As I wrote in previous post I’m going to write something about this new computer I bought because even before I left the Czech Republic I knew that I will have to buy one as the old one is not good enough for what I started there. For a long while I’ve been thinking about ThinkPad from Lenovo and those you can get in Canada also cheaper. But then after many hours of browsing through reviews and stores I have decided to get computer from Canadian manufacturer Eurocom as soon as it they will introduce it to the market as this model starts at August 1st, 2013 and so I have ordered Eurocom M3 (it was named Monster 3.0 before they started to sell it).
This company is building gaming and powerful laptops but you can choose from different options what should be in yours and this will then influence the price. For me it was an easy calculation for now I couldn’t get configuration which will fulfill my needs and ideas how should mine laptop looks like and if I want to get close to this I would pay way more with any classic brand.
So that’s enough for introduction now lets see what I have here, it’s 13.3″ big laptop with matte Full HD (1920 x 1080) matte IPS display which looks really nice in such a small screen (anyway my phone have HD on 4.7″ :-)) but I understand that those resolutions are not for everyone. Then there is fourth generation (Haswell) mobile quad-core processor from Intel in my case it’s i7-4800MQ on frequency 2.7 GHz, discrete mobile graphic card Nvidia 765M with two gigabytes of own memory, eight gigabytes of RAM which keeps me with one free slot for further extension. Also it contains 750 GB hard drive and two free mSATA slots for SSD (they haven’t had any 120GB SSD on stock so I will get one of those later) and as operation system I choose Windows 8 Pro so I could learn to work with this system as well. Everything packed in quite nice body which weight two kilograms with battery and it can stay on battery for approximately five hours. Everything for a bit less then $1,300.
In most reviews I’d read about computers of this company you will see that their design is poor. However, I’m satisfied how this model looks and those decent indication LEDs which are not disturbing and gray-black combination on body make together good looking computer. Anyway for me it wasn’t important at all, if you want to see how this computer looks like the best is to check page of the manufacturer.
If we stay with build quality there is nothing could complain. Everything is made of plastic but it fits together and there is no creaking. The lid could be twisted a bit and also once you push on back you can make some ripples on the screen but you need to use some strength to do that and most of the laptop will do the same if they aren’t made of metal or have somehow strengthen body. The lid can be open to approximately 120 degrees. The M3 feels like durable notebook.
If we look for a ports then on the left side is one USB 2.0 and jacks for headphones and microphone and ventilation exhaust, on the front is only SD card reader and on the right side we have rest of available connectors, a Kensington lock hole, AC power jack, RJ-45 Ethernet port, VGA, HDMI and three USB 3.0 ports.
There is no optical drive and I have inside wireless card 802.11 a/g/n 2×2 Intel Centrino Advanced N 6235 with Bluetooth 4.0.
The keyboard has a back-light which you can regulate in three steps, it’s one of those chiclet with extra spaces between keys and it’s easy to type fast and accurate on it.
Touchpad has classical construction with two buttons and big enough to provide comfort control, anyway I use external keyboard and mouse because I’ve computer lifted for better ergonomy.
As I said at the begging this display has really nice picture and colors are pretty nice but as I don’t own any tools to measure it I have to live with that that I like it :-).
Two speakers are located at back corners and on chassis is written they are from Onkyo and I can say they have nice sound and are loud enough so far I haven’t been forced to get external speakers but I would get one probably later as you still can get better sound from something bigger.
In case of performance I’ve been surprised what you can get in a such compact case as I would say that even the graphics card is pretty powerful at the only game I have tried so far – Lineage 2 it seems to have the same performance as one in mine two years old desktop computer I’d left at home and even under load the noise from fan is not too loud and temperatures are not getting high.
I’m not going to provide here any benchmark results as you could find those components tested at many different sites and I guess I will reach similar numbers and they are not really saying anything to me. In my opinion for the money there is no competitor in this size and I would bought this one again if I haven’t one already :-). I hope this post might help someone to decide even though it’s not a super-technical or something but I didn’t found any review yet of this laptop.
If I would any good reason I might write something in future as for now I have this computer just for a three weeks.