Review: Gigabyte P55K V4

Introduction and design

Serious gaming on PCs has never been a particularly cheap hobby, but as powerful desktop rigs have become more affordable, so too have gaming laptops that pack enough power to satisfy all your gaming needs.

Gigabyte may be better known for its quality desktop motherboards than its laptops, but after releasing the less powerful Gigabyte P35K V3 into the wild earlier in the year, it's back once again with the P55K V4. Featuring an Intel Core i7 CPU coupled with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M GPU, you can expect impressive performance at a bargain price that undercuts the HP Omen's price tag considerably.

Whilst the specifications may be good value for money, there is just enough detail in the P55K's design for it to stand out from other non-descript portable powerhouses and make it a genuinely appealing gamer's machine.

Design

Whilst we may not be dealing with a design award contender or a slim model with beauty pageant potential, the P55K V4 has a sleek sports car aesthetic that will appeal to young gamers, particularly with the orange accents that flank the sides and hinges.

Whilst the angular lines and mean-looking grilles may look ever-so-slightly Lamborghini-esque, every inch of the P55K's exterior is honed from relatively uninspired matte plastic. This means there's a little flex in the screen and a lack of the premium feel that you get from the latest (albeit more pricey) Dell XPS 15. Underneath all this plastic is a sturdy aluminium body, but you can't help but feel that a bit of variance in the materials used on the outside would have made a big difference.

Open up the lid and you'll notice that the plastic bezels above and particularly below the screen are also rather large, which unfortunately is necessary to allow the lid to line up with the body; were it not for the powerful components held within, I would have definitely expected a little less of the wasted space. Whilst the bottom bezel is home to nothing more than the Gigabyte logo, the top at least plays host to an HD webcam and microphone.

The full-size chiclet-style keyboard is responsive yet quiet, and spans most of the width of the laptop, which allows gamers plenty of room to thrash out commands or more productive types to slog through a few thousand words. The keyboard – like so many on gamer-centric laptops – is backlit with a blue LED hue that makes it easy to find the all-important W, A, S and D keys, or whichever other letters your game of choice might require.

The trackpad is very spacious, accurate and responsive, and it recognises the common gestures that Windows 8 users will be familiar with; though if you're a first-person shooter fan you will no doubt want to plug a mouse into one of the four USB 3.0 ports (two on either side). Of course, the Gigabyte P55K V4 is now upgradable to Windows 10 for free.

On the left edge there are also 3.5mm microphone and headphone sockets, as well as an optical drive. A Super Multi DVD RW drive featured on our review model, which can be exchanged for a rewritable Blu-ray drive for a little more. The left edge harbours both HDMI and VGA video outputs, along with a network port and a rather monstrous fan grille. The only other port worthy of mention is the SD card slot on the front, but unlike the P35K, there are no additional drive bays.

Weighing in at 2.5kg (5.5 pounds) and at 34mm deep it may not be the most svelte of 15.6-inch laptops around, but then with great power comes... a few extra millimetres around the waist.

The Acer Aspire V15 Nitro may be skinnier, and the pricey Alienware 13 more trendy, but the P55K V4 has just about enough to stand out from many of the other dull laptops lining the shelves.

Specifications

Measuring up at 380 x 269 x 34mm (W x D x H) – that's 14.96 x 10.59 x 1.34-inches – actually makes the P55K V4 one of the narrower 15-inch laptops available, but the aforementioned large bezels around the screen make it deeper than most.

The overall footprint comes in slightly smaller and lighter than the all-conquering Origin EON15-X and compares favourably to the similarly priced Digital Storm Triton, which weighs an identical 2.5kg.

Spec sheet

There are slight variations of the P55K V4 on offer, but here are the specifications of the unit made available to TechRadar:

• Processor: Intel Core i7-5700HQ (quad-core, 2.7GHZ, 3.5GHz with Turbo Boost)
• GPU: Nvidia Geforce GTX 965M (2GB GDDR5); Intel HD Graphics 5600
• RAM: 8GB DDR3L
• Screen: 15.6-inch full HD 1,920 x 1,080 LCD
• Storage: 128GB SSD, 1TB HDD (7,200 rpm)
• Optical drive: Super Multi DVD-RW
• Ports: 4 x USB 3.0, HDMI, VGA, RJ45, microphone-in, analogue/optical headphone-out, SD card reader
• Connectivity: 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0
• Camera: HD webcam
• Audio: 2 x 2 watt speakers, microphone, Dolby Digital Plus Home Theatre certified
• Battery: Li-ion 6-cell 5400mAh (63Wh)
• Weight: 2.5kg (5.51 pounds)

The specs you see above can be had for £1,049 (around $1,650, or AU$ 2,230) but there are other variations of the P55K available with a minimum of 4GB of RAM, hard drives ranging from 500GB to 2TB, and as we already mentioned, a Blu-ray Rewritable Drive on offer instead of the standard Super Multi DVD-RW drive. The rest of the specification including the CPU and GPU options are a standard affair that can't be tweaked.

For the same price as the new 12-inch Apple MacBook you're getting a super-speedy Intel Core i7 processor with clock speeds of up to 3.6GHz, and one of the latest (if not the absolute fastest) mobile GPUs from Nvidia, which is perfectly capable of full HD gaming.

The SSD and HDD combo, plus 8GB of RAM, are enough to fly through any application and can easily cope with any of the current crop of top-end games. The 128GB solid state drive could be a little roomier, but it's enough for Windows and your most-played games, with the 1TB hard drive on hand for everything else.

Performance and multimedia

Although it may be considered one of the budget GPUs in Nvidia's range, the GeForce GTX 965M packs as much as the outgoing GTX 870M, and a little less than the GTX 970M – which is plenty for playing games at full resolution on the 1080p screen.

Considering the P55K V4 has very similar specs to my considerably larger desktop PC, I went into this review expecting stellar performance; thankfully I wasn't disappointed.

Okay, so you won't be able to run every game at 'ultra' settings, but you will be able to easily surpass the 60 fps holy grail in almost any game, perhaps with the settings knocked down a peg or two.

If you are pounding your way through The Witcher 3, or lapping at speed in Project Cars, you will notice that the plastic underside of the laptop stays fairly cool, although the fan can be quite noisy at full pelt. It's not an annoying whine or too loud to be obtrusive over the volume of the inbuilt speakers, but we'd be lying if we said it was quiet. Thankfully the fan quickly calms down once you've returned to the desktop, where the P55K is virtually silent.

Benchmarks

Here's how Gigabyte's P55K V4 scored in our benchmark tests:

• 3DMark: Cloudgate: 18,043; Sky Diver: 14,859; Fire Strike: 4,949
• Cinebench: CPU: 644 points; Single Core CPU: 143 points; Graphics: 101.02 fps
• PCMark 8 Home Test: 36,754
• PCMark 8 Battery Life: 2 hours 36 minutes
• Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor: 1080p, Ultra: 43.59 fps; 1080p, Low: 101.19 fps
• Metro: Last Light: 1080p, Ultra: 25.98 fps; 1080p, Low: 89.14 fps

With a powerful Maxwell GPU under the hood and one of the high-end Intel i7 processors to boot, it's no surprise that the P55K produced the goods in our benchmarks. The majority of scores were very impressive, with a very respectable score of 4,949 points in 3DMark's strenuous Fire Strike test which places it over 1,000 points ahead of the Asus ROG G501 (which is based upon the slightly older 960M).

When cranked up to 'ultra' settings, the incredibly pretty 1080p Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Metro: Last Light benchmarks still ran at a playable 43.59 fps and 25.98 fps respectably – a considerably jump up from the Asus V15, but not quite on par with the dual GTX 965M-wielding Aorus X5 which (unsurprisingly) managed approximately an extra 15 fps in both tests.

Battery life

It is to be expected that most power-hungry gaming laptops are rather thirsty when it comes to battery life, and the Gigabyte P55K V4 is no exception. Testing under the conditions of PCMark 8's rigorous battery test gave an end result one second shy of 2 hours and 36 minutes – in no way a terrible score considering the persistent pressure that the test applies, but nearly a full hour short of the slimmer P35K V3.

As well as the thorough benchmark from Futuremark, I also did a bit of my own testing, and after using it as my main PC for mixed web browsing, office productivity, a small amount of Photoshop and a bit of media in the form of YouTube and Spotify, the battery lasted a more respectable 3 hours and 10 minutes.

Under full resolution gaming conditions, I found that my addictive battles of Rocket League had to be paused in order to plug in at around the 2 hour mark. Where charging is concerned, the P55K went from 10% to 100% in 2 hours 15 minutes.

When only using the onboard discrete Intel graphics, the P55K is portable enough to be used out and about at university or in a meeting if needed, but it certainly doesn't keep up with the much more frugal (and lower powered) Ultrabooks of a similar price.

Multimedia

With Dolby's Digital Plus Home Theatre magic onboard, the P55K V4 does a pretty good job of emulating surround sound effects in games. There isn't a subwoofer, so the sound isn't as punchy as some larger laptops we've used, but it's crisp and clear, and able to approximately reproduce the effects you'd get from a basic 5.1 surround setup. Venture into the settings and a customisable equaliser allows you to set the audio up to your own tastes or toggle virtual surround and other settings.

For music and video streaming the sound is fairly loud, but not of the highest quality. It's worth noting that the sound doesn't distort too badly at full volume, which is good as it's likely you'll have it cranked up most of the time for gaming.

If you can splash the cash 4K gaming laptops are available, so with a screen pumping out a 1920 x 1080 resolution, the P55K V4 doesn't have the highest resolution 15.6-inch screen of gaming laptops we've tested – that would be the aforementioned Asus ROG G501, which packs a UHD screen.

Even though your smartphone may very likely pack the same (or even higher) resolution, full HD is more than enough for sharp gaming that still looks stunning on the P55K, especially considering that it packs an IPS panel that produces very accurate colour. Okay, so it may not be as bright as the TN screens which are the more common choice, but IPS does mean that viewing angles are excellent, too.

Verdict

At only a little over £1,000 (about $1,570, or AU$ 2,130), the Gigabyte P55K V4 manages to pack great performance into a relatively attractive package. Okay, so there are thinner alternatives around (including the older P35K V3 we reviewed back in February), but where value is concerned, you are unlikely to get a better specified machine without spending around half as much again.

We liked

The P55K V4 offers a lot of gaming power at a price that won't break the bank. Nvidia's GTX 965M is a perfectly capable graphics card, and the high-end Intel i7-5700HQ is more than a match for pretty much anything you can throw at it.

The IPS display may not be the brightest, but with accurate colour, a quick response and good viewing angles, it's perfect for gaming from the comfort of your sofa, with the built-in virtual surround sound only sweetening the deal.

Other media and office apps are handled with ease thanks to the full-sized keyboard, large trackpad and good connectivity, and to top it all off the P55K doesn't look half bad, either.

We disliked

Whilst it isn't the most boring of laptop designs, there are a couple of things that let down the look of the P55K. Firstly, the large bezels around the screen feel like they would be more at home in a laptop from 2005, not 2015.

Equally, by today's standards the P55K is a pretty chunky beast with vast swathes of plastic on show, and not a hint of premium metals in sight. Coupled with the orange trim, it's a design that will appeal to teenage gamers, but perhaps not more mature buyers looking for the epitome of understated cool.

Lastly, the battery life was only average, and sadly didn't keep up with Gigabyte's slimmer, cheaper P35K.

Final verdict

Gigabyte's P55K V4 covers all the bases a gamer might look for if they don't want to be tied to a desktop PC. A good quality full HD screen driven by a powerful CPU and GPU combo make it a great contender to more expensive alternatives like the HP Omen, and it is considerably better value than the Acer V15 Nitro.

The styling may not be to everyone's taste, and the chunky plastic body could have been blessed with a few more premium touches, but the matte finish and orange accents certainly help it stand out from some of the more boring alternatives.

Additional features like the virtual surround sound and wealth of connectivity options mean you're getting a lot from this gaming laptop, without a bank-busting price to swallow. Just remember to pack your charger if you plan on getting your game on for more than a couple of hours.

from TechRadar: Technology reviews http://ift.tt/1J9Oia3