Scan Graphite 3XS LG15 review

The enormous Scan 3XS Graphite LG15 has to be one of the biggest and bulkiest laptops we’ve seen outside of Dell’s AlienWare series. It’s 45mm thick and weighs nearly 4kg, but inside this black behemoth is a 17.3in screen with a Full HD resolution, more I/O ports than you could ever need and some seriously powerful hardware.

Our review sample came with a quad-core Intel Core i7-3630QM processor running at 2.4GHz and 8GB of RAM, and it completed our multimedia benchmarks with a super-fast score of 88 overall. This score isn’t that far off our reference processor, the desktop-based Intel Core i5-3570K, which scores 100 overall. This means it’s more than fast enough for everyday applications and more processor-intensive applications such as video-editing suites and music production software.

Its 3GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 670MX graphics processor was equally impressive. It breezed through our laptop Dirt Showdown test, producing an average frame rate of 97.1fps at High quality and a resolution of 1,280×720. It even managed 61fps when we increased the screen’s resolution to its native 1,920×1,080. It struggled slightly when we kept it at a resolution of 1,920×1,080 and increased the quality settings to Ultra, but it still managed 24fps.

It also coped very well with our more demanding Crysis 2 test. It achieved an average frame rate of 22fps at Ultra quality and a 1,920×1,080 resolution, which isn’t smooth enough for comfortable play, but this rose to 54fps when we decreased the quality settings to High. As long as you’re willing to compromise on graphics settings it shouldn’t have any problem playing modern games.

Of course, a powerful gaming laptop needs a good-looking screen, and sadly its display didn’t perform as well as its other components. While we enjoyed the 17.3in screen’s 1,920×1,080 resolution, colours were decidedly on the cool side, which made images look far more washed out than our reference images. Blacks were pleasingly deep and whites were very bright, but this didn’t make up for its fairly poor contrast levels. A lot of detail in our high contrast test photos was simply lost in a mass of black, which could be problematic for games that require you to look at dark but highly detailed environments.

We also noticed a worrying amount of flex in the screen’s frame, particularly when we tilted it back and forward to adjust the viewing angle. This made the screen feel a little fragile, which is a shame considering the rest of the chassis feels so solid and well built.

Typing on the LG15 was surprisingly comfortable. It’s not the prettiest keyboard we’ve ever seen, but the keys had plenty of bounce and gave lots of tactile feedback. We’d have preferred more space between keys given the size of the keyboard tray, but we didn’t find ourselves making many mistakes or hitting the wrong keys. It’s backlit, too, making it perfect for a late-night gaming session.

The touchpad was a little disappointing. Its smooth surface was very responsive and we liked the individual buttons, but we had a tendency to keep displaying the Windows 8 Charms bar accidentally when we tried moving the cursor from right to left. This behaviour should normally only occur if you swipe at the very edge of the touchpad, but here it was happening further into the main area of the touchpad. We also had issues with getting two finger scrolling to work, but other multitouch gestures such as pinch-zooming worked very well.

One thing the LG15 certainly isn’t lacking is a plentiful supply of connection ports. It has three USB3 ports (one of which doubles as an eSATA port), one USB2 port, a multiformat card reader, a FireWire port, a Gigabit Ethernet port, four separate audio jacks and a DVD optical drive. As if that wasn’t enough, it also has HDMI, DisplayPort and dual-link DVI-D graphics outputs. Its 1TB hard disk gives you plenty of space for all your games and media.

You’ll probably want to make use of its audio ports, as its pair of Onkyo speakers produced plenty of overall volume but not enough bass. They’re still a cut above most ordinary laptop speakers, but we recommend connecting a pair of dedicated speakers to get the very best sound quality.

Its battery life is another weakness. It only lasted 4 hours and 15 minutes in our light-use battery test with the screen set to half brightness, and heavy duty tasks such as gaming will drain it more quickly. This shouldn’t be a huge concern, however, as its size and weight rather precludes it from being anything other than a desktop replacement that’s always plugged into the mains.

At just over £1,100, the Scan 3XS Graphite LG15 is one of the cheaper gaming laptops around. It’s good value, but its screen prevents it from being truly outstanding.