Want to use your gaming laptop for work and play? With slim bezels, compact chassis, and speedy graphics, gaming laptops have never looked more attractive.
Aftershock’s APEX-15 was designed to compete directly with the latest crop of thin-bezel gaming notebooks. That’s no easy task, and the field is stacked with competitors like the Gigabyte Aero 15X, MSI GS65 Stealth Thin, and Razer Blade.
However, for its price, the APEX-15 brings quite a lot to the table without sacrificing too much. Like the rest of the competition, one of the most attractive things about the APEX-15 is how compact it is for a 15.6-inch laptop. The slim bezels mean it’s closer in size to a 14-inch laptop, so you benefit from the greater screen real estate without having to put up with much more bulk. The aluminum alloy chassis is also lightweight and solid, so this is quite a well-built laptop overall.
That said, one thing stands out, and the APEX-15 is not a Max-Q laptop as you’d expect. This means that the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB in it, is running at full speed. The price you pay for this is subpar battery life. The lack of deliberate optimizations for efficiency and the small 46.74Wh battery mean that it won’t last for long away from a power outlet.
The APEX-15 also features a 1,920 x 1,080-pixel AHVA 144Hz display. This is an IPS-type panel manufactured by AUO, and has similar performance characteristics as IPS displays. Colors appeared reasonably vibrant, and I wasn’t bothered by any bias toward the colder or warmer end of the color spectrum. Viewing angles were good as well, although I’d have liked the display to be a little brighter.
There’s also room in the top bezel for the webcam, which I consider to be a good thing.
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