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Ticking the right boxes – Gigabyte P35W V5 gaming notebook reviewed

I’ve seen more a few gaming laptops in my time, and nearly every time I’ve had one to play with, I’ve found at least a few things to detract from their overall appeal.

Some were too fat, some made a lot of noise, some looked like the designer phoned it in and some seemed like “gaming laptop” was just a marketing term for the box rather than a description of the actual performance on offer.

And even when performance has been what I’ve wanted from something calling itself a gaming laptop, the overall appeal has been undermined by a crazy-expensive price tag.

Basically, what I’ve been looking for all along is a gaming laptop that looks nice, has the hardware to play games at 1080p with full details and running at 60fps, for a price that doesn’t ask that I sell a kidney or two. Oh and for one that doesn’t sound like a jet attempting take-off when processing all of the shiny graphics I like so much. That would be nice.

Gigabyte’s P35W, then, took me completely by surprise – it gave me everything I was looking for, and more, for a price that didn’t turn me off it.

A looker

Starting off, it’s a looker; not in the stealth-fighter way of Gigabyte’s Aorus range, but in a stylish, understated yet classy way. Its 20.9mm thick metal chassis is slender and beautifully machined, it has three USB ports, a card reader, headphone/mic jacks and three video outputs – Mini DisplayPort, HDMI and VGA – in case I feel the need to drive a four-monitor setup. I love that there’s also a USB 3.1 (type C) connector included as well, for that extra bit of future-proofing.

After spending some time with the machine, however, it became apparent that the lid becomes a little discoloured, likely due to the heat of the display located just beneath its surface. It’s by no means a deal-breaker, however – there’s plenty more to like here that tips the balance in the P35W’s favour.

GB_P35W_Cover

I have the power

Then comes the very impressive hardware. Not only is this machine powered by one of Intel’s fastest mobile Core i7 chips, the i7-6700HQ, it has an impressive 16GB of DDR4 RAM and sports my ideal hard drive configuration – a solid-state operating system drive coupled and a 1TB platter drive.

All of that means blistering sub-15s boot times from cold and no waiting for Windows to do anything, as well as enough storage space for general data.

But Gigabyte didn’t stop there – the P35W also has a GeForce GTX970 graphics card that comes with 6GB of video memory (needed for high-resolution and/or multi-monitor gaming), a 4K IPS display and a DVD writer. The GTX970, RAM and Core i7 processor work together to produce gaming performance that’s within a stone’s throw of my full-blown desktop machine at home. 4K gaming is a bit hit-and-miss, though, as you’ll see in a bit.

Gaming Performance

I was so pleased to note that Dying Light: The Following didn’t dip below 50fps at 1080p (which the screen upscales somewhat), instead maintaining performance between 55 and 79 frames per second, constantly bumping up against 60fps with V-Sync disabled. The game was more than playable – it was fast.

P35W - Dying Light

I even managed to play the DOOM beta on this machine at very similar performance levels at 1080p, something I wasn’t sure was possible on a laptop given that the game runs on the latest id tech engine, a notoriously demanding bit of code. But the P35W did it, and it was brilliant.

Gaming on battery was good, too, but of course some concessions must be made. In the case of the P35W, NVIDIA’s “Battery Boost” tech kicks in when not connected to the mains, which caps gaming performance at 30fps to stretch the battery a bit. 30fps is more than playable, too, since it’s the frame rate of any given games console, so I was impressed.

4K Gaming

Gaming at the 4K/UHD resolution of 3840 x 2160, however, proved not so impressive. Both DOOM and Dying Light’s performance dropped considerably, leaving me playing at 20fps or so. While not entirely unplayable, it was bad enough that I didn’t want to play at that resolution, despite the crispness it added to both games’ graphics. So no, this laptop isn’t quite ready for 4K gaming.

P35W - Dying Light at 4K
Computer says no.

Which brings me to the P35W’s screen. It’s a lovely piece of engineering, and its 15.6-inch IPS panel produces some lovely lifelike colours and viewing angles are fantastic, but I don’t think it adds anything special to the P35W’s appeal beyond maybe bragging rights. It’s an extra the machine could do without. Kudos to Gigabyte for trying, but honestly it’s not necessary.

Fortunately for local gamers interested in this machine, that won’t be an issue, as the version of the P35W being sold in South Africa does not come with a 4K screen. Instead, the one you’ll find in local shops ships with a Full HD IPS screen, something that keeps the price low and avoids disappointing anyone with less-than-stellar 4K performance. It also has less RAM (8GB) and no SSD be default. If you want those, they’re extra.

[su_box title=”A quick aside about 4K gaming” box_color=”#f37021″]Playing games at that crazy four-times-Full-HD resolution might be the new standard many PC gamers aspire to in 2016, but in my opinion, it’s only for people who have tens of thousands of rands to spend on their gaming PCs and/or laptops. I feel that for the rest of us, gaming at 1080p with anti-aliasing applied to smooth edges delivers almost as nice-looking a gaming experience as playing at 3840 x 2160, at a far lower cost. If you really want to game at 4K, prepare to splash out on a R12 000+ monitor and at least two GTX970 desktop cards at R8 500 each (nevermind what the rest of the computer costs), or R50 000+ on a gaming laptop with two GTX980Ms in SLI. For me, those prices are just too high to pay for the extra crispness your games’ graphics get at that resolution.[/su_box]

Benchmarks

Overall, I found the P35W’s performance to be very good. These benchmarks confirm what you’ve already read – this laptop is really good at 1080p gaming, but it struggles a bit at 4K.

Cool and quiet

So not only is the P35W great for 1080p gaming, but it has somehow managed to produce that performance without either heating up uncomfortably or making too much noise. Other laptops can sound like jet engines attempting take-off, but the P35W’s design prevents that from happening. At full tilt playing Dying Light at its highest detail level, I heard fans but they weren’t so loud that they were distracting.

This was largely thanks to a combination of Skylake’s ability to run faster but generate less heat, and Gigabyte’s own Supra-Cool heatsink tech that conducts heat away from both the graphics card and processor and expels it via vents at the back of the machine. It’s a very clever, very neat design that keeps the P35W cool under load, and not waking the dead with ridiculous fan noise, or overheating hands resting on the keyboard.

Modular storage design

Earlier, I mentioned the presence of a DVD writer which you could be forgiven for thinking is strange for such a modern laptop. I only brought it up because it can be removed entirely and replaced by another hard drive if that’s what you want, giving you the option to run a total of four hard drives (one fixed laptop drive, two M.2 SSDs and another laptop drive mounted in the DVD drive’s place).

As much as I like storage options, what I liked even more was the M.2 SATA drive connected via NVMe, which Gigabyte says lets it deliver speeds of “up to 2000MB/s”. And that was proven in the CrystalMark benchmark I did, hitting a very impressive sequential read speed of 1907MB/s.

And that’s why I consistently get sub-15s boot times and Windows operates like it’s on methamphetamines. Having the drive connected to the rest of the system via the PCI Express bus as opposed to the far slower SATA bus clearly makes a huge difference to drive’s overall performance, and thus to the larger system it supports.

Keyboard, sound, trackpad

While I have a SteelSeries 6GV2 mechanical keyboard attached to the P35W for most of the time, it’s not because the laptop’s own keyboard is rubbish – it’s just the way I have my desk set up.

When I use the laptop’s keyboard when I’m out of the office, I really like how the keys press and how they feel beneath my fingertips. I’ve typed many an article on them while maintaining accuracy and speed; plus, the P35W is big enough that it can have a full-sized keyboard that includes a number pad, which I really like. It’s just all-round comfortable to use.

GB_P35W_KB_1080p

 

The trackpad, on the other hand, isn’t wonderful. My fingers don’t glide across its surface as smoothly as I’d like, and pressing down to register a button click doesn’t always result in that click actually happening. It could be down to the pressure I exert on that particular motion, but other laptop trackpads I’ve used haven’t had the same problem. My advice would be to simply avoid using it and always carry around a mouse.

The keyboard also has two levels of backlighting, neither of which is incredibly bright but there’s certainly enough light produced to help unsure typists hit the right keys in darkened rooms.

And sound: the P35W produces loud, clear sound that’s excellent for everything from gaming to movie-watching. Cranked audio doesn’t distort or crackle, either, and I was pleasantly impressed.

Battery Life

Pushing the P35W eats battery – watching 4K YouTube videos at full brightness and high performance settings, the battery lasted just under two hours. Sticking to 1080p YouTube with the brightness at 50% and performance set to balanced, the P35W lasted for three and a half hours. Gaming is particularly punishing – I played Dying Light at its highest settings and in Performance mode for just over an hour before the machine switched off.

Overall, battery performance isn’t anything special; but it’s a moot point for me as the point of owning a P35W V5 is all about the gaming it’s capable of, and I wouldn’t expect it to last beyond a few hours away from the mains. That it can last over four hours on a single charge is pretty good, then.

Wrapping up

I am really impressed with this gaming laptop. Sure, there are others out there that perform better, that look more like gaming laptops and whose keypads are nicer, but as a complete package, the P35W V5 offers a lot of bang for your buck.

That’s due to refinements to Gigabyte’s design, the performance and power consumption improvements that come with Intel’s new Skylake platform, and the sheer power of NVIDIA’s GTX970M graphics card. All for less than thirty grand.

Basically Gigabyte has put together a gaming laptop that ticks a lot of the right boxes for me. It may not be perfect, but it easily justifies its asking price with exceptional 1080p gaming capabilities and brilliant all-round Windows performance, things made all the sweeter by its cool and quiet operation.

[su_box title=”Specs” box_color=”#f37021″]

Price R28 499
Display 15.6″ Full HD 1920 x 1080 IPS LCD (4K optional)
Storage 1 TB 7 200 RPM HDD (SSD optional)
CPU Intel Core i7-6700HQ
GPU  Intel® HD Graphics 530 + NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M 6GB
OS Windows 10 Home 64-bit
Camera HD Webcam
Memory 8GB DDR4 2133 (max 32GB)
Networking 10/100/1000Mbps Ethernet | 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN | Bluetooth V4.0
Dimensions 380 x 269 x 26.8 x 34 (mm)
Weight 2.3kg
Other: SD Card Reader, Kensington lock, DVD drive

[/su_box]

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