This version of the Origin EON17-SLX has been replaced and is no longer available. Read our review of the most recent model.

It’s that time of year, when newly released components are seized upon by boutique gaming PC manufacturers and squeezed to extract every drop of improved performance and speed out of the hardware in the name of competitive gaming. At first glance, the Origin EON17-SLX (2014) ($3,676.34 direct) gaming laptop looks very much like last year’s Origin EON17-SLX(2,177.00 Base Configuration at ORIGIN PC)(Opens in a new window) with a slight spec bump. However, on closer inspection, it’s clear that the never-ending quest for more power has pushed the EON17-SLX (2014)(2,177.00 Base Configuration at ORIGIN PC)(Opens in a new window) to the front of the pack, making it our new Editors’ Choice for high-end gaming laptops.

Design
As with most gaming laptops, the EON17-SLX is big and bulky, with a basic black exterior and soft touch matte finish across the lid. You won’t find the flashy racing-style paint job of the Maingear Nomad 17 Ultimate here, though you will find one cosmetic feature familiar to muscle cars—tail lights. On the two back corners is a pair of red lights that glow menacingly whenever the EON17-SLX is powered on. Sadly, there’s no turn signal.

The keyboard features a backlight with seven colors to choose from and three distinct lighting zones. The touchpad glows and changes colors to match the keyboard, but it’s a bit different than others we’ve seen. Not only does the pad have a separate button bar for right and left clicking—most systems these days have shifted to clickpads which combine the buttons with a clickable touch surface—but the EON17-SLX takes it a step further. The button bar is separated from the touchpad by a full half-inch, which takes a lot of getting used to. To the right of the touchpad is a built-in fingerprint reader for secure logins.

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The EON17-SLX is hefty, weighing 9.3 pounds alone (12.3 pounds with the power adapter brick) and large, measuring 2.15 by 16.5 by 11.3 inches (HWD). While that’s not terribly bulky compared with similarly sized gaming rigs, like the Alienware 17($1,449.99 at Dell)(Opens in a new window) or the Maingear Nomad 17 Ultimate, it’s still too big for carrying further than the other side of the house.

The EON17-SLX (2014) features a 17.3-inch display with 1,920-by-1,080 resolution, and while there’s a bit of a glossy finish to it, it doesn’t seem to suffer from the mirror-like reflectiveness I saw on the previous iteration. Accompanying the display are built-in Onkyo speakers, complete with an integrated subwoofer. The combination sounds excellent, and is further helped along with some tweaking in the Sound Blaster X-Fi MB control panel.

Features
The laptop is outfitted with plenty of ports and connectors. On the left, there are jacks for headphones and microphone, an S/PDIF optical connection for digital surround sound, a Gigabit Ethernet port, and a Kensington lock slot. On the right, you’ll find a combination USB/eSATA port, two USB 3.0 ports (one with power for charging devices), a tray-loading DVD+-RW drive, and a Thunderbolt port. That last item might surprise a few people, since Thunderbolt has so far been seen largely on Apple’s Mac laptops and desktops, but now that same high-speed data connectivity is also available for Windows users. Whether or not you have the need (or the Thunderbolt-equipped accessories) to use it is another question. On the back of the system you’ll find two additional USB 3.0 ports, a four-pin power connector, and an HDMI output.

Interestingly enough, the EON17-SLX has both a front-facing 5-Megapixel webcam and a rear-facing 1-Megapixel camera built into the lid. While this sort of feature has been known to pop up on mobile products, such as tablets and hybrid ultrabooks, it’s the first rear-facing camera I’ve seen on a gaming notebook.

The EON17-SLX (2014) boasts dual-band 802.11AC Wi-Fi, which will provide excellent connectivity and speed, even in places crowded with extraneous wireless signals, such as an apartment building or college dorm. There’s also Bluetooth for wirelessly connecting certain mice or headsets. My only concern with the EON17-SLX was the decision to use a four-pin power connector instead of the barrel connector used on most laptops—the pinned connector must be plugged in correctly, or the plug may be damaged to an unusable degree.

The system combines two 128GB solid-state drives (SSDs) in a RAID 0 configuration with a 750GB 7,200rpm hard drive, offering both speedy performance and large storage capacity. Our review unit came with Windows 8.1, but is otherwise free of any egregious preinstalled programs. Bundled with the laptop was a recovery flash drive, and Origin covers the EON17-SLX (2014) with a one-year warranty, 45 days of free shipping, along with free labor and support for the life of the machine.

Performance
The most important parts of the laptop are inside, and Origin puts the power where it counts with an Intel Core i7-4930MX, a 3.0 GHz quad-core processor from Intel’s Extreme line, paired with 16GB of RAM. Complementing this processing power are two Nvidia GeForce GTX 780M graphics cards in SLI configuration, each with 4GB of dedicated memory. The combination resulted in powerful performance both in gaming and non-gaming tests.

In PCMark7 the EON17-SLX scored 6,446 points, putting it ahead of the other 17-inch gaming laptops, like the Maingear Nomad 17 Ultimate (5,328 points) and the Editors’ Choice Alienware 18( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) (6,220). It also dominated in Cinebench R11.5, scoring 7.63 points—the closest competitor was the previous Origin EON17-SLX (7.44 points) —and the fastest multimedia performance of the bunch, finishing Handbrake in 31 seconds and Photoshop in 3 minutes 2 seconds. These sorts of results not only promise excellent gaming, they also indicate that the EON17-SLX will be a strong performer in any other application you set it to.

Not only does the EON17-SLX (2014) offer strong performance in productivity and multimedia tasks, but the gaming performance is top notch. In our gaming benchmarks, Aliens vs. Predators and Heaven, the system topped every competitor, producing 96 frames per second in both tests when set to full 1080p resolution and high-detail settings. No matter what new game you want to run on it, the EON17-SLX should be able to handle it with flying colors.

If you want to take the laptop on the road (despite the gargantuan size and weight), you will run into the problem of battery life. In our battery rundown test, the EON17-SLX (2014) lasted just over an hour (1 hour 13 minutes). Even among high-powered gaming rigs, which are notorious for short battery life, this is short. By comparison, the Alienware 17 lasted 2:55 and the previous Origin EON17-SLX lasted 2:21; but it’s not the shortest-lived of the bunch—the Maingear Nomad 17 lasted only 1:06. Suffice it to say that you’ll definitely need to stay near a power outlet.

Conclusion
While running down the list of components and specs would make the Origin EON17-SLX (2014) look like simply a refresh of last year’s model, the new iteration gets more than a new coat of paint, thanks to an Intel Extreme Core i7 processor and dual Nvidia GeForce GTX 780M GPUs. While the separated touchpad and mouse buttons is a tad off-putting, and the battery life is short (even among short-lived gaming systems), there’s no denying the appeal of raw power. With the Origin EON17-SLX outpacing the Alienware 18 with better numbers both in raw performance and gaming, as well as coming in for roughly $800 less, the Origin EON17-SLX handily claims the title of Editors’ Choice for high-end gaming laptops.