Gigabyte P34G v2 review

Look at the name and the photos and you’ll see nothing remarkable, but the Gigabyte P34G v2 is a gaming laptop that flies in the face of convention. On paper, the combination of an Intel Haswell CPU with Nvidia’s latest 8 Series GPU isn’t strictly new; the giant-sized MSI GE70 2PE Apache Pro has already beaten Gigabyte to the punch in delivering that combination. But the P34G v2, which will hit the shops later this month, performs the impressive feat of squeezing those high-power components into a slim, portable 14in chassis. See also: The best laptops of 2014

The Gigabyte doesn’t wear its heart on its sleeve. The exterior is finished in an understated palette of matte-grey plastics, and it’s only once you tilt back the slim, sturdy-feeling lid that proceedings are enlivened by a keyboard surrounded with a plate of silver metal.

Compared to the slick, stylish exteriors of cutting-edge Ultrabooks, the Gigabyte is less than enticing. That’s not to say build quality is bad, though – it’s anything but. The 1.7kg chassis feels well put together, and although it measures a relatively dainty 23mm across its thickest point, there’s barely any flex or give anywhere.

The two sizable fan exhausts on each rear corner give a clue as to this laptop’s capabilities. The quad-core 2.4GHz Core i7-4700HQ is normally more at home in 15in or 17in designs, and Gigabyte has partnered the powerhouse CPU with Nvidia’s recently launched GeForce GTX 860M GPU, which is why it requires such a beefy cooling system.

There’s even a modest amount of upgradability. Our review unit came with a single 8GB DDR3L SODIMM installed, leaving one RAM slot free, and a 128GB Lite-On mSATA SSD drive. Other models of the P34G v2 also have room for a secondary 2.5in HDD, but in this model there isn’t enough room due to the larger battery.

Alongside the fastest laptops and mobile workstations on the market, the Gigabyte P34G v2 can hold its head up high. In our Real World Benchmarks the P34G v2 scored 0.99, a whisker ahead of far larger laptops such as the 3kg MSI GE70 2PE Apache Pro and the Dell Precision M3800.

Gaming performance is remarkable. The P34G v2 scythed through every single one of our Crysis tests without stuttering, and it was only once we reached Full HD resolution and Very High detail that the average frame rate dropped to 41fps.

Battery life does suffer due to the high-end components, but the Gigabyte fares much better than you might expect. Thanks to the huge 64Wh, 4,300mAh battery inside, the P34G v2 survived for 7hrs 26mins in our light-use battery test – not an amazing result by Ultrabook standards, but a very creditable result for a gaming laptop.

Thanks to Nvidia’s Battery Boost feature, there’s even enough stamina for a reasonable amount of battery-powered gaming. With Battery Boost set to cap the maximum frame rate at 50fps, the P34G v2 kept our Crysis benchmark humming along for 1hr 34mins. With the frame rate capped at 25fps, the Gigabyte lasted 1hr 56mins.

If there’s a downside to accommodating high-end components in a compact chassis, it’s noise. Play a game for any length of time and the P34G v2’s fans spin up noisily. They do their job, though. We set our Crysis looping indefinitely for several hours: the GPU never exceeded 70°C, and the CPU settled at around 88°C with peaks of 92°C. Handily, Gigabyte’s Smart Manager control panel provides a degree of control, giving options to set the fans to maximum speed, adjust fan speed automatically, or engage a “stealth” mode that reduces the speed of the CPU to 1.2GHz.

Upfront, the Gigabyte’s Full HD display also puts in a solid performance. The matte anti-glare finish fends off distracting reflections, at the expense of adding a slightly grainy effect to images. Image quality is generally good, with brightness peaking at a respectable 272cd/m[sup]2[/sup] and contrast at an impressive 1,195:1.

The panel covers most of the sRGB gamut, and colour accuracy is excellent. The Gigabyte’s weakest hand is its tendency to crush greys into black, a trait that makes it necessary to increase the gamma or brightness settings to dredge up detail in darker games.

Finally, connectivity is beyond reproach. Dual-band 802.11ac, Gigabit Ethernet and Bluetooth 4 all make the grade, and the selection of two USB 2 ports, two USB 3 ports, an SD card reader and HDMI and VGA outputs is ample.

The P34G v2 packs more performance into its compact chassis than any comparably portable laptop we’ve come across. It could be more attractive, and the display more finely calibrated, but these are small complaints. The Gigabyte P34G v2 isn’t only every gamer’s ideal laptop; with top-flight performance in a sub-2kg chassis, and for a reasonable price, it’s a portable that deserves the attention of anyone with a need for speed.

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