Aftershock S-15 Review & Story

[RazeG3SG1]

Hello everyone, a few days ago I bought a gaming laptop from a home brand. So I'm going to do a review of it. I got myself an Aftershock S-15 which is a rebrand of Clevo P650SE. A base model for some other gaming laptops like Venom Blackbook 15. You might ask why is it so special? Well it's the story behind the brand.

 

Aftershock, the story behind the brand

Credits: Straits Times

 

 

Aftershock is a Singapore based custom gaming laptop brand. Founded by brothers, Joseph (left) and Marcus Wee in 2012. The brothers have a strong passion in gaming, back in their college years when they were in Australia, they had to game on laptop due to convenience.

 

It was then Joseph got tired in working for others and returned to Singapore from New Zealand and the brothers started the business. Gaming laptop were largely dominated by Alienware and Asus ROG, which both brands have fixed hardware and quite overpriced. The brothers decided to be different, allowing maximum flexibility for their products, which is why they rebrand Clevo, the only OEM that can do that. Their debut was the X series which sparked a success.

 

Their debut was initially flaked by narrow minded people here saying they will fall within 1 year etc as living in Singapore is not cheap! However, the brothers prove themselves that they are a force to be reckon with in Singapore's gaming laptop market. They are so successful that they even expanded to Malaysia, competing with another local brand there called Illegear which also rebrands Clevo gaming laptops. They also expanded their base of operations, which is impressive considering how expensive is Singapore's property.

 

 

Alright, they are Clevo rebranders like Origin, Venom, Eurocom and Sager, so what sets them apart?
Aftershock is unique in a way that they don't just offer hardware customization, they also offer looks! Many brands that you might be familiar with like Eurocom and Sager offer very flexible hardware customizations that I actually would like as a consumer but I don't see custom painting except Origin PC. I find that some Clevo rebrands are very inflexible in the configurations notably Venom, which has their configurations fixed.

 

They allow user to personalize their laptop and they are no slouch in doing so. This is a screenshot of the simulator in their website.

 

Painting doesn't impress you? Well you can personally contact them through email to make even more complex stuff. Like this!

That's right, Singaporean professional Dota 2 player VG.iceiceice has his laptop made by Aftershock too. Other than just spray painting or images, they also offer professional wrapping like carbon fiber texture on the backcover.

 

Another feature would be physical showroom that allows potential customer to try out the laptops. They even have samples of different display and colour calibrations so that one can decided if it is worth the extra.

 

 

Aftershock S-15 Appearance

The S-15 is one of the latest generation of notebook from Aftershock. They are the rebrand of Clevo's P650SE and they look exactly the same as Venom Blackbook 15 and Origin's newer EON15-S . Regardless of what configurations, they have an exhaust vent, HDMI port, a USB 3.0 and 2 mini display ports at the left. A vent, power jack and a E-SATA/USB 2.0 port at top and finally, a kensington lock, a Realtek gigabit NIC, 2 USB 3.0 ports, 1 SD card slot, 1 mic, 1 headphone and S/PDIF jacks at the right.

The dimension of the laptop being 15(W) x 10.6(D) x 0.9(H) inches and weighs about 5.5 pounds. They body is mostly metal constructions consist of what I think is aluminium alloys, the finish is also brushed with options for automobile wrapping. I did regret for not going for the carbon fiber wrap as I didn't expect that fingerprint is so much of an issue. The keyboard is by default white backlit. Though buyers can have the options of changing to other colours by paying US$15.

Overall, I really like the clean look of the S-15, in fact, I even manged to fool someone saying it was an Acer! Contrary to popular believes (with Singaporean), they think gamers prefer blings that has lots of LED, I think more mature gamers prefer clean look over blings.

The laptops's power brick is also huge and made by Chicony. I think this can be improved upon as Razer's power brick is pretty small and can power the Blade properly.

 

 

Maintenance

It is very easy to access the battery, hard disk, RAM and heat sinks as everything is right underneath the panel.

Even the keyboard looks pretty easy to remove by just removing two screws. You don't need to open the panel for that.
Since one can access pretty much everything, I think I can say this can be the easiest laptop I'll ever repair should it fail.

 

Build Quality
This is just solid! The screen doesn't flex when opening it. The whole laptop is well built too. The only thing that I foresee may spoil is the hinge. The hinge design is okay but not those that are unbreakable.

 

 

Display
15.6 INCH FHD Matte Display with AHVA Wide viewing angle technology and Wide Colour Gamut. You may ask what's that. Basically, it makes your screen's viewing angle super wide and the colour much more vibrant. I compared it with the normal one, I think it was as good as comparing to TN vs IPS, so I paid more for this display and colour calibration. Very glad I actually went that.

 

 

Performance
Config:
Intel i7-4720HQ
16GB Crucial 1600 DDR3L RAM
GTX 970M 3GB
1080p AHVA matte display with Professional calibration
480GB OCZ Vector 150 + Hitachi 1TB HDD
Windows 8.1 Pro

 

I have to say, this thing can keep up with my desktop, which is exactly what I'm looking for. I'll just brief through gaming performance since they can be found everywhere. I can run Shadow of Mordor with all settings at High and get an average 66FPS. Temperature wise is quite impressive, the 970M's max temp is 74 degree Celsius while the CPU is 77 degree Celsius. Acoustic wise, even at High performance mode with both CPU and GPU hit their max temp, the fans are quiet, not silent. It is quiet enough to even blend into the ambient noise while maintaining the temperature.

 

As many of you have known, gaming laptops that are big tends to have great thermals and acoustics but trades it with portability. I mean good luck trying overheating an Alienware or Asus ROG G751. While the slim ones will have worse like Blade 14 can overheat and Gigabyte's P34W which is notorious for its fans. Linus' comment on the Blackbook 15 is exactly what I would say for the S-15, a perfect sweet spot.

 

When it is at the max temp, the typing area of the laptop does not feel hot at all. You can feel that the keyboard area starts to get slightly warmer, whereas the wrist rest area is cool. It's only the power switch area that is hot. Overall, gaming on this laptop is comfortable.

 

Battery life wise, S-15 like all gaming laptop eats a lot of power. I can go at most 3-4 hours by browsing the internet, Powerpoint slides and watch videos at high performance mode. Which is better than my aged Acer.

 

Config wise, there is an option to go for 980M and a 3K display. Thus it is recommended to go for 980M if one wants to play at such a high resolution.

Softwares

Software wise, it is identical to Venom Blackbook that Linus had reviewed. Though there are modes like Gaming which allows you to tweak some setting under that mode. Do take note that by turning on Power saving mode from the command center (FN+Esc), it turns off the wireless by default. It also has built in macros which you should not be using if you want to be good in games. It is an insult to one's skills IMO.

Aftershock's laptop also has 0 bloatwares installed. You don't have to reformat the system. Even if you do, Aftershock has their drivers for all their lineup zipped and available for download from their website.

 

 

Competitions
Even today, gaming laptop market in Singapore is still dominated by Alienware. However, new additions like MSI GS60 has picked up in popularity, thus making it one of the community favourites. And so I'm going to compare the S-15 with GS60's most ideal and identical specs.

 

GS60 (US$2400):
-Intel i7-4710HQ
-GTX 870M 3GB
-1080p display
-16GB RAM
-256GB M.2 (128+128 RAID 0) + 1TB HDD
-Intel Wireless AC7260
-Killer E2200 NIC
-Windows 8.1

 

S-15 (US$1930):
-Intel i7-4720HQ
-GTX 970M 3GB
-1080p display + Professional calibration (Assuming it needs that to be identical with MSI's display. I didn't managed to find both samples to compare side by side, it costs very little to go for it anyway)
-16GB RAM
-256GB M.2 (128+128 RAID 0) + 1TB HDD
-Killer 1525 AC Wireless
-Realtek NIC
-Windows 8.1

 

The reason why I went to the S-15 as you can see, it just doesn't worth that much. The only thing that I can see GS60 having an edge is its weight and thinness. Also, the flexibility in the hardware configurations allows me to ditch away stuffs that I don't need. I saved much more by ditching away the M.2 SSD and stick with the 8GB, I used my salvaged RAM to upgrade it too.

 

 

Conclusion
Okay, now we have reached the end here. So what is my rating on this? I say overall is positive, I never get so satisfied for gaming laptop, Aftershock's S-15 has what I need and even flexible enough to allow me to do whatever I like. I have not much that is not satisfied for to be honest, so I'll just have to nitpick.

 

Pros:
-Flexibility (You want power? You can have it, if you have deep pockets of course =P)
-Very balanced with thinness, thermal and acoustics
-Cheap
-Low profile looking
-Easy to perform maintenance

 

Cons:
-Brushed aluminium finish = Fingerprint magnet (This can be avoided if you go for other cover options, which clearly I regretted)
-Driver disc (Which year is it guys? S-15 don't even have a DVD drive built in. Not everyone has external)
-60Hz (As someone who games on 144Hz, so this is kinda a con for me.)

 

Alright that's all. This is my first ever review, I hope is detailed and properly done, leave a comment on what I can improve on. Thank you.