This laptop is smaller and lighter compared to most others considering
the powerful specs it’s packing. It’s known as the MAX-15 from Eluktronics in the US,
and sold here in Australia as the Vapor 15X from Aftershock.
You can customize it when ordering and check updated prices with the links in the description.
The build quality feels nice, it’s got a silver magnesium alloy finish
on both the lid and interior, and no sharp corners or edges.
The weight is listed at 1.7kg and mine was around this or 3.9lb,
then 2.6kg or 5.8lb with the 230w power brick and cables.
It’s on the smaller side for a 15” gaming laptop with these specs, coming in under 2cm thick.
It’s got a 15.6” 1080p 240Hz display, no G-Sync or FreeSync though. There’s an option in the
BIOS to enable or disable optimus though, and this will give a performance boost in games.
I’ve measured the average grey-to-grey response time at 4.6ms, there’s a link
in the description if you need an explanation on these numbers.
It’s one of the best response times out of the laptops that I’ve tested,
and only just below the 4.16ms needed for a 240Hz screen.
I’ve tested the screen with the Spyder 5, and got 98%
of sRGB, 71% of NTSC, 76% of AdobeRGB and 76% of DCI-P3, decent results for a gaming laptop.
My panel was right on 300 nits at 100% brightness with a 520:1 contrast ratio,
so although quite low for the contrast I can’t say I noticed it and brightness was average.
Backlight bleed was minor, I never noticed it when viewing darker content,
but this will vary between panels.
There’s a 720p camera below the display in the middle, and it’s got IR for Windows Hello,
though you have to tilt the screen back so it can see you to unlock.
As the camera is down the bottom your fingers do kind of get in the way a bit while typing, and
you’ve got to push the screen back to actually get yourself in frame. Here’s what it sounds like when
we set the fan to full speed, so it’s not doing a great job of isolating my voice over the fans.
The keyboard has 4 zones of RGB backlighting which lights up all keys and secondary functions.
There’s 4 levels of key brightness which can be controlled using the keyboard shortcuts
or software. I liked typing with the keyboard, it felt nice and tactile,
here’s how it sounds to give you an idea of what to expect.
The glass precision touchpad is smooth and worked alright,
but I’m testing the larger 17” at the same time and that one just feels much better.
It does a decent job of hiding fingerprints and dirt as it’s not matte black, and the
smooth surface makes cleaning easy with a microfiber cloth.
The weight distribution felt good, allowing for one finger opening, and the screen goes
a fair way back. Keyboard flex was only minor when pushing down hard, it feels quite solid,
there was some flex to the lid but it is on the thinner side, it felt sturdy enough.
On the left we’ve got a Kensington lock slot up the back, air exhaust vent,
USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A port and separate 3.5mm microphone and headphone jacks.
The right has a MicroSD card slot, two USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-A ports and an air exhaust vent.
The rest is on the back, from left to right there’s a USB Type-C port
with DisplayPort output and Thunderbolt 3 support, HDMI 2.0 output, gigabit ethernet,
and the power input. The front has a little groove in the middle to aid opening the lid,
as well as an RGB light bar which can be customized through software with the keyboard.
Both display outputs connect directly to the Nvidia graphics,
but Type-C cannot be used to charge the laptop.
Underneath has plenty of air vents towards the back half of the machine,
and the rubber feet do a good job of preventing sliding on my desk. It’s easy to get inside,
just take out 11 Phillips head screws and the panel basically comes right off.
Inside we’ve got the battery down the front, two M.2 slots above it on the left,
two memory slots in the middle, and WiFi 6 card to the right of that.
Plenty of shared heatpipes and VRM coverage up the back for cooling.
The two speakers are on the left and right sides towards the front.
They sound about average, not too clear at max volume, there was a little bass,
but also some vibration or distortion at max, and the latencymon results weren’t too bad.
It’s powered by a 4-Cell 62Wh battery. I’ve tested it with RGB lighting off,
background apps disabled and screen at 50% brightness. The battery life wasn’t great,
pretty bad given the size compared to others. This is something I’ve seen with
other Tongfang laptops prior to BIOS updates, so I would expect this to improve over time.
Let’s check out thermals next.
The control center software lets you change between three different performance modes,
which from lowest to highest are office mode, game mode and beast mode. Office
mode lets you pick different fan profiles or set a custom fan curve, and also toggle ECO mode.
Game and beast modes also give you the option to enable fan boost to max out the fans.
None of these modes applied any GPU overclocking. By default
undervolting is allowed through the BIOS, and you can also undervolt through BIOS.
The idle temperatures were fine with a 21 degree Celsius room,
stress tests were done with the Aida64 CPU stress test with stress CPU only checked and
the Heaven GPU benchmark run at the same time, while gaming was tested playing Watch Dogs 2.
I might have gone a bit overboard on the testing here. Basically office mode
seems to limit the CPU to an 80 degree thermal throttle cap, game mode increases this to 85,
and then beast mode boosts this to 90 degrees. This means it’s not possible for the CPU to
rise above 90 degrees Celsius, which I think is good even if it means some thermal throttling,
personally I’d prefer it to not get hotter but that’s me. The GPU was thermal throttling at 86
in the game with beast mode enabled though, this was only removed with the cooling pad.
These are the clock speeds for the same tests just shown. There’s not that big of
a difference in beast mode with the game running with the cooling pad,
so the GPU thermal throttle must have been small. GPU speeds were only really lower in office mode.
I also didn’t see much difference with or without ECO mode enabled, more on that soon.
CPU speeds rise in game mode because the thermal throttle cap increases, then again in beast mode
for the same reason. Setting the fan to max speed didn’t change anything because it was already
running at full speed under both of these tests. The undervolt almost gets us 300Mhz extra clock
speed, then the cooling pad helped out more as again, thermals are the limit to more performance.
I don’t think this is too bad when we remember that this has an 8 core Intel processor and
115 watt RTX 2060 graphics in a 15 inch chassis that’s thinner and lighter than most other laptops
I’ve covered. You’ve also got the option of upgrading to better thermal paste when ordering,
and realistically more than 4GHz over 8 cores for an Intel based laptop is a good result.
The 2060 had no problems running at its 115 watt limit regardless of the performance mode in use.
We can see that office mode regardless of whether or not ECO was ticked seems to cap at 25 watts,
otherwise the CPU power is limited by the thermal throttle limits for each
mode. With good cooling though, it’s possible to surpass a 55 watt TDP,
which I think is good as other laptops will cap this arbitrarily to 45 watts as per Intel spec,
leaving performance on the table for lower temperatures.
Here’s how CPU only performance looks in Cinebench with the GPU now idle. ECO mode is actually making
a difference now, as we saw earlier it didn’t seem to do much in CPU plus GPU workloads like gaming.
I found game mode and beast mode similar in terms of CPU performance, so it looks like the
only difference may be the thermal throttle limits of the processor as noted earlier.
When we compare the best result against others, it’s doing very well for a 10875H laptop,
the best single core result I’ve seen anyway and ahead of all the Ryzen laptops,
though the multicore performance is being beaten by those 8 core 4800H machines above it.
The middle of the keyboard was warmer when idling compared to most laptops I’ve tested,
but it was hardly warm to the touch. It starts approaching hot in the middle with the stress
tests running in the same lowest office mode. It’s not too different in game mode,
still quite uncomfortable in the middle and up the back. It’s the same deal with
the highest beast mode, but the left and right sides are much cooler comparatively,
no problems playing a game and resting on WASD. Let’s have a listen to the fans.
The fans were still audible at idle, then when under load I found no difference to fan volume
whether in game mode, beast mode, or enabling fan boost,
so it was always at max regardless during these tests.
Now let’s check out how well the Vapor 15x
performs in games and see how it compares with other laptops.
I’ve tested Battlefield 5 in campaign mode at ultra settings, and the 15x is highlighted in
red. It’s just 1 FPS ahead of the only other 115 watt 2060 I’ve tested in the MSI GL65,
which is just below it, though the 1% low is almost 9% higher presumably due to the
better processor, and there’s not that much of a gain to be had from the 2070 machines above it.
These are the results from Far Cry 5 with ultra settings in the built in
benchmark. This test depends more on the processor, which is probably why
it’s now ahead of the more powerful 2070 in the Dell G7 just below it.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was also tested with the games benchmark tool with the highest setting
preset. The average frame rate was the same as the 115 watt 2060 in the GL65 in this more GPU
heavy test, just a few frames behind a 2070. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, after the
2060 you really start getting into diminishing returns for the amount of money you’re spending.
Now for the benchmarking tools, I’ve tested Heaven, Valley, and Superposition from Unigine,
as well as Firestrike, Timespy and Port Royal from 3DMark,
just pause the video if you want a detailed look at these results.
I’ve used Adobe Premiere to export one of my laptop review videos at 4K.
Lower times are better here, and the 15X is similar to other RTX 2060 laptops tested.
I’ve also tested Premiere but with the Puget systems benchmark
which also accounts for things like live playback, and the 15X is doing quite well,
though there are some Ryzen options with lower powered GPUs that do better.
The results were similar in Adobe Photoshop, this tends to be more of a CPU focussed test,
however it’s one of the lower results from a 10875H laptop.
I thought it would do better due to the higher power limits.
DaVinci Resolve is more GPU heavy,
though it’s basically the same as the 65 watt Max-Q 2060 in the ASUS G14 just above it.
I’ve also tested SPECviewperf which tests out various professional 3D workloads.
I’ve used Crystal disk mark to test the 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD,
and both reads and writes were great, though this will vary based on drive selection when ordering.
The microSD card slot was also doing ok, and the card sticks out a little when inserted.
For updated prices, check the links in the description, as prices will change over time and
you can customize when ordering which will affect the total. At the time of recording, the Vapor
15X starts from $2160 AUD, but you can get $50 off with code ‘JARRODSTECH’. This config just has one
stick of memory, I definitely recommend upgrading to dual channel for the performance boost.
In the US they don’t seem to offer the 115 watt 2060 option,
instead opting for 2070, 2070 Super, or 2080 Super Max-Q.
So to conclude, the Vapor 15x offers great gaming performance due to the higher wattage
2060 graphics and 8 core processor, especially for the size and weight of the machine. If
you’re after a good mixture of portability and power then this one is worth considering.
As a result of that combination, it can get hot to the touch in the middle,
but the WASD area and sides were cool. The internals are capped to different thermal
throttle limits based on the mode in use which I think is a good way to prevent it getting hotter,
and you can get further improvements with some undervolting or a cooling pad.
CPU performance was great, especially for single core,
though multicore was still behind cheaper Ryzen options, but that’s just the current state of
Intel 10th gen mobile processors when it comes to rendering workloads like this.
The screen was great for gaming, 240Hz with low response time,
good colour gamut for some content creation, brightness was average but contrast was low,
at least when I measured it, I can’t say I noticed it myself when using it.
The main issue I had was with the battery life,
but I’ve found similar problems with tongfang laptops in the past prior to BIOS updates,
so that will probably improve over time based on the size of the battery.
Anyway let me know what you thought about this laptop down in the comments, and if you’re new
to the channel then get subscribed for future laptop reviews and tech videos like this one.