb with the 230 watt power brick.
It’s on the thinner side for a 17” gaming laptop with these specs, coming in at 2cm thick.
It’s got a 17.3” 1080p 240Hz display, no G-Sync or FreeSync though. There’s an option in the BIOS to enable or disable optimus, and this will give a performance boost in games. I’ve measured the average grey-to-grey response time at 7ms. It’s not too bad compared to others, but definitely below the 4.16ms needed for a 240Hz panel. I’ve tested the screen with the Spyder 5, and got 96% of sRGB, 74% of NTSC, 78% of AdobeRGB and 78% of DCI-P3, decent results for a gaming laptop. My panel was 332 nits at 100% brightness with a 980:1 contrast ratio, so again pretty decent, and better than the 15” model I recently reviewed in all areas except response time. Backlight bleed wasn’t too bad, I never noticed it when viewing darker content, but this will vary between panels.
There’s a 720p camera below the display in the middle, and it’s got IR for Windows Hello, but you have to tilt the screen back so it can see you to unlock. As the camera is down the bottom your fingers do kind of get in the way while typing, you’ve got to put the screen a fair bit back to actually get yourself properly in frame, it’s not doing a great job of isolating my voice over the fans.
The keyboard has 4 zones of RGB backlighting which lights up all keys and secondary functions. There’s 4 levels of key brightness which can be controlled using the keyboard shortcuts or software. I liked typing with the keyboard, it felt nice and tactile.
The glass precision touchpad is smooth and worked well, you can double tap the top left corner to disable it. It’s on the larger side and was noticeably better compared to the 15” model. Fingerprints and dirt aren’t too obvious on the matte black finish, a bit more noticeable on the touchpad, but as it’s a smooth surface it’s easy to clean.
The weight distribution felt good, allowing for one finger opening. Keyboard flex was only minor when pushing down hard, it feels quite solid, there was some flex to the lid but it is on the thinner side, and due to it being the larger 17 inch size I did notice it would wobble around a bit when typing. On the left we’ve got a Kensington lock slot up the back, air exhaust vent, USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A port and separate 3.5mm microphone and headphone jacks. The right has a MicroSD card slot, two USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-A ports and an air exhaust vent. The rest is on the back, from left to right there’s a USB Type-C port with DisplayPort output and Thunderbolt 3 support, HDMI 2.0 output, gigabit ethernet, and the power input.
The front has a little groove in the middle to aid opening the lid, as well as an RGB light bar which can be customized through software with the keyboard. Both display outputs connect directly to the Nvidia graphics, but Type-C cannot be used to charge the laptop.
Underneath has plenty of air vents towards the back half of the machine, and the rubber feet do a good job of preventing sliding on my desk. It’s easy to get inside, just take out 11 Phillips head screws and the panel basically comes right off. Inside we’ve got the battery down the front, two M.2 slots above it on the left, two memory slots in the middle, and WiFi 6 card to the right of that. There’s some empty unused space to the left of the battery, might have been nicer if it could be filled with more battery.
The two speakers are on the left and right sides towards the front. They sound about average, not too clear at max volume, there was a little bass, but also some vibration or distortion at max, and the latencymon results weren’t too bad.
It’s powered by a 6-Cell 91Wh battery. I’ve tested it with RGB lighting off, background apps disabled and screen at 50% brightness. The battery life was alright, lasting for over 6 hours in the YouTube playback test and an hour and 44 minutes while gaming. Of course if we instead use the discrete graphics only, the battery life is worse.
Let’s check out thermals next. The control center software lets you change between three different performance modes, which from lowest to highest are office mode, game mode and turbo mode. Office mode lets you pick different fan profiles or set a custom fan curve, and also toggle ECO mode. Game and turbo modes also give you the option to enable fan boost to max out the fans. None of these modes applied any GPU overclocking.
By default undervolting is allowed through the BIOS, and you can also undervolt through BIOS. The idle temperatures were warmer compared to the same specs in the 15 inch model, which I found interesting given the 17x is larger. Stress tests were done with the Aida64 CPU stress test with stress CPU only checked and the Heaven GPU benchmark run at the same time, while gaming was tested playing Watch Dogs 2. Office mode seems to set the thermal throttle cap of the processor to 80 degrees Celsius, game mode raises this to 85 degrees, while the highest turbo mode further raises this to 90.
This means it’s not possible for the CPU to rise above 90 degrees Celsius, which I think is good even if it means some thermal throttling, personally I’d prefer it to not get hotter but that’s me. The GPU wasn’t hitting thermal throttling in any of these tests, but interestingly the cooling pad didn’t really help in terms of temperatures.
These are the clock speeds for the same tests just shown. The cooling pad does improve the clock speeds a bit, particularly in terms of CPU performance. Despite the 90 degree cap still being hit, it lets us throttle a bit less. GPU speeds were a bit lower in office mode, and for some reason ECO seemed to perform a bit better in CPU speeds, I expected the opposite but here we are.
Game mode hits better CPU speeds due to the higher thermal throttle limit, then turbo mode increases for the same reason, though undervolting allows us to get some nice gains.
The 2060 had no problems running up to its 115 watt limit regardless of the performance mode in use. I found it interesting that the smaller 15” model was able to run up to 55 watts on the same CPU best case, so it seems like the cooling in the 17” model isn’t quite as good, though some of it could also be silicon lottery differences.
Here’s how CPU only performance looks in Cinebench with the GPU now idle. ECO mode is actually making a difference now, as we saw earlier in CPU plus GPU workloads ECO on seemed to do better. I found game mode and turbo mode similar in terms of CPU performance, so it looks like the only difference may be the thermal throttle limits of the processor as noted earlier.
When we compare the best result against others, it’s very similar to the smaller 15x model with same specs, so doing very well for a 10875H laptop, better than the Ryzen options in single core, though not quite able to match the 4800H in multicore.
The middle of the keyboard was warmer when idling compared to most laptops I’ve tested, but it was hardly warm to the touch. With stress tests going it’s warm in the center, but much cooler on the sides as the fans pull air in through the keyboard. Game mode was perhaps just a little cooler worst case then the highest turbo mode was about the same, low 50s in the center, but higher fan noise now.
The fans were still audible at idle, then when under load I found no difference to fan volume whether in game mode, turbo mode, or enabling fan boost, so it was always at max regardless during these tests, and this is why I didn’t bother testing with and without fan boost earlier.
Now let’s check out how well the Vapor 17x performs in games and see how it compares with other laptops.
I’ve tested Battlefield 5 in campaign mode at ultra settings, and the 17x is highlighted in red. It’s only just a little ahead of the 15x below it, which has the same specs but in a slightly smaller area. This is the best result I’ve had from RTX 2060 graphics so far.
These are the results from Far Cry 5 with ultra settings in the built in benchmark. Again it’s just ahead of the 15x with the same specs, making it the best result I’ve had from an RTX 2060 laptop. It’s even beating the 2070 with the same wattage in the G7 as this is more of a CPU intensive test.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was also tested with the games benchmark tool with the highest setting preset. Just 1 FPS ahead of the smaller 15x here, but again the best RTX 2060 score so far, and just a couple FPS behind the 2070 in the Dell G7.
Now for the benchmarking tools. I’ve used Adobe Premiere to export one of my laptop review videos at 4K. Lower times are better here, and like the games it’s just a little ahead of the 15x with the same specs, though slightly behind the MSI creator 15 with lower GPU. I’ve also tested Premiere but with the Puget systems benchmark which also accounts for things like live playback, and the 17x is doing well, a few spots above the 15x now but still being beaten by cheaper Ryzen alternatives. The results were similar in Adobe Photoshop, this tends to be more of a CPU focussed test, and for some reason the score was much better compared to the 15x now, more than 100 points higher. DaVinci Resolve is more GPU heavy, however it’s still being beaten by lower wattage GPUs paired with Ryzen processors. I’ve also tested SPECviewperf which tests out various professional 3D workloads.
I’ve used Crystal disk mark to test the 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD, and both reads and writes were great, though this will vary based on drive selection when ordering. The microSD card slot was also doing ok, and the card sticks out a little when inserted.
As for prices, the Vapor 17X starts from $2590 AUD. This config just has one stick of memory, I definitely recommend upgrading to dual channel for the performance boost. In the US they don’t seem to offer the 115 watt 2060 option, instead opting for 2070, 2070 Super, or 2080 Super Max-Q.
So to conclude, the Vapor 17x offers great gaming performance with some of the best results I’ve seen from the RTX 2060. This is thanks to it being the higher wattage 115 watt variant, and there’s also an extra speed boost by disabling optimus. Although it was ahead of the smaller 15x in games and content creator workloads, in the thermal testing and Cinebench it was actually slightly behind. I’m not too sure why this is the case given the cooling solution looks similar and you’d think more space in the 17” equals more cooling, but that doesn’t seem to be a major factor.
Regardless, the CPU performance was still quite good for an i7-10875H laptop, and although single core was better than Ryzen, Intel’s 10th gen mobile chips can’t currently match the 4800H in these sort of multicore rendering tasks. The screen was alright for gaming, 17” is more immersive compared to 15”, but personally I prefer 15” for portability, personal preference of course, though at 1080p I feel like the pixels are easier to notice at 17 inches, we need some 1440p options. I didn’t like the bottom camera and the screen was more prone to wobbling compared to the smaller 15”, but apart from that there’s not much to complain about.
Battery life is alright given the specs and much better than what I got from the 15”. It’s this and screen size that are the main differences between the 15” Model and 17” model, so when picking between them you’ll need to decide what your priorities are.
Anyway let me know what you thought about this laptop down in the comments
No comments yet