Origin pc is the company that makes custom-designed personal computers that are good with aesthetics as well as performance. They are especially known by their GENESIS line-up of desktops and their thin and light laptop series known as EVO series laptops. Their laptops that are released every year are specially designed for gaming and content-creating purposes bearing in mind portability and aesthetics, with ORIGIN PC EVO 15S being their current flagship promising their best laptop experience to date. This review will test the limits of this gaming laptop and try to answer the question, do aesthetics deserve extra Bucks?
Design
The highlight of the Origin’s Evo series is their compact and attractive designs, this model is no exception to that, with dimension being 14.9 x 9.9 x 0.7 inches.The laptop is completely constructed of aluminum with the exception of plastic bezels that are too big according to current standards with side bezels being 0.6875 inches, while top measures 0.875 inches and the biggest of them all, the bottom bezel that is 0.9375 inches wide with the origin logo engraved on it, apart from that it is incredibly thin at 0.74 inches.
The light metallic matte finish adds to its aesthetics keeping the overall weight just above 4 pounds, adding to that the chassis is not that rigid especially the palm rest area,it feels too fragile. At the rear end, there are two grills for the heat outflow, on close examination one of them in blocked internally due to unknown reason while the other one serves its purpose. The back end of the laptop is clean with the origin logo that brightens up as soon as the laptop is started. There are two minimal accents under the logo that add a slight aggressiveness to the EVO 15-S design without drawing too much attention.
It is only available in black if you buy it from a third-party vendor,the black color gives it the “stealthy” look, that every gamer nowadays wants as there are plethora of the “Shiny red” gaming laptops that are not pleasing as far as the color is considered, however, you can select any color and design that you want while purchasing this laptop through their website, they have a lot of aesthetically pleasing colors and the “Shiny red” too, following the trend probably.So, if you want that “premium” feel while holding a laptop, due to its matte metallic finish, this should be your go-to option.
Peripherals
Although it is quite thin, Origin made sure to add every possibility of wired connectivity apart from the wireless connections that are Intel Dual Band Wireless AC-8265 Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.1. Thereis a ton of connectivity options from USB 3.0 to mini display ports. On the left there is a noble lock, RJ-45 LAN port(Ethernet) that is a lot faster than the gigabyte ethernet port, a full-size Sd- card reader, three USB 3.0 ports and the audio jacks on the other hand side you can find a power connector, mini display port, one USB 3.1 type C port, HDMI port, and a USB 2.0 port. The placement of the power connector is not the best when you have other devices connected it can make a mess of wires.
Keyboard and Trackpad
On the front end of the laptop you will find a full-sized keyboard with enough key spaces and good keystrokes, you can write on this keyboard for hours without getting tired, the keyboard has back-lighting that is customizable through the pre-built software, the backlight has a gradient effect on it that does not maintain the same color throughout, the color fades and shifts along the keyboard, you can customize how you would like the light to fade too although, you cannot remove this“fading” effect.
The trackpad they have included is made of plastic, the tracking is below average, with no windows precision drivers, the buttons are abit mushy, but they have a “clicky” feel, although it is an improvement over the last year, precision drivers are a must nowadays for the trackpad to work properly, additionally the trackpad is accompanied with a fingerprint sensor, that is very responsive and easy to set.
Specification
Since EVO 15S is their flagship device, it is expected to be packed up with best possible hardware. Starting with display it comes with a variety of options for displays with 1080p, 60 Hz being the most inferior one comparatively then display with higher refresh rate of 120 Hz and the best being 4k, 60 Hz display, the screen is an IPS LCD panel having a vast color gamut with SRGB 90%and Adobe RGB 70% rating, ensuring better contrast, brightness great viewing angles.
Under the hood there is an INTEL core i7-7700HK, Nvidia GeForce® GTX 1070 with Max-Q design that gives the performance of the desktop 1070 with a lot less power consumption, 16 GB DDR4 memory clocked at 2666 MHz that is upgradable up to 32 GB, 512GB M.2 SSD drive ensuring blazing fast load times, 2 Tb SSHDD that is faster than a normal hard-drive, INTEL’s dual-band Wi-Fi card and Integrated high-definition audio powered by Sound Blaster-X Pro-Gaming 360. It can be inferred that it is a complete package designed for gamers.
Performance
Since, this laptop is powered by the 7th gen Kaby lake processor, i7-7700HK and a discreet 10th gen graphics card from Nvidia,GTX 1070 with Max-Q design, one can expect sheer performance out of the box, not only in gaming but also in any other task that you throw towards it, accompanied by the M.2 SSD drive that ensures fast boot-up and loading time, and due to 16 GB RAM multi-tasking is on a whole new level in this device.
The performance test starts with the synthetic benchmarks, it scored 11,856 in Fire Strike, with the graphics score of 14,509 while running 3D Mark that is a bit less than the MSI GE63VR Raider that scored 13,214 and 17,397 respectively in both tests it was expected as the MSI laptop has desktop grade 1070 that has higher clock speed and thermals than the Max-Q designed 1070. Same is the case with the 3D Mark’s time spy test the EVO 15S scored just below the GE63VR.
The battery benchmarks should have shown good results compared to MSI Raider due MAX-Q 1070 that requires a lot less power than the pascal’s 1070. On the contrary, it had an average battery life of 3 hours that is considerably low since it has an only 60Wh battery, but gaming laptops usually have battery life around 3 to 5 hours mark so, it is on the alarming end.
Continuing the performance test of the laptop by testing games, while running the Rise of the Tomb Raider, it maintained an average frame-rate of 42.67 in 1080p at ultra settings, while the MSI GE63VR Raidergot 50.59, again due to the Max-Q design. The benchmark of the Division further refined the results abovewith EVO 15S getting 64.45 frames at ultra setting in 1080p and Raider got 74.47 frames on average. The last game that was tested is the most optimized and popular of them all;it got 51.49 frames while running GTA V in 1080p at ultra settings while its MSI counterpart got 51.88 frames that tells the level of optimizations Rockstar has in their game.
Pricing
The pricing of this laptop is on a very high level, it starts at a price of around $2100 with a GTX 1060 and goes all the way up to $2500 with a GTX 1070 Max-Q and 4k screen. The pricing depends upon the components that you want in your device from panel and color to ram and SSD all components are chose-able, thus following their tradition of highly customizable devices. While its direct substitute the Gigabyte Aero 15X-BK4 starts at $1990 but does not offer the level of customization offered by the EVO 15S.
Verdict
Answering the question asked before, the ORIGIN EVO 15S does ensure the level of performance that is required and by the level of customizability it offers additional price demanded by the vendor is somewhat justified. But if you are the person who cares more about raw performance than the aesthetics, spending on other laptops that are much cheaper with almost same performance will be a better idea. However, if customization is your taste than ORIGIN EVO 15S should be the laptop you require if you can ignore those bezels and terrible battery life even for a gaming laptop.