Eluktronics Mech-15 G2R Pro-X Laptop Review

The Eluktronics Mech-15 G2R Pro-X enters the gaming scene with nothing but top of the line components, assembly and performance. It packs a modern Core i7-8750H processor, the latest in Nvidia RTX cards (Nvidia RTX 2070), 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. Just like its predecessor, the Eluktronics Mech-15 G2, it continues the struggle with a 15.6 inch Full HD LED-backlit display that shoots bright and crisp images. An impressive on-paper specs list and performance for both productivity and gaming propels it to our Editor’s Choice list of budget gaming laptops.

Pros

  • Remarkable 144Hz Full HD display
  • Great overall performance
  • Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 graphics card
  • Plenty of ports including USB-C
  • RGB backlit keyboard

Cons

  • Poor battery life
  • Lacks Thunderbolt 3 port

Eluktronics is among the first OEM companies to update its gaming laptops with the newly released RTX 20 series graphics card. Our unit on review is the Eluktronics Mech-15 G2R Pro-X laptop, a 15-inch compact laptop in the gaming scene.

You might recognize the Eluktronics Mech-15 G2R Pro-X laptop’s aesthetics and design prowess because it isn’t new at all. It is an older model of the No products found., an identical laptop that Eluktronics had on the shelves recently. It’s new sibling now ships with the iconic RTX 20 series graphics card that offers a significant performance boost.

To be precise, the unit flaunts a GeForce GTX 2070 GPU and an Intel Core i7-8750H processor. It initially packed a GeForce GTX 1060 GPU. In this review, we find out what changed versus what remained the same and also what performance boost the Eluktronics Mech-15 G2R Pro-X receives as a result of the RTX 2070.

Buy the Eluktronics Mech-15 G2R Pro-X.

Eluktronics Mech-15 G2R Pro-X Specs

Display15.6-inch IPS Full HD (1920 x 1080)
Refresh rate144Hz
Processor 8th Gen Intel Core i7-8750H
RAM16GB DDR4-SDRAM (2666MHz)
Storage128GB SSD
Graphics CardNvidia GeForce Gtx 2070 w/8GB GDDR6 VRAM
Connectivity802.11ac Wi-Fi/ Bluetooth 4.2
Operating SystemWindows 10 Home
Dimensions14.13″ x 9.29″ x 0.86″
Weight4.5 pounds
Battery life3 – 4 hours (4-Cell 62.36Wh Polymer)

Design and Features

The Eluktronics Mech-15 G2R Pro-X has some reputable components that you will love for their performance and a mechanical keyboard. But its versatility does not end there, it stretches to its design and aesthetics. The Eluktronics Mech-15 G2R Pro-X expands its portfolio with a low-toned chassis with few hints of gamer design on its vents. I liked the silver brushed aluminum chassis it comes enshrouded in.

The case is smooth with a logo embossed at the center and gamer exhausts at the back and sides of the laptop. There are two muscle lines but they don’t really bring out the gamer theme as other gamer themed laptops in the industry. For the most part, the Eluktronics Mech-15 G2R Pro-X embraces a modern business and casual laptop look.

To be precise, the chassis is bought from a third party vendor meaning Eluktronics did not build or design it. They rather have personalized it and made it in their own liking. Eluktronics used the Tongfang GK5CN6Z barebone for this laptop, a similar one used by other OEMs like the Overpowered laptop (owned by Walmart) and Schenker’s XMG Neo 15.

At 14.13 x 9.29 x 0.86 inches and weighing 4.5 pounds, this 15-inch laptop looks and feels like a full-fledged gaming laptop. That’s in terms of weight, being that gaming laptops are often a bit bulky and heavy. Compared to competition such as the Acer Predator Helios 300 (10.5 x 15.3 x 1.1 inches, 5.51 pounds) and the Asus ROG Strix Scar 2 (14.2 x 10.3 x 1 inch, 5.29 pounds), our unit has a smaller footprint and should be lighter on your back.

Displays

The display also has a few niceties of its own. It offers a 144Hz Full-HD (FHD) panel (LGD05C0) which is common in some laptops in the gaming industry, for instance, the Razer Blade 15 or the Gigabyte Aero 15X. There is also a 60Hz configuration available if you want to go a bit lower on the display options. Moving on, you get an ultrafast 3ms gray-to-gray (GTG) response time, 98% sRGB, 70% NTSC and 75% AdobeRGB. As far as screen brightness goes, this display offers 300 nits which is a decent average that should allow you to outdoor and dimly-lit-room use.

Because the display panel is In-Plane Switching (IPS), viewing angles are wide on clear on acute corners. That makes it a great display for watching movies, handling multimedia and gaming.

Related: Best laptops for Finance Majors

Ports

The Eluktronics Mech-15 G2R Pro-X has plenty of ports to offer. The highlight of the port system is a USB Type-C port located at the backside (behind the display) of the laptop. That’s good news for users looking for reliability as the port can transfer of data (not Thunderbolt 3 meaning can’t charge and transfer). On top of a USB 3.1 Type-C port, it also houses an HDMI x 2.0, two Mini DisplayPort (v1.4) and a DC power jack that uses 120watt brick. The left side is home to a Gigabit Ethernet RJ45, Audio out & Mic In and a Kensington lock slot.

The right side has a few options including two USB 3.0 ports and a 4-In-1 Card Reader. There are some awesome looking exhaust vents on this side that give the laptop a beastly look and aid in the cooling.

Performance

The Intel Core i7-8750H processor has featured in several laptops since its release last year. More so, it has proved itself a worthy replacement over its predecessor, the Kaby Lake Core i7-7700HQ. Intel included 2 extra cores to this processor making it a multi-threaded tasks workhorse and consequently boosting its performance by 50%.

With its six cores, the i7-8750H makes everyday use a walk in the park. Thanks to it, most apps open instantly, navigating Windows is a breeze and web browsing is fast. For the most part, the Eluktronics Mech-15 G2R Pro-X powers through most tasks with relative ease.

With this Coffee Lake processor, Intel reduced the base clock speed in attempts to increase single-core performance. The i7-8750H manages a high of 4.1 GHz on single-core performance, a major improvement from the 3.8GHz on 7700HQ. Also, it pushes the limits of two core performance to 4.1GHz and 4.0GHz on all four cores. On all the 6 cores, it pushes the performance down to 3.9GHz. That’s an impressive improvement from the 7700HQ’s 3.4GHz on all four cores. I’ve simplified this in the table below:

 Single-core2-cores4-cores6-cores
i7-8750H4.1 GHz4.1 GHz4.0 GHz3.9GHz
i7-7700HQ3.9 GHz3.4GHzN/A

Finally, just for your information, the i7-8750H also comes with 9MB of L3 cache.

Memory and storage

The processor significantly brings in better performance improvements in productivity workloads; especially the multi-threaded (thanks to the extra cores) ones. Additionally, you can handle more multi-threaded work, apps, software, and games because of the 16GB memory available.

Usually, 8GB is excellent for Windows, most casual tasks and games. It’s the ideal memory amount recommended for most people. 16GB, on the other hand, is best for professionals who use software and perhaps even hardcore games playing demanding games. So, as is, the Eluktronics Mech-15 G2R Pro-X fits the bill for whatever you might want to throw at it. If that’s not enough, you can opt to upgrade up to a 32 GB limit.

Moving on, in terms of storage, the Eluktronics Mech-15 G2R uses a 256GB solid-state drive as its boot drive. The solid-state drive write speeds are fast and it helps to make opening heavy apps fast and load times short. You can opt to boost the storage with a mass storage 1TB hard drive option. The HDD should come in handy for storing media files, data, music, movies, and the occasional games.

Gaming Performance

For gaming performance and handling intensively graphics workloads, Eluktronics swapped out the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 for a GeForce RTX 2070 graphics card. But if you want the old system, Eluktronics has reserved No products found. on their website and on Amazon. The GTX 1060 is a common GPU among mainstream to high-end gaming laptops, so I suppose that’s why it was considered as a configuration option.

In performance circles and benchmark scores, the Nvidia RTX 2070 outscores the RTX 2070 Max-Q GPU on the Razor Blade 15 laptop. It also has improved performance compared to the GTX 1070 and the RTX 2060. Meanwhile, it shows 50% better performance than the Nvidia GTX 1060 GPU.

This translates to better frame rates when playing modern AAA games. In essence, you should expect to see more than 60 FPS in most games while playing. The 144Hz also comes in to play when gaming at high graphics settings. It helps images become smooth and reduces motion blur during your gaming moments.

To get a good feel of how good the RTX 2070 is, it helps comparing it to other GPUs. The RTX 2070 generally outperforms the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 and is a just a few percents shy of the RTX 2080 Max-Q. That said, the RTX 2080 is the only GPU in the lead (as of this year 2019). According to Anandtech, the RTX 2070 brings around 75% of the RTX 2080 and around 83% of the RTX 2080’s 1440p performance.

That means the two cards are almost the same with little differences here and there. One great thing we loved about the RTX 2070 is that its capacity for 4K performance on external monitors (it brings 82% of the RTX 2080’s 4K performance). And secondly, it sports some hard acceleration nitty-gritty, like real-time Ray tracing, that adversely affects the clarity of images and gaming (in a positive way).

Backlit RGB Keyboard

One of the considerably impressive aspects of the Mech-15-G2R Pro-X is its RGB backlit keyboard. Aside from being RGB, the keyboard deserves praise for being mechanical therefore highly gamer-friendly. The keyboard design is simple with flat keys, number pad and special keys for turning the fan and turbo mode on. You can easily adjust the light effects through the Gaming Center, that is, the keyboard backlight and LED light bar.

For the keyboard backlighting, the center allows you to choose whichever lighting you prefer both for individual keys and multiple keys. You can have a set of keys pulsating on one color and another set in a completely different one. This sets a great tone for gaming if you’re one to game in a dimly lit room.

Yes, it’s got value.

So if you’re still on the fence about whether to get the Eluktronics Mech-15 G2R Pro-X laptop, here’s a summary of why you should. The reason it’s such a great laptop is it assembles some of the most top-of-the-line components and manages to stay budget at the same time. You get a modern Core i7-8750H processor, the latest in Nvidia RTX 20 series cards (Nvidia RTX 2070), 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.

In terms of performance, it has excellent gaming performance, only second to laptops with Nvidia GTX 2080 cards. We loved the Full HD (1920 x 1080) display and the 144Hz refresh rate that jumps into play whenever you’re gaming in high settings.

The low-key design is a new angle to gaming laptop aesthetics, certainly, a different step from the red accent themed designs we’re used to. However, while we didn’t mind the modesty, it might be a notable thorn in some user’s foot, so we let it rest as a matter of opinion and preference.

Bottom line, because the Eluktronics Mech-15 G2R Pro-X excels at its purpose which is gaming and productivity, we recommend it as an option for high-powered gaming laptops. If you can overlook some of its drawbacks (lack of Thunderbolt 3), then it should serve you well. It earns our Editor’s Choice award list of budget gaming laptops.

Liam Weissman

A lover of MacBook Air and the Dell XPS line of laptops, Liam has been researching and writing as a guest blogger for numerous websites for over 10 years. Now, he blogs about tech trends, PCs, laptops, gadgets, and other emerging gadgets on FancyAppliance.com.

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