CyberPower Fangbook EVO HFX7-200 Review

Why is the Fangbook a great gaming laptop under $1500?

The Fangbook is a great machine. Powered by the mighty i7 and the hugely popular GeForce 770M, make is a force to be reckoned with. Being slight under-gunned in comparison to our number 1, the MSI GT70, puts you at a beautiful decision. Go for max performance with the MSI GT70, or take the FangBook and save yourself some money to spend on a cool game. Both are excellent choices.

Features

Full focused gaming laptops, like the Fangbook, rarely come in a modest design. The Fangbook is no exception to this. Having a huge chassis (11.3 x 16.9 x 2.2 inches) that for some reason reminds us of Alien vs Predator, makes is this laptop a big chuck of gaming excellence. Luckily, the performance under the hood justifies the 7.9 pounds as the technology is nothing short of state of the art. As icing on the cake, the Fangbook comes with a full HD (1920x1080) 17.3 inch screen displaying your games, DVD and Blu-rays in full HD splendour. 

As most good gaming laptops under 1500, comes the Fangbook X7-200 equipped with a wide range of connectors, ports and sockets of all sorts. Having 3 USD 3.0 slots, a 4-in-1 card slot and enough audio connectors for an small army (headphones, speakers and mic) on the left, the Fangbook comes with an additional two USB 2.0 ports and a DVD-RW on the right. Finally, the Ethernet port, eSATA (to connect previous generation hard drives), two VGA and HDMI outputs on the back, and you can understand that this powerhouse of a laptop can become your own personal media station. 

As gaming station, the Fangbook X7-200 will not disappoint. Packing the quad core intel i7-4770MQ, clocked at 2.4 GHz, provides enough calculating power for both gaming and multimedia creating purposes. Being backed up by NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770M gives it both the brand name reassurance associated with Intel and NVIDIA, as well as the graphical performance to play most of the latest games on at least ‘high’ spec.

It must be noted though, that our colleagues at NotebookCheck have benchmarked the GeForce GTX 770M and the NVIDIA Geforce GTX 870M in an independent comparison. Unsurprisingly, the 870M consistently outperformed the 770M in every game. An excellent example of this Battlefield 4, which was clocked at 27 frames per second (fps) on Ultra settings using the 770M, while being clocked at 37.0 fps on the same settings using the 870M. 

What games will you be able to play?

The below stated games are all playable on ‘ultra’ settings with a frame rate of at least 30 per second.

The Elder Scrolls Online, Titanfall, Batman: Arkham Origins, F1 2013, Fifa 2013, Saints Row IV, Dota 2, DRID 2, Bioshock Infinite, Tomb Raider, Dead Space 3 and more. 

To Conclude

The Fangbook is one of the best gaming laptops under 1500 dollars available. Being slightly under-gunned in comparison to our number 1, the MSI GT70 places it in an uncomfortable position. However, having the 150 dollar price advantage at its side, it just might win over the hearts of some gamers. So ask yourself, are you going to go with the ultimate performance of the MSI GT70 Dominator? Or will you save yourself the extra bucks, select the equally awesome Fangbook and get yourself a few games? Up to you...

The Key Facts:

• Processor / CPU: 2.4 GHz Intel Core i7
• Graphics Card / GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770M
• RAM: 8 GB DDR3
• Hard Drive / HD: 750 GB
• Screen Size: 17.3 Inches
• Screen Resolution: 1900 x 1080 pixels
• Operating System: Windows 8
• Weight: 7.9 Pounds
• Number of USB 2.0 Ports: 2
• Number of USD 3.0 Ports: 3
• Battery Life: Lithium-Ion
• Dimensions: 11.34 x 16.85 x 2.17 inches