Hardware PC Specialist Defiance III Review

Aesthetically, it's pretty much a carbon copy of the PC Specialist laptop I have, which was based around the Clevo/Sager P650SG chassis (I forget exactly what PCS called it; Defiance something-or-other...

What I really like about these is the room for drives it has: two M.2 drives and two 2.5" drives! If your wallet was (near?) bottomless, you could cram 10TB of storage in the thing! (2x1TB M.2 SSD, 2x 4TB Samsung SSDs)

It's a shame they don't offer a 4K option on this system... I love the 4K screen on mine (even if 4K in Linux is a massive PITA...) and I'd like a GTX1080 option, like there used to be a 980M option (which was the top end at the time).

Also... for a laptop of these sort of specs, 2.5KG isn't that heavy, is it? That said, the weight of the power brick needs to be added - a 230w power brick weights a lot.

 

2880x1620 is the sweet spot resolution for my 970 SLI rig, whilst it doesn't sound like a big jump over 1440p, the actual image quality improvement is huge and its the first resolution where anti aliasing becomes a nice bonus rather than a necessity in most games.

Spoiler

..but a single 1060 isn't really enough for it IMO.

 

I'll wait for the 15" laptops with a 1080 before I get rid of my current PC Specialist Vortex IV.

 

Hooked a friend up with a laptop from these people few years ago and he had a great experience.

 

I had a bad experience with pc specialist a few years back. Bought a high spec clevo 15" 860gtx model and the thing went back for repair twice within 3 months of buying it before I finally sent it back for a third time for a full refund.

 

I had problems with one system I bought; stuck pixels. It went back. Replacement screen had stuck pixels. Ended up taking it there myself since I didn't live far away at the time (they agreed) and it was fixed - and fix confirmed - within 30 minutes. Got something of an impromptu tour at the same time. Was impressed with their service.

I'm not usually full of the praises of companies that get it right, but I've tried to be since the last time I had a BT (subcontractor) engineer visit for something, and he spent literally hours fixing the issue. As these engineers get a right shafting if someone complains (usually penalised more money than they earned doing the job, which frankly I think is patently unfair) I try to redress the balance when I've had a good experience. I've never had anyone more surprised on the end of the 'phone than when I call up - not to make a complaint - but to say someone has done a damned good job.

But your issues sound like all the fun I had with an Acer laptop, which spent 50 weeks of its first year of me owning it either a) in transit between myself and Acer UK or b) being 'fixed' by Acer UK. First one BSOD'd immediately upon boot (couldn't even get into Windows to set up an account!) 'fixed' one had broken wifi/bluetooth, third had HDD not detected... I mean, that thing put me off Acer equipment for the rest of my life. In the end Acer agreed to just give me a completely new one (which was nice, as I got quite an upgrade in the process!) but didn't really make up for the fact that I'd spent a year fighting with them over all sorts of issues.

 

Got to be better than what happened to me with Kobalt.