The Eluktronics MAX-15 and MAX-17 are similar 15 inch and 17 inch gaming laptops, but there
are some important differences between the two you need to know about. In this detailed
comparison I’ll look at pretty much everything to help you decide which one is right for
you.
The major specs of both laptops I’m testing here are the same. Both have an Intel i7-9750H
CPU, Nvidia RTX 2070 graphics, no Max-Q here, 16gb of memory in dual channel, and a 500gb
NVMe M.2 SSD. As per the name, the MAX-15 has a 15” screen and the MAX-17 has a 17”,
both are 1080p 144Hz IPS panels.
They’re both the same in terms of network connectivity too, they’ve got gigabit ethernet,
WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.
You can configure them a bit differently though, the MAX-15 also has the option of RTX 2060
graphics, while the MAX-17 also has that, but also the option of GTX 1660 Ti. You can
find examples and updated prices linked in the description.
Both laptops are made of a magnesium alloy, the build quality of both was solid. The MAX-15
is silver, while the MAX-17 is all matte black. The 15 has the Eluktronics logo on the lid,
while the 17’s is all clean. The interior of both is the same colour as the exterior,
again all metal build.
As you’d expect, the MAX-17 weighs more than the MAX-15, it’s around 500g or 1.1lb
heavier. Both have a 230 watt power brick, the only exception is the MAX-17 with GTX
1660 Ti, which has a lower powered 180 watt brick.
Likewise, the MAX-17 is of course larger to accommodate the bigger screen, however the
thickness is almost the same for both.
As for screen differences, the MAX-15 was slightly better in terms of colour gamut and
brightness, however the panel in the MAX-17 had better contrast, and neither have G-Sync.
Backlight bleed was minimal but about the same in both, but this will vary between laptops
and panels.
Both laptops have a 720p camera with IR support for Windows Hello down the bottom below the
screen.
Screen flex was similar in both, and they both felt fairly sturdy due to the magnesium
alloy build.
Keyboard flex was similar and minimal on both when intentionally pushing down hard, again
the metal body of both was quite solid.
The membrane keyboards in both appear to be exactly the same, and I liked typing with
either. The layout looks the same, and I even measured them at the same dimensions. They
both have 4 zones of RGB backlighting which illuminates all keys and secondary key functions.
They both have an extra button next to the power button above the keyboard which can
be used for cycling between the different performance modes, more on those soon.
Both have glass precision touchpads. They’re both fairly sized, but the one in the MAX-17
is larger. The one in the MAX-15 was noticeably better to use. I thought the MAX-17 pressed
down a bit strange in the far front corners.
Fingerprints and dirt didn’t really show up much on either due to the matte finish,
however the silver of the MAX-15 did a better job in that regard, but both were easy to
clean due to the smooth finish.
Let’s check out I/O differences, I’ve got the MAX-17 on the bottom and MAX-15 on
top. On the left both have a Kensington lock, air exhaust vent, USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A port,
and 3.5mm mic and headphone jacks. The MAX-15 also has its ethernet port here, the only
difference.
The right is identical, both have a MicroSD card slot, two USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-A ports and
another air exhaust vent.
The rest of the I/O is on the back, both have a HDMI 2.0 output, USB Type-C port, and power
input. The differences are that the MAX-17 on the bottom has Thunderbolt 3 while the
MAX-15 on top does not. The MAX-17 has its ethernet port here, while the MAX-15 has two
mini DisplayPort outputs, the 17 has none.
Both laptops have a RGB light bar on the front, and this can be customized through the software.
Underneath is quite similar with both, they’ve just got air intake vents towards the back
half of the machine. They both open up extremely easily, just take out 11 Phillips head screws
and the bottom panel comes right off.
The internal layout is pretty much the same with both laptops. There are two m.2 slots
for storage, two memory slots, and a WiFi card. The only real noteworthy difference
is that the larger MAX-17 has a bigger battery.
The speakers on both laptops are found on the left and right sides towards the front.
Listening to both side by side, the MAX-17 was noticeably better, it had more bass and
also got louder with the sound at maximum volume, the MAX-17 also gave better results
when it came to latencymon.
As mentioned the battery in the MAX-17 is larger, it’s a 6 cell 91 watt hour battery,
while the MAX-15 has a smaller 4 cell 62 watt hour battery. I’ve tested both with the
screen brightness set to 50%, background apps disabled and all RGB lighting off.
While just watching YouTube videos, the MAX-17 lasted for 7 hours 9 minutes, while the MAX-15
lasted for 4 hours 55 minutes. For the specs, the MAX-17 is offering seriously impressive
results compared to the other models I’ve tested. The MAX-15 is about average, and still
better compared to most others with this spec, however as soon as I unplug it while gaming
the frame rate wasn’t capable of running at 30 FPS like the other machines tested.
Based on my test, if you’re looking at gaming on battery power, I can’t recommend the
MAX-15, however the 17 was ok. I’m not sure if this is just a one off issue with my machine
though.
Next let’s take a look at thermals. Both laptops were tested in an ambient room temperature
of 21 degrees Celsius. Inside the heatpipe design looks the same, with three shared between
the processor and graphics.
Both laptops let you select between three different performance modes, which from lowest
to highest are office mode, game mode, and turbo mode. Office mode lets you select between
three fan profiles or customize the curve, while game and turbo modes let you enable
fan boost which sets the fan to max speed. Both laptops were also undervolted by -0.05v
by default out of the box.
These are the CPU temperatures of both machines while under combined CPU and GPU loads, we’ll
check the GPU results after, so for now just keep in mind these are CPU only results but
for combined loads. The idle temps on the CPU were the same. Stress tests were done
with the Aida64 CPU stress test and Heaven benchmark at the same time, and gaming was
done playing Watch Dogs 2. Both laptops have the same thermal throttle caps on the CPU,
so there’s an 80 degree limit in office mode, 85 degree limit in game mode, and a
90 degree limit in turbo mode. Interestingly with the cooling pad in use on the MAX-17,
I found the thermal throttle limit would rise an additional 5 degrees, and while gaming
with the cooling pad I was able to prevent thermal throttling for the first time on the
MAX-17.
These are the CPU clock speeds while running these same CPU and GPU heavy tests. In pretty
much all cases, the larger MAX-17 was performing better than the MAX-15. Although both are
thermal throttling at the defined limits, the MAX-17 seems to suffer a bit less due
to the larger chassis.
When we look at the GPU temperatures for these same combined CPU and GPU workloads, the smaller
MAX-15 was generally warmer. This wasn’t always the case, but for the most part the
bigger MAX-17 was a little cooler.
These are the GPU clock speeds from these same tests, and the RTX 2070 in the larger
MAX-17 was hitting higher clock speeds in all instances. The difference was even larger
when actually playing a game in game mode or turbo mode, so it will be interesting to
see how gaming performance compares, we’ll check that soon.
Here’s what we’re looking at in terms of Cinebench R20 scores from both machines
with turbo mode enabled. Both at stock and with the same undervolt applied, the MAX-15
was slightly ahead, both in single core and multicore performance, however it was extremely
close.
As for the areas where you’ll actually be putting your hands, they were both quite similar
when idling. With the stress tests going, the MAX-17 appeared to be just a little warmer,
and then this was the same with game mode enabled. With the highest turbo mode enabled,
the MAX-15 was now a bit warmer, but realistically the differences would be hard to notice.
Here’s how fan noise sounded during these tests.
Both were audible at idle, however the MAX-17 ran a little quieter. With the stress tests
going, office mode was now a little louder on the MAX-17, and then all other modes of
operation were about the same in this test with no real noticeable difference. Both laptops
were already hitting maximum speed in game or turbo mode with the fans set to auto, which
is why I didn’t bother testing fan boost separately.
Let’s compare some games next. Both laptops were tested in turbo mode with fan boost enabled
for best results, using the same version of Windows and Nvidia drivers.
Red Dead Redemption 2 was tested using the game’s built in benchmark tool. Like the
other graphs, I’ve got the larger MAX-17 shown by the purple bars, and the smaller
MAX-15 shown by the red bars, and the MAX-17 was performing a little better at all setting
levels.
Battlefield 5 was tested in campaign mode, and the results were a little closer together
here, at least at the higher setting presets where there was no major difference between
the two laptops.
Control was tested by running through the same area of the game on both machines, and
this time the larger MAX-17 was ahead at all setting levels, with almost a 3% higher average
frame rate at high settings.
Apex Legends was tested with either all settings at maximum, or all settings on the lowest
possible values, as it doesn’t have predefined setting presets. The 144 FPS frame cap was
being hit at minimum settings, so no difference there, but with everything maxed out the MAX-17
had a nice 7% performance boost.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare was tested in campaign mode, and I’ve also tested it with
the settings either maxed out or at minimum. The MAX-17 was ahead here, with almost a 3%
higher average frame rate at max settings.
Rather than talk through the rest of the games which will take forever, I’ll just quickly
skip through the rest of the results, as I tested 20 games in total at all setting levels.
Feel free to pause the video if you want to take a longer look at any of these graphs,
but basically the summary is that the MAX-17 is pretty much always coming out slightly
ahead in gaming performance.
On average over these 20 games tested, the MAX-17 is 3.7% faster in terms of average
FPS when comparing tests done with the highest setting preset. This makes sense as both the
CPU and GPU were performing a bit better in the MAX-17 during the thermal testing. As
you can see, it really varies based on the specific game. Some saw basically no change,
while others had much larger differences. Once we average everything out though, less
than 4% isn’t too meaningful, hardly anything you’ll actually notice while playing in
any case, but technically the MAX-17 was consistently performing better.
I’ve also got the scores for the 3DMark Fire Strike, Time Spy and Port Royal benchmarks.
Unlike the games, the MAX-15 was just slightly ahead in all of these tests.
Outside of gaming, I’ve also tested Adobe Premiere video exporting. In this test, the
MAX-17 was just 5 seconds faster at exporting one of my laptop review videos at 4K, so no
real major difference. The RTX 2070 also didn’t seem to matter too much here, given other
GTX 1660 Ti based laptops were performing similarly.
I’ve tested storage with Crystal disk mark, and the performance in both was about the
same, which makes sense given both of my laptops have the same model of 500GB M.2 NVMe SSD
inside. Results will vary based on the storage you select when ordering though.
The MicroSD card slot performed similarly, however there was more of a difference in
write speed.
Now for the final difference, the price. You can check updated prices using the links in
the description. At the time of recording, the configuration with RTX 2070 graphics that
I’ve tested here goes for $1600 USD for the MAX-15, or $200 more to get the same specs
in the larger MAX-17. They’re both also available with RTX 2060 graphics for $200
less, while the MAX-17 has the option of stepping down further to the GTX 1660 Ti for another
$100 less.
Finally let’s summarise the differences and similarities between these two machines
to help you decide which you should get.
The obvious difference is the MAX-15 has a smaller 15 inch screen, while the MAX-17 has
a larger 17 inch screen. The screens in both were quite similar though in terms of colour
gamut and brightness. Some people really do prefer having a larger screen when they travel
though, so the 17” could be worth it there.
This size difference puts the MAX-17 500g or 1.1lb heavier than the MAX-15, however
when compared against other gaming laptops with this level of hardware inside, both are
significantly lighter in comparison.
The specs in both were otherwise essentially the same in terms of CPU, GPU, memory and
storage, however the MAX-17 does differ by having a 1660 Ti option which the MAX-15 is
missing.
The layout of the internals was much the same, however the MAX-17 was able to fit a larger
6 cell 91Wh battery compared to the smaller 4 cell 62Wh battery in the MAX-15. When comparing
both of these to other laptops with the same specs, they’re both doing very well, however
battery life with the MAX-17 was next level. Unfortunately my MAX-15 didn’t handle games
too well on battery power, so if this is something you want to do you might need to consider
the MAX-17, assuming this wasn’t just an issue with my unit.
As the MAX-17 is larger and heavier, it has more cooling capacity, despite both being
about the same thickness. This was shown by the 17 both performing a little better during
the temperature testing, and also and also coming out ahead in games. The end result
was that when testing out 20 different games at maximum settings, the MAX-17 was 3.7% faster
than the MAX-15 on average.
Personally I don’t think this is enough of a difference alone to pay $200 more for
the MAX-17 as I doubt you’d be able to actually notice the difference in most games, but it
does have an edge there.
The touchpad on the MAX-15 was much better to use than the one on the MAX-17 in my opinion,
I found myself getting annoyed with the 17 in some instances.
The I/O was similar with both laptops, however the MAX-15 has two mini DisplayPort outputs
while the MAX-17 has none, however the MAX-17 has Thunderbolt 3 which the MAX-15 is lacking.
The speakers on the MAX-17 sounded better than the 15 in my opinion, there was a bit
more bass and they also got louder too.
Otherwise the overall metallic build quality of both was similar. The MAX-15 has a silver
finish with the Eluktronics logo on the lid, while the MAX-17 is all matte black with a
completely clean finish.
Personally I’d pick the MAX-15. You can get it with the same specs for a couple of
hundred dollars less money. I don’t play games or need amazing performance on battery
power, and I prefer a smaller and lighter machine as I only actually use it when travelling.
Not having Thunderbolt isn’t an issue for me when travelling. The larger battery from
the MAX-17 would be nice to have, but for my use case that benefit doesn’t outweigh
having a larger and heavier machine. The MAX-17 is slightly cooler and performs a bit better,
but as we saw that difference was fairly small for the most part, I don’t think it’s
worth making the decision purely based on that. I think it makes more sense to compare
the size, weight, price, and small feature differences when deciding.
So which of these two gaming laptops would you pick, the smaller Eluktronics MAX-15 or
larger MAX-17? Let me know which you’d get and why down in the comments, I’m interested
to see which you would prefer, and if you’re new to the channel consider getting subscribed
for future comparisons and tech videos like this one.