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Lenovo N20p Chromebook review

Posted by: Unknown Posted date: 9:58 AM / comment : 0

A versatile Chromebook experience for a reasonable price

£199.99 | $344.99

The Lenovo N20p is the one of the first multi-mode Chromebooks, which is an accomplishment all on its own. With just a flip of the keyboard, this Chromebook transforms from laptop to tablet mode. When you consider that the device weighs only 1.4kg, is sleek and perfect for everyday use, you’ll fall in love with this machine. It’s more expensive than other leading laptop-only Chromebooks, such as the Acer C720 Chromebook and the HP Chromebook 11, but the tablet viewing capability is worth the extra cost.
Lenovo N20p Chromebook

The N20p is a Chrome laptop with a 10-point multi-touch display. Features and specs are nothing special or out of the ordinary, but they come together to create a pretty seamless machine. There is an 11.6-inch, 1,366 x 768 touchscreen, which doesn’t compare to the Toshiba Chromebook 2’s 1080p screen, but it’s a decent enough display for everyday use.
The N20p also features a quad-core Intel Celeron processor, 16GB of eMMC storage, 4GB of DDR3 RAM and a 1MP webcam.
This is all standard spec-wise for a Chrome OS notebook, and while it doesn’t impress like the Acer 13 Chromebook – which is powered by Nvidia’s ARM Cortex A15-based Tegra K1 – you won’t find the computer lagging behind at all.
The chiclet-style keyboard is relatively standard, although the smaller size of the computer creates the impression that some standard key functions are being left off.
Despite this, the travel between the keys is more comfortable than on most small laptops. The trackpad is crisp, responsive and gives a very satisfying click when it’s selected. 
The non-click touch option with mouse movements and gestures (that is, two-finger scrolling) is just sensitive enough to require minimal tapping, but not overly sensitive to the point where you find yourself making many accidental or phantom swipes.

Fast mover

With its 2.16GHz Intel Celeron N2830 CPU, the N20p feels spritely when completing everyday tasks such as checking email and surfing the web. Even with a large amount of tabs open (which we’re all guilty of), there was minimal slowdown of processes thanks to the integrated graphics processing, which is sufficient for basic web browsing. An especially nice touch is the super-quick start-up time for the machine, which also means that powering down the machine when you’ve finished working involves less waiting around.
Performance is on a par with competing systems, with fast boot times (going from cold start to login screen in under 10 seconds) and quick browsing. With the built-in Camera app, 1,280 x 720 photos came out blurry, even with relatively good lighting, rendering and leisure activities, the battery lasted anywhere from 6-8.5 hours. This smaller internal battery allows for a slimmer design, which makes the slate-grey device sleek and easily portable.

Well-connected

It’s obvious Lenovo has spared no expense in terms of connectivity, too. The N20p features Bluetooth 4.0 as well as 802.11ac Wi-Fi. Since the Chrome OS relies so heavily on an internet connection for nearly everything, state of the art 802.11ac pictures that were darker than expected. Video chats seem to fare better, with users at the other end having no issue with video quality.
Performance is on a par with competing systems, with fast boot times and quick browsing
One disappointment is the sound quality from the laptop’s tiny speakers. Located underneath the chassis, the speakers get some more breathing room in stand mode, where they actually project toward you. But the sound was still tinny and somewhat lacking bass, which seems to be a norm for small laptops. This is particularly a letdown for this system given the N20p lends itself to video viewing, but sadly the audio hardware just doesn’t match up.
The 34.8-watt-hour battery life is good, as promised: after heavy and extended use with both business networking gives the N20p a real edge in this area.
Among the N20p’s best features are the touch control and stand mode; their versatility makes this a great leisure and possibly a work device. You might have some difficulty when using it as a tablet, as Chrome isn’t entirely tailored to touch control, being a largely browser-based operating system, so we’d recommend using this for recreational activities rather than heavy business use.The 300-degree-rotation hinge lets you flip the N20p’s display backward all the way into stand mode, which lends itself nicely to viewing movies or showing presentations, as the image flips automatically to match the display.

Toshiba Kira Ultrabook review

Posted by: Unknown Posted date: 12:14 AM / comment : 0

A revised model arrives with improved battery life and its predecessor’s good looks intact

£1,299 | $2,230

Toshiba Kira
Toshiba Kira
Toshiba’s new Kira is a 2014 update to last year’s model, which marked the company’s first foray into premium Ultrabook territory. With a sleek chassis and improved battery life, it joins a growing list of competing Windows Ultrabooks with high-resolution, high-pixel-density displays. 
For the Kira’s entry price of £1,299/$2,230 you could bag yourself a Dell XPS 13, or a laptop/ tablet hybrid such as the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 2 Pro or Asus UX301. In the business arena, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon and Fujitsu Lifebook U904 also pack sharp screens, slim designs and the latest Intel Core processors. Can Toshiba match such fierce competition? 
After years of dependable (if slightly uninspired) mid-range laptops, Toshiba’s original Kira was a statement of intent – a flash Bentley coming off a production line of three-door hatchbacks. A performance boost to an already attractive Ultrabook is welcome, but is it enough to launch the Kira into pole position?

Slick design

The Kira’s chassis measures just 23mm at its thickest point and tapers toward the bottom, making it appear even thinner. There’s an eye-catching black bezel around the screen, and the lid and base are coated in an attractive silver finish. This is complemented by a silver edge around the power button, Wi-Fi indicator and trackpad. 
Build quality is decent overall thanks to the Kira’s magnesium alloy construction, which uses a honeycomb structure for strength. You’ll only notice the flex on the underside of the base if you go deliberately prodding it, but the laptop’s lid is worryingly bendable and you’ll want to avoid using it to pick the machine up. 
Though it was more of a standout feature on last year’s version, the Kira’s 13.3-inch WQHD (Wide Quad High Definition) PixelPure display still makes for impressive viewing, with high contrast levels that show off its deep blacks and solid colours. 
The Kira’s display is far from perfect though; despite its solid colour reproduction, the panel’s image quality is hampered by a dim backlight, which maxes out at
what feels like around 85 per cent brightness. This is exacerbated by the display’s highly reflective finish, which makes viewing its contents awkward in brightly-lit places. 
The screen features 10-point multi-touch, which is responsive and accurate. You might wonder whether you would need touch on a non-hybrid model (especially for the added cost), but it allows you to perform some tasks more quickly than a trackpad or mouse. 
Despite feeling quite compact for a 13-inch Ultrabook (mainly thanks to the thin bezel), the Kira doesn’t provide a cramped typing experience. However, that’s not helped by the fact that its chicletstyle keyboard keys aren’t completely square; they’re slightly wider than they are tall, which may take some getting used to.
You shouldn’t make the Kira your main sound system for house parties, as its Harman Kardon speakers are no substitute for a dedicated speaker and subwoofer system. However, it’s fine for personal listening and you can tweak the sound settings using the DTS Studio Surround app.

Scale and polish

Like other Ultrabooks with high resolutions, the Kira struggles with Windows 8.1’s poor scaling abilities, making text and UI elements difficult to read in certain apps. Some apps cope with this better than others. The desktop version of Evernote, for example, doesn’t attempt to adjust to the higher resolution. Internet Explorer, on the other hand, sets itself to a 200 per cent zoom level by default, which makes web pages appear comically large compared with everything else (we found that 125 per cent made for comfortable reading). 
Aside from playing around with individual apps’ settings, the only option is to use a lower resolution, such as 1,920 x 1,080, which defeats the point of a high-PPI display.

Powered up

Our test model was supplied with Windows 8.1, an Intel Core i7-4500 processor running at 1.80GHz, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. The Kira’s graphics are powered by an integrated Intel HD 4400 chip, which handled 3DMark 8’s least demanding benchmarks with ease, but began to struggle with increasingly complex tasks. It’s fine for playing games running Valve’s Source engine around the 40-50fps mark (if you lower the resolution to 1,920 x 1,080). However, as is expected from an integrated GPU, you won’t experience those frame rates in newer games such as Battlefield 4 or Titanfall, even if you drastically lower the resolution. Any tasks we performed in desktop mode were nippy and responsive – from opening desktop programs to snapping multiple apps side-by-side. Because of its speedy SSD, the Kira only took 10 seconds to boot from cold. The Kira’s CPU has been upgraded from Ivy Bridge to Haswell, resulting in improved battery life. The laptop ran for 11 hours using PCMark 8 Home’s battery life test, which continually opens and closes programs and loops video until the battery is completely depleted. The port selection is good for an Ultrabook, offering a full-size HDMI output and two USB 3.0 ports on the left-hand side. On the right-hand side is an SD card slot, a 3.5mm stereo headset jack and one more USB 3.0 port. Connectivity options here include 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. The updated Kira’s longer battery life, compact styling and attractive looks (with the lid open) are all plus points, but some of the flaws could be deal-breakers. The most glaring one is the display’s dim backlight. It’s a shame that Toshiba couldn’t crank the display brightness up by 10-15 per cent, which would make it easier to use in direct sunlight The amount of flex in the Kira’s lid is also cause for concern for a laptop in this price bracket. Although the Kira only offers an integrated graphics setup, it’s fine for playing casual games. The speedy SSD makes sure you’re never waiting for applications to respond on the desktop, and boot times are fast too. All things considered, this is a highly portable machine with fantastic battery life, competent performance and perhaps a little more in the way of style than substance. If the Kira was a bit less expensive it would be easier to look over its misgivings, but when the competition is this strong, it is something of a hard sell. 

The updated Kira’s longer battery life, compact styling and attractive looks are all plus points

The high cost of the Kira puts it at a disadvantage, but it’s a great laptop apart from the dim display 

Toshiba Kira
Processor: Intel Core i7-4500 1.8Ghz
Storage: 256GB SSD
RAM: 8GB
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 4400
Connectivity: 1 x HDMI, 2 x USB 3.0,
SD card, 3.5mm audio
Weight 1.35kg
Screen size: 13.3 inches
Display resolution: 2,560 x 1,440

...

Lenovo ThinkVision Pro 2840m

Posted by: Unknown Posted date: 1:21 PM / comment : 0 ,

A stylish looking panel, but its chic looks conceal some serious problems

£450 | $799 

Lenovo ThinkVision Pro 2840m
Most of the monitors on test this month get so much right, it seems all the wrongness has been reserved for Lenovo’s unfortunate ThinkVision. To be clear, this is largely a high quality product from a normally highly reliable brand. The chassis is a nice bit of engineering, as is the fully adjustable stand. Overall, it feels reassuringly expensive. However, it has serious problems. It starts with the glass cover over the screen. No doubt product managers at Lenovo spotted the same feature on Apple’s hot-selling iMacs and assumed it’s a premium feature that buyers want. Indeed, it might be a feature Apple customers like, but it’s not one that improves a PC monitor. It’s one that introduces unwanted reflectivity in return for zero improvement in image quality. 

Crushed to death

Bad indeed, but not actually the worst problem. No, that involves this monitor’s image-processing chipset. The default setup is off-the-map wonky, with crushed details in white tones and a similar lack of definition in the black scales. This thing is just compression city.Normally, that kind of thing is the result of a wonky factory setting that can be mitigated through on-screen display tweaks and, if necessary, some image-tuning using your graphics driver. But not here. For starters, the options in the OSD are limited. There’s no gamma adjustability and the contrast option really only serves as a brightness adjustment. It doesn’t help matters at all.Into the Nvidia driver, then – but oh no, that’s not helping either. In fact, we can’t remember the last time we tested a display with such wonky default settings that we were unable to arrive at a semiacceptable solution through the video driver. It’s very disappointing.In fairness, when you’re not looking at test images, the ThinkVision doesn’t look awful. Actually, it looks pretty nice at a glance, but you will spot the compression problems from time to time, and it will drive you crazy.In other regards, it’s broadly on a par with the rest of the brave new 28-inch 4K brigade. Colours are impressively vibrant for a TN, and even pretty decent by IPS standards. Likewise, black levels and light leakage in general are kept well in check (even if its glass cover does a decent job of disguising that).As ever, then, it’s the mediocre vertical viewing angles that give the TN game away. Oh yeah, and just in case you aren’t already terminally put off, it also suffers from a spot of input lag. Nice. All in all, this isn’t a monitor that we can recommend. Not even a qualified “It’s okay if you don’t mind x and y.” Sadly, this is a screen that we must in all conscience warn you away from in its current state. With tweaked electronics it might be a possibility for anyone wanting a screen with a cover, but until then, steer well clear.

Looks like a quality product, but unfortunately its default settings are no good at all.


Price:£450/$799
Manufacturer: Lenovo
Size: 28-inch-TN
Resolution: 3,840 x 2,160
Viewing angles: 170/160°
Contrast: 3,000:1
Response: 5ms
VESA mount: 100 x 100mm 

MSI GeForce GTX 970 Gaming 4G/£275

Posted by: Unknown Posted date: 12:47 PM / comment : 0

MSI GeForce GTX 970 Gaming 4G/£275
MSI GeForce GTX 970 Gaming 4G/£275

Unlike the GTX 980, the GTX 970 is only available in customSKUs courtesy of Nvidia’s board partners. 
MSI is one such partner, andits GTX 970 Gaming 4G is a cracking card too. The GTX 970 GPU is essentially the same as the GTX 980, but with three SMMs disabled, reducing its streamprocessor and texture unit counts to 1,664 and 104 respectively.
The reference clock speed is also slightly down at 1,050MHz, but clock speeds also vary between partners. 
Elsewhere, the full 4GB of GDDR5 memory again runs at 7GHz (effective) across the same 256-bit interface, and all 64 ROPs are intact too. 
The specifications tell us that the GTX 970 should offer roughly 80 per cent of the performance of the GTX 980, yet it costs just 60 per cent of the price (models start at around £255). 
MSI makes up the performance deficit slightly by increasing the base clock to 1,140MHz for a boost clock of 1,279MHz, although the memory speed is untouched. 
Thanks to MSI’s oversized cooler, the height of the card is 140mm, so small form factor users will need to check there’s room for it in their case. 
The cooler also extends over one of the SLI connectors, so 3-way users will need SLI ribbon cables to reach over it – a fixed bridge won’t fit. 
On the plus side, the card measures a few millimetres below dualslot depth, which leaves more space for airflow if you need  to cram some cards together in SLI mode. 
MSI uses an older selection of connections that favours  DVI over DisplayPort, although the HDMI connector is still version2.0. 
It has expanded the card’s power specifications too, kitting it out with an 8-pin and 6-pin combination, and a tasty 6+2 phase delivery system with Military Class 4 components. 
The sizeable, high-quality Twin Frozr V cooler comprises four nickel-plated copper heatpipes that pass through a massive baseplate for the GPU, along with a large heatsink and two 100mm fans. 
The design is semipassive too, so the fans stay turned off until the GPU reaches around 65°C, so idle workloads will be silent. You can also manually control the fan speeds independently of each other.

 
Performance

This card offers seriously impressive performance. As the specifications hinted, it’s closer to the GTX 980 than its price suggests. At 1080p, it trumps the R9 290X every time, managing over 60fps in every game except Crysis 3. At 2,560 x 1,440, the R9 290X creeps head in Battlefield 4, but MSI 970 is way ahead in BioShock and narrowly leads in Crysis 3 too. 
Meanwhile, at 4K, the R9 290 and GTX 970 are very close, with no meaningful performance difference other than in BioShock, where the MSI GeForce GTX 970 Gaming 4G/£275 inc VAT SUPPLIER www.ebuyer.com/SPECIFICATIONS Graphics processor Nvidia GeForce GTX 970, 1,140MHz  (boost clock 1,279 MHz) Pipeline 1,664 stream processors, 104 texture units, 64 ROPs Memory 4GB GDDR5, 7 GHz effective Bandwidth 224GB/sec
Compatibility DirectX 12, OpenGL 4.5 Outputs/inputs Display Port, DVI-D, DVI-I, HDMI Power connections1 x 8-pin, 1 x 6-pin, top-mounted Size269mm long, dual-slot GRAPHICS CARD MSI just manages to stay above 30fps while the AMD can’t. Still, neither card is suitable for gaming at maximum settings at this resolution. Power consumption is very good too, although the MSI card consumes a little more than the GTX 980 as a result of its bolstered power inputs and factory overclock. The cooler  is whisper-quiet too, you’ll struggle to hear it. What’s more, our MSI GTX 970 sample overclocked even  better than the reference GTX 980. 
We reached a base  clock of 1,315MHz, giving us a stated boost clock of 1,454MHz. In games, however, the significant power and thermal headroom saw the MSI card boosting constantly to 1.5GHz, whichis incredible, especially as the noise and GPU temperature were virtually unaffected. It’s highly recommended you try overclocking – in our tests, the MSI exceeded stock GTX 980 performance in both Battlefield 4 and Unigine when overclocked.

 
Conclusion

MSI asks for a £20 premium over basic GTX 970 models, and that’s well worth paying for the quality of the semipassive cooler and the factory overclock. The GTX 970 also compares very favourably with the rest of the market. AMD’s R9 290X starts at around£270, but that buys you a noisy, hot and irritatingly loud stock cooler, and this MSI GTX 970 card is a much better all-rounder. If you’ve been itching  for an awesome sub-£300 graphics upgrade, this is it.

SPECIFICATIONS

Graphics processorNvidia
GeForce GTX 970, 1,140MHz
(boost clock 1,279MHz)
Pipeline1,664 stream
processors, 104 texture units,
64 ROPs
Memory4GB GDDR5,
7GHz effective
Bandwidth224GB/sec
CompatibilityDirectX 12,
OpenGL 4.5
Outputs/inputsDisplayPort,
DVI-D, DVI-I, HDMI
Power connections1 x 8-pin,
1 x 6-pin, top-mounted
Size269mm long, dual-slot

Mountain Graphite 20 Pro/£1,110 review

Posted by: Unknown Posted date: 12:38 PM / comment : 2

This gaming laptop, from Spanish firm Mountain, is an exercise in extremes. It only has a 13.3in screen, which makes it much smaller than every other gaming laptop we’ve reviewed recently, but that panel also has a colossal native resolution of 3,200 x 1,800.
Mountain Graphite 20 Pro

The resolution and 13.3in diagonal creates a pin-sharp pixel density of 276ppi; a long way beyond the 127ppi of 17in gaming laptops with 1,920 x 1,080 panels. It’s even better than 4K screens – our favourite, the 28in Asus PB287Q, has a pixel density of ‘just’ 157ppi. The result is that photos, icons and text look fantastically smooth when they’re rendered properly. 
However, while the huge resolution grabs attention, it also raises concerns. This panel has 5,760,000 pixels; many more than the 2,073,600 on a conventional 1,920 x 1,080 panel, and that’s a problem for gaming: graphics might look sharper, but it’s no good if quality settings need to be reduced for a smooth frame rate.
The high resolution proves problematic outside of games too. Windows 8.1 scales up much of the OS to mimic a 1080p panel now, which makes the screen easy to use (and sharp) without squinting, but a few software vendors still haven’t followed suit. For example, Google Chrome stays at its normal size in terms of buttons and features, but its text looks blurry, while Steam and Origin look similarly fuzzy. That isn’t the fault of the laptop, of course, but it’s worth bearing in mind before  buying a PC laptop with such a high pixel density. Mountain has fitted a GeForce GTX 860M to cope with gaming demands, sitting between the GPUs found in larger laptops we’ve recently reviewed; the 17in  MSI GS60 has a more powerful GTX 870M, but the Asus G550JK and its 15.6in screen makes do with a GTX 850M.
The Mountain’s 2.5GHz Core i7-4710MQis a step ahead of the 2.4GHz i7-4700HQ inside both these machines though.
The boot drive is a 240GB Crucial M500 SSD, and there’s a 750GB hard disk too – a decent enough storage setup. However the single-band 802.11n Wi-Fi systemis disappointing by current standards, especially compared with the MSI GS60’s  dual-band 802.11ac setup.
The Mountain’s exterior isn’t particularly striking, although the build quality is decent  throughout. The third-party chassis is covered in different shades of grey plastic, Mountain Graphite 20 Pro/£1,110inc VAT SUPPLIER www.mountain.es/SPECIFICATIONS CPU 2.5GHz Intel Core i7-4710MQ Memory 8GB 1,600MHz DDR3 Graphics Nvidia GeForce GTX  860M 2GB GDDR5 SoundOn-board Screen size 13.3in 3,200 x 1,800 Storage240GB Crucial M500 SSD,750 GB hard disk Networking Gigabit Ethernet, single-band 802.11n Wi-Fi Weight 2.1kg Ports3 x USB 3, 1 x USB 2, HDMI 1.4, VGA,2xaudio,SD card slot Dimensions (mm)330 x 227 x 32 (WxDxH) Operating system Windows 8.1
64-bit Extras Bluetooth 4 WarrantyTwo years return to base GAMING LAPTOP lacking the slick design or smart touches of recent rival systems we’ve seen. The logo on the lid is merely a metallic sticker, and gaming laptop fans may already be familiar with the chassis – German firm Schenker uses it for some of its  XMG-branded 13.3in machines, for example. 
The outside has three USB 3 ports, a USB 2 port, and D-SUB and HDMI outputs. There’s Gigabit Ethernet and an SD card slot too. Meanwhile, one panel on the base can be removed to grant access to almost every component. The hard disk and SSD can be easily removed, there’s a spare mSATA slot, and the wireless chip and memory slots are also accessible. 
Even the heatsink and fan can be popped  out and cleaned by removing a few screws. The 13.3in screen means this machine is 330mm wide, which makes it narrower than both of the aforementioned machines. It’s 32mm thick, though, which is chunkier than the 28mm Asus G550JK and thesvelte 20mmframe of the MSI GS-60. The Mountain also tips the scales at 2.1kg, which is 140g heavier than the MSI with its 17in screen; however, it’s still light enough to carry around. The keys are satisfyingly rigid too, although the confines of the chassis means they’re a little on the small side, and there’s also no room for a numeric keypad

Performance

The GTX 860M is a competent GPU, but it couldn’t handle all our test games at 1080p. In fact, it only ran smoothly in BioShock Infinite, with a 37fps minimum. 
Battlefield 4 was hampered by a 23fps minimum, and in Crysis 3, the Mountain’s 17fps minimum was decidedly sluggish. Top-end games will need to be toned down to run smoothly on this GPU, and that’s doubly true when the screen’s native resolution is deployed. Crysis 3’s Very High settings ran at a single-figure frame rate at 3,200 x 1,800, and both BioShock and Battlefield 4 were only a little smoother. The Mountain’s gaming credentials are further hampered by its speakers. Despite the Onkyo branding, they lack volume, the bass is weedy, and the top end is distant.
Disappointingly, the screen’s contrast ratio of 454:1 was also very low – half the figure we saw on the Asus G550JK and MSI GS-60, and the 350cd/m2 brightness level is good but unremarkable. The lack of contrast means that colours lack punch, but that isn’t the only department where colours suffer. The Mountain’s average delta E of 2.95 isn’t stunning either, with the aforementioned MSI system’s screen comparatively managing 2.16. This isn’t a bad screen, but you can definitely get better image quality elsewhere. 
On the plus side, the Core i7 is an impressive CPU. In our new benchmarks, it scored 1,987 points overall, putting it in the same ball park as the MSIGS60– only the toughest Windows software will cause this machine to slow down. Not surprisingly, battery lifewhen gaming isn’t brilliant. When running a looped gaming test with the screen at 100 per cent brightness, the Mountain lasted 56 minutes – that’s  in the same ballpark as most gaming laptops. Cooling ability is more of a concern, however. In the tight  confines of the 13.3inchassis, the processor and GPU temperatures topped out at 97°C and 81°C respectively. The latter figure is fine, but the former is higher than any CPU temperature we’ve seen in other recent gaming laptops. The internal fans also then spun up suddenly to cope with the heat, with excess air pumped from a vent on the lefthand edge – use of a headset is recommended to drown out the noise.

Conclusion

We like the idea of a13.3in gaming laptop with such a high screen resolution, but this system makes numerous sacrifices. Its GTX 860M GPU struggles to maintain playable frame rates at top settings at 1080p, let alone the screen’s native resolution. Plus, while the Mountain has a small  VERDICT A very high screen resolution and decent application performance, but it’s hamperedby slightly disappointing image quality and a hot-running CPU. 
OVERALL SCORE 77% 
SPEED 19/25
HARDWARE 22/25
DESIGN 16/25
VALUE 20/25
width, it’s also thicker and heavier than the 17in MSI GS60. While the Mountain’s screen offers a fantastic pixel density, the MSI’s lower resolution screen is better, thanks to superior contrast and colour accuracy. That said, though, the Mountain remains a 13.3in laptop at a reasonable price that has the power to play high-end games at 1080p, as long as you’re prepared to drop your settings a little. As such, it’s still a decent option for those who want gaming power inside a small frame, and for those who use software that specifically benefits from the higher resolution. If you’re not fussed about the width or the high resolution, though, the MSI GS60 offers a slimmer, lighter laptop with more gaming power and better image quality  for just an extra £160.

SPECIFICATIONS

CPU 2.5GHz Intel Core i7-4710MQ
Memory 8GB 1,600MHz DDR3
Graphics Nvidia GeForce GTX
860M 2GB GDDR5
SoundOn-board
Screen size 13.3in 3,200 x 1,800
Storage 240GB Crucial M500
SSD,750 GB harddisk
Networking Giga bit Ethernet,
single-band 802.11n Wi-Fi
Weight2.1kg
Ports3 x USB 3, 1 x USB 2, HDMI
1.4, VGA,2x audio,SD card slot
Dimensions (mm)330 x 227 x 32
(WxDxH)
Operating system Windows 8.1
64-bit
Extras Bluetooth 4
Warranty Two years return to bas
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