Eluktronics N850HP6 Pro-X Gaming Laptop - Intel Core i7-7700HQ Quad Core Windows 10 Home 6GB GDDR5 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 15.6” Full HD IPS Display 128GB PCIe NVMe SSD + 8GB DDR4 RAM

Coming from an Acer Predator 17 (G5 series) and an Alienware 15 R3, this laptop is an excellent gaming alternative and I’ve opted to return the other two and keep this one.My intentions of buying a laptop was: Portability, high gaming, aesthetically pleasing.I was originally looking for the best bang for my buck so I bought an Acer Predator 17 (G5 series) for $1100 at Microcenter. Although that was a beast in specs and build quality, it was ultimately a desktop replacement. It reeked gamer laptop so I couldn’t casually bring it to work with its bright red/black design. It was also very heavy and bulky and even my largest laptop backpack had trouble fitting it.Then I bought an Alienware 15 R3 for its reputation, for $1400. Excellent alternative to the Acer Predator and slimmer too, but I was not a fan of its cooling system and it was definitely still on the bulky/heavy side. The fans would run high and was extremely noisy during gameplay. I drowned it out with headphones or use its excellent speakers but I could always tell it was there. I also disliked its keyboard, how there’s no space inbetween the keys and you couldn’t see the backlight too well in daylight settings (others love their keyboard, to each their own). I did love the LEDs surrounding entire laptop but couldn’t see them half the time unless I’m looking at the laptop from a distance.After much research, I’ve only heard good things about Eluktronics/Sager/Clevo, so I took a chance and bought this laptop. Boy does it impress me.DESIGN: Very sleek and thin profile gaming laptop, plastic materials. Gentle contours throughout the laptop so it isn’t a flat plastic look, unlike the very plastic’y Asus ROG. Also love the plain color scheme for business settings, but can amp up the RGB keyboard for personal settings. I can take this to Starbucks and not stand out.PERFORMANCE: The version I bought doesn't have a SSD so you WILL need to replace the given HDD, this is mandatory. I got a Crucial SSD for $50 on sale and that was the bottleneck, it basically is a different machine with a SSD. (It’s a straight forward process but you need to be careful when removing the back panel to access the HDD bay as this is a thin profile laptop).Doesn’t have the same GTX 1060 video card as the Acer Predator or Alienware but it still plays all my games on high/ultra settings at 1080p (Diablo 3, Starcraft, CSGO, Street Fighter 5, many more) and get fluid play. No regrets with downgrading.COOLING: I would say it’s pretty noisy like the Alienware but the fans seems to run less frequently on this (to me it seems). It’s normally cool/lukewarm otherwise so I’d say it gets the job done. I didn’t run any Temp tests. For the record, Acer Predator has the best quiet cooling system.DISPLAY: Love the IPS display for wide viewing angles and color accuracy. I compared this to my friends Acer Aspire VX 15’s IPS display and we both agreed this is slightly better. Although the Acer Predator and Alienware’s IPS displays are definitely brighter/crisper than this. This display is more than acceptable.KEYBOARD/TOUCHPAD: Keyboard’s layout is standard and acceptable and has quiet clicks. The RGB colors are very bright but can be dimmed or turned off with dedicated keys. For touchpad, it’s responsive and left/right clicks has a satisfying feedback. I love that I can use the two-finger gesture to navigate a page diagonally, as well as up/down.DISLIKES: I’m nitpicking here. 1) keyboard is a little mushy, the keys are ever so slightly wobbly 2) no LED light indicator for Caps-Lock or Num-Lock 3) personally I find the placement of Volumes/Display-brightness keys placement odd. 4) Speakers do suck, slightly better than my iPhone 7 Plus speakers, although very similar. Don’t let these dislikes sway you, I am finding things to complain about (except speakers, below acceptable).In conclusion, for $899, it is a very high quality built system and I can’t recommend it enough.

Laptop is exactly what I wanted with a few small issues that don't cost a star.Pros:Screen is excellent. Very usable in brightly lit rooms. Although I haven't used it outside I'm sure it'll work just fine.I have this laptop hooked up to two external 1080p monitors and it is driving all 3 screens without any issues.This computer replaced a Dell Inspiron 17 7000. While that one has similar specs, it only has one cooling path for CPU and GPU so video card is basically unusable. As soon as it reaches 70C, it reduces GPU speed by about 70%. Eluktronics has separate cooling paths so it allows the video card to perform to its full potential.Keyboard is on par with every other laptop I've used and backlight is evenly distributed.Battery life is more than adequate. You get about an hour of gaming or about 4-5 hours of light usage with NVidia GPU off.Eluktronics include an awesome Samsung NVMe OEM SSD with specs on par with their top consumer SSDs.Support is very responsive and were able to answer a few questions I had quickly and professionally over phone and email.Cons:The only real con is that USB-C port doesn't support Thunderbolt so it is not compatible with Thunderbolt docking stations. That means I have to plug in 3 cables instead of one for 2 monitors and a USB dock. Not a huge problem to be honest.

Other than the blue screen of deaths caused by the touch pad driver, this laptop is great. Updating the drivers to their latest version does not fix anything. Since this is a windows driver issue, you would probably be fine with this laptop if you install linux instead.Now what seems to have worked for me to prevent the BSODs (I've gone for two weeks without a BSOD now. I'll update my review again in a few more weeks to let everyone know if its still fixed):1. click start2. open device manager3. expand Mice and other pointing devices4. double-click the synaptics touchpad5. click the driver tab6. click 'update driver'7. accept the driver provided by windows. This changed my BSOD error from one thing to another. I don't know if it was a necessary part of the fix, but afterward the continuing BSODs were caused by something outside syntphelper.exe, so certainly something changed.8. open powershell as administrator9. cd 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Hotkey\Driver\'10. .\HKFltrSetup.bat -u11. exit12. zip up 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Hotkey\Driver\' to back it up, and remove the original files.13. restart your systemIf it were not for the BSOD issue, this would be a 5 star review, but the BSODs are utterly unacceptable and the laptop came with no instructions about how to fix the BSOD issue.By the way, what the steps above did were to update the synaptics touchpad driver to a version that was not provided by eluktronics (its different from the one provided on eluktronics website). Then we uninstalled HKFilter, which is apparently something provided by Eluktronics. I'm not certain on this one where HKFilter actually comes from.