Illegear Z5 Gaming Laptop..

Discovering the balance between power and cost is an art that few gaming laptops manage to master. Illegear’s new Z5 gaming laptop presents multiple configurations for customers to attempt to find a balancing point that they can live with. This could possibly mean many things for many people. For us, it means taking a look at the best that the Z5 has to offer and find out if it is worth the price tag.

The Z5 bears the stylings of a modern gaming laptop. It features plenty of sharp angles and grilled vents to evoke imagery akin to a high performance sports car or jet fighter. A slight depression sits at the top of the cover, providing an interesting concave look to the machine.

Where the aesthetic value of the look crosses the threshold of looking “cool”, the materials used to accomplish this façade disappoint. Simply holding the top of the display tells users that many expenses were spared in the construction of the Z5. The flimsy plastic is simply unpleasant to hold, and creates a disconnect with what looks like a premium grade product.

This lack of build quality continues to the hinge, where the grade of the plastic is particularly noticeable. The display wobbles at the slightest touch, and it does not inspire confidence in the Illegear Z5’s ability to survive sustained use. In fact, there was little confidence that it would make it to the end of the review period without cracking. Potential buyers should take a little extra care when opening and closing the hinge. On the bright side, the plastic doesn’t smudge very easily and doesn’t suffer from the same finger print magnet problem of other gaming laptops.

The island style keyboard is rather unexceptional, at least in terms of layout and design. The macro keys are located somewhat disturbingly close to the power button; it shouldn’t matter, but seeing any other keys located near the power button always makes me a little nervous. There is that chance that a wrong key press ends with a computer in sleep mode and many unhappy teammates.

Aside from that, the many ports are sensibly located around the sides of the Illegear Z5; two USB ports line the left and right sides of the machine, with the HDMI, RJ45, and VGA ports located on the back. The right side USB ports are of the 3.0 variant, while the two on the left are split between a USB 3.0 and a USB 2.0 charging port.

It should be noted that the left USB 3.0 port on this review unit had some issues with staying connected to an external HDD. It kept disconnecting and prevented the transfer of our benchmarking software. It could just be a faulty connection on this unit, but it takes a few more points off from the total build quality score.

#gajet