 The world of technology is always an arms race and often an unpredictable one I mean look at phones first we wanted smaller than we wanted flips then we wanted touch screens and now we want Bigger and bigger with an appetite for massive black phones that can't be wait what gold phones Okay, well this video is about a laptop anyway, which we golden laptops all right you lost me there This is a non-ridiculous black laptop with more horsepower than my son's tricycle the gigabyte P34w v3 Fractal design listens and the define r5 case was made with feedback from you the PC community So click wherever you want to learn more how about here and here? Now? I was obviously being facetious in the intro there the specs alone Tell us that today's featured item is designed for a different customer than Apple's new MacBook Inside the 21 millimeter thick chassis you'll find a quad core core i7 4720 HQ that turbo to 3.0 to 3.1 gigahertz under a sustained four core load for me up to 16 gigs of DDR3 memory up to 512 gigs of mSATA SSD storage and 2 terabytes of hard drive based storage and Intel to spatial stream AC wireless card that I had connected at up to 780 Megabit per second and managing 42 to 45 megabytes per second transfer speeds from my server Man Wi-Fi has come a long way and a dual graphics solution comprised of Intel HD graphics 4600 and a gtx 970 M 3gig graphics card yeah, you heard me right this puppy packs a serious GPU punch for gamers on the go Removing the bottom reveals gigabytes dual fan Supra cooling branded cooling solution that they've been using to make Thinner gaming devices under their own brand and their premium a or s brand for about a year now It's pretty simple in principle intake at the front and Strategically along the bottom to keep the wrist rest and gaming keys cool with heat pipes carrying that heat to the back Where it can be exhausted without making your palms sweaty? I just wish it was a fair bit quieter It seems like gigabytes fan profiles could use some tuning here since the fan ramps up at even a mere sort of 10 to 20% CPU load Immediately upon beginning my physical tour here I realized that my comparison of this compact gaming notebook to Apple's latest and greatest Macbook was even more Inappropriate than I initially thought the p34w has actual ports on it specifically a power in HDMI out SD card reader and two USB 3.0 ports on the right and a lock a realtech powered gigabit ethernet port VGA and two more USB 3 ports and a headphone and microphone combo jack on the left Flipping this puppy open reveals the 1080p IPS screen with a couple front-facing which is nice for loudness But decidedly laptop grade speakers under it I'm happy to see this compared to a TN panel But it should be noted that not all IPS displays are created equally Motion blur and processing leg were non issues here from using it But contrast is noticeably unexceptional and there's some wicked backlight bleed along the top and bottom Edges on dark backgrounds on my sample the keyboard and touchpad are similarly unexceptional and while I Appreciate the separate buttons and solid tracking for the touchpad the plastic surface is something I'd like to see gone on any laptop over a thousand dollars and while the keyboard is well laid out with a nice bright backlight It and the wrist rests flex far too much to deliver a satisfying typing experience Which is actually a complaint I have about the general build quality of this notebook the screen and hinge feel robust So I wouldn't expect any breakage there, but it seems like gigabyte Sacrificed all the space inside the main chassis that would normally be allocated for structural support to the gods of thinness and Lightness I played with the p34w's bigger cousin back at CES and told gigabyte that if they sent me anything with that kind Of flex to it. I was gonna call them out on it and while this one is not as bad as that one I'm gonna call him out on it anyway What's the point of making a computer out of metal if it bends more than a plastic shell would have anyway? But some people buy for bang for the buck and are willing to be a little careful with their fancy piece of machinery So let's have a look at gaming performance then shall we at high details with very high textures Forex TXAA and motion blur disabled at its native resolution of 1080p the GTX 970M in our thin and light gamers delight here manages a whopping 76 frames per second in my standard crisis 3 run pretty impressive That is until you let the laptop sit for a while on a hard flat surface Have the GPU throttle weigh the truck down to 671 megahertz at 87 degrees and lose a solid 25% of that performance yes this baby thermal throttles But the good news is that it's not as severe as that bricks gaming computer we checked out a while back and not enough that Gigabyte would have been better off simply putting a lower grade less power hungry part into their design like they would have in that case And there are some other positive takeaways to battery life is in line with what I'd expect from a gaming notebook at two hours And 40 minutes in the PC mark work suite and overall I think gigabyte has actually done a swell job of targeting their audience presumably the traveling gamer who may have to hook up that VGA port to a Boardroom projector from time to time with a rocking spec list at a reasonable price compared to This time not Apple's MacBook gold or whatever they're calling it But something like the razor blade which has similar specs and a much higher price tag because that's the decision buyers will ultimately Have to make settle for throttling and weaker craftsmanship or pay the significant premium product tax for what is essentially thicker metal from a brand like Apple or razor or even Gigabyte's own aorist for that matter Speaking of paying a premium why would you pay a premium for your mobile carrier? Ting.com is the mobile carrier that's focused on customer service and customer satisfaction and charging a real price How do you focus on customer service well when you call them for example? You don't talk to a robot or an automated menu you actually get put through directly to a real person also You only pay for what you use the average ting bills only $24 per month per device So what you do is you go on their site? That's Linus.ting.com you fire up their savings calculator, and you actually just enter okay? Well here were my last few bills here was my usage and it spits out a number that says hey This is how much you would pay if you switched over to ting if you've got a contract They'll pay 25% of your cancellation fee up to 75 bucks not to mention that if you use our link That's Linus.ting.com you'll also get $25 in service credit or 25 bucks towards a new device as well So I think that's pretty much it guys like this video if you liked it dislike it if you thought it sucked leave a comment Preferably at the link in the video description in our forum where you can discuss it with our other Forum members also linked in the video description You can give us a contribution change your bookmark to one with our affiliate code at Amazon or buy a cool t-shirt Just like this one also don't forget to subscribe to our other channels channel super fun and tech quickie And as always subscribe and follow Linus tech tips and all that good noise for more videos just like this one