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Today's video is about a little black book that I have. And if you jumped to

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the same conclusion as my wife and thought to yourself, that hound dog

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scoundrel, then I'm flattered. But you're overestimating the effect that

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YouTube internet fame has on members of the opposite sex or on members of the

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same sex for that matter. Nope. I don't have that kind of blackbook. I'm afraid

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my blackbook is a gaming laptop from Venom. And while it is pretty sexy, the

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closest thing it contains to the phone numbers of members of the opposite sex

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is a bookmark for

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livels.com. Cooler Master's Casemod World Series is your opportunity to show

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off your modding skills and win great prizes. Entries close February 7th,

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2015. Click now to learn more. So, let's

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kick things off with a bit of who the devil are these guys about Venom.

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They're a small Australian gaming laptop company that caught my attention by

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making some pretty eyebrow raising claims with respect to the performance

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and quality of their products. My initial response to their request for a

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review was a chilly, well, I'm sure it's fine, but frankly, I'm not really sure

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what someone who isn't a tier 1 manufacturer can contribute to the category at this point. But they

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insisted that if I gave it a chance, I would be impressed and sent me this, the

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Venom Blackbook 15. So, what makes a BlackBook special then? Anyway, their

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overall sales aren't large enough for a worldwide exclusive chassis. So,

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according to Venom anyway, it's the finishing touches, configuring fan

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behavior, creating the OS image, which they include on a USB drive instead of a

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hard drive partition. Thank you. sourcing their own LCD panels, sourcing

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their own keyboard key switches, sourcing their own memory and drives. And I was skeptical about this one at

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first, but apparently one advantage of their lower volume requirements is that

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they can exclusively opt for lower yield Agrade materials for the construction of

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their products. And it actually seems to make a difference because the finished

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product really is unexpectedly nice. There were a lot of ways that a company

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with the name Venom could have gone overboard on the all flash, no dash

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gamey look designed to appeal to the demographic that needs to ask their

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parents for a new gaming machine. But the BlackBook 15 is all business from

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the outside with a good mix of I/IO including optical out, dedicated

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headphone and microphone jacks, an SD slot, a SIM slot, unusual here in

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Canada, two USB 3 ports, and an Intel Gigabit port on the right. another USB 3

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port, HDMI out and dual mini DisplayPort 1.2 ports and some ventilation on

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the left and a curiously positioned ESA/

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USB 3 port and some more ventilation on the back to go along with the power

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jack. So, the overall takeaway holding it in my hands is reassuringly premium

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aluminum unibody construction, stealthy

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blasted black anodized finish, and uh

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well, horses to spare once you get under the hood. Because specwise, all current

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BlackBook 15s have an Intel Core i7 4710HQ quad-core processor, GeForce GTX

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970M graphics, a 1 TB 2 and 1/2 in hard

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drive for mass storage, and Windows 8.1. Then there are three different tiers to

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get more or less RAM and SSD space depending on how much you want to pay.

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I've got the mid-tier one with a 256 gig M.2 SSD and 16 gigs of RAM, but the

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lowest end one has that and the highest N1 doubles it. But chassis and specs

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aren't even really what's supposed to be interesting about this thing. So, let's

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get into what that is. Sitting in front of it, the first thing I noticed is the

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gorgeous 3K 2880 x620 Vision IPS matte

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display. Man, this thing is nice. Deep blacks, vibrant colors, minimal glow, a

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must if you're going to run at this resolution without scaling. As expected,

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motion blur for a non TN panel, and fantastic viewing angles. The next thing

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I noticed was the OS. And while their Windows image does have a fair bit of

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stuff installed out of the factory, most of it is what I would classify as useful

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rather than bloat. There's a Resident Evil 6 benchmark, for example, that they

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presumably use for validation that everything is working correctly. A

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screen evaluation utility that I immediately fired up to determine that I

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have no dead pixels and that other than a touch of backlight bleed at the top

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and bottom edges, it looks terrific. Firefox and Chrome browsers, a copy of

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Divix Player, which isn't my favorite third party player, but prevented me

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from ever having to see the horrible modern UI video player. And finally, a

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copy of Norton Antivirus and Internet Security, which normally I would blast them for,

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but since they have the consideration to at least include a full year of service

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rather than some BS trial like the Tier One guys are doing these days, I guess

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we'll call that a draw. Their control

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center utility is fairly bare bones, but is lightweight and does what I need it

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to do. There are toggle buttons for most onboard stuff and quick configuration

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for fan profiles, including the ability to create a custom profile if you wanted

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to, you know, turn the fan speed way up and overclock the GPU or something.

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Something I didn't end up playing around with because the stock config had the

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internals topping out at 70° C while

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also staying reasonably quiet. I mean, we've got it running full boore right

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now, and it doesn't have that annoying whine to it that some that some gaming

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notebooks do, which I guess leads pretty well into the overall gaming experience.

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The BlackBook 15 strikes, in my mind, an excellent balance between notebooks that

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trade away their slimness for being powerful, cool, and quiet, like ASUS's

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G751, and notebooks that trade away their coolness and quietness for being

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extremely slim and powerful, like MSI's GS60 Stealth. This one is equally

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powerful, but carrying it or using it

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feels like it's striking more of an even balance between noise, heat, and

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thickness. Speaking of even balances, the 3K panel is a total of 4.67

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megapixels, which is another compromise that I mostly agree with. 4K at 8.25

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megapixels would have obviously been too much for this and really any notebook

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GPU to drive today, and 1080p is

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decidedly last gen at this point. So, I see why they did it. But my complaint

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here is one for panel makers rather than for Venom. Because while the BlackBook's

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970M is enough to handle even most AAA

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games at medium or better at native res, I wish that 1440p notebook displays were

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available because that would give a little bit more breathing room for future games at native res without

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without running at a lower res and dealing with interpolation. Let's move

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on to the keyboard now, though. Some stuff wasn't too noteworthy. The layout

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commits no major sins, but isn't exceptional. And the backlight is a nice

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feature, but it's not super bright or anything. But the feel of it was pretty

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unusual. Honestly, a little stiff for my tastes. But given that this is a

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lowprofile notebook keyboard that we're talking about, the tactile feedback is

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excellent. And while at first I bemoaned

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the lack of macro keys, Venom includes a utility, even though it is a bit buggy,

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that allows any key to be rebound with another key or a macro. Not

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bad. So, conclusion time. Is this

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notebook good? Yeah, it is. Is it really

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good? Actually, yeah. Is it the kind of product that I would love to carry

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around with the fit and finish that's closer to what I'd expect from Apple or

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Razer than to your typical plastic gaming PC notebook? Yeah. But is it

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worth the price? Well, that's your call.

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But with the words Razer and Apple having just rolled off my tongue, I

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think you already know that the BlackBook 15 is not going to be a

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bargain basement gaming machine. So ultimately that call has to be yours. As

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usual, we'll have links in the video description for price comparison. Guys,

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thank you for watching. Like this video if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it. Leave a comment if your

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