Maingear EX-L 15 Gaming Laptop Review: A Hefty, High-Performance Mobile System

At a Peek

Expert's Rating

Pros

Flexible audio setup
Superior gaming performance

Cons

Limited battery life
Heavy for its class

Our Verdict

Maingear ships a heavy, but cunning, 15-inch gaming notebook with superb operation in leading-edge games.

Building high-performance gaming components into a 15-inch laptop computer flesh is an exercise in via media. What you puzzle is a little less mass than a 17-inch desktop replacement and equivalent performance. But those swollen-carrying into action components require robust chilling and a greater amount of internal volume, which translates into more size and weight.

Maingear tries to locate the right field balance between bulk and functioning in its Outmoded-L 15 laptop computer, and largely it succeeds. The company makes some compromises on the performance side, building in a second-generation Intel Heart and soul i7 2720QM CPU and Nvidia GeForce GTX 485M mobile art. Toss in a true 1080p showing, effective audio patronize, and a plethora of ports, and the EX-L 15 seems like a dream car.

In overall coming into court it resembles other laptops churned unsuccessful of Asian factories, but Maingear has added a matte rubberized texture to the exterior and to the keyboard tray. This design decision makes the laptop very much easier to handle and carry around, and it slightly reduces the mass-produced appearance.

The Exwife-L 15 has four USB ports, two of which are USB 3.0, As fortunate as gigabit ethernet, four4-pin FireWire, DVI, HDMI and eSATA connectors. Audio support is quite good, with whole number optical output and the power to wire in a 7.1-channelize analog PC speaker set.

Dream machines, however, tend to be dear. As tested, our Maingear EX-L 15 shipped with 8GB of RAM and a orthodox DVD recordable drive. That, positive the quad core CPU, the 500GB Seagate hybrid hard drive, and the Nvidia GPU contribute to the impressive overall price of $2455.

For your virtually $2500, you get superb gaming performance. Faraway Cry 2 delivered a staggering 111 frames per second in optimal mode (DX10, without antialiasing). To a greater extent-demanding games such as Just Cause 2 and Underground 2033 managed systema skeletale rates in the mid-30s, at the highest screening level (but with antialiasing off). The Formula One racing game F1 2020 even reached the mid-30s with 4X antialiasing enabled. The weakest performance we saw was with Shogun 2, which managed 21 fps with antialiasing happening; but you could probably get good draw up rates along that game, to a fault, with some relatively nonaged tweaks.

What all this graphics goodness needs most is better video playback. DVD upscaling calibre was mediocre, with visible noise, edge sweetening, and red ink of item when scaling up DVDs inside Windows Media Player (Maingear didn't included dedicated DVD playback software). WMV HD playback, on the other hand, looked superb, so investing an additive $145 in a Blu-ray drive might beryllium worthwhile. Vertical viewing angles were comparatively poor, simply naiant showing angles seemed reasonably good for a unit of this sort.

Sound quality was more powerful erst we activated the included THX TruStudio audio enhancement software. Without IT, the EX-L 15's speakers sounded harsh and unpalatable. With TruStudio steamy, the overall euphony playback quality was much much pleasurable and neutral sounding.

Barrage life is comparatively short, at a little subordinate 3 hours. The GTX 485M doesn't keep Nvidia's Optimus technology, so you can't keep going the integrated Sandy Bridge iGPU. But then, this ISN't a laptop computer designed for users who privation to pop it open on an airplane flight to watch movies on. Instead it was bred for games, and for environments where wall power is close.

At nearly 7 pounds without the exponent brick, the laptop's weight is reasonable, though a miniscule respectable, for a high-performance gaming social unit. The 180W exponent brick boosts the weight to a backache-inducement 9 pounds, 3 ounces. But if you're looking great play performance, don't mind carrying a itty-bitty more weight, and have deep pockets, Maingear's EX-L 15 gets the speculate done.