Superb bang for buck
If you think the 15-inch Dreambook Touch 15 from Dreamcore looks familiar, I don’t blame you. You see, it’s based on the Intel NUC M15 Laptop Kit aka a “whitebook” – a prebuilt notebook that end-users like you and I can’t buy outright. Instead, it’s offered to Intel’s boutique notebook partners and channel customers for them to re-brand, customise, and resell. Chances are, you’ll also find a similar, lookalike, notebook from other local and regional brands.
Our Touch 15 review unit came in a grey coloured unibody aluminium construction that gives it a premium look and touch – Dreamcore has also made a midnight black option available if you prefer a darker tone. The notebook measures 14.9mm in thickness, weighs a stout 1.65kg, and is pretty well-built overall. For a 15-inch notebook, these are respectable figures. Despite it being based on a reference design from Intel, I do quite like the simplicity of it all. For connectivity, there are Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports as well as regular USB-A ones on both sides of the notebook. The good news here is that you can also charge the device on either side, unlike some other notebooks. There’s also an HDMI 2.0 out but unfortunately, no SD card reader. For the display, Dreamcore has gone for a 16:9 touchscreen with an 1080p IPS panel. Personally, I would have preferred a 16:10 panel as it has more screen estate for work productivity. According to the specifications sheet, it’s also rated with a max brightness of 450 nits, 1500:1 contrast ratio and 100% sRGB colour gamut. What I can tell you is that the screen is bright, displays vivid colours and sharp images even at 1080p resolution. It’s actually one of the best I’ve seen from a notebook of this ilk. The Dreambook Touch 15’s keyboard is reminiscent of the old, pre-2016 MacBook Pros. The keys come in a standard layout that is well spaced out and of a good size.
Key travel is decent, but the general feeling of the keys is mostly positive. The notebook also sits at an angle by a couple of degrees (thanks to the taller rubber feet near the screen hinges), creating a little tilt that makes it a bit more ergonomic to type on - and for better airflow. The touchpad, on the other hand, is no slouch. Its 12 x 6.5cm glass surface is spacious enough and allows for great gliding capabilities. It also meets the Microsoft Precision standard and allows four-finger gestures, so multitouch gestures like pinch to zoom and multi-finger swipes for switching desktops are supported as well.
Our test unit comes with the 11th Gen Core i7-1165G7 processor which has integrated Xe graphics. It may not seem much as compared to the ASUS ROG and Razer Blade notebooks, but remember this isn’t a gaming notebook. There’s also 16GB of memory but it’s soldered on, so there’s no room for upgrades. Dreamcore also has a Core i5-1135G7 as
EXCELLENT PRICE-PERFORMANCE RATIO, SOLID DISPLAY, GREAT BATTERY LIFE AND A CLEAN DISPLAY.
an alternative and cheaper processor, but that only comes with 8GB of memory that might hamper your overall usability. You don’t get to mix and match. From a performance perspective, the Touch 15 is pretty good. We haven’t seen a lot of non-gaming 15-inch notebooks lately, but there are a few similarlyspec ultraportable notebooks built for productivity that my companion Kenny has reviewed before. Obviously, these are not the same class – generally speaking, a larger notebook has better thermals, which also allows for stable performance as the processor is less likely to throttle over extended periods of high-performance tasks. Honestly, I’m surprised by how good the Dreambook Touch 15 is. Dreamcore has slashed the price down to $1,950 (for the same specs as our review unit) and I think that’s an incredible value. Perhaps its only Achilles’ heel is the integrated GPU, which does not allow for high-end gaming. But otherwise, the display is good, keyboard and touchpad are quality stuff, there’s a decent number of ports and even the performance and battery life are nothing short of impressive at that price point. There’s also no pre-installed software to bloat up the Windows 10 operating system, leaving it as clean and pure as you could imagine an Intelbased system to be.