Origin EVO15-S (Skylake) Review

By Josh Norem

Editor’s note: Some of you may have noticed this review was linking to nowhere for a few hours. There was a small issue with our CMS that has since been resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience.

The Origin EVO15-S is a rare commodity in the mobile gaming world; a “thin and light” that’s packing quite a bit of horsepower. Unlike the Acer Predator we recently examined, which is the size and weight of a small mammal, the EVO15-S eschews the “built like a tank” ethos in favor of a much slimmer footprint, measuring less than an inch thick and weighing just 4.2lbs. Naturally, it doesn’t boast quite the same hardware specs or capabilities as the Acer notebook, but that’s the tradeoff Origin makes in favor of a design that won’t factor chiropractor visits into the cost of ownership.

One interesting note about the EVO15-S is it’s apparently the exact same notebook as the less expensive MSI GS60 Ghost, though assembled and supported by Origin, which told us they buy the units from MSI then add their own integration expertise and warranty support, along with custom paint options. The warranty coverage is extensive and nothing to casually dismiss, as it includes two years of free part replacements, and lifetime labor and 24-7 phone support in the US.

Despite its waifish profile (for a gaming laptop at least), the EVO15-S is still wide and large, measuring 15.35” across and 10.47” deep, though it’s just .78” tall. Despite its stature it’s outfitted with an impressive loadout of hardware. Let’s take a glimpse at the spec sheet.

The most interesting bits for gamers are the quad-core Intel Core i7-6700HQ Skylake CPU, GeForce GTX 970 GPU with 6GB of video RAM, and 16GB of system RAM. That’s a fairly potent combo and when combined with the included 1080p display, should be able to get us to 60fps nirvana in most titles. Other tasty components include a 256GB PCI Express SSD along with a 1TB 7,200rpm hard drive for data, and a lone USB 3.1/Type-C port which will be useful in the future, hopefully. There are two USB 3.0 ports, an SD card reader, RJ-45 port for hardwired LAN, and HDMI and mini-Display port outputs as well.

If you’re not a fan of the CPU, RAM allocation, GPU or storage combo, too bad because there’s not any other options when you decide to “configure” this system on Origin’s website. You can opt for a higher-resolution panel though, as Origin offers a 3840×2160 “4K” display for a surprisingly low $103, but it’s glossy so there’s a tradeoff.

Perhaps the most feature-laded aspect of the EVO15-S is its Steel Series keyboard, which is backlit and able to pull off most of the tasks that are available in expensive mechanical keyboards. For example, you can record macros on any key, change the lighting to pretty much any color you want, and even have the lights make a wave, breathe, and other tricks you’ve seen on other fancy mechanical boards.

The default colors are a range of blue, red, purple, orange, etc, but you can click anywhere on a color wheel to customize the lighting for five zones across the keyboard. You can also create a lighting profile and have it activate when a specific EXE file is activated, so the keyboard will turn blue when MS Paint is activated, etc.

To benchmark the EVO15-S we ran it through our usual gauntlet of benchmark-able games, and compared it to the GTX 980-equipped Acer Predator 15 we reviewed a few weeks ago, which also features a Skylake CPU. Since the EVO15-S weighs just 4.2lbs compared to the Predator’s hefty 7.5lbs, it comes into this contest at a disadvantage due to its smaller size and lower specs. Most importantly it’s rocking a GTX 970, so it’s expected to not perform as well as the Acer laptop, though the difference shouldn’t be too massive. While you examine the benchmark chart we put together, keep in mind that we run each test at 1920×1080 using Ultra quality with 4X AA enabled, so the scores you see reported are kind of a worst case scenario.

Not surprisingly the EVO15-S performed worse than the Predator and its burly GTX 980 GPU, performing about 20% slower. That’s the kind of tradeoff you have to make for such a slim notebook. It was still able to hit 50 fps in Shadow of Mordor and Batman: Arkham Origins though, and 41 fps in Heaven with extreme tessellation and 4XMSAA. With the settings backed off a smidge, it’d be no sweat to hit 60 fps in most games. As an example, we ran Heaven 4 at medium settings with no AA and extreme tessellation and were able to achieve 63 fps.

One thing to note about its gaming performance is there is quite a bit of fan noise when it’s under load, which is to be expected on any gaming notebook, and especially so on a laptop that’s less than an inch thick. Just be sure to use headphones and you’ll be fine.

Easily the most disappointing aspect of the EVO15-S is its paltry battery life. Origin states on its website that it can achieve up to four hours thanks to Nvidia’s GPU-switching Optimus technology, but we never got anywhere close to that in testing. In the PC Mark 8 battery rundown it scored just 1 hour and 37 minutes, and when we simply watched a movie until the laptop died it lasted only 2 hours and 2 minutes. That’s below average, and when we ran Heaven 4.0 until the battery died it was only able to run for 39 minutes. Compared to the Acer Predator, which provided three times the length while playing movies, and an extra two hours in the PC Mark battery rundown, we can see the EVO15-S is sorely lacking in the battery department. Granted, a notebook like this is meant to be plugged in, but these numbers are still quite low, especially when compared to Origin’s claims.