[section_title title=”Conclusion”] Conclusion
So, what is good about the Gigabyte P27? A few things actually. Firstly even the limited performance is still pretty fantastic to have in a portable package. True, you can’t really play on a gaming laptop with most games without a dedicated mouse, keyboard and/or controller, but the performance of the laptop is still really something. Taking our Tomb Raider results as an example, the only difference between the two highest graphical settings is the implementation of TressFX – something that runs better on AMD cards than Nvidia. With TressFX off you can hit a solid 30FPS with a top level of IQ which is very impressive for a mobile machine.
Secondly, the screen itself is absolutely gorgeous. The clarity of a 1080p on a screen of this size has to be seen to be believed. The screen itself has a nice matte finish and avoids any hard anti-glare coating and colours are great no matter the brightness setting. Due to the high PPI nature of the screen on the P27, I even ran some games at 1600*900 and up scaled they still looked great if you were interesting in looking for some extra performance. Of course, 1080p at this size also makes general computing much more enjoyable. Websites and documents are easy to read and edit compared to the usual low resolution displays we’re used to on notebooks. Having the capacity to display two full size webpages side-by-side is on a laptop is a real eye opener. So props to Gigabyte for the wonderful screen choice.
On the other hand, there are a few satisfactory elements to the P27 which should be better for over a grand’s worth of laptop. The speakers really aren’t anything special for the price. The keyboard has an average feel to it when typing and there is only a 2.4GHz WIFI radio on-board. These aren’t game breakers by any stretch and you’ll be more than likely needing to wear headphones whilst using the P27, but then buying any laptop in this price range should have these areas covered without any questions asked. The fact that these areas feel skimped out makes it harder to justify the price tag.
At £1100 the Gigabyte P27 is certainly well in the fight where gaming laptops are concerned. The specs on paper should deliver solid visual and performance at the gaming standard of 1080p and Gigabyte wrap their product up in a sleek and well-designed chassis. There is the small matter of the actual performance of the P27, though, and it just isn’t up to snuff to be quite frank. Gigabyte need to go back to the drawing board and re-examine their cooling solution and change the components around to better fit the rather large TDP envelope. Including a full-fat i7 is extremely nice, make no mistake, but it just isn’t needed for a gaming laptop and on where the thermal envelope is so easily exceeded. I can’t help but shake the feeling that if Gigabyte had opted for a more reasonable CPU where thermals are concerned that actual FPS and benchmark results would ironically, be better.
Asking £1100 from someone for a system that can’t maintain its stock level of advertised performance is laughable at best. There is no way that, on the performance of this review, the P27 can be recommended in it’s current state.
[ratings”]
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Performance
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Design
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Value
Summary
For the first 10 seconds that the P27 does what you’ve bought it do it is brilliant and worthy of its price. The remainder of your session however is plagued by less than acceptable performance due to a bad thermal routing and design.
