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[REVIEWED] Gigabyte P27G v2 Gaming Notebook

Want a gaming notebook that manages to play games at their highest settings at a very playable frame rate? Gigabyte’s P27G v2 gaming laptop does a pretty good job and will cost you significantly less than Dell’s premium-branded Alienware gaming notebooks do. Read on for the details.

This “new” notebook is actually a refreshed P27, with the same outer shell as the original but with a new graphics card and processor. The 1080p (Full HD) screen is still there, as is the backlit keyboard, its range of ports and its 128GB SSD and 1TB hard drive. In car terms, the P27G v2 is basically last year’s model with a new engine and a more advanced electronic control unit (ECU).

The question is, is that enough to woo fans in 2014? Happily, the answer is yes.

New and improved

The biggest change is the single NVIDIA GeForce 860M graphics chip and its 2GB of VRAM, which is powerful enough that each and every game I tested on the P27G played smoothly at their highest settings. Even setting graphics quality to Ultra where possible meant it was pumping out around 30 frames per second, even on a demanding game like Battlefield 4. That performance was likely helped along by the P27G’s quad-core Intel Core i7-4810MQ processor.

While this isn’t necessarily ideal – hardcore gamers will tell you that 60fps is the target to aim for – it’s fast enough that you can play games without feeling like you’re compromising, which is pretty damn good for a portable computer.

And if you don’t mind compromising, you can push frame rates well into the 50s and 60s by disabling features like anti-aliasing (edge-smoothing) and tesselation (better lighting and smoother geometry), graphics technologies that usually lower overall game performance.

When you’re not gaming, Intel’s excellent HD Graphics 4600 chip takes over display duties, a trick that saves on battery power.

At 17 inches, the screen is small enough that you probably won’t notice any jagged edges or the absence of super-realistic bumps without it, and the extra frames per second could well be worth putting up with the slightly-downgraded visuals. It’s just nice knowing that you don’t have to.

Gaming Performance

I played Tomb Raider, Crysis 3, Hitman: Absolution and Need for Speed: Rivals at their highest settings on the P27G, all of which ran very smoothly. Tomb Raider and Hitman’s built-in benchmarks returned over 40 maximum frames per second each, with minimum frame rates in the upper 20s. I even fired up Battlefield 4 and ran it at Ultra settings:

BF4 Settings

Of course I got pwned, but it was my own skill to blame and not the PC. The game itself absolutely flew.

Just Cause 2 – while it’s four years old it’s still quite a looker – likewise ran well enough to play:

Just Cause High

3DMark also returned some good results:

3DMark Default

As did the Unigine Heaven benchmark:

Heaven on power

As such, the P27G is absolutely perfect for taking to a LAN. It’ll play whatever you’re playing just fine.

Day-to-day Performance

Of course, the extra horsepower that makes gaming so smooth means booting up and using Windows is fast, too. We timed the P27G, with the following results:

  • From completely off to the login screen: 15.6s
  • From desktop to sleep: 13.7s
  • From sleep to the login screen: 5.1s
  • From clicking Restart to the login screen: 30.1s

That’s not the fastest we’ve ever seen (some notebooks boot up in less than 12s), but it’s plenty quick. Using the P27G as a day-to-day PC is a real pleasure as a result.

Build quality

I’m not impressed by any notebook’s build quality these days as so many seem to be made from weak plastic, and unfortunately the same is true of the P27G – its lid flexes when pressed, as does the plastic covering its underside. It’s within acceptable bounds, of course, but it still feels a bit cheap. The premium you’ll pay for it is simply not reflected in its build quality.

While it feels a bit disappointing, Gigabyte has maintained the P27’s colourful legacy with the delightful shade of bright orange that adorns the lid, so at least you’re sure to attract a lot of attention wherever you set it up.

The P27G is quite a thick notebook at 48.8mm, but that allows it to have a Blu-ray/DVD combo drive and fit in all of the extras that make it so good for gaming. It’s also how Gigabyte offers gamers the option to install multiple hard drives and upgrade its memory to a maximum of 24GB, up from the 16GB it ships with. The notebook supports two 2.5-inch drives in addition to its primary 120GB mSATA SSD, allowing gamers to install a maximum of 3TB of storage. The insides are laid out quite simply, too, so gamers won’t need an Official Gigabyte Technician to perform the upgrades.

SONY DSC

 

Other bits ‘n bobs

Performance and build aside, the P27G has a very nice backlit keyboard that’s comfortable to type on with what felt like just the right amount of travel, and a good selection of ports (1x USB 2.0, 2 x USB 3.0, HDMI, eSATA, Ethernet). The keyboard’s backlight is limited to a single colour – white – and the intensity adjusts automatically according to how much battery is left. There aren’t any media keys to control movies and music, though, which is a pity.

P27 ports from the Side 1080p

 

I wasn’t wild about the P27’s trackpad – it provided a bit too much friction beneath my finger, and it occasionally didn’t register the two-finger slide I did that is meant to activate the scroll function. I’m also not a fan of the touchpad’s right- and left-click buttons; the P27G has a single contiguous button that responds according to the side you press on, so it works well enough, I just don’t like that lack of separation. That’s entirely subjective, of course, and you may quite like it.

Battery life

I got on average just over three hours out of each recharge but that was while benchmarking, playing games and browsing the internet, so the P27G’s 76Whr/5600maH battery provides plenty of juice. When not gaming, it lasted just on four-and-a-half hours. It won’t last a full day of work, though, but then work isn’t the reason to buy it so that’s okay.

Value for money

At a recommended retail price of R22 999, the P27G v2 is not the cheapest notebook in the world, but you definitely get what you pay for. If you keep an eye on local e-tailers you can even pick it up for less than R23k – the lowest I saw it for online was R21 305. The other thing to keep in mind is that R23k is still less than you will pay for a comparably-specced 17-inch Alienware gaming notebook, which means the P27G v2 offers excellent value for money. You just don’t get the same look and feel as more expensive gaming notebooks.

Wrapping up

So the P27G v2 isn’t the sleekest or nicest-looking notebook out there. But that doesn’t matter, since people should buy gaming notebooks because they run games nicely, not because they look like supercars, and in that the P27G most certainly succeeds. Think of it as a brightly-coloured family sedan whose bonnet hides a 500kW engine that can leave any souped-up megaboet special standing at the robots. And that’s brilliant.

Specifications:

  • CPU: Intel Core i7-4810MQ @ 2.7GHz
  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 860M 2GB + Intel HD Graphics 4600
  • RAM: 16GB DDR3 (max 24GB)
  • Storage: 128GB mSATA, 1TB Western Digital
  • Operating System: Windows 8.1 64-bit
  • Ports: USB 2.0 (x1), USB 3.0 (x2), Full-sized HDMI, Gigabit Ethernet, SD card reader, eSATA
  • Battery: 5 700maH, 86Wh
  • Price: MSRP R22 999
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