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Hypersonic Aviator EX7Killer gaming performance and a Pimp My Ride paint job for an exorbitant price. Price: $4,261
Hypersonic’s monster gaming system, the Aviator EX7, is enormous in every sense of the word. A 17-inch desktop replacement notebook that weighs a whopping 13 pounds, this is an over-the-top computer with dream components and power under the hood that matches its intimidating physical presence. When it comes to the pure gaming experience, the Aviator soars, but its staggering $4,261 price tag will put it out of reach for most.
The bold statements from the Aviator begin with its paint job. The elegant Piercing Blue Pearl on ours is one of 13 different luxury finishes that you can select when configuring your system, ranging from Colorshifting Green/Purple to Heat Sensitive Chameleon. They add a glimmering, reflecting face to a notebook that is otherwise boxy and dull in shape. Keep in mind that any color other than the default gray costs at least $200 extra; that’s because the systems are hand-painted with multiple layers of automotive paint, followed by four layers of crystal coat with waxing and buffing. The end result is one of the more sophisticated paint jobs you’ll find on a notebook. Like so many other gaming systems, the Aviator EX7 weighs a lot, in this casxe 13 pounds. Some of that weight comes from all the hardware stuffed into this beast, including two optical drives and two hard drives, but the main culprit is the inefficient design of the stock motherboard. Gaming enthusiasts probably won’t be bothered by the lack of portability as long as the EX7 delivers on speed, but Dell has raised expectations with its 8.6-pound XPS, and this rig feels a little heavy by comparison. When it comes to gaming or performance, the Aviator is near the top of its class. The 3.8-GHz Intel Pentium 4 is actually a processor designed for desktops, and it’s one of Intel’s fastest. The main hardware update on this version of the EX7 is the addition of Nvidia’s GeForce Go 7800 GTX graphics card. The 110-nanometer version of Nvidia’s most powerful processor, the 7800 has a 24-pixel pipeline, support for Direct X 9 Shader Model 3.0, and around 300 million transistors, all of which make it the premiere graphics solution available (ATI has announced a 90-nm card called the Radeon X1800, but mobile versions are months away). When paired with the P4, the Aviator’s benchmark scores are nothing short of extraordinary: at 14,387 in 3DMark03, it’s a hair shy of our current record held by the Dell XPS M170, but still extremely impressive. Playing a graphically intensive game like Far Cry produced similar results. With the settings on high, the EX7 averaged 88.7 frames per second (fps), an excellent score that’s in the range of a high-end desktop. Gameplay looks sharp on the 17-inch Wide-UXGA display, which is equally well-suited for widescreen DVD playback. The big display and powerful graphics cause the EX7 to run hot, but you’re not likely to play games with this system on your lap. Battery life is practically nonexistent at TK minutes, but that’s almost an afterthought on a performance rig like this. Extras on the Hypersonic can be upscaled or downscaled according to your budget, but ours came pre-configured with all the fixings befitting a true multimedia monster. There are not one, but two hard drives in a RAID configuration, each with 120GB capacity for a total of 240GB; most desktop drives top out at 500GB, and 240GB is a rarity for a notebook. Our EX7 also came with two DVD drives, one of which is a dual-layer LightScribe. Using specially designed blank CDs, a LightScribe drive burns a black pattern into the top surface of the disc to make labeling simple as burning the disc itself. All of the ports and slots you could possibly need are included, from four USB ports to FireWire, DVI and a 7-in-1 memory card reader. Our version included not only 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, but Bluetooth for interfacing with cell phones and other wireless devices. Customer support is three-years parts and labor, and while Hypersonic’s only support channels are phone and e-mail, there is a no dead pixel guarantee that promises to replace your display for an extra $119 if any pixels in your LCD are stuck when it arrives from the factory. For a system this expensive, we think that service should be free. There are two basic facts about the Hypersonic Aviator EX7: it’s incredibly powerful, and it’s incredibly pricey. This is a luxury gaming system for people with oodles of cash to burn. Hypersonic Aviator EX7 Specifications
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