Anyone have experience/suggestions for GIGABYTE P25W-CF4?

[weissbier]

Hi all!

I'm in the market for a medium to high end gaming laptop. I would like to have a 15inch screen or smaller (so it's quite portable) but pack enough punch to max out settings on games for a few years @ decent resolutions. I've been reading up on it & it looks like the GIGABYTE P25W-CF4 is a solid (best?) option at $1400 w/ a GT 770M card, i7 4700MQ core, and 128gb SSD but can't find many firsthand experiences with it. Anyone have thoughts on this rig? Other options to consider or recommend? The few reviews there are say it's nice but aren't always "10/10 buy this now!"... Thanks!

 

[Notda004]

Hey man I had the exact same problem u did I ended up taking the plunge and buying without being fully informed. Mine should be here sometimes today post what you want to know and I will tell you to the best of my ability. I bought the p25w-cf4

 

[vbuggy]

It's a great package on paper - I know I hovered over it for a while, but those who actually know how laptops should be put together seem to have real build quality issues with the P25W. It appears also to have a fundamental design fault around the optical drive in that the laptop doesn't have enough structural integrity to hold together around that area. Still again, it's a great package on paper.

 

[weissbier]

Hey guys - thanks for the response.

vbuggy - I know what you mean. We bought a dell M1330 when they first came out & it was (and still is) a great, fast rig and is ultraportable. Unfortunately, due to poor structural design the videochip overheats and dies sooner than later (partially the fault of the videochip, partially the fault of ineffective cooling). You can disable the videochip and the laptop works fine but then you run into issues viewing media.

Notda004- Thanks! Just curious about the laptop in general. Does it "feel" sturdy? In an informal test does it hold up to max settings for current games? Any hiccups with it?

 

[vbuggy]

The M1330 was a dog. It's one of the machines that made me stop buying Dell for a while and the entire XPS notebook range around that time gave me problems like nothing else - and put me off XPS's for years. However, the problem with the Gigabyte appears to be an actual falling-apart issue, and in earlier versions late last year, even in the shipping box.

I've been still quite tempted to pick one up, but since I'd be doing so only out of curiosity in the first place, I figure with the issues some users are consistently reporting it's probably a better ideal to steer clear.

What Gigabyte are trying to do is to pull a semi-Sony and from what I've seen of previous Gigabyte products, no way do they have the build quality to make it properly happen. Hope it works out well for you, Notda004.