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Aftershock XG13-V2 - A Champion Gets Refreshed

By Kenny Yeo - 29 May 2014

Conclusion

Staying at the Top

It is often said that it more challenging to stay at the top than to get there. And this is the exact predicament that Aftershock finds itself in - not that it is a bad one, of course. The first generation XG13 notebook was the winner of the Best Portable Gaming Notebook category in this year’s Tech Awards 2014, and while it might not be the lightest, slimmest or most well-built, it offered an unbeatable blend of performance, affordability and great features. To improve on it would be difficult, but this is exactly what Aftershock has done.

Somewhat erratic performance on PCMark 8 aside, the new second-generation XG13-V2 handily outperforms its predecessor in every other gaming benchmark, and by a considerable margin no less. In fact, in our gaming benchmarks, it was easily the best performing notebook in its class. Let’s not forget also that it has a substantially longer battery life and lower power consumption. To sum up, the performance of the XG13-V2 is pretty impressive and much of it can be attributed to the new GeForce GTX 860M mobile GPU.

Apart from performance, Aftershock has also done well to include an integrated headphone amplifier. Considering that most gamers would be using their headphones to play games on the go, this is a thoughtful move. In addition, the integrated headphone amplifier also helps drive audio output to your headphones, making them sound fuller and tighter.

The second generation XG13-V2 keeps its predecessor's winning formula of great performance at an affordable price alive. Behold also, our review unit's custom paint job.

Prices of the XG13-V2 will begin from as low as S$1520, but before you get too excited, this is for a unit with no SSD, no OS, no QHD display and only standard Wireless b/g/n connectivity. If you want one that is as specced to the same levels as our review unit, you would be looking at S$2375. While the optional extras may increase the cost substantially, in the grand scheme of portable gaming notebooks, this price is still pretty hard to beat. In fact, it is only about $135 more than the first generation XG13 that we reviewed last year.

The QHD display is presently a S$195 option and one that we think users should forgo. Although the GeForce GTX 860M has just about enough juice to handle some games at such extreme resolutions, we think that the Windows operating system on a whole is not ready yet for such ultra-high resolutions. There are some issues with scaling and certain applications, windows and pop-ups look fuzzy and out of place when we ran the notebook at its native resolution. Without the QHD display, the price comes down to S$2185, which is very attractive.

Its most keen competitor in this segment is probably Razer’s updated Blade notebook, which has been upgraded with a QHD display and a GeForce GTX 870M mobile GPU. We have yet to review it, but on paper at least, the GeForce GTX 870M should give the Blade the performance advantage. However, this would come at the expense of a sizable premium considering prices of the Blade would begin at S$3199 for the 128GB SSD variant.

All in all, the second-generation XG13-V2 keeps Aftershock’s tradition of offering great value for money and would likely be amongst the forerunners for next year’s Best Portable Gaming Notebook category at our Tech Awards.

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8.5
  • Design 7.5
  • Features 9
  • Performance 8.5
  • Value 9
  • Mobility 8
The Good
Customizable design and specifications
Good all-round performance
Sharp, bright QHD display
Good keyboard
Integrated headphone amplifier
Much improved battery life
The Bad
Below average build quality
No DisplayPort or Mini-DisplayPort
Small trackpad
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