Today's video is about a little black book that I have. And if you jumped to
the same conclusion as my wife and thought to yourself, that hound dog
scoundrel, then I'm flattered. But you're overestimating the effect that
YouTube internet fame has on members of the opposite sex or on members of the
same sex for that matter. Nope. I don't have that kind of blackbook. I'm afraid
my blackbook is a gaming laptop from Venom. And while it is pretty sexy, the
closest thing it contains to the phone numbers of members of the opposite sex
is a bookmark for
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2015. Click now to learn more. So, let's
kick things off with a bit of who the devil are these guys about Venom.
They're a small Australian gaming laptop company that caught my attention by
making some pretty eyebrow raising claims with respect to the performance
and quality of their products. My initial response to their request for a
review was a chilly, well, I'm sure it's fine, but frankly, I'm not really sure
what someone who isn't a tier 1 manufacturer can contribute to the category at this point. But they
insisted that if I gave it a chance, I would be impressed and sent me this, the
Venom Blackbook 15. So, what makes a BlackBook special then? Anyway, their
overall sales aren't large enough for a worldwide exclusive chassis. So,
according to Venom anyway, it's the finishing touches, configuring fan
behavior, creating the OS image, which they include on a USB drive instead of a
hard drive partition. Thank you. sourcing their own LCD panels, sourcing
their own keyboard key switches, sourcing their own memory and drives. And I was skeptical about this one at
first, but apparently one advantage of their lower volume requirements is that
they can exclusively opt for lower yield Agrade materials for the construction of
their products. And it actually seems to make a difference because the finished
product really is unexpectedly nice. There were a lot of ways that a company
with the name Venom could have gone overboard on the all flash, no dash
gamey look designed to appeal to the demographic that needs to ask their
parents for a new gaming machine. But the BlackBook 15 is all business from
the outside with a good mix of I/IO including optical out, dedicated
headphone and microphone jacks, an SD slot, a SIM slot, unusual here in
Canada, two USB 3 ports, and an Intel Gigabit port on the right. another USB 3
port, HDMI out and dual mini DisplayPort 1.2 ports and some ventilation on
the left and a curiously positioned ESA/
USB 3 port and some more ventilation on the back to go along with the power
jack. So, the overall takeaway holding it in my hands is reassuringly premium
aluminum unibody construction, stealthy
blasted black anodized finish, and uh
well, horses to spare once you get under the hood. Because specwise, all current
BlackBook 15s have an Intel Core i7 4710HQ quad-core processor, GeForce GTX
970M graphics, a 1 TB 2 and 1/2 in hard
drive for mass storage, and Windows 8.1. Then there are three different tiers to
get more or less RAM and SSD space depending on how much you want to pay.
I've got the mid-tier one with a 256 gig M.2 SSD and 16 gigs of RAM, but the
lowest end one has that and the highest N1 doubles it. But chassis and specs
aren't even really what's supposed to be interesting about this thing. So, let's
get into what that is. Sitting in front of it, the first thing I noticed is the
gorgeous 3K 2880 x620 Vision IPS matte
display. Man, this thing is nice. Deep blacks, vibrant colors, minimal glow, a
must if you're going to run at this resolution without scaling. As expected,
motion blur for a non TN panel, and fantastic viewing angles. The next thing
I noticed was the OS. And while their Windows image does have a fair bit of
stuff installed out of the factory, most of it is what I would classify as useful
rather than bloat. There's a Resident Evil 6 benchmark, for example, that they
presumably use for validation that everything is working correctly. A
screen evaluation utility that I immediately fired up to determine that I
have no dead pixels and that other than a touch of backlight bleed at the top
and bottom edges, it looks terrific. Firefox and Chrome browsers, a copy of
Divix Player, which isn't my favorite third party player, but prevented me
from ever having to see the horrible modern UI video player. And finally, a
copy of Norton Antivirus and Internet Security, which normally I would blast them for,
but since they have the consideration to at least include a full year of service
rather than some BS trial like the Tier One guys are doing these days, I guess
we'll call that a draw. Their control
center utility is fairly bare bones, but is lightweight and does what I need it
to do. There are toggle buttons for most onboard stuff and quick configuration
for fan profiles, including the ability to create a custom profile if you wanted
to, you know, turn the fan speed way up and overclock the GPU or something.
Something I didn't end up playing around with because the stock config had the
internals topping out at 70° C while
also staying reasonably quiet. I mean, we've got it running full boore right
now, and it doesn't have that annoying whine to it that some that some gaming
notebooks do, which I guess leads pretty well into the overall gaming experience.
The BlackBook 15 strikes, in my mind, an excellent balance between notebooks that
trade away their slimness for being powerful, cool, and quiet, like ASUS's
G751, and notebooks that trade away their coolness and quietness for being
extremely slim and powerful, like MSI's GS60 Stealth. This one is equally
powerful, but carrying it or using it
feels like it's striking more of an even balance between noise, heat, and
thickness. Speaking of even balances, the 3K panel is a total of 4.67
megapixels, which is another compromise that I mostly agree with. 4K at 8.25
megapixels would have obviously been too much for this and really any notebook
GPU to drive today, and 1080p is
decidedly last gen at this point. So, I see why they did it. But my complaint
here is one for panel makers rather than for Venom. Because while the BlackBook's
970M is enough to handle even most AAA
games at medium or better at native res, I wish that 1440p notebook displays were
available because that would give a little bit more breathing room for future games at native res without
without running at a lower res and dealing with interpolation. Let's move
on to the keyboard now, though. Some stuff wasn't too noteworthy. The layout
commits no major sins, but isn't exceptional. And the backlight is a nice
feature, but it's not super bright or anything. But the feel of it was pretty
unusual. Honestly, a little stiff for my tastes. But given that this is a
lowprofile notebook keyboard that we're talking about, the tactile feedback is
excellent. And while at first I bemoaned
the lack of macro keys, Venom includes a utility, even though it is a bit buggy,
that allows any key to be rebound with another key or a macro. Not
bad. So, conclusion time. Is this
notebook good? Yeah, it is. Is it really
good? Actually, yeah. Is it the kind of product that I would love to carry
around with the fit and finish that's closer to what I'd expect from Apple or
Razer than to your typical plastic gaming PC notebook? Yeah. But is it
worth the price? Well, that's your call.
But with the words Razer and Apple having just rolled off my tongue, I
think you already know that the BlackBook 15 is not going to be a
bargain basement gaming machine. So ultimately that call has to be yours. As
usual, we'll have links in the video description for price comparison. Guys,
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