Dream Machines P960RN Laptop Review (9750H & 2080 Max-Q)

1. Introduction2. Performance and Testing3. Thermals, Noise, Battery, Power4. Closing Thoughts5. View All Pages

Here at KitGuru we've reviewed a number of competent gaming mice from Dream Machines over the years, but the P960RN is the first time we have looked at a laptop from the company, with Fierce PC now stocking these machines for UK buyers.

Overall, I am impressed with what I have seen from this laptop. Things start well as the P960RN is well built and looks good thanks to its mostly metal chassis, giving it a premium feel in the hand. Additionally, the laptop's weight is just over 2kg so it is very portable, and total thickness (excluding feet) is under 2cm so it has a sleek and modern appearance.

The display is another strong point for this machine. Primarily, it is an IPS 1080p 144Hz panel, with that high refresh rate making gaming feel fast and fluid. Additionally, it is a high quality panel, registering 98% sRGB coverage and a surprisingly impressive delta E colour accuracy value of just 1.22.

As for the keyboard and trackpad, these are both decent but not mind-blowing. Still, they're not weak points and are more than good enough to get you by, but we wouldn't say either components was anything out of the ordinary.

It's the overall gaming performance that will sell this laptop, however, and the combination of i7-9750H CPU and RTX 2080 Max-Q GPU can put in a shift when playing the latest titles. In a nutshell, you can expect over 60fps at all times when gaming at 1080p with this machine, with games like F1 2019 and World War Z seeing average frame rates well over 100FPS. Even Red Dead Redemption 2 averaged over 76FPS at high settings, which is no mean feat.

The one negative aspect of the performance that we noticed was specific to CPU-intensive workloads, where the CPU's frequency dropped down as low as 2.6GHz when dealing with tasks such as Cinebench R20, with 100% CPU utilisation. This isn't ideal but is to be expected from a laptop this thin but still sporting a 6-core CPU. I don't see this as a huge negative point for the P960RN as it is a gaming laptop not a mobile workstation – but if you wanted something that is also capable of editing or rendering out some videos, the drop in clock speed will be noticeable.

Additionally, the inclusion of just a 500GB SSD is disappointing. Granted, it is a Samsung 970 Evo Plus which is very fast, but in 2019 500GB is not a lot of space at all. In my use case, by the time I'd installed the 5 games I benchmarked today, I was left with just 90GB free space remaining. Of course, you do have to factor in the extra cost to a larger drive – and you can configure this laptop with extra storage on Fierce PC's website – but there's no getting around the fact that with a single 500GB storage solution, space is going to run out fast.

Even with those two points factored in, the Dream Machines P960RN is still well worth buying. In fact, it is a very impressive gaming laptop for the money that looks good and is also nice and portable. If you want to get work done on the go, this probably isn't for you, but for those just looking for a fast and sleek gaming machine, this will do the job very nicely.

You can buy the P960RN from Fierce PC for £2069.95 HERE.

Pros

• Slim chassis.
• Mostly metal construction.
• Great gaming performance.
• Keen price considering the core components.
• High quality, 144Hz display.
• Good selection of ports.

Cons

• Processor struggles in CPU-intensive workloads.
• Single 500GB drive for storage.

KitGuru says: The Dream Machines P960RN is well worth buying considering the hardware you get for your money.

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