PC Specialist 15.6in Lafité Pro
It lacks finesse, but compensation comes in th the form of an aggressive pric price and strong performance
SCORE
Range starts at: £614 (£737 inc VAT) Model tested: £691 (£829 inc VAT) from pcspecialist.co.uk/reviews
If you’ve read the Chillblast review above, you’ll know what to expect of this PC Specialist machine. They use the same Clevo chassis, a 1.7kg beast that measures 357mm across to accommodate the 15.6in IPS screen.
Clevo has made it rain ports, with four on the left alone: a Thunderbolt 4, a USB-C 3.2, a USB-A 3.2 and an HDMI output. There’s also a DC input for the charger, but you can recharge this laptop and connect it to a monitor via the Thunderbolt port. And it doesn’t stop there. On the right, you’ll find a Gigabit Ethernet port, a 3.5mm jack, a USB-A 2 port and a microSD card slot.
The wide expanse also provides room for a keyboard with a number pad. We realise not everyone is a fan of this arrangement, not least because it forces you to type in a skew-whiff fashion, but it also means no function doubling and large cursor keys. We do wish Clevo would work harder on the “feel” of its keys, though, which lack the feedback of the best. This isn’t the most stylish design either, and while there’s backlighting (controllable via Clevo’s Control Center software) it’s bright and brash.
Clevo gets the touchpad design right thanks to its sheer size, even if it
steals a square centimetre for a fingerprint reader. This works ctively, but the surprise inclusion infrared webcam to support al recognition. Bearing in mind ow quality of the webcam – think and fuzzy – we were relieved to that this worked well in practice. We cover the performance in the lblast review, and the graphs tell r own story on p92, but we would marise it thus: this is a quick and onsive PC. The provided 16GB of AM is more than enough, and a 512GB SSD leaves plenty of room for adding media and games. Just note that, as supplied, the fans kick in prominently once the laptop is pushed. Fortunately, this won’t happen if you’re typing away in Word or browsing the internet, and Control Center can come to the rescue if you want to dial the fans down.
While PC Specialist can’t match Chillblast’s warranty – note that only the first month includes collect-andreturn service, with the rest of the three-year cover being return-to-base and only the first year including parts – this is more than reflected by the difference in price. It still falls short of a Recommended award due to a lack of finesse compared to rivals, but if your priority is power then you won’t be disappointed by the Lafité Pro.