Metabox Prime P650RE
Super-customisable.
The Prime P650RE is built around the philosophy of letting you decide what’s in your notebook. It looks extremely similar to the Alpha (left), with the main difference on our test system being a brushed metal finish rather than the matte of the Alpha, but inside the box is a whole lot of difference. Where the Alpha lets you select a few slot fillers, the Metabox Prime cranks the customisation up to 11 and rips off the dial.
You can choose an FHD or 4K screen (our test system had full-HD). You can choose how much graphics memory you have (3GB in our case); what processor it has (i7-6700HQ); how much memory you have, up to 64GB (we had 16GB); and most importantly what storage devices are installed. There are two M.2 slots to fill — one of which supports PCIe connectivity — as well as two hard drive bays, allowing up to four storage devices total. Our test system has a single SATA SSD in it. There is no internal optical bay.
It’s a little disappointing that the laptop has no USB 3.1 or Thunderbolt support, although it does come with two DisplayPorts, as well as HDMI, making it great for a multi-monitor home setup. We weren’t particularly enamoured by the softlybacklit keyboard, with too short a travel making it hard for precision typing and gaming. The touchpad was perfectly fine, however.
As with the Alpha, the industrial design of the Prime is a little meh. It feels absolutely solid, and there are options to add a textured carbon wrap, but it’s not a device that will have you feeling the wow.