Scan Graphite 3XS LG15 review

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.