For hard-core gamers, Origin and it’s usually excellent products clearly needs no introduction. And any attempt by yours truly to do so would be plain fatal! For those lucky few of you who got a magnificently capable Origin PC Evo15 gaming laptop under the Christmas tree, kindly accept my hearty congratulations mixed with gargantuan envy. If you don’t have this beast yet, but are surely ready to fight a tiger single-handed to get one, then this short Origin Evo PC gaming laptop review is for you and intended to whet your appetite and motivate you further.
You definitely won’t find any glamorous eye-candy exterior that looks like it belongs on an alien warship or in the ruins of the Halo Forerunners on the Origin PC Evo. Its case is perfectly normal and functional, and unless I patiently dismantle it and show you the graphics card and other hardware, you might find it difficult believing what this baby can actually do. Plus it’s amazingly slim, and weighs just 4.3 pounds! Which seriously belies it’s desktop graphically-competing abilities.
The display is a 15-incher, with a perfectly acceptable resolution of 1920 x 1080. Watching videos, not to mention playing games on such a vibrant and endlessly colorful screen is a real pleasure that takes some getting used to. OS is the Windows 10, 64-bit edition and comes with all the normal functionality you might reasonably expect.
But enough, let’s get to the real meat of the matter. And what a really tasty meat it is! I mean the graphics card of course. Powering everything is a single desktop-equivalent Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 that comes VR ready out of the box. Which means that we are in potentially very exciting times with VR headsets like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive loudly calling out your name like an irresistible siren and begging to be picked and slipped over the noggin to splendid effect. With such a very capable card, I had no problem whatsoever playing practically any game at high settings, nor should you.
Ports aplenty are available and include: 3 yes THREE USB 3.0 ports, one USB 2.0 port, HDMI and mini-display port, Ethernet jack, USB-C port, as well as thoughtfully separate headphone and microphone jacks. Battery juice is average in performance when gaming, therefore expect around an hour cheerfully shooting up the world in Call of Duty before the battery gets run down. Speakers do output reasonably acceptable audio, but it’s really best to get a headset for optimum usability. Cooling fans are effective, but noticeably loud. Which for me was effective in serving notice to everyone in close proximity at the local coffee shop that the laptop I was proudly rocking was a souped-up monster that delights in ripping through games with toothsome jaws.
At present, only a single configuration is available, priced at $2099. For such a king’s ransom, you get an Origin PC Evo with an Intel Core i7-6700HQ processor that does battle at 2.6GHZ. Along with 16GB of RAM, 256GB SDD, 2TB HDD that spins at 5,400 RPM, and of course the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060. Bluetooth 4.0, and Wi-Fi 802.11ac make up the rest of the rather savory menu.
The price and the battery performance are the only thing I can find fault with on such a gaming laptop. With an excellent screen and a mightily capable -and VR ready- graphic card it hits all the right spots sweetly. If you can afford it, go get it. If not, the Easter bunny might still gift you a copy!