Starting with the cosmetics, the overall appearance of the Vyper 15 is beautifully simple. The all-black lid with no distraction from that simplicity. Once the lid is opened, the laptop remains clean and straightforward, however, when the laptop is powered on and the keyboard allowed to do its RGB thing, that’s when you suddenly realise the gaming potential of the laptop; the arrow keys and WASD keycaps are etched with some small directional shapes to help you quickly locate the keys you require for gaming. Our only gripe with the keyboard is the proximity of the number pad with the keyboard itself, leaving very little room. It was often far too easy to accidentally press the wrong key.
PC Specialist’s decision to route the main ports to the back of the laptop is, in our opinion, a solid choice and something all laptop manufacturers should work hard to achieve. The main bonus of this is a total lack of cables obstructing you from your work or play, both visually and physically. They’ve also aimed the exhaust vents from the heatsinks out the rear of the laptop, helping to prevent sweaty hands.
Moving onto the display, which is a 1080p 60Hz TN panel measuring just over 15” diagonally. The matte coating does a good job of limiting reflections on the screen, an absolutely vital feature for any gaming orientated laptop while also handy for using the laptop in any bright environments. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card, with 6GB of VRAM on board, pushes frames perfectly well at the 1920x1080 resolution, all of the games we tested, with the slight exception of Deus Ex, managed an average of 60 FPS or more (Deus Ex managed an impressive 54.6).
The laptop doesn’t feel “solid” in all respects. We would’ve liked to have seen something sturdier than the plastic construction. The screen feels like it would damage all-too-easily if dropped or any pressure applied from above, there’s also a seriously worrying amount of flex within the screen and lid when open.
Looking at our CPU tests, the i7-8750H really stepped up to the plate, powering through tasks with incredible efficiency. A Cinebench score over 1000, from a reasonably budget-orientated laptop cannot be sniffed at. For context, an i7-7700K desktop CPU scores around the same.
Thanks to the Samsung 970 EVO 500GB SSD, boot times and overall system responsiveness was difficult to beat, while the 1TB HDD provides ample space for music, videos and lesser-played games.
A clever feature we particularly liked was a shortcut key (FN + F4) in this case, which turns off the trackpad. When using a discrete mouse and the built-in keyboard, we found that your thumb could brush against the trackpad and ruin your aim.
Battery life is something of great importance in a laptop, especially if you plan to use the device on the go, nowhere near a power socket. Unfortunately, the Vyper doesn’t perform well in this instance, managing little over 90 minutes in our battery test.
PC Specialist’s decision to route the main ports to the back of the laptop is, in our opinion, a solid choice and something all laptop manufacturers should work hard to achieve. The main bonus of this is a total lack of cables obstructing you from your work or play, both visually and physically. They’ve also aimed the exhaust vents from the heatsinks out the rear of the laptop, helping to prevent sweaty hands.
Moving onto the display, which is a 1080p 60Hz TN panel measuring just over 15” diagonally. The matte coating does a good job of limiting reflections on the screen, an absolutely vital feature for any gaming orientated laptop while also handy for using the laptop in any bright environments. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card, with 6GB of VRAM on board, pushes frames perfectly well at the 1920x1080 resolution, all of the games we tested, with the slight exception of Deus Ex, managed an average of 60 FPS or more (Deus Ex managed an impressive 54.6).
The laptop doesn’t feel “solid” in all respects. We would’ve liked to have seen something sturdier than the plastic construction. The screen feels like it would damage all-too-easily if dropped or any pressure applied from above, there’s also a seriously worrying amount of flex within the screen and lid when open.
Looking at our CPU tests, the i7-8750H really stepped up to the plate, powering through tasks with incredible efficiency. A Cinebench score over 1000, from a reasonably budget-orientated laptop cannot be sniffed at. For context, an i7-7700K desktop CPU scores around the same.
Thanks to the Samsung 970 EVO 500GB SSD, boot times and overall system responsiveness was difficult to beat, while the 1TB HDD provides ample space for music, videos and lesser-played games.
A clever feature we particularly liked was a shortcut key (FN + F4) in this case, which turns off the trackpad. When using a discrete mouse and the built-in keyboard, we found that your thumb could brush against the trackpad and ruin your aim.
Battery life is something of great importance in a laptop, especially if you plan to use the device on the go, nowhere near a power socket. Unfortunately, the Vyper doesn’t perform well in this instance, managing little over 90 minutes in our battery test.
