Scan 3XS LG17 Carbon Extreme Review - Keyboard, Trackpad, Battery and Verdict Review

Scan 3XS LG17 Carbon Extreme – Keyboard and Trackpad

Bucking the trend of most laptops, there’s no island-style “chiclet” keys here. Instead you get a more traditional design with the keys sitting closer together. The cursor keys aren’t set apart from the rest of the buttons, either – that’s my only tiny complaint.

The keys offer good travel and they’re aided by the rock-solid base. The buttons are consistent and comfortable, with a decent snap. They strike a decent balance between the firmer action of a proper mechanical keyboard and the softer buttons associated with laptops, and it means this keyboard is perfectly good for gaming. I prefer it to the flexing, low-travel unit on the Asus ROG GX700.

The trackpad is more mixed. Its surface is fine, but its buttons are a little too soft and press down a little too far – decent for a gaming laptop, but not as good as a proper USB mouse. The pad sits over on the left-hand side, which means my wrist occasionally brushed the cursor when I was gaming with the WASD buttons.

Related: Best Gaming Mice

Scan 3XS LG17 Carbon Extreme – Battery Life

I wasn’t sure what to expect from the Scan’s battery. On the one hand, Pascal GPUs are incredibly efficient – but, on the other, this laptop has a desktop Core i7 processor and a 17.3in 4K screen.

I should have expected typical gaming notebook longevity. The standard battery test loops a video and simulates with the screen at 40% brightness, and under these conditions the Scan lasted for about two hours. This result puts it a little behind the Asus, and half the time of the CyberPower Fangbook 4 SK-X17.

My gaming test saw the Scan run out of juice following close to an hour of playtime. This isn’t long enough for a serious session away from the mains, and altering the screen’s brightness made only about ten minutes of difference to the result.

Should I Buy the Scan 3XS LG17 Carbon Extreme?

Scan’s latest laptop is built for gaming speed, and the GTX 1080 allows it to deliver an huge amount of gaming power. This it the first time that a single-GPU notebook has been able to go toe-to-toe with gaming desktops, and it means games run smoothly, despite the Scan’s 4K screen.

It’s hardly a slouch elsewhere, either. The desktop-class Core i7 processor puts it in the top tier of application performers, and it has a generous allocation of memory and a fast SSD. The screen is good quality, the keyboard is decent, and even the speakers perform well.

Of course, it comes with the usual desktop replacement caveats: it’s huge and heavy, its battery life is poor, and it’s eye-wateringly expensive. But if you crave power and want to play at 4K, it’s a good option.

With all of that said, the latest Nvidia 10-series laptops have only just started to go on sale, and this is only the second unit I’ve reviewed. While its performance isn’t in doubt, if you want something sleeker, it might pay to wait a little longer for a more attractive design from rivals Alienware, Asus, MSI and others.

Verdict

A powerful and power-hungry gaming laptop that’s ready for anything.

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