the electronics rp15 is the best
ryzen-based gaming laptop i've tested so
far
but it's not without its faults in this
review i'll show you
everything this machine has to offer and
help you decide if it's worth it the
rp-15 comes with eight core ryzen 7
4800h processor
nvidia rtx 2060 graphics which can boost
up to 110 watts with electro boost
and 144hz screen my review unit came
with 32gb of memory and dual channel and
2 terabytes of ssd storage
but you can configure these things and
more when ordering
if you buy without windows or dbrand
skin it starts from eleven hundred and
forty us dollars
which sounds quite reasonable for this
hardware let's find out if that's the
case
the lid is normally a clean matte black
metal but mine has the optional dbrand
skin applied and the interior is a matte
black metal
the overall build quality felt okay and
there were no sharp corners or edges
anywhere it wasn't a premium feeling or
anything
like the more expensive mech 15 g3 but
it doesn't come off as cheap feeling
like other plastic machines
the weight is listed at 4.3 pounds or
just under 2 kilos
and mine was a little under this with
the 180 watt power brick and cables for
charging included the total rises to 5.9
pounds or 2.7 kilos
the rp-15 isn't too big for a 15-inch
gaming laptop
especially with the level of power
available and this smaller footprint
results in nine-millimeter screen bezels
on the sides
the 15.6 inch 1080p 144 hertz screen has
a matte finish
unfortunately there's no freesync and
the integrated graphics can not be
disabled
i recorded average grader grey response
time at 4.8 milliseconds
there's a link in the description if you
need an explanation on what these
numbers mean
here's how the response time stacks up
to others i've tested
so one of the best results overall and
the best out of the ryzen options
i've tested the screen with the spyder 5
and got 98
of srgb 68 of ntsc
73 of adobe rgb and 73
of dci p3 at 100 brightness i measured
the panel at 305 nits in the center with
an 850 to 1 contrast ratio
so some decent results there for a
gaming laptop backlight bleed was good
too but this will vary between laptops
and panels
there was some screen flex when
intentionally pushing it but it wasn't
excessive and it felt fine during
regular use
the hinges are out towards the corners
and it felt sturdy enough there was no
screen wobble while typing
there was some keyboard flex when
intentionally pushing down hard but i
never noticed any stability issues
during normal use
it was just possible to open with one
finger but this may not be the case in
the production model as it's got a
larger battery down the front
as a result of the thinner bezels the
720p camera is found below the screen
it's got infrared for windows hello
support but you have to tilt the screen
back for it to actually see you
the camera and microphone aren't great
and as it's a nose cam your fingers do
kind of get in the way and to get
yourself in the frame you could put the
screen pretty far back
this is what it sounds like if we set
the fan to maximum speed
[Music]
so you can still hear me okay over the
fan noise the keyboard has rgb
backlighting which is customized as one
single zone
there are limited effects available in
the software or you can set the whole
thing to a color of choice
key brightness can be adjusted between
four levels or turned off
and all keys and secondary key functions
are illuminated
some might not like the smaller right
shift key but overall i really liked
typing on it the keys felt a bit clicky
here's how it sounds to give you an idea
of what to expect
the power button is above the keyboard
on the right there's also a button to
quickly swap between the different
performance modes
more on these soon the precision
touchpad clicks down anywhere
feels smooth and works fine you can
double tap the top left corner to lock
it and the size was reasonable
using most of the available space
fingerprints show up fairly easily on
the matte black interior but as a smooth
surface they're easy enough to clean
with a microfiber cloth the stock lid is
probably the same but with the d-brand
skin
i didn't notice any on the left from the
back there's a kensington lock air
exhaust vent gigabit ethernet
usb 2.0 type a port and 3.5 millimeter
microphone and headphone jacks
on the right from the front there's a uh
s1 sd card slot
2 usb 3.1 gen1 type a ports and another
air exhaust vent the back has two more
exhausts towards the corners
then from left to right two mini display
ports and hdmi outputs
type c port no thunderbolt or type c
charging here and power input
i confirmed that both the hdmi and mini
displayport outputs were connected
directly to the nvidia graphics
the type c does not have display output
underneath there are plenty of air
ventilation holes towards the back half
of the machine
a stark contrast when compared to the
tough a15
getting inside involves taking out 10
phillips head screws of the same size
and the panel was very easy to remove
inside we've got two m.2 slots on the
left
two memory slots in the middle wi-fi
card to the right and battery down the
bottom
now my review unit shipped with a
smaller 47 watt hour battery however
electronics will be selling the rp-15
with a larger four-cell 62 watt-hour
battery
i happen to have the max 15 here which
has the same 62-watt battery that the
rp-15 will ship with
so i've used that to do my battery
testing i've tested with screen
brightness at 50
background apps disabled and keyboard
lighting off the battery life was pretty
standard while playing a game
then in my youtube playback test it was
looking decent the speakers are found
towards the front on the left and right
i'd say they sounded a little above
average there was some bass but a little
vibration in the palm rest at max volume
i thought they sounded loud enough maxed
out and the latency mod results were
looking decent
let's check out thermals next this will
be more of a summary as i've got a full
detailed video covering thermal
performance linked in the description
the gaming center software lets you
select between different performance
modes
which from lowest to highest to office
mode game mode and turbo mode
in office mode you can also toggle
standard or eco which lowers the cpu
power limit
while game and turbo modes have a fan
boost button to set the fans to max
speed
turbo mode also enables electro boost
which should get the rtx 2060 boosting
up to 110 watts
but none of the modes apply to any gpu
core or memory overclocks
software doesn't report the boost from
90 to 110 watts on the gpu when you
enable turbo mode but by monitoring the
power draw from the wall it was possible
to see the difference
plus the gpu gets hotter too and clock
speed rises as a result of the increased
power
thermals were tested with a 21 degree
celsius ambient room temperature
idle results down the bottom were a bit
warm but no issues there
worst case stress tests were done with
the ada64 cpu stress test with cpu only
checked and the heaven benchmark at the
same time
while gaming was done with watchdogs too
office mode with eco enabled was the
coolest
changing from eco to standard increases
the temperatures as fan noise stays the
same
but power limits increase so better
performance at the expense of more heat
but still not really hot yet
in game mode the cpu gets hotter due to
further increase to the power limit but
the gpu gets a bit cooler as a result of
the increased fan speed
in turbo mode the gpu was actually
thermal throttling at 86 degrees celsius
at least in these particular workloads
so whether under stress test or with
this game
and as a reminder this is the electro
boost mode it was possible to lower the
temperatures by around 15 degrees on the
cpu by limiting the processor to base
clock speed or we could instead use a
cooling pad which helped nicely too
thanks to the large vents underneath
these are the average clock speeds while
running the same tests
the gpu clock speed only really changes
once we enable turbo mode
as this boosts the max power limit of
the 2060 up to 110 watts
and it was a little lower prior to
capping the processor to base clock or
using a cooling pad presumably due to
the gpu thermal throttle in turbo the
cpu was otherwise hitting 4.0 to 4.1
gigahertz on all eight cores at stock in
game and turbo modes
a good result when you consider that the
asus tough a15 with same cpu and gpu was
3.5 to 3.7 gigahertz
of course capping to base clock limits
this to 2.9 gigahertz
which was only a little below using eco
mode honestly the gpu in the rp15
still appears to be hitting good speeds
and performing well personally i'd
prefer what we're seeing here compared
to 95 to 100 degrees on the processor
which was the case in the tough a15 and
lg 5sc
not to mention the a15s 2060 was only
one degree behind the rp15
while the g5 was far hotter as the 5600
m seems to have a higher limit
when we look at how an actual game
performs in these modes the cooling pad
only boosted us by one frame with the
gpu thermal throttle removed
so it really does seem to just be a
borderline gpu thermal throttle
otherwise the quieter office mode still
performed quite well comparatively
here's how the different modes perform
in cinebench limiting to base clock
isn't as useful compared to using office
mode as that doesn't cap single core
speed
we can see how much better the rp-15 is
doing against others
it's scoring around 10 percent higher in
multi-core than the next best ryzen 7 4
800 h laptop that i've tested and is
only beaten by much thicker and more
expensive machines
as for the external temperatures where
you'll actually be putting your hands
at idle it was a bit warmer than others
with the stress test going it's warm in
the center but never hot to the touch
and you can see how this changes with
the different modes in use let's have a
listen to how fan noise is affected
it sounded silent at idle the fan was
audible when browsing in chrome
stress tests in standard mode were the
same regardless of whether eco or
standard modes were selected then
game and turbo modes were the same and
maxed out in these particular tests
so no difference if i enabled fanboost
let's also take a look at how the rp-15
compares with other laptops in games
i've tested with turbo mode so electro
boost enabled with max fans for best
results
in battlefield 5 i've got the rp15
highlighted in red
i found it interesting that the asus
tough a15 with the same cpu but lower
wattage gpu was a few frames ahead but i
suppose the a15 does have a small
overclock by default
i mean it's not enough to make a
difference you'd actually notice while
playing
but the rp15 should technically be able
to pull more power to the gpu
the average frame rates in far cry 5
which was tested with the game's
benchmark tool were ahead of the a15
this time
though the 115w 2060 in the msi gl65 was
ahead however there is also a processor
difference there the one percent low
from the rp15 was above
most of the other machines as the cpu
performance in this machine is
excellent as we saw earlier these are
the results from shadow of the tomb
raider with the built-in benchmark at
highest settings
the tough a15 with same cpu and gpu was
just one fps ahead now
again not a difference you'd care about
or notice in a practical sense
if you're after more gaming benchmarks
check the card in the top right corner
or link in the description where i've
tested 20 games in total on this machine
as the display ports connected directly
to the nvidia graphics
i've also tested with an external
monitor to see what sort of performance
improvement is possible
and in shadow of the tomb raider there
was more of a boost at the lower setting
levels
now for the benchmarking tools i've
tested heaven valley and superposition
from unigine as well as fire strike
time spy 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
and the rp15 was a little behind some of
the a15s with lower spec'd gpus but same
cpu
i've also tested premiere but with the
puget systems benchmark which also
accounts for things like live playback
rather than just
export times this time the rp15 was
further ahead and close to much more
powerful and expensive systems
similar results in adobe photoshop i
believe this is more of a cpu heavy test
and as we've seen the rp15 does very
well in this area
davinci resolve was still stacking up
quite nicely as a more gpu bound test
it would appear that the higher wattage
gpu is able to stretch its legs
i've also tested spec view perf which
tests out various professional 3d
workloads
i've used the openvr benchmark to test
the htc vive cosmos elite
and although the rp15 is on the lower
side out of what i've tested so far
the one percent low was decent and still
no issues playing half-life alex
only the alpha 15 and below struggled
there i've used crystal disk mark to
test the storage
despite the two one terabyte drives in
my unit being the exact same model
the right speed on one was much better
than the other not sure what the deal
was there
you also have the option of enabling
raid through bios
the sd card slot was on the lower side
but i still prefer having one at all
compared to not
and the sd card sticks out a fair bit
when inserted alright with all that in
mind let's conclude by summarizing the
good and bad parts of the electronics
rp15
gaming laptop to help you decide if it's
worthwhile overall the rp15 is a good
option for the money and is the best
ryzen-based gaming laptop that i've
tested so far
it's not perfect and there are some
issues but compared to the tough a15
safaris g14
or dell g5sc the compromises that have
been made may be preferable
the screen has better color gamut and
response time compared to those other
ryzen machines
and there was basically no bleed in my
unit it's unfortunate that there's no
freesync like most other amd based
laptops
but apparently this was one such
compromise in order to get a panel with
decent brightness
colors and response time i think the
trade-off is worth it the performance in
games was good but lower than i expected
with a 110
2060. in most games i tested the rp15
was similar to other 2060 laptops
which means it's still quite good and
able to take on any game with good
settings
outside of gaming and cpu heavy tasks
the rp15 is on another level performing
significantly better compared to other
ryzen laptops due to high processor
power limits
despite these higher limits the cpu
doesn't get too hot either
under combined cpu plus gpu load it was
often cooler than those other machines
the gpu did thermal throttle a bit in
turbo mode in the heavy workloads i
tested
but it wasn't by much and given it was
only one degree warmer than the tough
a15 with lower 91 2060
i still see this as a better option as
the processor is much cooler it's super
easy to improve cooling too due to the
large vents on the bottom
so a stand or cooling pad will help out
far more compared to the a15 with
minimal ventilation
it's nice to have this as an option
without having to resort to removing the
panel
the only thing i didn't personally like
was the nosecam with windows hello it's
a bit awkward to move the screen into
the right spot to log you in
but really that's a minor detail the
build quality was fine
not anything impressive and there's some
flex to it if you go out of your way to
push it
but for an 1140 us dollar entry level
price
you're getting some serious power and in
particular due to the better screen
a better gaming experience compared to
other competing ryzen machines i've
tested while also being cheaper
let me know what you thought about the
rp15 gaming laptop from electronics down
in the comments
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