A shoutout to Prince J, very sorry for not doing this earlier.

I bought an RS-15 sometime last year (May or June, I think?), and I've been meaning to do a review but a combination of procrastination, forgetfulness, and the nature of my work makes it hard for me to find a suitable time to do so.

I won't go very technical with this review, so yeah, it'll be a bit anecdotal, but I believe the experience is as important as the machine itself.

My specs:

Illegear RS-15
15.6" FHD Matte display (NTSC 95% color gamut)
i7 4800MQ
16GB of RAM
GTX 780M
500GB 7200RPM HDD (Boo!)

So yeah, it doesn't boot blazing fast because I chose HDD instead of SSD, but hey, I can spare a few minutes.

So I would like to consider myself a power user and I've been using this machine for a good 7-8 months now, and let me sum it up briefly: other than the early hiccup I got early on, the machine has been performing admirably and reliably. I've been pounding my laptop with work (I edit videos for a living) and games all of my laptop's lifespan, and it has yet to disappoint me.

Though my beast of a machine has been great, it wasn't all flawless. Early on, I had a problem with my graphics card: long story short, it died(!) and needed replacement. Though it took a week or so, Price J came over to my house and replaced the card, and I had no problems with the machine ever since. He's a nice, cool and helpful uncle. Thumbs up! Though width of the support isn't on par with big name brands like Dell or HP, the personal touch makes up for it.

Working with After Effects/Premiere Pro/Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign (All CC, updated to the latest version) has been fantastic, very rarely crashed (though I'm inclined to believe that's more software than hardware). PP's Mercury Engine playback works well with the 780M, same goes with AE. Suffice to say when these two heavy hitters are smooth sailing, lesser giants like PS, AI, and ID runs as well if not better. Though nothing beats working on a high-end desktop workstation, this machine is a joy to work with. Huge bonus for portability.

Gaming's been very good too for the machine. So far the only optimized game that strained my 780M is Battlefield 4 singleplayer. But heck, if you don't mind playing at 30FPS, then go ahead and maximize everything. .

Although the built-in speaker's brand is Onkyo, I find it lacklustre - average, but since I use ATH-M50 cans, I barely even use the speakers. Not exactly bad, but not the best for gaming, and not very practical for work.

I've yet to encounter driver problems (I've even updated my OS to Windows 8.1), though one thing that bothers me is my USB2.0 devices don't play well with the USB3.0 ports - especially my Samsung Note II. But since USB3.0 gives me better speeds than FireWire 800, I'd rather things stay this way.

In closing, I would like to mention again, that after the initial hiccup, I have yet to encounter a problem with the machine. It has been performing admirably and reliably ever since the GPU replacement. And this is saying a lot because I've only cleaned the fans from dust twice from the day I bought it. Great machine, great service. If I can rate mine out of five, I'd give it 4.5/5. (-.5 because it's heavy as ****)

Hope this helps, and sorry for the spelling/grammatical errors, I'm typing this super fast at work

Hi i am interested to buy this brand, do i need to buy online ? thanks

i think there are resellers. you can ask Prince J about them.

thanks

Thanks for the review, good to know

Dafuq? Prince J is Uncle lai? miahahaha

mai hak dou, lou ban.
everyone can work in that field as long it earns them a living and/or suitable with their interest.

I've always thought he's around our age ~~

hmm.. i juz got my illegear laptop today.. anyone know why is it beeping so loud and all d indicator light is blinking and then forced shutdown by itself lol. but temperature is fine when i check, its beeping so loud and all d fan is running at fast speed, even tried fn+1 to turn d fan off coz i see temp is only around 30-40c. installed all d correct driver and using latest nvidia driver. rs15 lite

This post has been edited by hurtnet: Feb 14 2014, 01:57 AM

Hi hurrnet,

If possible please film a short vid of beeping sound to support@illegear.com it can help us to check the problem.

done

Hi, last night I've email support to ask about the maximum RAM that can be insert into my precious RE-17 (Windows 8, 64 bit). Thanks to the quick customer service reply, it was good to know that it can support up to maximum 24GB and no warranty will be void if the upgrade is taken under care:

However, since I'm lack of knowledge about upgrading a laptop:

1) This laptop used SDRAM or SODIIM?

2) can I use this high performance RAM? I would like to provision two 8GB x 2 of this RAM below :

Vengeance® — 16GB High Performance Laptop Memory Upgrade Kit (CMSX16GX3M2A1866C10)




Spec:

Density: 16 GB (2x8 GB)
Speed: 1866 MHz
Timing: 10-11-10-30
Limited Lifetime Warranty





Otherwise, there are other 1600 Mhz standard version such as:


Vengeance® — 16GB High Performance Laptop Memory Upgrade Kit (CMSX16GX3M2A1600C10)






Thank you for the advice

This post has been edited by Irzani: Feb 16 2014, 04:15 PM

Hey Irzani

The ivy bridge RE-17 can support DDR3/DDR3L 1600MHz ram.

This post has been edited by Prince J: Feb 16 2014, 04:17 PM

Thanks for the reply Prince J. How about this, is it okay?

Vengeance® — 16GB High Performance Laptop Memory Upgrade Kit (CMSX16GX3M2A1600C10) - 8GB x 2

Looks ok.

Note your RE-17 doesn't support 1866MHz ram.

just curious... any plans to have touchscreens + fullHD? or already got such models/ customisation?

hi gamers.

Just a silly question here but it really mean to me.

as you guys are using a gaming laptop, i just wondering, have you guys encountered the same problem like me? Im having a problem of the laptop kept on shutting down while im playing games like crisis 2,3 and nfs rival. Last year, this problems didnt occur, only this year its happen.

im really upset with this problem. =(. Can anyone help me?

Sounds like overheating
You just need to clean the fan/vents and reapply thermal paste

I suppose touchscreen is not that much of a hit on gaming notebooks
Still, I think Prince J will probably consider if there's demand for it, especially for models like the RU-14

true... but having used a few transformer products, i'm really impressed and feel it is the next step... these days, many times i catch myself 'touching' the screen of a non-touch screen laptop and wish some stuff can be just touch interface.

anyway, Prince J contacted me... they do have a touch-screen model. so illegear RU-14 will be one of the models i will be considering. <-- yes, that's the one he mentioned to me with touchscreen.

where can i get the thermal paste?
which fan do you mean? is it the gpu fan? it only has 1 fan.. lol