Aftershock Vapor 15 Pro review: Amazing laptop at an amazing price

Note: This article was first published on 29 September 2019.

This laptop came out of nowhere

In early September, a gaming laptop from a nearly unknown company made a few splashes on the internet, most notably through popular tech YouTuber Dave Lee. That laptop was the Eluktronics MAG-15, a laptop that Intel helped design. 

Its claim to fame was the fact that it was supposedly the lightest 15.6-inch gaming laptop in the world at just 1.87kg. I should point out that the MSI GS65 Stealth isn't much heavier at 1.9kg, but laying claim to a world's best in anything is still sure to turn a few heads. Intel also put a lot of work into optimising the laptop for good thermal performance, so the notebook supposedly runs really cool, a huge boon for a slim and light gaming laptop.

As it turns out, you don't have to place an order with Eluktronics if you want one, because the MAG-15 is coming to Singapore in the form of the Aftershock Vapor 15 Pro. 

Here's an overview of its specifications:

• 15.6-inch 1,920 x 1,080-pixel 144Hz IPS display
• Intel Core i7-9750H processor (2.60GHz, 12MB L3 cache)
• 16GB DDR4-2666 dual-channel memory
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q
• Phison 512GB NVMe SSD
• 94Wh battery
• 356.4mm x 233.66mm x 20.5mm
• 1.87kg

The price is really attractive too, and the laptop will cost you just S$2,799, a good thousand dollars cheaper than many similar GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q notebooks on the market. Does the laptop live up to its promise? Read on to find out. 

What's the big deal about this laptop?

I think it's safe to say that no one was expecting this laptop. It literally came out of nowhere, and it was a surprise to see Intel working with a smaller brand like Eluktronics to bring this laptop to fruition, instead of a more established player like ASUS or Razer. As it turns out, local PC builder Aftershock was also among the many partners that Intel consulted with, and it's helping bring the notebook to Singapore in the form of the Vapor 15 Pro. The laptop goes by different names in different regions – it retails as the XMG Fusion 15 and the Maingear Element in Europe and the US respectively. 

There are a few reasons why you should be excited, but the biggest selling point for me is probably the price. At S$2,799, the Vapor 15 Pro is significantly cheaper than anything available on the market right now. Its closest competitor is probably the Acer Predator Triton 500, and that costs S$3,198.

What's the catch?

Now, you're probably thinking, what's the catch? As far as I can tell though, there isn't one. This is actually a premium notebook with a budget price. Normally, if a laptop had a GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q and only cost this much, I'd expect some trade-offs. Maybe the build quality isn't the best. Perhaps the display is really lacklustre. Or maybe, it has a really tiny battery and runs super loud and hot. The good news is that the Vapor 15 Pro suffers from none of these problems.

Build quality is excellent and there's barely any flex when pushing down on the palm rests or keyboard. The hinge opens in a single fluid motion, and it's perfectly capable of being operated with one hand. I don't like that you can see the seams where the different pieces of the notebook's shell come together as it slightly cheapens the overall look, but I'm really nitpicking here for what it offers. That said, there's a reason for the plastic cutout you see below – there's one on each side and it's there to allow Wi-Fi signals to pass through.

This is a high-end laptop through and through though, and it comes with just about everything you could want, including a Thunderbolt 3 port, SD card reader, and an infrared camera for Windows Hello face recognition. It's even got a glass precision trackpad with integrated buttons and an RGB backlit mechanical keyboard that supports per-key customisations.

No need to worry about battery life either, since it comes with a large 94Wh battery, rivalling the Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED XA. 

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the Vapor 15 Pro is a potential Razer Blade 15 killer. It even looks a lot like one, with its black magnesium alloy chassis and minimalist design. The Blade 15 has so far gone unchallenged in my books in terms of design, but the Vapor 15 Pro has come the closest to upsetting it. 

What's more, this is the world's lightest GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q laptop at just 1.87kg. It features a full magnesium alloy body and is noticeably lighter in hand than the competition. I've gotten used to reviewing laptops that weigh just over 2kg, and the difference in weight is obvious.

Another important point to mention is that Intel has supposedly optimised the notebook for better thermal performance. Intel makes the chips that go into your laptop, so you'd expect that they'd know a lot about how to make the chip run better. The Vapor 15 Pro uses Intel's custom BIOS and the bundled Control Center program offers up three different performance profiles – Battery saver, Balanced, and Performance – each of which results in meaningful differences in power consumption and performance. Make no mistake, these modes aren't just for show as we've found out. 

A dedicated button in the top right lets you toggle between the three modes, with helpful LED indicators to show what mode you're on – two lighted LEDs for Performance, one for Balanced, and none for Battery saver.

So what does it have?

When it comes to hardware specifications, the Vapor 15 Pro doesn't offer anything out of the ordinary. These specifications are pretty much a given on any high-end gaming laptop today, and you get an Intel Core i7-9750H processor, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q, and a 512GB SSD. There are two M.2 sockets though, and the DIMM slots are easily accessible, so you should be able to perform your own upgrades pretty easily. 

The 1,920 x 1,080-pixel 144Hz IPS display is similarly par for the course, and there is no support for NVIDIA G-Sync. I don't feel like the absence of G-Sync will make too much of a difference on such a high refresh rate screen, and the Razer Blade 15 doesn't offer it either. The display itself is more than good enough for games. Colours are reasonably bright and vivid and appear in no way washed out or inaccurate. The screen was also bright enough for me at maximum brightness – it works well under direct overhead lighting and the matte surface helps dispel reflections. 

It also has a mechanical keyboard equipped with tactile switches. The keyboard supports per-key RGB customisations and you can switch between four different levels of brightness on the keyboard itself. The backlight is well-implemented too. It is bright and clearly visible, considerably better than the faint lighting I've observed on some other notebooks like the Aorus 15 XA.

This is not a chiclet keyboard though, and there is less distinction between individual keys. Personally, this wasn't too much of a problem for me and I enjoy the extra travel distance and feedback that the mechanical switches give. However, I can see how some people might need time to get used to it, especially if you're more used to chiclet keyboards where there's a separate cutout for each key.

Unsurprisingly, there is some key wobble, especially on larger keys like the spacebar and Shift. Still, it's not too excessive, and I don't think you'll notice it while typing, unless you like to hit the large keys on their corners for some reason.

The switches themselves are manufactured by GTMX, and they each have a tiny stabiliser bar, even for the smaller keys.

The trackpad itself can be disabled by double-tapping in the top left corner. Once disabled, an LED indicator there will come on, so you don't have to wonder whether it's disabled or simply broken. The glass coating feels really slick and nice, and the integrated buttons help free up more space and make it look less cramped. 

A separated LED light bar sits on the front edge of the laptop. You can customise it using the Control Center software as well or disable it entirely if you don't like it. 

Finally, the laptop has two bottom-facing speakers, but they aren't much to get excited about. Sound quality is average, and while the volume is sufficiently loud, it's still lacking in weight in the low-end and ends up sounding a bit hollow.

What are the connectivity options like?

The Vapor 15 Pro has just about everything you could need in terms of networking and connectivity options. It's equipped with an Intel Wireless-AX200 for Wi-Fi 6 support and a Gigabit Ethernet port powered by a Realtek controller.

It also features a Thunderbolt 3 port round the back, in addition to an HDMI 2.0 output, Ethernet jack, and the power connector. I find the port placement quite thoughtful, since their location at the rear makes cable management easier when you're connecting the laptop to a Thunderbolt 3 dock or outputting to an external monitor. Similarly, having the power connector at the back means that the cable won't bother you too much when you're gaming or working. 

On the sides, you'll find one USB 3.1 (Gen 2) Type-A and two USB 3.1 (Gen 1) Type-A ports, along with the SD card reader on the right and dedicated headphone and microphone jacks on the left.

This is really one of the most complete packages on a gaming laptop. To my knowledge, only the HP Omen 15 and Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED XA have both a Thunderbolt 3 port and a full-sized SD card reader, and they both cost S$3,599 and S$3,799 respectively.

Test setup and performance

Here's a full list of the notebooks we're looking at: 

• Aftershock Vapor 15 Pro
• Acer Predator Triton 500
• Lenovo Legion Y740
• Razer Blade 15

I've chosen to compare the Vapor 15 Pro against the other GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q laptops we've reviewed so far to give you an idea of how it stacks up against the immediate competition.

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I ran the notebooks through the following benchmarks:

• PCMark 10
• AS SSD
• 3DMark
• Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
• Far Cry 5
• Metro Exodus
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider
• Tom Clancy's The Division 2

How good is it for work?

PCMark 10 Extended evaluates systems based on workloads that can be categorized into four distinct groups, comprising Essentials, Productivity, Digital Content Creation, and Gaming. This includes tests such as app start-up times, web browsing, word processing and spreadsheets, photo and video editing, and rendering and visualization tasks. Finally, gaming performance is evaluated using the Fire Strike benchmark. 

Unsurprisingly, all the laptops performed really close to each other. There aren't really any meaningful differences in terms of performance here, given that they all share the same CPU and GPU configuration. That said, the Vapor 15 Pro was still just under 8 per cent faster than the Razer Blade 15 in terms of overall scores. 

What's the storage performance like? 

The Vapor 15 Pro is equipped with a Phison-branded ASE12NVME512 512GB M.2 SSD. It does really well in AS SSD, particularly in the high queue depth workloads, beating out all the other notebooks. 

How fast is it in games?

I mentioned earlier that the Vapor 15 Pro offers three different performance profiles. They modify the power limits of the notebook as follows: 

• Battery saver - PL1: 35W, PL2: 60W
• Balanced - PL1: 45W, PL2: 65W
• Performance - PL1: 65W, PL2: 100W

I pulled the information above from HWiNFO, and the difference between even Balanced and Performance mode is quite stark. That's not something I've noticed on other gaming laptops, so it seems like Intel has configured each profile quite differently.

For instance, running PCMark 10 in Balanced mode brought the overall score down to just 5691, a nearly 23 per cent drop from running it in Performance mode. Similarly, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and The Division 2 ran at just 52.3FPS and 57FPS respectively, a massive decrease of over 50 per cent in both cases. 

I think it's safe to say that the Balanced mode isn't as "balanced" as its name suggests. If you're gaming, you should definitely run the laptop in Performance mode, which is what I ran all the gaming benchmarks at. There is also a dedicated benchmark mode, but all that seems to do is run the fans at maximum by default.

Overall, the Vapor 15 Pro was generally slightly behind the other laptops, but the difference is so small as to be negligible. I wouldn't quibble over a few frames, especially not when the laptop offers so much else. 

This is still a very fast gaming laptop, and it'll run any AAA game with no problem today at 1080p. 

How good is the battery life?

I tested the battery life using PCMark 10's new Modern Office and Gaming battery life benchmarks. All the notebooks were set to 100 per cent display brightness and had Wi-Fi enabled. The keyboard backlight was disabled. 

Battery life on the Vapor 15 Pro is pretty great in Balanced mode. It still doesn't match up to the Predator Triton 500, but it's ahead of the Razer Blade 15 and way better than the Lenovo Legion Y740. The Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED XA lasted 307 minutes, so the Vapor 15 Pro goes toe-to-toe with a laptop that has traditionally delivered one of the best battery performances on a 15.6-inch gaming notebook, an impressive feat.

I also ran the same battery life benchmark in Battery Saver mode and came up with 310 minutes, not a particularly big difference.

The Vapor 15 Pro does well in our portability index too, which takes into account factors like weight, dimensions, and battery life. Its 1.87kg weight and good battery life help it edge ahead of the Razer Blade 15, and the Vapor 15 Pro is really one of the best portable gaming machines you can get right now. 

Is the cooling performance good?

I tested the thermal performance by running 40 loops of 3DMark's Fire Strike Extreme stress test. This laptop may have much hyped-up thermal performance, but don't expect freakishly low numbers or anything like that. Still, peak CPU and GPU temperatures are great, and setting the fans to max speed further brings temperatures down to 63°C for both.

It's still cooled using a fairly standard setup – I count four heat pipes in total, with one dedicated to the GPU on the left and three shared between the CPU and GPU. These in turn channel heat to four different heat sinks. 

I take my temperature readings in the same air-conditioned room to maintain consistency, but I also try to use the laptops in a non-air-conditioned environment. In the latter scenario, the Vapor 15 Pro feels markedly cooler, especially around the palm rests and areas like the WASD key cluster. They almost never got excessively warm, which I found to be quite impressive. In contrast, while the Blade 15 never got too hot to touch, I could positively feel the heat emanating from it when touching the palm rests.

Instead, heat on the Vapor 15 Pro mostly seems concentrated around the upper-middle segment of the laptop, which you're probably never going to touch anyway. I can also feel cool air being circulated around the left and right sections of the keyboard.

Noise levels are under control too. The fans are audible at top speed, but they're quite bearable.

This should make the bigger brands very worried 

Put simply, the Aftershock Vapor 15 Pro is quite the stunner. It's amazing how much has been packed into this laptop without driving up the price. At S$2,799, the Vapor 15 Pro makes hardly any sacrifices and is fully capable of competing toe-to-toe with laptops that cost nearly a thousand dollars more. 

If you liked the Razer Blade 15 but thought it too pricey, the Vapor 15 Pro will make you very, very happy. The two laptops look really similar, and the Vapor 15 Pro even offers additional features like a mechanical keyboard and SD card reader. It also has slightly better port placement with the Thunderbolt 3 and HDMI ports located at the rear. More importantly, it's a lot lighter, weighing just 1.87kg to the Blade's 2.15kg.

It beats the Blade 15 in other areas too, delivering longer battery life and an extra M.2 socket for your own upgrades. Better still, the keyboard sticks to a more conventional layout, and you don't have to deal with the odd location of the right Shift key. 

In other words, the Vapor 15 Pro is lighter, lasts longer, and is also cheaper, all while offering the same features as the Blade 15, down to support for Wi-Fi 6 and Windows Hello face recognition. Razer still has a slight edge in terms of aesthetics, the higher refresh rate 240Hz display, and slighter better gaming performance, but these small variances may not be worth the massive price gap.

The Vapor 15 Pro will take any modern game you throw at it, and it'll do so without outputting a ton of heat and noise. I'm really not sure what else you can demand from a gaming laptop at this price. If you're shopping for a portable gaming machine right now, this tops any other offering in giving you the most mileage for your money.