Excellent laptop, great value for money and quality
I have been following this brand for while, when upgrading my current laptop I decided to take a chance with this brand. I went from a Dell XPS 13 to the Max-15, and I am very happy. The build quality is very solid (though the plastic panel on the bottom of the laptop lacks a little of the "premium" feel of the XPS ). I am happy with the keyboard but in line with other online reviews, it is not anything special, but certainly not bad. Coming from the smaller layout of the XPS to the more full size layout of the MAX I feel that any missed key strokes are my fault and not the keyboard.
The screen is fantastic, web cam is average and in line with many other laptops IMO.
I have played some games on it, and it remains quiet and efficient, I was extremely impressed. My XPS fans were louder when it was plugged in and streaming videos than when I was playing the Witcher 3 maxed with unlocked frame rates. Very happy
Max 15 w/ highest mods
This things plays games phenomenally well. I have only 2 complaints that may seem major to some and not to others.
1. The battery life with battery saver and in office mode is a little over 2 hours. Basically, it needs to be plugged in at all times or you better have the charger with you.
2. It gets hot playing games. I used Bob of all trades as referred to by eluktronics and it did improve the heat by about 12°c so I'm around 77-76° Celsius which is still warm by the touch of the keyboard IMO.
overall, it's a great laptop just needs a better battery and a way to keep it cooler.
Solid Gaming Laptop
Went with the Max-15 with Ryzen 5900HX and Nvidia 3070. I’m quite pleased with this combo, as it has the muscle for serious gaming, but with the integrated graphics card of AMD, can sip battery when just browsing or watching YouTube. I’m particularly pleased that the back comes off with a handful of screws, allowing easy hardware upgrades or replacements. All in all, it’s a solid laptop.
Amazing laptop
I have always owned Asus gaming laptops and decided to change things up and purchase a Max-15. I wanted something powerful, light, and non-flashy. Eluktronics definitely delivered. The machine I customized looks amazing and benchmarking it showed outstanding results. Extremely satisfied with my purchase and the shipping times. Ordered on August 31st and had it delivered to me September 2nd. Highly recommend this company, and I haven't had to use it yet but I have heard amazing things about their customer service.
Max 15
The laptop is crazy light and super powerful. Running Adobe Premiere, PS and AE as well as autodesk Maya. It’s a beast. Super impressed with its minimalism, weight and power.
A sleek BEAST
Wow. What can I say about this device? For an intro, absolutely breathtaking. However, before forming an opinion on the device, MAKE SURE THAT YOU HAVE ADJUSTED THE NVIDIA CONTROL PANEL SETTINGS TO THE OPTIMAL SETTINGS. This is usually overlooked by many including myself. It will make a WORLD of difference. Guides can be found all over Youtube.
The chassis is surprisingly solid, everything feels super premium and professional instead of the usual RGB rainbow vomit or the bulky Batmobile designs of laptops in this performance range.
I love the fact that I could take this to the office and no one would be able to tell that I can run my entire 300 game Steam Library at 2k 165Hz on demand.
I love the fact that I can run Control at 4k 100 FPS and the GPU + CPU temps will RARELY EVER break 90 degrees Celsius!! Absolutely insane. Fans are loud, given for laptops with this kind of performance and chassis design but I can live with it, especially since the laptop is SILENT in idle.
The only negative in my opinion is the battery life. As enticing as it may be to choose this gaming laptop for portability, the battery performance doesnt make this a feasible on-the-go gaming device without the power supply. But if I really wanted a gaming device that I can use anywhere and everywhere I would have just bought a Switch.
Another negative is the Eluktronics customer support. I was experiencing microstuttering while watching Netflix and Youtube (This was solved once NVIDIA control panel settings were optimized). When reaching out to Eluktronics Customer Support, they basically told me "make sure youre not running the laptop on Battery Saver mode". Do they really think that someone who would spend $2500+ on a laptop wouldnt be checking battery profiles??? Dont expect much from them if you have software issues, youre better off doing your own research online. Remains to be seen how they deal with hardware problems but with how solid the build of the laptop is I doubt I will need to deal with Customer support for hardware.
If youre looking for a thermal beast that can produce incredible graphics in a sleek and professional build then LOOK NO FURTHER. Very happy with my purchase as long as I dont have to deal with customer support :D
Lightweight exceptional gaming on the go!
Build quality is top notch with this magnesium alloy case. The screen is fantastic with freesync on - smooth and sharp images thanks to the 165hz 1440p res.
Personally, I am enjoying the membrane keyboard and key spacing. I work on many different keyboard types so I may be more adaptable to keyboard layouts than some.
The light bar on the front - kinda cool... but almost feels like a waste to me.
4 zone keyboard RGB - not my preference. Single zone or per key. But I didn’t buy this for the keyboard lighting
Brilliant laptop and well worth the cost
I waited 6 months to write this review to make sure I still felt the same way - love it. If you’re on the fence about which laptop to buy, this is a powerful laptop, powers through any game I throw at it, and is made by a smaller company so you get decent customer support. Highly recommend.
Looks great, not showy/flashy like some laptops so I can take it with me without feeling like a dweeb. But turn on the keyboard lights and light bar and it’s brilliant.
Built in speakers are not that good, sheer volume level is low - I use a headset to game and plug in a portable speaker to watch movies, or run an hdmi cable to the TV which works fine.
My screen had a hardware issue about 3 months in, they fixed no problems (during the pandemic!) and had it back within a couple of weeks, most of that time was shipping time. They were very responsive. These things happen and they fixed it perfectly.
Easy recommendation for any of my friends.
I bought this computer because I wanted a gaming laptop with decent build quality. I am coming from the desktop computer world (and have worked at a large desktop computer manufacturing company in the past) and, although I dislike the size and "specialization" of desktop computers, I have appreciated their marked increase in build quality over the last decade. I have owned Razer and MSI laptops in the past, and have been disappointed with their price, build quality, and "peripheral" quality (trackpad, screen, keyboard, etc). The Max 15 has surpassed my expectations on all accounts, with the added benefit of being completely unbranded, which is very much to my taste. I can (and have) happily recommend this laptop to any of my friends who are looking to purchase a laptop.
MAX 15 PERFECT LAPTOP
I purchased this model barebones (other than the processor) added 32 gb of ram and a 1tb Samsung 870 Pro. Win10 Pro loaded ultra fast, (I have many laptops to compare against this, I own a 6th gen Northwest Falcon 17", two lower line Eluks NBTZ50's one a rebuild due to a damaged motherboard with a I7 engineering sample processor, and a Evoc Clevo 9th gen with a Custom Prema Bios and none of these compare in speed and weight and quality and ease of access to the internals to change ram, wifi card a and drives. If the webcam location is sales breaker then you should buy a real webcam as no laptop has a top notch camera and mic system. Overall you can't buy a better laptop at this price range and not this light in weight with a all mag chassis not plastic, and only a Prema bios option would be the icing on this cake!!! BTW, a little difficult to load the Thunderbolt driver from the Eluk driver downloads as installing from executable does not work as you will have a device with an unloaded driver in the device manager list. (uncompress all drivers for this machine and point to surrounding folder for all (Place all in one folder) and update driver for unknown base device and driver will manually load as Win 10 will locate the proper driver from the drivers in the folder and load it for you.) Also, by default NVIDIA 2070 will not be the primary video unless this is changed in the bios.
Good, but with some notable oddities
I'll start off with a disclaimer- This is the only eluktronics product I have ever bought, and I do not have much indication (outside of other reviews) if my experience is normal.
Moving on.
First of all- the computer is generally great performance wise. Though, there are some hiccups that I'm suspicious about, but I feel that those lean more towards my paranoia than anything else. One thing I will mention is that the fans get LOUD when they get going. I pretty much always use headphones, so not much of an issue for me, but if you're trying to listen to something when the fans are going you're gonna need to pump up the volume, and the speakers aren't the best in the world (frankly speaking, the speakers are actually about equivalent to my last laptop. But that one was bought several years ago for 1k)
Working on the computer is great. The keyboard is pretty responsive, and the backlight is nice. Though the backlight does turn off whenever I unplug it, and I cannot seem to find a way to turn it back on while unplugged. It does come on instantly when I plug it back in however.
The screen quality is fantastic, and using browsers and such is extremely smooth. A+ there.
Now onto my main gripes.
The entire computer (at least the base) is uneven. Pressing on the bottom left porton when the computer is open causes the entire computer to tilt like a table in a restraunt resting on an uneven surface. This seems to be due to the rubber stands on the bottom being uneven and are frankly the most annoying bit I've had with the computer over the two weeks or so I've had it. The keyboard seems to be ever so slightly lower towards the left-middle, as if sagging by just a couple milimeters (not enough to effect working really). There were some odd, large scratches (two primarily, and closer to smears I suppose? About the width of a pinkie (relatively small one) and about as long, one smaller than the other) on the top of the laptop towards the bottom right (screen closed, as if you are about to open it.) But have no affect besides that due to me including the D-Brand skin (though I chose the option to just apply it myself).
Besides those issues mentioned above, I've yet to discover any other problem with computer, and so far it's been great, despite not giving me the best of hopes when coming out of the package. Hopefully I don't discover anymore, but due to college I've not been able to fully test out its performance in some higher-end graphics games and don't know if problems will arise then.
Overall, good computer.
This is the best gaming laptop I have ever had, and it still looks professional in the office!
My past gaming laptops have all been too loud, too hot, or too big. The design of this laptop keeps my WASD keys cool to the touch even during intense gaming. The build I chose came with a plastic bottom which is better at keeping my lap cool when actually on my lap. The magnesium frame is super light and thin and durable, all of which have been tradeoffs when buying gaming laptops in the past and I am pleased they are all in this new unit. The screen is amazing with its refresh rate and great look, and I love the thin bezel design. I acknowledged the camera was going to be an issue if I end up ever using it. I did pick up a small tripod and external webcam if I have meetings I need to look professional in and these will always be in my laptop portfolio, but my career rarely requires these to-date.
I did choose to have my laptop customized for me resulting in over a month for delivery. I could have bought almost the exact Eluktronics design on Amazon and received it within a week, so the customization was something I prioritized and appreciated.
I end up replacing my laptops every 16-24 months due to the amount of travel and use they all get, and I do extensive research before buying, Eluktronics is far ahead of my experiences with other laptops and name brands that I don't see myself going anywhere else for my next work/gaming computer.
