This laptop has a thinner and lighter design, but it can still offer excellent performance.
This combination usually means higher temperatures or other compromises though,
so let’s find out if it’s any good!
This Tongfang chassis is sold as the MAX 15 from Eluktronics in the US,
or Vapor 15X from Aftershock here in Australia.
The grayish silver magnesium alloy finish feels nice.
It’s smooth and feels fairly solid while also feeling light.
The front has a subtle RGB light bar, as well as a small indent to help you
get your fingers in to open the lid. The lid doesn’t quite go the whole way back,
but 150 degrees is more compared to most other laptops.
The hinges felt sturdy when moving, and the movement of opening and closing the lid was nice
and smooth, but there was a bit more flex to the thinner lid compared to most other laptops. This
isn’t really an issue alone, but I did also notice that the screen could wobble a bit when typing.
The keyboard felt fairly solid though, even when going out of my way to push down hard.
The laptop weighs 1.7kg or 3.8lb, so quite portable,
and it increases to 2.6kg or 5.7lb with the 230 watt charger included.
It’s on the smaller size for a 15” laptop too and on the thinner side. Not quite as thin as
Razer’s Blade 15, but the Blade also costs $600 USD more, or a whopping $2000 AUD more locally.
It’s got a MUX switch, so you can disable optimus to increase FPS in games,
but there’s no advanced optimus, so you have to reboot to swap.
My configuration has some good mid-range specs,
including full powered RTX 3060 graphics, Intel i7-12700H CPU, and a 15.6” 1440p 240Hz screen.
There’s a 1080p camera above the screen in the middle,
and it has IR for Windows Hello face unlock.
This is how the camera and microphones look and sound, and this is how it sounds
while typing on the keyboard, and as you can see there is some screen wobble happening.
The keyboard has 4 zones of RGB backlighting, and all keys and secondary functions get lit up. There
are 4 levels of key brightness available which can be adjusted with the F6 and F7 shortcut keys,
or through the control center software, which also lets you customize the light bar on the front.
I liked typing on the keyboard, the presses just felt nice and I had nothing to complain about.
The glass touchpad feels excellent. The click just felt great and I found it accurate to use.
The left side has a Kensington lock up the back, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port,
and separate 3.5mm mic and headphone jacks.
The right side has a MicroSD card slot and two USB 3.2 Type-A ports, but slower Gen 1 on this side.
The rest is on the back. From left to right we’ve got a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port with Thunderbolt
4 support, HDMI 2.1 output, 2.5 gigabit ethernet and the power input. Unfortunately
the ethernet port isn’t the preferable way, so you need to lift the laptop to unplug an
RJ45 cable. To be fair, it probably wouldn’t fit the other way due to the thinner design.
Unfortunately Type-C could not be used to charge the laptop, which I think is a bit of a missed
opportunity given this thing is meant to be a more portable and lighter design. That just would have
been a nice feature to have because you wouldn’t have to carry around a bigger power brick.
The Type-C port does offer DisplayPort support though, but if you have optimus on it connects
to the Intel integrated graphics, however if you disable optimus then the Type-C port
instead connects directly to the Nvidia discrete graphics, bypassing optimus.
The HDMI port on the other hand always connected directly to the Nvidia graphics
no matter what, and we confirmed that it could run a 4K TV
at 120Hz 8-Bit with G-Sync, so variable refresh rate support.
All 10 Phillips head screws to get inside were the same length,
and the panel basically came right off without the need for any pry tools. You probably have a
different laptop though, I'll leave a link to the tools I use for opening laptops below the video.
Inside we’ve got the battery down the front, two memory slots just above in the middle,
two M.2 storage slots to the left of those, and a Wi-Fi 6 card on the far right.
The speeds from the installed 1TB SSD were great, but the storage will depend on the
company you’re buying the machine from and what SSD options they have to offer. The
UHS-I MicroSD card slot was alright but not amazing, my card can get close to 300MB/s.
The card sits most of the way into the machine, so less risk of accidentally bumping and breaking it.
The Wi-Fi performance was decent,
just not quite as good compared to a number of other laptops that also have Intel Wi-Fi.
The upgradeability score is also pretty good as the machine is so easy to open and
you can change both M.2 storage slots, both memory slots and the Wi-Fi card.
The speakers weren’t very good though. There isn’t really any bass and they sound tinny,
especially at higher volume levels, but there wasn’t too much palm rest vibration.
The latencymon results were looking a bit better though.
It’s powered by a 4-cell 62Wh battery, not super big, but it is a thinner laptop. Auto refresh
rate was checked in the control center. This automatically lowers the screen’s refresh rate
down to 60Hz when you unplug the charger to save battery, and then it reverses it
when you plug back into power which is why the screen flashes black when it changes.
The battery life wasn’t great, one of the lower results I’ve tested at just over 4
hours. Lower battery life seems to be the case from Intel based laptops in my testing.
AMD Ryzen machines generally last longer, both in terms of video playback and gaming.
Let’s check out thermals next. The CPU uses liquid metal,
and there are three heat pipes shared between the CPU and GPU with two fans,
which exhaust out of both the left and right sides, as well as out the back.
There are plenty of holes underneath for air to get in, and I noticed that the back of the
laptop seems to stick up a bit higher compared to many others, which will help cool air get in.
The control center software lets us change between three different performance modes,
which from lowest to highest are office mode, game mode and turbo mode. Each mode can be
customized and you can save 5 custom profiles within each, and the fan boost button will max
out the fans in any of the three modes. There is also some more granular fan control too.
You can also press the button next to the power button to cycle between the three modes.
Not lit up means office mode, one light is game mode, and two lights is turbo mode.
The SPC settings tab gives you way more customization compared to most other laptops
out there. You can change CPU power limits, and although there appears to be an undervolting
option, it doesn’t seem to do anything as Intel 12th gen H series doesn’t support it. You can also
adjust the TCC offset which basically limits the maximum CPU temperature if you want lower temps,
adjust the default GPU overclock, and even customize the maximum GPU temperature and
GPU power limit. I’ve done all testing here with the default settings for each mode,
which for turbo maxes out both the CPU and GPU power sliders.
Office mode also enables Nvidia whisper mode with a default FPS limit of 30,
but we can boost it up to 60 FPS. If you want more than this then you can’t use office mode.
The internal temperatures were cool when just sitting there idle. The rest of the
results are from combined CPU and GPU stress tests which aim to represent a
worst case full load scenario. Nvidia’s default thermal throttle limit is 87 degrees Celsius,
and this was being hit in game mode, turbo mode, and even turbo mode with the cooling pad.
Remember you can use software to lower the maximum GPU temperature limit from 87 down
to 75 in turbo mode, but that would result in lower performance too, it’s a tradeoff.
The way I see it, Nvidia knows what their hardware is capable of more than you or me,
so I’ve got no issues leaving it at 87, but it’s good to have options.
These are the clock speeds from the same tests. Higher modes equal higher clock speeds,
no surprises there. The clock speeds were a little higher with the cooling pad in use.
Although there was still thermal throttling in this worst case stress test, improved cooling
means more thermal headroom, allowing the CPU and GPU to run at higher power levels.
We can see that the RTX 3060 was running at around 120 watts in turbo mode,
and then basically hitting its 135 watt maximum limit with the cooling
pad. This tells me the thermal throttle with the cooling pad was borderline,
as 135 watts is as good as it gets with the CPU also loaded up. With the CPU idle,
the GPU can max out at 140 watts with Nvidia’s dynamic boost. This is 10 watts higher compared
to 3060 laptops that came out last year in 2021, which were limited to 130 watts.
Here’s how an actual game performs with the different performance modes in use.
Office mode was limited to 30 FPS with Whisper mode, but remember you can boost that to 60.
The CPU power limits are able to go higher when the GPU isn’t being used.
Turbo mode could boost up to 95 watts for example, which results in higher multithreaded performance,
though the single core score was the same regardless of the performance mode.
It’s doing fairly well when compared against other laptops. MSI’s GP66
just below it for example was more than 1000 points lower despite having the same i7 CPU
and it being in a thicker machine. Razer’s Blade 15 is only slightly thinner but much
more expensive, and is losing out on multi threaded performance as a result.
Less space means less cooling, which means lower power limits and lower performance.
Performance drops back when we unplug the charger and instead run
purely off of battery power. The single core score didn’t go down much,
but it’s now one of the lower multicore scores out of the same selection of laptops.
I mean it’s barely ahead of a last gen 6 core CPU in multicore score now. Combined with the lower
battery life shown before, you’ll probably want to plug this laptop in when possible.
Most laptops I test are in the low 30 degrees Celsius range on the keyboard at idle,
and this is just slightly warmer in the center, but still cool feeling overall.
It’s only a few degrees warmer with the stress tests going, but the WASD keys and
numpad stay cool as air comes in through the keyboard. Game mode was warmer in the middle,
but not hot or uncomfortable. Turbo mode was much the same, but again if you’re resting your
hand on the WASD keys playing a game it actually feels cold. Let's have a listen to the fan noise.
The fans were still audible when it’s doing nothing at idle in office mode,
but it’s quiet. It’s louder with the stress tests running, and game mode
wasn’t too different to turbo mode. Turbo mode was already maxing the fans out in this test,
so the fan boost button didn’t change anything.
Just before we get into the game benchmarks, let’s check out the screen,
given it’s what you’re actually going to be looking at when playing.
It comes with a 15.6” 1440p 240Hz screen. There’s no G-Sync, but you can use adaptive
sync to remove screen tearing when optimus is on. The color gamut isn’t super impressive,
so content creators might want to look elsewhere. It doesn’t get amazingly bright either,
but 300 nits at maximum is the minimum I want to see, so fine for indoor use.
The screen could be better when it comes to gaming too. Don’t get me wrong,
it’s fine and you’ll have a great time playing on it, but at 240Hz we’re after a 4.17ms response
time for transitions to occur within the refresh window, and we’re close to 7ms here.
Even the 240Hz panel from the model 2 years ago was faster, granted it's 1080p. It’s
possible that this could be improved with a software update if Tongfang wants to implement
some sort of optional overdrive mode, but I wouldn’t hold out for it.
The total system latency is the amount of time between a mouse
click and when a gunshot fire appears on the screen in CS:GO,
and it’s a middle of the pack result here with both faster and slower laptops out there.
Backlight bleed looks a little patchy,
but I never noticed it during normal use, though this will vary between laptops.
Now let’s find out how well this laptop actually
performs in games and see how it compares against others!
Cyberpunk 2077 was tested the same on all laptops, and I’ve got this one shown by the red highlight.
It’s easily the best RTX 3060 laptop tested so far. This is only the second time we’ve had a
3060 this year with the new maximum 140 watt power limit, but this one has a much higher minimum of
135 watts, so it’s no surprise to see it ahead of the 3060 in the Ryzen based TUF A15. The 1%
low in particular is excellent, so less dips in performance. We’ve got fewer 3060 results
at the higher 1440p resolution, but it’s still coming out as the fastest 3060 tested so far,
granted the gap between it and the TUF A15 just below is smaller now compared to 1080p.
The average FPS was basically tied in Control at 1080p with the TUF A15 now.
The 1% low was a little higher with the Vapor, but not by as much compared to the last game.
Lenovo’s Legion 5i from last year wasn’t far off either, so just goes to show not all games need
the latest hardware. The TUF had a larger lead at 1440p now, and the Vapor was close to last
year’s Legion 5. But none of these are serious differences you would actually notice in practice.
Red Dead Redemption 2 was tested with the game’s benchmark, and it’s back on top out of the 3060
machines now. It’s ahead at 1440p too, but again like we saw in other games, the performance
difference is smaller compared to the TUF with the same tier GPU, despite the fact that the Vapor has
a higher minimum GPU power limit. The TUF is a thicker machine though, and as we saw earlier
in the thermal testing, if both CPU and GPU get smashed thermals can become a limit on the Vapor.
Here are the 3DMark results for those that find them useful, now for some content creator tests.
Adobe Premiere was tested with the Puget Systems benchmark tool. This test seems
to do better with Intel 12th gen laptops, as they’re dominating the top of the graph. Given
it’s basically scoring the same as Razer’s $4000 USD Blade 17, I’d say this is a great result.
Adobe Photoshop likes single threaded performance,
which is why this laptop is closer to higher tier machines with higher GPUs.
GPU power doesn’t matter as much here, but it does matter more in DaVinci Resolve.
Again it’s scoring basically the same as the far more expensive Blade 17, an impressive result,
and quite a bit higher compared to other 3060 laptops with lower minimum GPU power limits.
We’ve also tested SPECviewperf which tests out various professional 3D workloads.
The BIOS might look kind of ancient, but there’s some good functionality
in here. Nowhere near as much compared to MSI’s advanced BIOS,
but you can at least do some memory tweaking - something most other laptops don’t support at all.
Linux support was tested with an Ubuntu 22.04 live CD. By default the keyboard, touchpad,
speakers, camera, ethernet and Wi-Fi all worked. The keyboard shortcuts for screen brightness and
volume adjustment worked, but the F6 and F7 keyboard lighting adjustments did not work.
Let’s discuss pricing and availability next. This will change over time,
so refer to the link below the video for updates and current sales.
At the time of recording, in the US you can pick up this machine for $1900 USD at Eluktronics,
so definitely a bit more expensive compared to other 3060 based laptops. That’s just
the way tech works though, smaller and thinner machines with good performance increase cost.
If you’re in Australia and trying to buy from Eluktronics, you’re looking at over
$3000 AUD, so you’re much better off just buying locally from Aftershock.
Not only will you get local support, but the same machine is $550 less. Actually $600 less,
because you can get $50 off if you use code “JARRODSTECH” when buying.
All things considered, this is a nice and portable gaming laptop design,
but a thinner machine does mean there are some compromises.
The first would be that the screen had a bit of wobble
and the lid had a bit more flex compared to others, but it’s not too bad.
There was CPU and GPU thermal throttling when under heavy load,
but I don’t really think this is a big deal considering the performance in games and
apps was often better compared to most other thicker RTX 3060 laptops that we’ve tested.
I expected more from the screen, an overdrive mode to lower the response time would have been nice,
otherwise the color gamut is lower than I’d like for content creation, but fine for gaming.
Battery life wasn’t great, and performance on battery was lacking too. I would have loved
to see Type-C charging as an option as that would help increase the portability factor.
Those are the few negatives I’ve got with this laptop. Ultimately no laptop is perfect
and it comes down to finding something where you can live with the downsides.
And honestly these negatives that I’ve mentioned aren’t really that serious.
For most people, the lack of battery life is probably the main one, but if you’re always
going to be using the laptop around a wall socket then it doesn’t really matter. This is definitely
a machine that I can recommend if you’re after a smaller and more portable 15 inch laptop.
Of course as long as you’re happy paying that bit extra in order to get the extra portability.
Should you buy a laptop with an Intel CPU though? Maybe AMD is better for whatever you’re doing.
The differences are actually quite big this year. Check out one of these videos next to
find out all of the differences. This one compares gaming, where we’ve tested
21 different games and 1080p and 1440p, while this one compares apps and programs,
so things like video editing. I’ll see you in one of those next!