the world of technology is always an arms race and often an unpredictable one
I mean look at phones first we wanted smaller then we wanted flips then we
wanted touchscreens and now we want bigger and bigger with an appetite for
massive black phones that can't be wait
what gold phones okay well this video is
about a laptop anyway which wait golden laptops all right you lost me there this
is a non- ridiculous black laptop with more horsepower than my son's Tri
bicycle the Gigabyte p34w
V3 fractal design listens in the Define
R5 case was made with feedback from you
the PC community so click wherever you want to learn more how about here and
here now I was obviously being fous in
the intro there the specs alone tell us that today's featured item is designed
for a different customer than Apple's new Macbook inside the 21mm thick
chassis you'll find a quad core core i7 4720 HQ that turboed to 3.0 to 3.1 GHz
under a sustained four core load for me up to 16 gigs of DDR3 memory up to 512
gigs of MSA SSD storage and 2 tabt of
hard drive base storage an Intel two spatial stream AC wireless card that I
had connected at up to 780 megabit per
second and managing 42 to 45 megabytes
per second transfer speeds from my server man Wi-Fi has come a long way and
a dual Graphics solution comprised of Intel HD graphics 4600 and a GTX 970m 3
gig graphics card yeah you heard me right this popy packs a serious GPU
punch for Gamers on the go removing the bottom reveals gigabytes dual fan Supra
cooling branded cooling solution that they've been using to make thinner
gaming devices under their own branding and their premium a brand for about a
year now it's pretty simple in principle intake at the front and strategically
along the bottom to keep the wrist rest and gaming Keys cool with heat pipes
carrying that heat to the back where it can be exhausted without making your
palm sweaty I just wish it was a fair bit quieter it seems like gigabytes fan
profiles could use some tuning here since the fan ramps up at even a mere
sort of 10 to 20% CPU load immediately
upon beginning my physical tour here I realized that my comparison of this
compact gaming notebook to Apple's latest and greatest MacBook was even
more inappropriate than I initially thought the p34w has actual ports on it
specifically a power in HDMI out SD card
reader and two USB 3.0 ports on the right and a lock a real Tech powered
gigabit Ethernet port VGA and two more USB 3 ports and a headphone and
microphone combo Jack on the left flipping this puppy open reveals the
1080p IPS screen with a couple front facing which is nice for loudness but
decidedly laptop grade speakers under it
I'm happy to see this compared to a TN panel but it should be noted that not
all IPS displays are created equally
motion blur and processing leg we non-issues here from using it but
contrast is noticeably unexceptional and there's some Wicked backlight bleed
along the top and bottom edges on dark backgrounds on my sample the keyboard
and touchpad are similarly unexceptional and while I appreciate the separate
buttons and solid tracking for the touchpad the plastic surface is
something I'd like to see gone on any laptop over $1,000 and while the
keyboard is well laid out with a nice bright backlight it and the wrist rests Flex
far too much to deliver a satisfying typing experience which is actually a
complaint I have about the general build quality of this notebook the screen and
hinge feel robust so I wouldn't expect any breakage there but it seems like
Gigabyte sacrificed all the space inside
the main chassis that would normally be allocated for structural support to the
gods of thinness and lightness I played
with the p34 W's bigger cousin back at CES and told Gigabyte that if they sent
me anything with that kind of flex to it I was going to call them out on it and
while this one is not as bad as that one I'm going to call him out on it anyway
what's the point of making a computer out of metal if it bends more than a
plastic shell would have anyway but some people buy four bang for the buck and
are willing to be a little careful with their fancy piece of Machinery so let's
have a look at gaming performance then shall we at high details with very high
textures Forex txaa and motion blur disabled at its native resolution of
1080p the GTX 970m in our thin and light
Gamers Delight here manages a whopping
76 frames per second in my standard Crisis 3 runs pretty impressive that is
until you let the laptop sit for a while on a hard flat surface have the GPU
throttle weigh the truck down to 671 MHz
at 87° and lose a solid 25% of that
performance yes this baby thermal throttles but the good news is that it's
not as severe as that bricks gaming computer we checked out a while back and
not enough that Gigabyte would have been better off simply putting a low grade
less power hungry part into their design like they would have in that case and
there are some other positive takeaways too battery life is in line with what
I'd expect from a gaming notebook at 2 hours and 40 minutes in the PC Mark work
suite and overall I think Gigabyte has actually done a swell job of targeting
Their audience presumably the traveling gamer who may have to hook up that VGA
port to a boardroom projector from time to time with a rocking spec list at a
reasonable price compared to this time not Apple's MacBook gold or whatever
they're calling it but something like the razor blade which has similar specs
and a much higher price tag because that's the decision buyers will
ultimately have to make settle for throttling and weaker craftsmanship or
pay the significant premium product tax
for what is essentially thicker metal from a brand like apple or Razer or even
Gigabyte's own aorus for that matter
speaking of paying a premium why would you pay a premium for your mobile
carrier ting.com is the mobile carrier that's focused on customer service and
customer satisfaction and charging a real price how do you focus on customer
service well when you call them for example you don't talk to a robot or an
automated menu you actually get put through directly to a real person also
you only pay for what you use the average Ting bill is only $24 per month
per device so what you do is you go on their site that's lin.com you fire up
their savings calculator and you actually just enter okay well here were
my last few bills here was my usage and it spits out a number that says hey this
is how much you would pay if you switched over to Ting if you've got a
contract they'll pay 25% of your cancellation fee up to 75 bucks not to
mention that if you use our link that's Linus doing.com you'll also get $25 in
service credit or 25 bucks towards a new device as well so I think that's pretty
much it guys like this video if you liked it dislike it if you thought it
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