Gadgetory

hey guys Eber here with hard-working axe CES is over I'm back here in the studio getting back to the normal grind but I'm gonna kick things off with this the eurocom q5 gaming laptop Uemura called this notebook from a video that I did last month we teamed up with Samsung to create a how-to guide on upgrading you know notebooks traditional hard drive to an nvme SSD and we talked about the performance benefits so if you're interested to learn more about that you can check it out right over here now while I was working on that video I noticed something interesting about the display on this notebook because it sports a 15.6 inch 1080p TN panel at a refresh rate of 120 Hertz and that got me to thinking well how is it like gaming on a panel or on a laptop with a refresher of 120 Hertz because normally we do see gaming monitors ranging from a hundred all the way to 240 Hertz but you obviously have a slightly larger screen real estate to work with but how was it like to actually came out of notebook I mean I did recently take a look at a notebook from Asus called the rog Zephyrus that comes with a 120 Hertz g-sync display which was absolutely fantastic but that thing cost like three thousand dollars which is kind of ridiculous and I really didn't like that notebook but this seems to be on par with what I would expect but it still has its limitations so I'm gonna talk about my experience most importantly we will take an in-depth look at this notebook and talk about you know how it performs its price point actually speaking of its price point this thing costs $2,000 and that ain't cheap guys that ain't cheap anyways let's take a closer look right after this the new master liquid all-in-one coolers are available in 120 and 240 millimeter stylish radiator sizes with air Balance fans included for best airflow and RGB sync on the pump and the fans that are controlled via this hub or through your motherboard check out the ML 120 ln 240 L down below ok so let's get down to business if you're thinking about creating content say you want to edit photos or videos with a TN panel don't even think about it the contrast ratio on this panel lacks consistency and it doesn't display colors as accurately as an IPS panel especially when you're grading here's a comparison to the gigabyte Aero 15 X featuring a Pantone certified display I've used this notebook to edit our recent CES videos and I have to admit this thing is a content creators dream if you're interested to learn more about this notebook I'll link the video in the description down below anyways coming back to the q5 while the TN panel suffers color reproduction it shouldn't pose a problem while gaming since the number one thing that gamers care about is higher frame rates lower response times and possibly a display with a high refresh rate to complement obviously a smoother gameplay experience and that's exactly where the q5 shines with its 120 Hertz refresh rate and 5 millisecond response time it's very hard to pass this over an IPS display with a 60 Hertz refresh rate so there are some compromises to take when you're going for a 120 Hertz TN panel versus a 60 Hertz IPS panel but I'd love to hear your thoughts on IPS versus TN displays on notebooks are you willing to compromise on you know a color reproduction for a high refresh rate or vice versa on a gaming laptop not on monitors but on gaming notebooks let us know in the comments down below I also did a little bit of an experiment testing out how high refresh rates could affect battery life and to my surprise it really didn't I ran the 3d mark 5 track test on a loop until it drained the battery on the first run I had the display set to 120 Hertz and in the second run I toned it down to 60 I love the results using Batman and as you can see there wasn't a difference whatsoever this is also a really good time to comment on battery life for the q5 it's really not that great I mean the maximum you could squeeze is maybe an hour depending on what settings you play with now normal usage would get me roughly 4 to 5 hours depending on you know your usage but it all comes down to hardware and software optimizations I don't think your gum has done a pretty good job when compared to gigabytes air 15 X but that guy sports a much larger battery than the q5 so do keep that in mind let's move on to the rest of the hardware first up the design it's alright definitely not on par with the XPS 15 or even the Aero 15 x from gigabyte the chassis is mostly made out of aluminium and plastic materials and I would give it a solid 8 out of 10 in my books for build quality you can spot a few red accents throughout the body like this undefined logo then is here comes branding and les if I'm mistaken there are subtle red LEDs beside the logo that complements the aggressive design the bezels are thick but that could just mean me because I'm so spoiled after using the arrow 15 X the keyboard however is fantastic there is great tactile feedback they don't feel mushy when typing but rather there is a good amount of travel distance which is awesome they have received the RGB treatment but you can only customize the colors either as an entire set or by three zones using software I wish they gave users the option to customize the colors on the wast key set but perhaps we could expect that in the next revision the trackpad is really good thankfully they're using Windows precision drivers over a LAN or synaptics so you can take full advantage of the gesture control within Windows 10 which is a thumbs up from my end there's a built-in fingerprint reader for your convenience and it's quick at unlocking the notebook the dedicated primary left and right buttons are within comfortable reach and they don't require too much force to register and I quite like this implementation over integrated buttons but it may not be to your taste port selection is plenty on the q5 on the right hand side there is a Kensington lock a LAN check an SD card reader a SIM card reader same card reader well I'll take that a single USB 3.0 port and a dedicated headphone in my checks switching over to the left you'll find power in HDMI 2.0 port 2 mini DisplayPort 1.3 ports a couple of USB 3.1 gen2 type-c connectors and two more USB 3.0 type-a ports you won't have to carry any adapters around because the q5 has you covered it's a lot more than what you would get with the Aero 15 X and here's a side-by-side chart comparing both of them with regards to how thick or thin they are let's talk about specs so the q5 features a core i7 7700 HQ quad-core CPU 16 gigabytes of RAM GTX 1070 in its max Q design a 256 gigabyte Samsung 850 Evo SATA SSD and a 1080p 120 Hertz TN display and this particular configuration costs $2,200 remember $2,200 and I'm gonna let that sink into your minds for a moment because personally in my opinion that's a complete ripoff because first and foremost you're getting a SATA base SSD instead of nvme at a much lower capacity and if you try to bump up that storage using their online configurator you're gonna be paying a lot more than what you would normally be doing but I think part of that premium involves the fact that you can actually upgrade this notebook and customize it to the spec you desire you can't necessarily do that with the Aero 15 X or the ROG Sepphoris because that would void your warranty and actually getting into those notebooks is quite complicated so here's what I would recommend is you know pick up the very bare bones basic system so probably get 8 gigabytes of RAM maybe a traditional hard drive and then pick up the aftermarket parts so like the 16 gigabyte RAM kit and an nvme SSD from a retail channel and just upgrade yourself you're gonna save a lot of money that route but either way I mean thinking thinking about it I don't think it still offers a lot more value because personally I prefer the arrow 15 X over the q5 in a lot of ways because that notebook is priced exactly around $2,000 and it comes with a great design fantastic display and of course the performance is just right on par with the q5 but I just prefer that over over the q5 so upgradability is fairly simple on the q5 I'm so glad your comp has included a warranty void if remote sticker the user has full control to upgrade the components so once you have access to all 11 screws you can open the lid and you find access to the 2 and half inch hard drive bracket there's an MDM 2 slot that can support an nvme Drive and the RAM is also a gradable as well switching over to performance the q5 blazes through most titles at 1080p set to high settings and this is all thanks to the gtx 1070 in its a max q design battlefield 1 at 1080p set to high averaged well over a hundred frames per second or watch set to epic I gave is roughly seventy four frames per second dooms set at Ultra using the Vulcan API was blazing through the gameplay dishing out well over 120 frames per second Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon wildlands which is a heavily demanding title averaged around 60 frames per second and this is at the very high preset you could get away with some 1440p gaming if you connect the notebook to an external display but you'll have to fiddle around with the settings to get it comfortably experience now I do have a few concerns with regards to the acoustic performance on the q5 because both under idle and load situations the fans do ramp up quite often I think this is probably due to the cooling solution being integrated to cool the gtx 1070 max-q but most importantly the was keyboard the wast area section of the notebook got relatively warm while gaming and it was kind of comfortable or uncomfortable because my palms got or my fingers got sweaty and yeah overall it wasn't really a pleasing experience so that's something to keep in mind if you're considering new york on q5 CP and GP temperatures were really good and this makes sense because the fan was trying so hard to cool both the components so as you can see I got around 45 degrees idle with the CPU and around 84 C under load and this is during our height of 64 stress test during gaming the GPU God is far a 74 C which is not bad it's definitely respectable but I thought the whole idea of Max Q was to give users higher performance and a relatively thin inform factor without sacrificing on thermal efficiency but unfortunately the q5 struggles to checkmark some of those tests and so this brings me to the conclusion the eurocom q5 is an interesting notebook in a lot of ways I mean for one you have a lot of options to play around with especially when configuring the notebook to the spec you like the only problem is that find that it's a 2015 notebook with 2017 specs because the design is not that outstanding especially when compared to the Aero 15 X I can go back to using a notebook with thicker bezels the performance is great given that it has a gtx 1070 and it's max q design you can blaze through 1080p gaming you can also get away with some 1440p gaming as well but be mindful that the notebook does get louder under gaming and sometimes even idle scenarios where the fan just ramps up randomly so I just found that to be a really odd situation because I've never experienced something like that on the air 15 X the last thing that I want to touch base on is the price point because at $2,000 I really can't recommend this notebook after using the air 15 X and I've been saying the air 15 X or I've been comparing this notebook to the air 15 X throughout the video but guys it makes total sense that notebook is a lot better than the q5 it has a beautiful display the design is absolutely great I love the thin bezels yeah just probably go get the air 15 X escape this guy but I'd love to hear your thoughts on the eurocom q5 gaming laptop what do you guys think about the notebook you know is it worth its price are you a fan of the design are you okay with it let us know in the comments down below most importantly I would love to hear your thoughts on IPS versus TN displays on notebooks would you consider taking a sacrifice for a high refresh rate but rather a poor color reproduction or vice versa leave your thoughts in the comments I made with hurricane X thank you so much for watching and we'll see you in the next one