Origin EON17-S

Taking a page from the Alienware book of style, the Origin EON17-S ($3,499 list) has the look and feel of a high-end gaming laptop, and more importantly, it performs like one. Fueled by Intel's latest Extreme Edition Core i7-3920XM (Ivy Bridge) processor and an Nvidia GeForce GTX675M GPU, this 17-inch gamer turned in impressive benchmark scores and gave us over 2.5 hours of battery life, which is quite good for a laptop in this class. You'll have to shell out some big bucks for this notebook, and while its graphics performance is good it can't match the frame rates put out by our reigning Editors' Choice, the Alienware M18x ($4,529 direct, 4 stars).

Design and Features
The EON17-S has a decidedly Alienware-esque look to it. The lid is done up in a matte black rubbery finish reminiscent of last year's Alienware M17x ($2,254 direct, 4.5 stars). Of course instead of an illuminated alien head, it sports the Origin logo, a bright red O with a dot in the middle. Origin offers this model with a matte red or glossy silver finish as well. At 8.3 pounds, the EON17-S weighs the same as the MSI GT70-0NC-011US ($1,999.99 direct, 4 stars), and like most 17-inch gaming laptops, is big and bulky. Factor in the two-plus-pound power brick, and you've got close to 11 pounds of laptop to lug along to your next LAN party.

Beneath the lid sits a beautiful 17.3-inch full HD display framed by glossy black bezels. The screen delivers bright, bold colors with good viewing angles but the reflective glossy coating is mirror-like, particularly when a black background is being displayed. I much prefer a matte coating like the one used on the MSI GT70-0NC-011US. A webcam is embedded in the upper bezel and the Origin badge is affixed to the lower bezel.

The spacious keyboard deck offers a full size traditional style keyboard with three zone backlighting and seven color options to choose from. The keyboard not only looks cool but is also a pleasure to type on. The touchpad is smooth and responsive, and there's a fingerprint reader sandwiched between the two textured mouse buttons. Above the keyboard are two Onkyo speakers which, with the help of a 3-watt subwoofer, deliver a powerful wall of sound. You can customize and optimize your audio output with Creative's THX TruStudio Pro software (included) which offers Surround, Smart Volume, and Crystalizer settings.

There are plenty of ports scattered around the outside of the chassis. Along the left edge are three USB 3.0 ports, a mini-FireWire port, a LAN port, and a 9-in-1 card reader. The right side has four audio jacks (headphone and 7.1 channel surround-out) and a USB 2.0 port. There's an optical drive bay here that you can have outfitted with any type of CD/DVD/BD drive or an additional storage drive; our review unit was configured with a 1TB hard drive and came with an external USB Blu-ray drive. DisplayPort, HDMI, and DVI video ports are positioned on the rear of the chassis along with the power jack.

In addition to the 1TB storage drive, our EON17-S came with two 120GB solid-state drives set to RAID 0. It also has built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios and is loaded with Windows 7 home Premium. Thankfully, there is no bloatware. Instead you get Cyberlink PowereDVD12 Ultra and a webcam utility. Origin covers the EON17-S with a one year parts and labor warranty and lifetime 24/7 technical support.

Performance
Origin engineers ratcheted the Intel Core i7-3920XM Extreme Edition clock speed up to 3.10GHz from its stock speed of 2.9GHz. Aided by 16GB of system RAM and a pair of SSD's in RAID 0, the EON17-S's PCMark 7 score was the highest we've seen from a laptop of any stripe, beating the Alienware M18x by more than 2,300 points and the Eurocom Leopard 2.0 ($3,606 direct, 4 stars) by 704 points. Likewise, the EON17-S took top honors on our Cinebench R11.5 test with a score of 7.29. The Eurocom scored 5.96 on this CPU-intensive test and the M18x scored 6.52 points. The over-clocked processor and memory combo helped earn the EON17-S top scores on our Handbrake (1:01) and Photoshop CS5 (2:27) multimedia tests as well.

Like any gaming notebook worth its salt the EON17-S features a beefy GPU; it uses Nvidia's new GeForce GTX 685M graphics controller, which like the Core i7 processor, is over-clocked for enhanced performance. On our 3DMark 11 (DX11) Extreme test its score of 1,145 trumped the less expensive MSI GT783 (1,056) and GT70 (963) notebooks but fell way short of the more expensive M18x (2,024) and Leopard 2.0 (2,199), both of which use dual GPUs. Results were similar on our Lost Planet 2 DX11 test; the EON17-S managed a very playable 32.6 fps on the native (1920 x 1080) test but the M18x and Leopard 2.0 had scores of 64.4 fps and 55.7 fps, respectively. Its DX10 performance was also quite good but still not on par with the multi-GPU notebooks; the EON17-S scored 41.3 fps on the high quality Crysis test, as did the MSI GT783, while the M18x scored 71.1 fps and the Leopard 2.0 scored 75.8 fps.

The EON17-S lasted an admirable 2 hours and 33 minutes on MobileMark 2007, which is a little more than an hour longer than the M18x and just shy of an hour longer than the Leopard 2.0. The MSI GT70 is the clear battery life leader with a score of 5 hours and 29 minutes.

Conclusion
The Origin EON17-S delivers the fast frames rates and processing power that gamers crave. While not as menacing as Alienware's M17x, the EON's rubbery finish and colorful keyboard lighting give it an edgy look, and its audio output is loud and robust. However, if you're not a big fan of glossy screens you may want to consider spending your $3,500 elsewhere. At the end of the day, if you must have the very best gaming laptop on the block the Alienware M18x is still the king of the hill, but it costs around $1k more than the EON17-S.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS:

COMPARISON TABLE
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