PC Specialist Cosmos II HD review

The Cosmos II HD comes with plenty of ports, including two USB3 ports, two USB2 ports, one of which doubles up as an eSATA port, VGA and HDMI video outputs, a multi-format card reader, a Gigabit Ethernet port, a DVD rewriter and separate headphone and microphone jacks. Our sample also had a 1TB hard disk, which gives you lots of space for your files.

The only minor disappointment was the laptop’s 15.6in screen. Its 1,920×1,080 resolution looked razor sharp, but its overall image quality left a lot to be desired. We measured a contrast ratio of just 281:1, which is one of the lowest scores we’ve seen from a laptop, so images weren’t very detailed in our high contrast test shots. This wasn’t helped by the screen’s poor black levels. We recorded a black level reading of 1.02cd/m2, which is much higher than usual. This meant our solid blacks were practically grey in our subjective image tests, and we also noticed a very slight amount of backlight bleeding in the top corner. You’d have to strain your eyes to see it on a daily basis, though, and we certainly didn’t notice it while watching films either.

Fortunately, the laptop’s colour accuracy was much more promising, as our colour calibrator showed it was displaying 78.5 per cent of the sRGB colour gamut. This is above average for a laptop of this price, and our reds, greens and blues all looked deep and vibrant.

The Cosmos II HD’s battery life was also good for such a power hungry laptop, as it lasted 5h and 6m in our light use test with the screen set to half brightness. Most gaming laptops only last around four hours, although playing games on the move will drain this much faster than writing Word documents, for example.

The PC Specialist Cosmos II HD has its flaws, but we’re willing to overlook them in the face of its fantastic value. You’d be hard pushed to find a quicker laptop with such a powerful graphics chip at this price, so if you want greater graphics performance than the Best Buy-winning Asus X552CL, the Cosmos II HD is for you.