Slim gaming notebooks take been getting a lot of attention lately, and rightfully so. For years, gamers on the go have had to contend with massive machines that simply weren't practical for anything else due to their heft. Only thanks to recent advances, manufacturers are now able to cram loftier-end hardware within a chassis that looks no different than a general-purpose notebook. That means you can behave such a system with you to work or school during the twenty-four hour period and then turn around and utilise information technology to play the latest games at night.

Remember of this new breed of notebooks similar a mullet – business in the forepart, political party in the dorsum.

The Maingear Pulse xv we volition be looking at today – while still in the same class every bit the MSI GS70 Stealth Pro we recently covered – does have some notable differences which we will get to in a scrap. But kickoff, a rundown of Maingear's latest is in gild.

Maingear Pulse xv - $2,474

  • fifteen.6" ii,880 x 1,620 IPS LCD (212 ppi)
  • ii.5GHz Intel Cadre i7-4700HQ
  • 16GB DDR3 1,600MHz RAM
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 870M GPU 3GB GDDR5
  • two x 128GB SSD RAID 0
  • 1TB HDD 7200rpm
  • SteelSeries keyboard backlit in full color
  • three ten USB 3.0 , HDMI, one 10 mini DisplayPort
  • SD card reader
  • Wi-Fi b/one thousand/due north/ac, Gigabit Ethernet
  • Windows 8.ane
  • 4.31 lbs, xv.35" x 10.47" x 0.78" inches

Our Pulse 15 sample came equipped with an Intel Core i7-4710HQ CPU clocked at ii.5GHz alongside 16GB of DDR3 1,600MHz retentiveness and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 870M GPU with 3GB of GDDR5. The car features a 15.half-dozen-inch display, which is a flake on the small side for gaming purposes, although it does operate at an attractive 3K resolution of 2,880 10 1,620.

Rounding out the packet is a pair of 128GB Kingston M.2 SATA express solid state drives running in RAID 0, a 1TB difficult drive spinning at seven,200 rpm for storage, a Qualcomm Killer E220 network adapter, Intel dual-band Air-conditioning Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a full color adjustable backlit LED keyboard and a vi-cell, 5,400mAh li-polymer battery. Maingear besides thrown in an external slim optical drive past Asus in the issue you yet rely on legacy media.

Pricing for the Pulse 15 starts at $ii,199 although our cost equally configured here today based on Maingear's online configuration tool is $ii,474.

If you lot've e'er purchased a organization from a bazaar builder similar Maingear, you already know that attention to detail and client service is bar none.

Ane example is the Maingear Personal Binder included with every purchase. The binder is loaded with a quick-commencement guide, an invoice with the specifications of the system you've ordered, a driver disc, a Windows viii.1 disc, a user manual, warranty information, a 55-signal quality assurance log and even a signature from the person who configured your machine.

Something else you demand to know well-nigh boutique builders is that they don't really build near of their notebook offerings. Past that, I mean they source barebones systems from other manufacturers and then add together some customization and brand them as their own. The Maingear Pulse 15 started life as an OEM-esque MSI GS60 Ghost Pro 3K.

As we've seen in the past, Maingear has a penchant for applying automotive-form paint to systems and the Pulse xv is no different. The company sprayed the outer chapeau and lesser shell of our sample with its Epic Cherry-red paint. While not as flashy as the Maingear Shift nosotros looked at a few years agone, the matte finish looks good against the black screen bezel and keyboard deck.

Across the front of the chassis we find a series of LED indicators for, from left to right: slumber, hard bulldoze action, num lock, caps lock, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and bombardment. Moving to the correct side, we accept a powered USB iii.0 port, SD memory card slot, HDMI port, mini DisplayPort, an Ethernet jack, a battery reset hole and an exhaust event.

A few more ventilation slots grace the edge of the system which is otherwise void of any I/O connection. The left side of the machine is dwelling house to some other cooling vent, a Kensington lock slot, power connector, two more USB iii.0 ports, a mic jack and a headphone jack.

Much like we saw on the MSI organization, the bezel on the Pulse xv is a bit of an eyesore. At the top is an integrated webcam capable of 1080p @ 30fps recording flanked by dual microphones. Across the lesser bezel is the Maingear branding which brings me to my first major complaint.

As I was unboxing the notebook, the cloth screen protector snagged on the Maingear branding and the offset "A" really fell off. Upon closer inspection, you can come across that the lettering is extremely inexpensive. Printed branding – or even no branding at all – would have been a wiser choice. I am a bit surprised by this and if it were my own personal organization, I'd simply peel it off and call information technology a mean solar day.

What's more, I couldn't help but notice how flimsy the bottom of the display felt every bit I tried to reaffix the lettering. Because there'southward no swivel or other support construction here, the bezel and screen has a lot of flex. I don't recall it'd always be a concern nether normal use – especially every bit this isn't a touchscreen notebook – but again, it just feels inadequately cheap.

Perhaps Maingear is hoping ane tin overlook such shortcomings with the centerpiece of the Pulse fifteen, its 3K IPS display. The console operates at a resolution of 2,880 x one,620 which, while not quite equally impressive as the 3,200 x one,800 screen constitute on the 14-inch Razer Blade, is even so a step above the slew of gaming notebooks that ship with 1080p panels.

The backlit keyboard is virtually identical to the one we saw on the GS70 Stealth Pro although the deck is a flake different. That's not a bad affair as the SteelSeries keyboard on the MSI was a pleasance to work with. If it is indeed the same keyboard, ane has to wonder why Maingear wouldn't tout information technology being from SteelSeries.

The all-in-1 touchpad, meanwhile, appears to be roughly the same size although it has been moved to the left a chip. Icons for the front-facing LED indicators are printed on the keyboard deck just higher up the LEDs while the system's power button appears largely unchanged. The serial of holes below the power push announced to be for ventilation purposes only equally the system's speakers are positioned on the bottom of the automobile.

On the bottom are nine safety feet to keep the notebook firmly planted as well as the familiar felt-type of cloth lining the hotspots. It appears that more a dozen screws would need to exist removed to gain access to the organization'south internal hardware and in what seems to be an unavoidable tendency, the battery on the Pulse 15 is non-removable.

Since the arrangement comes equipped with 16GB of RAM and more than enough storage space, the only reason you'd really ever need to open things up would be to replace faulty hardware. And in the issue things go wonky and yous demand to difficult reboot the machine, the tiny battery reset push on the correct side of the notebook will get the chore washed.

Software and Performance

Our testing Maingear Pulse xv system shipped with Windows viii.1 64-scrap. After measuring the common cold kicking startup fourth dimension, I was pleased to see the organisation came free of whatever unnecessary software bloatware.

Unlike big-proper noun PC makers, Maingear and other boutique builders send their systems completely free of junk software. You get the bare essentials – basically what you'd end up with if you installed a fresh copy of Windows yourself. It's a shame that PC makers are willing to clutter up their systems only at the cease of the twenty-four hours, it all comes down to another revenue stream.

All graphics-based benchmarks (unless otherwise noted) were performed with the discrete Nvidia GPU selected equally the recommended graphics carte du jour in the Nvidia command panel.

The Maingear Pulse 15 is equipped with the same GTX 870M GPU as the MSI GS70 we reviewed niggling over a calendar month ago, and equally such it tin handle modern games at a reasonable xl - threescore fps when using medium graphics settings at 1920 ten 1080 full Hard disk drive resolution. Max out the center candy and more than often than not you will be reaching for a more modest 30 fps mark.

It's another story when gaming at the native 2880 x 1620 3K resolution. As seen above, the GTX 870M isn't nearly powerful enough to run modern games at max graphics settings, and depending on the title it volition struggle with medium graphics settings, too.

MSI GS70 Stealth Pro Maingear Pulse 15
3DMark 4231 4355
PCMark 7 6196 5904
iTunes encoding 59 seconds 58 seconds
File transfer (small files) 5 seconds iv seconds
File transfer (single large file) iv seconds three seconds
Cold boot time 12 seconds 14 seconds

Our iTunes encoding tests consist of converting 14 MP3s (119MB) to 128Kbps ACC files and measuring the operation's duration in seconds.

For file transfers, nosotros measure how long information technology takes to copy two sets of files from one location to another on the aforementioned drive. The small files examination consists of transferring 557 MP3s, totaling 2.56GB, while in the large file the aforementioned MP3s were zipped into a single 2.52GB file.

Bombardment Life

I conducted our standard notebook battery tests on the Pulse 15. Our video playback test consists of looping a 720p rip of the movie Inception at total screen with max effulgence and Wi-Fi disabled. This is a taxing test that resulted in two hours and 59 minutes of battery life.

These results were obtained with the graphics card ready to "motorcar" pregnant it selects either the integrated Intel graphics or the discrete Nvidia bill of fare based on what information technology thinks is all-time for the chore at paw. The system wisely selected the Intel solution.

Previous reviews have seen bombardment life gains of as much as an hour simply by dimming the brandish but not here. By toning the test down to 60 percent brightness and keeping everything else the same, the arrangement surprisingly lasted for the exact same amount of time. A fleck puzzled, I re-ran each exam to verify the settings and came upwards with the same outcome.

Usage Impressions and Conclusion

After having experienced what the Sound Equalizer Cinema ii software was capable of on the GS70, I was looking forward to testing it on the Pulse 15. Unfortunately, I didn't get very far.

Upon launching the software, I was met with a pop-upwards that said the selected audio device was disabled, non present or non supported by the awarding. I was given the option to select another sound device but was met with another message telling me there is no supported sound device available and while the program would launch, nigh everything was greyed out.

That said, the speakers on the Pulse xv did work – they just didn't audio nearly as good as they could have with the Sound Blaster application. The downward-firing speakers, even without the software, weren't bad. They got enough loud and there wasn't any baloney even at full volume. I really wish I could have seen what they'd do with some software assistance.

The touchpad on the Pulse 15 showed the aforementioned faulty beliefs as the GS70. By that, I mean it randomly wouldn't recognize my fingers. I'd have to remove my finger then reapply – frequently multiple times – before it would register I was touching information technology and let me motility the mouse pointer.

In my MSI GS70 review, I was unsure if it was an isolated result just now I know that isn't the case and it'southward either a hardware or software problem. Hopefully it'southward the latter and a commuter gear up could alleviate the effect. Information technology's non likely to accept a huge impact as I suspect about will use a dedicated mouse to play games with but for normal use, it'due south very annoying.

1 thing I did notice is that the mouse arrow speed seems quicker than virtually systems I've reviewed. Information technology'southward a subtle change but it does make the notebook feel a bit faster – pretty clever.

The keyboard, on the other hand, didn't give me whatsoever issues. While it did showroom a fleck of flex virtually the middle, it was nothing to be concerned about. Typing on it felt fine and there weren't any issues with the layout equally I've seen on some notebooks.

The backlighting worked peachy although the "pulsing" event was a flake of a distraction. The bundled keyboard utility provided plenty of customization so I was able to disable the effect without whatsoever issue. If you lot're the blazon that likes a colorful keyboard, you'll no incertitude be happy with what the board and software offer.

Our standard YouTube 4K resolution examination was no match for the Pulse 15. The clip remained smooth throughout playback and looked great in the procedure.

Connectivity is sufficient with three USB 3.0 ports, HDMI, mini DisplayPort and an SD card reader. The USB count should exist plenty for most and there's nix that'southward glaringly missing.

The 2 128GB SSDs in RAID 0 performed exceptionally well, even managing to outperform the trio of SSDs found in the GS70 under our real-world testing -- if only slightly. With that speed, even so, comes the risk of data loss. If either of the ii drives fail, the assortment is trashed and y'all'll lose all data. The 1TB storage drive included with the Pulse 15 could be a safe place to create a backup of your Windows installation just in instance -- and of course, there'southward always the deject for critical documents. I've ever been the type to favor speed over back-up but of course, I can't speak for everyone.

The system is certainly capable of generating a neat bargain of heat as axiomatic by the pads on the lesser of the machine. Noise output isn't likewise bad but you'll definitely want to keep the machine on a well-ventilated surface when playing graphically enervating games.

The 3K resolution will likely exist the deciding factor on whether or not someone purchases the Pulse 15. And while I've always been a proponent of high-resolution displays, I'm somewhat on the fence virtually whether or not such a high resolution makes sense for a 15-inch laptop display.

The display looks bully under nearly circumstances with great viewing angles and color accuracy, though at that place is a practiced bit of backlight bleeding that's visible on black screens.

Unfortunately non everything in Windows is scaled properly to match the loftier resolution. I encountered several prompts that looked blurry, as if they were out of focus. What's more, gamers will ultimately have to decide betwixt higher resolution or higher graphics settings when playing the latest titles -- you tin can't get both, unfortunately.

Every bit evident in our benchmarks, the GeForce GTX 870M GPU simply isn't powerful enough to run at max graphics settings using the system'due south native 3K resolution. Nvidia's new GTX 980M might be up to the job but the 870M certainly isn't.

That said, I tin't help simply feel that the Pulse 15 is trying to put the cart earlier the horse. The 3K display would exist a smashing addition if the graphics card could go on up at max graphics settings simply it simply tin't. Medium graphics at the top resolution is playable, if roughly 30fps will exercise for you, but gaming at 3K with the eye candy turned upwardly all the style is out of the question.

Lastly, knowing that the Pulse fifteen is substantially a GS60 Ghost Pro 3K, it doesn't take more that a quick search on Amazon or Newegg to detect the same model or even a souped upwards variant with a GTX 970M GPU for less than Maingear's asking price -- if you don't listen losing the paint job and superior customer service that you may or may not end up using, that is.

Pros: Beautiful, vibrant brandish. Blazing fast SSDs. Solid keyboard, configurable backlighting is a nice bear on. Slim and attractive design.

Cons: Gaming at 3K only using medium settings -- gaming at 1080p is okay, though. Touchpad functioning is rather finicky. Gets hot under load. Average battery life. Windows and many third political party apps often do a poor job with loftier DPI displays.