PC Specialist Defiance III Review

Performance Analysis

We'll start with the game tests as these are what you'll be primarily concerned with forking out £1,300 for a gaming laptop. We've ditched Battlefield 4 from our benchmarks, as we have done from our main graphics testing, but to add in a comparison for previous laptops, we've kept Crysis 3 for now. We've introduced Fallout 4, but this is the first laptop we've used it with, so we only have desktop card results. However, seeing as this mobile GTX 1060 is almost identical to its desktop counterpart, this isn't actually a terrible idea.

So, starting with Fallout 4, the PC Specialist Defiance III managed a minimum and average frame rate of 48 and 60 respectively. That compares against a desktop card in a more powerful system, which dished out 55fps and 67fps. That's a sizeable performance drop on the part of the laptop, but we can't forget that our desktop system has a much more powerful CPU - something we've seen add a fair few points to a Unigine result before in certain situations, but also down to the fact that the mobile part is slightly downclocked both in boost and base clock. So realistically, these numbers are actually pretty much what we expected, and essentially identical to a desktop GTX 970, which in turn was roughly equivalent to a GTX 980M.


This was at 1080p mind you - not the Defiance III's native resolution of 3K, and ramping up to 2,880 x 1,620 saw the minimum frame rate drop to 25fps - our lower limit as far as being playable goes. This is a fantastic result given the highly demanding nature of the scene we use, and dropping a couple of detail settings would easily see 30fps here on the minimum. This seems to be a much better resolution for laptop gaming - a 4K screen is overkill for a 14in or 15in laptop, but 3K still offers that boost in sharpness without annihilating the graphics card or requiring a magnifying glass to read anything on the screen.

Crysis 3 revealed that the Defiance III performed a tad slower than the MSI GS43VR Phantom Pro, albeit practically within the margin of error for frame rate recording and still just tipping over 60fps minimum at 1080p. If you're prepared to accept lower frame rates then gaming at the native 3K resolution is definitely possible - we saw 32fps and 36fps minimum and average respectively - perfectly playable and obviously that bit sharper than running outside of the native resolution.


Unigine still seems to underperfom with the mobile GTX 1060. We expected a 5,000 point result here, which is what we saw with the desktop card, and while it was a substantial seven percent faster than the MSI GS43VR Phantom Pro, which may have suffered from throttling issues, its score of 3,333 was still a lot slower than what we expected. At the moment with this synthetic test, we can only assume the lack of CPU grunt has something to do with it as the GPU temperature barely rose above 70°C during testing - well below throttling levels and this was backed up by GPU-Z which reported a fairly constant boost clock of a little over 1,700MHz. Once again, though, our game tests were pretty much as expected and the GPU temperature was similar here too, so for now we'd feel confident in saying that in games, you'll likely reap the rewards of the GTX 1060.

Elsewhere, the CPU performed as expected with the Core i7-6700HQ, although it did have the measure of the mostly identical MSI GS43VR Phantom Pro in most tests, possibly due to better cooling. Battery life was unsurprising too - the larger higher resolution screen compared to the 14in MSI was always going to lead to less time away from the mains and as expected, the Defiance III managed 45 minutes on battery in Unigine Valley - 16 less than the MSI, and also 25 minutes less in the less demanding PCMark 8 Conventional Battery Test, at just over three and a half hours.

The SATA 6Gbps SSD was never going to set our benchmarks alight, but we respect PC Specialist's decision here not to be lavish and opt for a PCI-E M.2 drive in a sub-£1,500 machine. You get more speedy solid state storage and even save some cash compared to opting for something like a Samsung SM951, which costs more for half the space. The Samsung SSD 750 Evo performed well and there's always the option of using the vacant M.2 slot for a super-fast SSD upgrade in the future when prices come down a bit.

Noise-wise, the unit was actually one of the quieter mid-range gaming laptops we've reviewed. It spins up under load in games for sure, but the noise is a comfortable one rather than screaming. The underside temperature was reasonable too - certainly warm but not singe-the-hairs-on-your-legs warm.

Conclusion

The Defiance III's weight and occasional mediocrity in screen performance are the only stand out concerns in what is otherwise a powerful, flexible and upgradable chassis. Battery life is reasonable and adding more weight for a bigger battery may have pushed it towards being too heavy for a mid-range machine. As it stands, it will fit into most standard rucksacks easily and it's not too much of a lump to carry around.

The chassis is solid and attractive, we love the keyboard and touchpad and performance outside of Unigine Valley is excellent, plus it can even manage to play some demanding games at its native 3K resolution too. Possible upgrades using PC Specialist's online configurator would be a PCI-E SSD and GTX 1070, but you'd see limited gains from the SSD and the GTX 1070 would only be worth it if you want to game at 3K with frame rates above the 25-30fps minimums we saw with the GTX 1060 at very high settings. On a side note, the BullGuard antivirus included was highly intrusive - make sure you disable that option in the menu, or delete it as soon as your shiny new Defiance III arrives so you can enjoy it in peace.