Gadgetory

what's up guys Ibraheim Canucks and gaming notebooks have come a long way we have the entry level gaming notebook starting at $1,000 that can play modern titles at low settings with reasonable frame rates and then comes the mid tier laptops that start at $1,500 to $1,700 that can do sixty frames per second at medium and then comes the high-end gaming notebooks that start at $2,000 I can go all the way up to $5,000 and these notebooks are capable of playing games in 4k one of my favorite things about Technology every year is that products become more efficient faster and the best part is that we're starting to see desktop class graphics migrating into the mobile space and this in turn shrinks the performance Delta between desktops and notebooks that being said the price to performance ratio still lies heavily upon the shoulders of desktop PCs and you will still need to make some pretty large financial sacrifices if you want to combine portability with high in game frame rates silverstone reversible cables feature beautiful aluminum housing in various colors and nylon braiding for protection with reversible USB 2.0 on one end for the really easy plug and play and on the other end available in both Lightning connector for the iPhone or reversible microUSB get your cables now with a link below we're taking a look at three notebooks today that occupy the high end space and we're also interested to see what similarities and differences they share welcome to the harbor connects showdown between these three powerhouses pricing and specifications first let's start with the eurocom sky x9 this thing is a monster it's rocketing i7 6700 desktop processor 32 gigabytes of fast 24 hundred megahertz memory and two gtx 980m eight gigabyte GPUs in sli perhaps the crowning or pointless addition here is the 4k IPS panel and I'll talk about that in a bit we also have a standalone desktop class gtx 980 with an MXF 3.0 added card so we can test frame rates with what amounts to less expensive option in your comes extensive setup page now these specs are very impressive but as configure it tops out at around five thousand dollars and you can take some time browsing through your coms website you can pick and choose which parts need to go in but most importantly the upgrades are horribly high in price moving on to the next notebook did you notice a change this is the origin Aeon 17s LX gaming notebook from all angles it looks identical to the eurocom sky x9 as both are using a generic sager source chassis and the motherboard combo upon which they install components this means both will likely perform the same and when it comes to things like keyboard trackpad and speakers milk quality they're all the same and the third contender is the msi gt72 dominated pearl it's the least expensive gaming notebook out of the three and you do get a lot for the price a gtx 980 32 gigabytes of ram 17.3 inch 1080p IPS display with g-sync and a refresh rate of 75 Hertz and unlike the other notebooks msi opted for a core i7 6820 HK mobile cpu unlike the desktop class grade chips on the other two all three notebooks come with a base MDOT - 256 gigabyte SSD and on top of that you get a standard 1 terabyte hard drive and speed wise the msi seems to have the fastest SSD on the market available while leon has the 950 Pro and the x9 sports a newer but slower SM 951 SSD build and design is the next the Sega source chassis on the X 9 and the eon 17 is a fully plastic affair but that doesn't mean that the build quality suffers there's very little top cover flex and with the laptop weighing about 10 pounds and 2 inches thick your comm needed to add structural stability to ensure damage wouldn't occur when this monster is being carried around I appreciate the matte surface for some stealth character with having an ex lighting strip on the top cover that can cycle colors inside it's the same matte black finish the palm rest is very stiff although it picks a ton of fingerprints the keyboard and trackpad aren't anything spectacular it looks basic and performs like that the backlighting lacks feature and I wish they added macro buttons on the side or any value-added rocket functions all this applies to the EON 17s LX as well although Origen offers a custom paint option which will cost extra the typing and gaming experience on this keyboard was fine but not totally satisfactory the keys lack sufficient travel and bounce back is sluggish this all leads to a mushy feeling which certainly hurts typing and gaming the trackpad however is pretty great the surface is smooth plus you gotta appreciate quality physical primary buttons with great feedback and they are so much easier to use compared to the tap gestures on Windows 10 Palmer's action ended up being in bridge too far and fingerprint reader never worked properly on the x9 but just fine on the EON 17 swinging at the IO it's a copy and paste in between the two we have a pair of land ports that connect directly to the killer neck a trio of USB 3.0 ports one of which features super charging capabilities and jacks for headphones a mic lining and spdif on the left side to the right we have two mini DisplayPort 1.2 ports a combo USB 3.1 type C slash Thunderbolt connector another USB 3.0 port and an SD card reader the rear facing area is mostly designed for ventilation but you'll find a power input another USB 3.0 port an HDMI 1.4 output and honest opinion I would have preferred one of the mini DisplayPort connectors here I like how your common origin encourages you to upgrade their notebooks as we did not spot a warranty void if removed sticker but taking a peek inside the x9 you see a pair of gtx 980m cards installed on the left side of the motherboard while the 6700 desktop CPU is enjoying its own dedicated heatsink in the upper right hand corner the memory is accessible but the storage drives and the m2 slots are located below the battery so getting to them will require the removal of a few more screws overall it's a very clean and organized pathway to upgrade components in the future on the e/m 17 the layout is a little different since we have a desktop class gtx 980 basically the GPU uses a single contact plate which transmits its heat to a set of large heat pipes and then on to the integrated fin array in the front of the left fan the MSI Dominator Pro definitely stands out from the other two laptops for one thing this beast is more portable at 8 pounds compared to 10 on the other - it's also built really well there's barely any flex on the chassis and that's appreciated physical character here is very much different compared to the understated body of the origin and the eurocom notebooks this one is taking a more gamer ish route this is the dragon edition with a red metallic plastic lid and an etched dragon print with a glowing eye the theme continues on the inside with the dragon design on the palm rest and I'm pretty sure most of you guys love the red and black color scheme that's going on here MSI has done a fantastic job with the keyboard layout with function keys off to the left that I'll get to in a moment the palm rest is very stiff it's built like a tank and I have to admit I enjoy typing this review and gaming on this laptop a lot it does tend to pick up grease from your sweaty hand but luckily it can easily be cleaned and while we're on the topic of typing and gaming on the dominator pro why don't we just talk about that keyboard it's a remarkable collaborative effort between MSI and SteelSeries and it's freaking amazing the keys are properly separated and one of the travel distance is short the keys have excellent tactile feedback with instant bounce-back the cherry on top of this is the incredible and robust software that allows for easy macro editing RGB backlit modification and profile setup the keys are lined with a very thin layer of silver which allows the backlit to shine through its natural form and it looks gorgeous especially in the dark there are too subtle lighting strips on the bottom that adds an extra layer of bling since RGB is the thing these days I also enjoyed listening to soundtracks from the integrated speakers there's a whole strip above the keyboard which is designed by the folks over at dinner audio it's backed up with a downwards firing subwoofer and man I have an experienced audio from a laptop like this before let's take a listen the four buttons towards the left side of the keyboard excluding the power button are pre-configured and cannot be modified I wish I could have that being said they do offer some additional control over the notebook right at your fingertips button one switches between the integrated and discrete GPU button two cycles two different fan profiles button three allows for quick boost of xsplit game streaming and button 4 cycles through different lighting presets within the chassis amazing job MSI looking at the i/o we have four USB 3.0 ports gold-plated audio connectors and an SD card reader on the left side the right area holds two more USB 3.0 ports and a DVD drive which we think does not belong on a gaming laptop in 2016 at the back we have a mini DisplayPort USB 3.1 type C port HDMI 1.4 Ethernet jack and power in placement of these is more ideal compared to the sacred body with majority of bulky cables hidden behind the computer unfortunately MSI doesn't want you to upgrade the storage or memory but ignoring that I plunged my screwdriver through the warranty sticker to see what's inside the layout is definitely different from the x9 the hard drive can be accessed on the left as well as the MDOT two SSDs the memory is also accessible without too much trouble both the GPU and CPU are cooled separately with large fans and proper heat sinks and they are positioned in the best possible way to let hot air exhaust through the back alright display and key mean performance next the origin and MSI models have the exact 1080p 17-inch 75 Hertz IPS panel with an integrated g-sync module while your comm boasts a 60 Hertz 4k IPS display NC hefty pricetag if your content creator like me you'd appreciate the 10 bit performance from the x9 since it covers 100% of the Adobe RGB spectrum where it says 70% on the other two but if you're after gaming going for a faster and gsync equipped 1080p display is the best option the 10 bit panel on the sky x9 does have slightly better contrast and brightness output but the other two notebooks are not bad at all for gaming now 4k is a hot topic these days and come starting to use these screens as a means of marketing while it is true that you get a lot more detail and real estate when working I just don't see the point of implementing that into a notebook because windows killing is not caught up to be enjoyable plus it's very difficult to drive this resolution even with a pair of nine ATMs why don't we take a look at some benchmarks these results are pretty much expected the 6700 K and the origin is the clear winner here since it's overclocked while the 6700 and the much slower 6820 HK falls behind testing the memory the sky' x9 pulls a little ahead due to its higher frequency modules one thing to note is that the origin is equipped with 16 gigabytes of RAM while the other two with 32 gigabytes so you can see we're not testing capacity rather the total bandwidth the Toshiba nvme SSD with an MSI's Dominator is exponentially fast and it destroys the 950 Pro and the SM 951 SSDs however the Acer 951 was able to overcome the other drives in write focused tests 3dmark synthetic benchmark results don't typically translate into actual in-game performance but they can be used for a reasonable good metric of where the notebooks will stand in relation to one another that means the beasley sli set up from your comp trumps all corners while the old clocked origin is able to overcome the Dominator so now comes the best part gaming performance the sky' x9 s expensive gtx 980m sli setup was able to top out at 1080p on most titles but for a few due to some SLI gaming profile issues this is always the case for multi-gpu configuration so it shouldn't come as a surprise when it was replaced with a single 980 the performance was lower but it was consistent across the board the EON 17s LX was a beast pulling great numbers while the slower processor on the MSI notebook did drag down its performance still the frame rates are completely playable at Ultra settings at 1440p they all perform really well once again but we're starting to see offering notebooks closing the gap within each other moving up to 4k and the sky x9 does start to show signs of struggle rendering at that resolution even the SLI configuration requires tweaking within the games to hit playable framerates once again all three notebooks deserve sincere recognition for what they can output with the given hardware testing the battery it is to be expected that the MSI is the clear winner here considering a more powerful CPU expect around three hours of browsing the web on the msi and by doing the same task on the other two with the desktop class processor and two GPUs it's guaranteed to give you a limited time taking a look at CPU temperatures the MSI once again shines here like a star especially with custom fan profile configuration the sky X line surprisingly showed lower idle temperatures in SLI compared to the standard 980 the 6700 K on the origin is definitely the coolest during idle and under load all that power when overclocked turns into heat the msi ran into some problems with GPU temps with the default fan profile the 980 was throttling all over the place but turning back the custom profile solved this issue the dual 980 ms on the sky x9 performed with expected temperatures and the same for the single 980 on the EON 17s LX the MSI Dominator pro was the quietest among the three notebooks the Sky X 9 and the EON 17s LX with a single 980 was louder than the dual nine ADM set up on the sky X 9 I thought it was supposed to be the other way around but I don't know what happened here finally conclusion time out of the three notebooks which one would I pick from a performance and portability standpoint I think the answer lies itself very well from the whole video the msi gt72 s dominated pro receives our pick for the damn good award but the story doesn't end there Europe comes sky Eckstein and origins Eon 17s LX are performed just like what they should perhaps even better than the MSI but I can't seem to justify paying that much for gaming notebook past 3k but what do you guys think about these three notebooks and which one of these would you actually pick as your ultimate gaming laptop I will make sure to check all the comments down below and as always subscribe for more similar content and we'll see you in the next one