Origin PC Eon17-X Review

Like its predecessors, the Origin PC Eon17-X is one hell of a beast. At $4,063 (starting at $2,432), the Eon17-X packs a crazy-powerful 9th Gen Core i9 processor and RTX 2080 graphics into a chassis with a comfortable keyboard and a good pair of speakers. However, it shirks some of its gaming-laptop duties with a super-dim, 17.3-inch display. Aside from that, it's super expensive, and although you can customize the lid, the print is low-quality. Nonetheless, the Eon17-X is a solid premium gaming laptop.

Price and Configuration Options

The Eon17-X that I tested costs $4,063 and comes outfitted with an Intel Core i9-9900K processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 GPU with 8GB of VRAM, 16GB of RAM, a 500GB Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD, a 2TB Seagate 2.5 FireCuda FAHD and a 1920 x 1080 display.

The starting model is $2,432, and drops to a Core i5-9600K, a GTX 1060, 8GB of RAM and a 250GB Seagate BarraCuda SSD. Going all out will cost you $6,516 and net you a Core i9-9900K CPU, an RTX 2080 GPU, 64GB of RAM, two 4TB Samsung 860 Pro Series SSDs and a 4K display.

Design

The Eon17-X's lid has several curves and grooves, similar to the hood of a car. While the custom graphic of Black Panther's Okoye that adorns our model is gorgeous on its own, the print actually doesn't look very good on the Eon17-X. The yellow base has visible static, and the edges around the Origin logo are soft, as if the skin were printed at a low resolution. Interestingly enough, the lid is actually a fraction smaller than the deck, and beyond the lid, half of the speaker system is on display.

The interior of this demon features a basic charcoal paint along with a three-zone RGB-lit keyboard. The speakers sit between the hinges, and right below that is a stylized power button accompanied by LED indicators. There's also a fingerprint reader within the touchpad (gross). The bezels on the display are decently thick as well.

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At 9.5 pounds and 16.4 x 11.6 x 1.6 inches, the Evo17-X actually has the thinnest back end among its competitors. The Alienware Area-51m is a lighter 8.5 pounds and measures 16.1 x 15.9 x 1.1~1.7 inches, while the MSI GT75 Titan is 10 pounds and 16.9 x 12.4 x 1.2~2.3 inches.

Ports

As if it were any surprise, this thick boy has a ton of ports.

On the left side, there's an RJ45 Ethernet port, one Thunderbolt 3 port, one USB Type-C port, two USB 3.1 ports and an SD card slot, while the right side features a security lock slot, two more USB 3.1 ports and four separate audio inputs.

The backside also has ports, including a place for the power jack, an HDMI port and two Mini DisplayPorts.

Display

The Eon17-X's 17.3-inch, 1920 x 1080 display is dimmer and duller than the screens on most premium gaming laptops, but it does clock a 144-Hz refresh rate.

In the live-action trailer for Mulan, the titular character's red-and-purple robe was decently colorful. However, I couldn't see any detail in the small tables on each side of her because the display was so dim. However, it was sharp enough to detail each strand of Mulan's hair.

I booted up Shadow of the Tomb Raider and spawned in a mud-covered wall. The point of the wall is to hide me, but I could barely see myself; the dim screen blended some details together. The color didn't exactly pop, either, but the way the sun hit the grass around me still looked photogenic. I could also spot the sharp details of the leaves in the bushes.

According to our colorimeter, the Eon17-X's panel covered 120% of the sRGB color gamut, which isn't inherently bad, but it is for the price and in comparison to the 146% premium-gaming-laptop average. The Alienware Area-51m was no better, at 118%, but the MSI GT75 Titan covered an impressive 178%.

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At 211 nits, the Eon17-X's display is inexcusably dim for a gaming laptop, especially against the 289-nit category average. While the Area-51m (284 nits) and the GT75 Titan (271 nits) also fell short of the average, they came closer.

Keyboard and Touchpad

Typing on the Eon17-X's keyboard was an undeniably comfortable experience, thanks to the thick keys and the cozy spacing between them. It was also decently clicky.

I blazed through the 10FastFingers.com typing test at 78 words per minute, flying above my 70-wpm average. The keys travel at 1.5 millimeters, landing at the doorstep of our preferred 1.5 to 2.0 mm, and required a meaty 79 grams of force to actuate.

The RGB lighting, however, is quite disappointing. For one, the lights barely seep through the deck, and to top it off, the keyboard has only three-zone lighting, which is insulting when you're shelling out four grand. The lighting can (barely) be customized via the Control Center 2.0's LED Device tab.

The Eon17-X's 4.2 x 2.4-inch touchpad is soft and accompanied by a solid pair of discrete buttons. But, as mentioned earlier, the fingerprint reader is embedded. That cuts off some real estate, which is frustrating. But thanks to the laptop's Windows 10 Precision drivers, gestures like two-finger scrolling and three-finger tabbing worked like a charm.

Audio

The Eon17-X's top-firing speakers produced solid, decently loud audio, blasting Lund's "BlkBird" across a small office. The speakers captured the depth of the acoustic guitar that opens the song, and when the vocals cut in, they sounded crisp and bright. However, although the bass was decent, it could have been deeper, and the sound was occasionally muddy when instruments clashed.

When I played Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the speakers were actually a little too loud -- uncomfortable even. However, the volume was enough to overwhelm the laptop's blaring fan, and I could hear everything in the environment around me, from the guard's footsteps to the annoying cawing of a bird nearby. The guards who were convincing each other that they were going to find me did so in a loud, albeit a little sharp, banter. But when I stabbed some dude in the spine with a pickax, I heard a satisfying, meaty crunch.

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You can tune the speakers through Creative Labs' Sound Blaster Connect app, which offers a fairly deep feature wheel. It includes a full equalizer and a library of presets, like Concert, Cinema, Gaming and even ones specific to certain games. You can customize those presets with provided dials, labeled Surround Sound, Crystalizer, Bass, Smart Volume and Dialogue. You can also make your own preset. The Concert preset sounded the best for music, but I had to turn the reverb off to normalize it, and the Gaming preset was good for Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

Gaming, Graphics and VR

Powered by an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 GPU with 8GB of VRAM, the Eon17-X ran Shadow of the Tomb Raider (Highest, 1080p) at a smooth 80 frames per second as I slid back to back on mud-covered walls, choking out baddies with my bow.

On the Rise of the Tomb Raider benchmark (Very High, 1080p), the Eon17-X nailed 81 fps, flying over the 64-fps premium-gaming-laptop average while also landing between the MSI GT75 Titan (76 fps) and the Alienware Area-51m (92 fps), which sport the same GPU.

The Eon17-X fell slightly behind on the Hitman benchmark (Ultra, 1080p), averaging 125 fps, which is above the category average (105 fps) but short of the Area-51m (143 fps) and the GT75 Titan (140 fps).

On the Grand Theft Auto V benchmark (Very High, 1080p), the Eon17-X hit 97 fps, once again sailing past the average for premium gaming laptops (78 fps) and landing between the GT75 Titan (90 fps) and the Area-51m (105 fps).

Unsurprisingly, the Eon17-X and the GT75 Titan scored a perfect 11 on the StreamVR Performance Test, skidding by the 10.9 category average.

Performance

Underneath the hood of this beast lies a desktop-level Intel Core i9-9900K processor with 16GB of RAM, which smoothly powered through 40 Google Chrome tabs and five 1080p YouTube videos while running Shadow of the Tomb Raider in the background.

On the Geekbench 4.1 overall performance test, the Eon17-X scored 27,347, climbing over the 21,677 premium-gaming-laptop average. The GT75 Titan's Core i9-8950HK CPU (24,569) fell slightly behind, but the Area-51m's Intel Core i9-9900K CPU excelled, with an average of 32,591.

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The Eon17-X completed the HandBrake benchmark in 6 minutes and 53 seconds, speeding past the category average (9:45). It was over a minute faster than the GT75 Titan (8:00), but the Area-51m (6:00) was quicker.

The Eon17-X's 500GB Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD copied 4.97GB of data in 9 seconds. That translates to 565 megabytes per second, which is a decent speed but slower than the average for premium gaming laptops (750 MBps). The Area-51m's 1TB SSD (1,272 MBps) and the GT75 Titan's 512GB SSD (848 MBps) were significantly faster.

Battery Life

This much power comes at a cost, and that cost is battery life. When the Eon-17X continuously surfed the web over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness, it died after 1 hour and 50 minutes, which is over an hour less than the current premium-gaming-laptop average (3:17). As expected, the Area-51m (2:36) and the GT75 Titan (2:20) crawled behind the average as well. If you want long battery life in a gaming laptop, look at machines that sport Max-Q GPUs, like the Gigabyte Aero 15 Classic or the Razer Blade 15.

Webcam

The Eon-17X's 1080p webcam is surprisingly good. I could see some detail in my stubble and even in my hair. It caught the color in my red shirt, as well as the green in the file cabinets behind me.

However, it failed to manage the contrast; the ceiling lights were way too bright, and everything else was too dark in the photo. We'd still recommend that you purchase an external webcam if you plan on streaming.

Heat

For a monster this size, the Eon17-X handles heat pretty well. After I played Shadow of the Tomb Raider for 15 minutes, the underside measured 108 degrees Fahrenheit, which isn't too far from our 95-degree comfort threshold. The center of the keyboard and touchpad hit 99 and 82 degrees, respectively. The hottest it got was 112 degrees, on the right underside of the hinge's vent.

On our normal heat test, the underside reached 101 degrees after the laptop streamed a 15-minute 1080p video, while the keyboard hit 102 degrees and the touchpad measured 92 degrees.

Software and Warranty

There's really only one piece of software on board the Eon-17X, and that's the Control Center 2.0. Here you can customize the output for your CPU, GPU, fan and memory. There are also presets, like Power Saving, Quiet, Entertainment and Performance, which automatically adjust the power output. The Eon-17X's software is so scant that it even lacks Windows 10 bloatware, which is a great thing.

Origin PC includes a one-year limited warranty on the Eon-17X.

Bottom Line

Origin PC's Eon17-X is a tank, on both the outside and the inside. It powered through everything I threw at it with incredible performance, its keyboard was incredibly comfortable to type on and its speakers serenaded my ears with some bangin' tunes. However, I can't look past its crazy-dim 17.3-inch display, its low-quality design and its wild price.

If you're already shelling out a ton of money, you might as well get the MSI GT75 Titan ($4,199), which offers a more colorful display, a mechanical keyboard and a higher-quality design.

But overall, the Eon17-X is a solid premium gaming laptop with super-competitive performance.

Credit: Laptop Mag

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