Disclaimer: I am NOT affiliated with ILLEGEAR in any way or circumstances to do this review.
WARNING : Long Loading time due to huge img size (Prepare your bandwidth)

About
Been using ILLEGEAR RE-15 for more than 2 weeks.
Animation student. Gaming is a plus.

Tech Spec

Hyundai Metallic Crystal White with Automotive Clear Coat

15.6" LG Phillips Full HD LED-Backlit Matte Display (1920 x 1080)

Intel® Core™ i7-4700MQ (6MB L3 Cache, 2.40GHz)

Nvidia GeForce GTX 765M 2GB GDDR5

IC Diamond Thermal Compound - CPU & GPU

8GB Dual Channel DDR3 RAM 1600MHz - 2 X 4GB Team-Elite 1600 RAM

500GB 5400rpm Western Digital Scorpio Blue Hard Drive

DVD-R/RW DL Combo Optical Drive

Realtek RTL8723AE - WLAN & Bluetooth 4.0 Combo

8-cell ion battery

2.7 kg


Price:RM 3817 (Without OS)



Unboxing "THE BOX"



It was a huge box and it seriously got me real excited when i frist picked it up.

The insides


Drivers disc and AC adapter ( smaller and lighter now)


The "Beast"


As usual, equipped with the standard ports, 2 usb 3.0 ports (marked with blue) 1 usb 2.0 , HDMI , e-sata Usb , LAN port ,SD Card Reader , Sound jack (microphone, headphone, speaker) and a lock.



The nice automotive lid.
Touching it just makes up for the quality.







LG Screen and the standard chiclet keyboard.
Keyboard quality is excellent once you get used to it. Build quality is decently good.
The LG screen has excellent contrast for it's price too, see in the next sections.

The laptop is mostly plastic but gives a quality feel with a plated base on top.

The onkyo speakers are decent but a lot people might not like it due to it's trebly sound (which is excellent quality for piano/classic music), can be improved with soundblaster cinema either way, get a subwoober or a headset.

VGA/OPTIMUS mode buttons.
Flight Mode switches ( disables WLAN) quite convenient.

Indicators (4th indicator to the right)
Orange : on Nvidia GPU
Green: On integrated GPU

The weight is standard for most 15.6 laptops. Considered light for it packed performance inside. And anyway, the bulkiness show just how good the ventilation is compared to other laptops

I carry it to college sometimes and it's a bit heavy but bearable coz i carried a 4kg laptop before previously. Most of the time i use it as a desktop at home.
The portability is there and the desktop replacement feature is there.
The RE-15 balances between desktop and mobility.
Get RE-17 for desktop replacements.

PLease dO nOt QQ about Ultrabooks VS this. There is absolutely no relation between RE-15 vs a SIMILAR SIZED ultrabook. You can't compare them. And you will never will. Ultrabooks are ultrabooks.


This post has been edited by johuru93: Oct 6 2013, 10:33 PM

The back Vent. This is the main thing that keeps the laptop cool. (Fan and Heatsink)

Temperature are very obvious at high load in these areas : vent, speakers area.
The keyboard and palm rest and touch pad are mostly minor and not really hot ( below 40~ (30-40)

GAMING



On power supply 100% brightness high performance battery mode

<--- This is with Crysis 3 in the background

Some tech info

Crysis 3
Low AA ALL ULTRA FHD 1920X1080. above 30fps


Devil May Cry 60fps and above Super Smooth perfect.
ULTRA everything other thing MAXED out! FHD 1920X1080



This post has been edited by johuru93: Jul 8 2013, 09:12 PM

UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Tomb Raider
All Ultra FHD 1980X1080 AA disabled Texture filter 1x anisotropic only


THE VERDICT

Let's get back on track shall we.

Price: You pay for what you get and its fair. You want corsair vengence, go get it, You want an extra SSD, get it. Fully customizable to meet your demands and giving adequate price that fits your specification. This baby gives you the best bangs for bucks. Of course, there are competitors such as Lenovo, MSI, Asus, and Alienware or others that may offer better specification for better price, but you must consider several important factors such as cooling or maintainence friendly or warranty issues or even updatability.

Design: As i said, it's a bit bulky and may be unattractive for some people and thankfully the automobile lid saves this point. Keyboard design is actually interesting. To sum it up, it's not a great looking machine like alienware but it's decent. What matters is the inside. Weight wise is standard, don't ask for more cause the cooling system will suffer.

Quality: For most notebooks at this price range, you'd expect the quality to be just decent but The barebones W350STQ has improved from it's predecessors by reducing the plastic in the design.

Sound: IS okay but may be UN-toleratable for some people who can't stand trebles. Instal the Sound blaster Cinema to give it more bass to improve it. Though there are better quality speakers around for this budget. exp MSI ge60/ge40 Asus N/A

Battery Life : 3~ hours surfing or normal load ~ As predicted, it's pretty standard for a 8 cell ion battery on a 15.6 inc screen (4700MQ is on 47TDP unless you ordered 4702 MQ 37TDP then you make a significant difference). i believe it can stay up to 5 hours on power saver and minimal activity. Actually battery life doesn't really matter here, we're talking about powerhouse , most likely you will stay plugged mostly. Gaming will only last an hour. Other activities like hd videos will be around 2-3 hours.


Performance: Nothing to argue here. There is nothing that compares to this beast in performance. Cooling, benchmarks are all excellent even at base specs. Customize it to the MAX and it's perfect.


FULL Detailed review here (same barebone W350STQ/W350ST) :

In conclusion,
I will recommend people to consider illegear, though it's still uncommon and relatively new in the market, ( i've just started )-----We'll see how it goes, so far so good and i'm building my trust with illegear slowly monitoring closely if there's anything wrong.

UPDATE:
-Used + Gaming/Work/Rendering almost everyday for 1 1/2 yr++ (since june 2013) and still perfectly fine.

-No problems.

-Added new Samsung 840 evo SSD easy upgrade to the extra sata port/

- Replaced WD 500gb Blue with Hitachi 7200 rpm 1T drive for faster and more storage.

-RAM ok. GPU ok. CPU ok so far.

- CLEANED THE 4000RPM FAN.

This post has been edited by johuru93: Dec 30 2014, 10:52 AM

Just wanna ask, on the pictures that you've uploaded (6th I think) why is there Windows XP displayed ? Correct me if I'm wrong or mistaken (maybe a different boot or something). Just curious because the next few pictures it displayed other version of Windows. O_O.

Initially i tested installing win xp pro sp3 with it.
But all drivers as of now are not compatible win xp anymore.
Just for research.
For the upcoming models if i'm not wrong , driver disc will only contain sp win 8 ( no win7 anymore)

Photos abit too large bro, might want to "spoiler" them ya

I see I see, so was it fast while running on XP SP3 ? XD

Btw, thanks for the speedy reply, cleared my confusion XD

Of course it was fast lols. Win xp doesn't sp all the drivers lols.
Nothing to run

We provide Windows 7 drivers DVD if customers purchase Windows 7 from us

By the way, thanks for the detailed (photos) review

Np welcome XD. I'm a fan of ILLEGEAR now.
Will continue to monitor closely if there's any problem.

sPOIlere'd a few

Thanks mate
My internet super slow haha, had problems when the photos are large
Just finished reading, nicely written, simple and straight, just the way I like it haha~
Though I have to say that most gaming notebooks are powered with premium speakers nowadays, and most are really good.
I'm not really sure about Onkyo, they don't seem to be very popular (at least I've never really heard of them until the recent ones in budget Toshiba and Fujitsu units)

good spec, but chasis design abit like dell vostro 5460 xD

Really ? Wow, yea. quite close lols

Yea, gotta say comparatively other gaming notebooks have better speakers. Either way, it's a trade off, maybe the RS or RX series with subwoober might beat the cake.

looks amazing!!! hope someday soon i'll be a proud owner of a re-15 as well.

does RE-15 has backlit keyboard ?

the answer is no except RS and RX.

Nice review you have there, well done bro

Hopefully we need more illegear users to start a community.