Reviews PC Specialist Recoil II Review

Thats an awful lot of PC for the price...

 

Customisation has always been PC Specialist's strong point. Their weak point (based on what I've ordered in the past) is chassis quality. They've always felt quite cheap and flimsy. How does this one fare in that department?

 

46 wh battery is terrible and a deal killer for any laptop for me. I know they expect you to be plugged in for gaming but I use my laptop for more than just gaming.

 

I really want to know why they went with a mechnical keyboard and per-key RGB instead of Thunderbolt?

I'm sure it's a nice keyboard but it's also a battery drain and being able to hook the thing up to a home set up by a single cable is so much more useful.

Even without that essential (to me) feature, those temps are extremely impressive, a laptop that can run an i7 and a 1060 flatout without running over 85.

 

I've had very positive experiences of PC Specialist. While my first laptop from them had an utterly terrible keyboard, that was the fault of the ODM chassis (a Clevo, IIRC) not PCS. My current laptop is great; a Defiance III? Something like that. Enough metal bits to make it feel solid and it simultaneously had a spec that was frankly jaw dropping for a 2.5KG laptop when I bought it. That said it does run rather hot if you push it hard.

I need a portable system, but rarely work "in transit" as I struggle to focus on anything more meaningful than a book when on a train or plane. I admit this has me interested.

 

Bought one from them a few years ago, great machine, son was using it, the gpu eventually died earlier this year. Laptop still works as the advantage of optimus is the gpu isn't being used except in games so you just disable it altogether. Still that is the major problem with laptops - gpu upgrades/replacements. I worked out the best gpu I could get in it would be a 970 but that would cost getting on £700 to buy, and it's not an easy install (mb bios updates, take the whole thing apart to replace gpu) so it might not even work if I messed something up.

Says something that I just passed on my old i2500k desktop instead, chucked in a second hand £80 GTX 7700 off ebay and son is really happy playing fortnite/pubg at high settings with high fps. That's a 2011 machine in 2018 that with a few simple upgrades stays current, it's also near silent even with the cpu o/c (unlike the laptop which whined away). You just can't do that with laptops

 

I have one, and I have to say I'm impressed. It's taking a bit of time to get used to the condensed keyboard - all the keys feel a little cramped together, so I keep mis-judging keypresses. Plus, it's a shoallow travel which I'm not used to.

I specced mine out pretty much as high as I could. I wanted something portable and powerful at games, but not necessarily something that would not be pluuged in to the wall. Battery life is something I've not tested, as I'm always running off mains.

I love the machine so far. Mine is the 60Hz display and it's fine for what I do. In fact, I'd go as far as to say it's pretty good!

The only gripe I have is the heat that comes from the top of the machine (right above the mechanical keyboard). It gets pretty toasty when gaming. Fan noise - it's not a quiet gaming machine by a long shot, either. But if you're a headphone gamer like me, that'll not be an issue.

Very impressed with overall build quality.

 

Nice review, that is a good spec for the money.

It can depend although I recently ordered the Latife III and the build quality is great. Best laptop I've had and the build quality seems on-par with my Dell XPS from 8 years ago.