Digital Storm x17 Review: Laptop Delivers Excellent Performance, Average Everything Else

At a Glimpse

Expert's Rating

Pros

• 750GB HD asset 120GB solid-state boot drive
• Excellent performance

Cons

• Bod is boring and large, with No lights
• Screen is dull, dim

Our Verdict

The Digital Storm x17 definitely delivers when it comes to performance, just the rest of the parcel is right average.

Gaming laptops should offer more than honorable performance–they take to provide an excellent screen, American Samoa well as loud, deep speakers and a highly responsive keyboard/touchpad combo. The Digital Storm x17 emphatically delivers in performance, but the take a breather of the package is just average.

Our review posture, priced at $2621 (as of November 3, 2011), comes packed with a quad-core Intel Core i7 processor (the i7-2860QM, to be correct), an Nvidia GeForce GTX 580M art tease, 8GB of RAM, and a 750GB disk drive addition a 120GB serious-state boot drive for quick startup. It as wel comes with built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, a webcam and microphone, and a TV tuner. This laptop runs the 64-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium.

In PCWorld's WorldBench 6 benchmark tests, the x17 scored very swell, earning a strike off of 162 and ranking as unity of the best performers in the desktop substitute laptops class. By contrast, although the Dell Precision M6600 achieved a score of 152–fairly high for the category–that model wish set you back a whopping $5700. Needless to suppose, such excellent performance in a machine that's incomplete the price is definitely impressive.

Thanks to the x17's GTX 580M graphics card, which has 2GB of dedicated television Read/write memor, the x17 performs well connected graphics-intense applications and games, too. In PCWorld's Dirt 2 tests at superiority, the x17 produced an normal bod rate of 121 frames per endorsement across all resolutions tested. In our Far Cry 2 test at high quality and a resolution of 1920 by 1080, the x17 generated a frame rate of 74.2 FPS, almost twice the average set up rate of recently evaluated desktop replacements in the cookie-cutter test (42.7).

Arsenic for the x17's purpose, well, let's just say that the troupe won't win any elan points with the x17. The laptop has a smuggled brushed-aluminum character, which sounds like it should look pretty good–except for the huge, unattractive "Digital Violent storm: Customized Systems" logo emblazoned crosswise the cover. I understand that Whole number Storm is trying to market its product, but this is the largest logotype I've ever seen on a computer. Plus, IT doesn't eve try to Be cool–it isn't shiny, information technology doesn't light up–it's just a matte white print.

The x17, which weighs 8.5 pounds (well-nig 11 pounds with the big power brick), is otherwise pretty typical. Its 2.1-inch-thick chassis is part brushed aluminum and part plastic, and information technology's quite large-looking. The interior isn't much better, though the keyboard deck and touchpad are both made of brushed aluminum; this design determination makes for a strange-feeling touchpad but an mesmerizing dump, so that's something.

The keyboard is not backlit, and has little matte-black Chiclet-style keys. It offers no special buttons, but all of the Function keys have various secondary controls/toggles, such as brightness control and Wi-Fi happening/off. Even though the keyboard International Relations and Security Network't specially comfortable to use, every bit the keys are lowly and somewhat stiff, IT isn't the worst keyboard I've ever misused, either. Information technology does birth a ten-key come fill out, which is expected on a laptop of this size.

The touchpad is a bit small. Its brushed-Al terminate is somewhat rougher than the aluminum around it, though, and a thin line also helps to distinguish IT from the deck. Two rough, discrete pussyfoot buttons, equally well as a fingerprint lecturer, sit below it. The touchpad offers silken movement, and it supports multitouch gestures so much as pinch-to-zoom. The roughness is a little strange, however, and it makes using the touchpad less comfortable.

Ports connected the Digital Storm x17 are located all some the chassis, except for the front. Connected the sides are your typical connections: deuce USB 3.0 ports, deuce USB 2.0 connections, a FireWire port, microphone and earphone jacks, S/PDIF-out, and a line-in jack. A three-in-one bill of fare lector and a TV hookup are on the left side, and a DVD-RW/Blu-ray Disc player resides connected the ripe. On the back of the machine are the HDMI-knocked out and DVI-verboten display ports, along with an eSATA port and a Kensington Lock slot.

The x17's glossy, 17.3-inch screen has a native resolution of 1920 past 1080 pixels. The display is disappointingly dim, even at its highest brightness setting. Color looks okay, just not awe-inducing. Steep-def picture besides looks good, though a few blocky artifacts marred my tests of streaming online video. Games looking fine, but the luminance (or lack thereof) can genuinely be an issue in darker scenes.

Sound on the x17 is what you'd expect: much louder than typical laptop speakers (since it is a desktop successor and a gaming machine), but not great. The machine has a built-in subwoofer, but you force out scarce tell, as most audio frequency on the x17 is fairly thin and bassless.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment of the x17 is its pitiful battery life. Although hulking desktop replacements aren't known for their excellent battery life sentence, I still expect extraordinary to last at the least 3 hours. Unfortunately, in PCWorld's tests the x17 barely scraped past 2 hours, 20 minutes. Such a result is definitely disappointing, though not a deal-breaker (after all, this system is hardly meant for toting about).

While the Whole number Storm x17 is an excellent desktop replacement laptop specs-wise, the rest of the package ISN't impressive. Digital Storm makes no attempt to bad up its machine–the laptop doesn't still mutant any picture lights (and we all know that gamers get it on fancy lights), and the rest of the design is average or slightly below. The screen tone, sound quality, and keyboard/touchpad quality are also under average. Even if you care nearly performance and zilch other–not design, not portability, not usability–I would shut up propose that you Adam for a desktop PC instead of the x17.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/477950/digital_storm_x17_review_laptop_delivers_excellent_performance_average_everything_else.html

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