Illegear is no stranger in building some of the most competitive gaming computers to meet gamers’ demands. They have certainly pulled an all rounder that goes head to head with some of the best looking yet competitive gaming laptops in the market. The Illegear Selenite is a slim gaming laptop that fits almost all the bells and whistles that could blow your mind off.
Design
The Selenite unlike those bulky and heavy gaming laptops that you would expect, is a gaming laptop designed with portability in mind, giving you the freedom to game anywhere. At first glance, you may say it’s a 15 inch laptop. You’ll be quite surprised to know that Illegear has managed to fit a 17.3 inch, 144Hz, 1080p IPS screen into a 15 inch form factor. The bezel is so thin that Illegear claims the Selenite is the world’s first bezel-less laptop.
The back cover is constructed from an aluminium frame anodized in black. There’s an LED Bar in the front of the laptop which can be configured to display colours of your choice when the laptop is plugged in to a power source or runs on the battery.
The keyboard features a full mechanical keyboard (That’s right folks) with brown switches and per-key RGB LED! You’ll be surprised by how the keyboard performs and the satisfaction it gives on every click. I instantly got used to typing on this keyboard and the typing experience is remarkably amazing. I couldn’t stop using the keyboard because it feels so good to type on it. The key caps are removable for easy cleaning if the laptop has been collecting dusts.
The Selenite comes with two bottom firing speakers on the sides and a subwoofer. There are 2 USB 3.1 ports and a card reader on the right and on the left it has a USB 2.0, an Ethernet port, a microphone and headphone jack. At the back, the laptop houses 2 mini Displayports, a HDMI port, a USB 3.1 Type-C and a power port. Illegear did not disclose any information on the webcam found on the Selenite but upon further checking, the camera is a 1MP shooter capable of taking pics and video recording in 720p. The quad vents for air ventilation are located on the sides and the back of the laptop to channel heat out.
Review
Illegear did spec out the Selenite a little for us to review. The laptop comes with an 8th Gen Intel Core i7-8750 with a base clock speed of 2.2GHz and can boost up to 4.1GHz. This CPU is not overclockable, unlike the i9-8950HK which Illegear also offers in this laptop but it comes with an additional price tag of about RM2000. It comes equipped with Nvidia GeForce GTX1060 6GB GDDR5 as standard across the board. The RAM is a 16GB DDR4 at 2400MHz, a Solid State Hybrid Drive(SSHD) with a capacity of 1TB and an 256GB Samsung NVMe SSD which takes up one out of the two M.2 slots on the motherboard.
These are not killer specifications which you would expect from a high end gaming laptop but enough to run games at a decent frame rate. I played CS:GO in maxed out settings and the game played fairly well. The 144Hz display was so pleasing to my eyes that I couldn’t stop playing. The colours are excellent and yes, the high refresh rate of the display is definitely noticeable. I managed to get an average frame rate of 120 and the laptop was relatively silent. I switched to the Gaming Mode, which allows the fans to spin fast. The fans worked excellent in channelling heat out to keep the laptop relatively cool to the touch.
The mechanical keyboard literally gave me keygasm while using it. Illegear claims the brown switches are silent, quieter than other mechanical keyboards they have come up with. However, it was still clicky but not as loud as the blue switches. This isn’t a complaint though. In my opinion, the brown switches in this keyboard is really good. I wouldn’t expect myself to use a mechanical keyboard that is totally silent because that wouldn’t give me the satisfaction to hear the clickiness of the keyboard. So thumbs up Illegear!
Sound quality from the speakers are decent and the subwoofer do produce a little bit of bass. The speakers comes tuned with the Sound Blaster Cinema 5 software for better audio output with surround sound. It’s not an excellent sounding pair of speakers but not the worst either. Overall, it does produce some good audio, unlike most bottom firing speakers which tend to sound a little hollow.
For daily usage, the Selenite performs well enough. Without any gaming, it lasted about 5 hours which is not bad at all considering it’s a gaming laptop. This laptop could be your everyday portable laptop if you’re looking to game on the go or even get some work done. The ultra slim profile and a lightweight gaming laptop with a 17 inch screen with a starting price point of RM7099 is worth every penny.
Benchmark results
3DMark – 3766
PCMark 10 – 5027
