Digital Storm Krypton Review

Einführung

We often ask ourselves that what is more important for a hardcore gamer, the overall package or just gaming performance? Digital Storm Krypton is the answer to this question, Digital Storm has paid no attention to the cosmetic details of Krypton and focused all their attention to maximizing the gaming performance of the laptop. Digital Storm Krypton is a midrange laptop that might not be pretty but thanks to its impressive hardware it can deliver pure gaming performance. With the gaming performance that rivals that of High-end gaming laptops, Digital Storm Krypton is probably the best midrange gaming laptop.

Design und Eigenschaften

Digital Storm Krypton is based on a Clevo chassis and has black plastic exterior with matte finish. The design of Krypton is very generic and almost identical to what we have seen from other gaming laptop manufacturers. Krypton is a big laptop and comes with excellent hardware to fulfill all your gaming desires. Overall dimensions of Digital Storm Krypton are 1.81-inch by 16.3-inch by 11.3-inch and it weighs 8.6 pounds. On the bottom it has removable panels that allow quick access to battery, hard drive, SSD, optical drive and memory, which makes it easier for the users to upgrade Krypton themselves. Digital Storm Krypton comes with a variety of ports to fulfill all your gaming requirements. On the right side there is a Blu-ray/DVD burner, a USB 2.0 port and audio ports for headphone, microphone and external speakers. On the left side Krypton has two USB 3.0 ports, a USB/eSATA combo port, a Gigabit LAN port, a 3-in-1 card reader and FireWire 800 port. On the back, there is a 4-pin power connector, an HDMI out, a DisplayPort and a mini DisplayPort.

Digital Storm Krypton comes with a 17.3-inch display with 1920 x 1080 pixel full HD resolution. The display comes with an antiglare finish, therefore users don’t face any reflectivity issues. Sadly Krypton’s display panel doesn’t feature IPS technology, meaning below average viewing angles, but looking at the screen from the front gives beautiful results. Comparing the display with similar laptops, we realized that the blacks are not as dark or as rich as others. Below the screen, there are two Onkyo speakers and their performance is more than enough to satisfy hardcore gamers. Digital Storm Krypton also comes with a 1-inch subwoofer integrated on the underside of the chassis. Speakers are combined with Soundblaster X-Fi 3 sound card to produce high quality sound so that users can hear every little sound effect. Krypton even adds amplification to the headphone output to increase sound clarity through headphones.

Digital Storm Krypton comes with a backlit keyboard which is slightly smaller than a full-sized keyboard. It comes with square keys which are nicely separated from each other, which decrease the chances of typos. The keyboard is very comfortable to use and provide plenty of space for typing and gaming. The keyboard keys are evenly backlit by blue LEDs and offer good tactile feedback when pressed. Just below the keyboard, Krypton features a large multi-touch trackpad with separate left and right mouse buttons. There is a glowing insignia on the surface of trackpad, which rotates through several colors. Between the mouse buttons, Krypton also features a fingerprint reader, which offers easy and secure login.

Surprisingly Digital Storm has kept Krypton free of bloatware, at first boot users only get a 64-bit version of Windows 8.1 including drivers and utilities for sound and Nvidia GeForce Experience. With the new Nvidia GeForce Experience users get features like ShadowPlay and GameStream. ShadowPlay give users the ability to record in-game videos and GameStream give users the option to stream their games to an Nvidia Shield. With Nvidia GeForce Experience, users also get Battery Boost feature, which remarkably improve the gaming performance when system is on battery power. With Krypton, Digital Storm offers three year limited warranty which includes three year labor warranty, one year part replacement warranty and lifetime tech support.

Leistung

Digital Storm has equipped Krypton with the mighty Intel Core i7-4810MQ quad-core processor with Intel HD Graphics 4600. The processor belongs to Intel’s fourth generation of processors also known as Haswell, which are famous for their robust performance and are very light on power consumption. It is normally clocked at 2.8GHz but with turbo boost goes up to 3.8GHz. Krypton comes with 16GB DDR3 1600MHz memory which is upgradable up to 32GB. To fulfill all your gaming needs, Krypton features Nvidia GeForce GTX880M as a discreet graphics card with 8GB memory. It comes with a 250GB SSD and a 750GB 7200rpm mechanical hard drive For wireless connectivity, Krypton features Bluetooth 4.0 and a dual band 802.11ac Wi-Fi

During different benchmark tests and game plays, Digital Storm Krypton has proved its mettle and it was able to perform similar to high end gaming laptops that cost up to $1,000 more. During PCMark 7 test, Krypton scored 6,375 points, while Alienware 17 only managed 5,734 points. During 3DMark11 benchmark with extreme settings, Krypton managed 2,943 points and Alienware 17 scored 2,888 points. During Heaven Benchmark test with maximum settings, Krypton managed 49 frames per second while Alienware 17 gave 48 frames per second. Krypton blazed through the Handbrake test in just 33 seconds and finished Photoshop CS6 test in 3 minutes and 14 seconds. The 250GB SSD can give a speed of up to 159MBps. While playing games like Aliens vs Predators at maximum settings, Krypton manage to give steady 49 frames per second. During the battery test it lasted 4 hours and 7 minutes while Alienware 7 lasted only 3 hours and 13 minutes. After extensive testing it can be confirmed that Digital Storm Krypton can play almost any game with medium to high settings, but if gamers want top of the line graphics with all the eye candy, then they might want to go for a dual-GPU system like the Origin-EON 17-SLX (2014).

Abschluss

Digital Storm Krypton is a midrange gaming laptop, but with its impressive processing and graphics performance it has proved that it can hold its own against more expensive high-end systems. While those high end gaming laptops might offer more features like improved design or more storage space, these features are secondary for a hardcore gamer. What really matters to a hardcore gamer is that he gets the best gaming performance for their hard-earned money and Krypton has proved that it can offer the best bang for the buck. As Krypton can provide performance comparable to high end gaming laptops in the price tag of a midrange gaming laptop, it is clearly the best choice for a midrange gaming laptop.

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