Origin's Eon18 gaming laptop reviewed, found to be a great performer, not a great value

Now that's a shocker, isn't it? A gaming laptop that isn't particularly friendly on your wallet? It's true, Origin's Eon18 is not the machine to consider if you're ready to make the step up from a netbook but aren't yet willing to step into quadruple-digit price tags. As tested by Laptop, the Eon18 was half-way to five-digits thanks to its $5,952 cost, but that money gets you a an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9300 chip running at 2.53GHz, dual 160GB SSDs, a pair of GeForce GTX 280M graphics cards, a lovely airbrush job on the lid, and a power brick that on its own, at three pounds, weights more than some of the competition's machines (no concerns about inadequate juice here). That configuration delivers unbeatable I/O performance but, when it came to the all-important gaming benchmarks, was found to be comparable to Alienware's M17x, and thus not exactly worth the $1,000 premium -- unless you really dig flame jobs.

[Thanks, Mark]

[EI8HT Posted Dec 14th 2009 7:53AM]

flame jobs???

[EI8HT Posted Dec 14th 2009 7:55AM]

blow???

[EI8HT Posted Dec 14th 2009 7:55AM]

steve???

[EI8HT Posted Dec 14th 2009 7:56AM]

half assed???

[stridermt2k Posted Dec 14th 2009 8:26AM]

@EI8HT
Lectroids?...Planet 10?
Nuclear?...Extortion?
A girl named JOHN???

Good God...

[Bryce Posted Dec 14th 2009 11:08AM]

@stridermt2k Jesus?

[Streetfights Posted Dec 14th 2009 2:52PM]

@Bryce

I Think some people around here may think his last name is Jobs

[Leindurstit Posted Dec 14th 2009 7:54AM]

Well, at least they've succeeded in their goal of reclaiming the "stupidly-overpriced" notebook segment.

[richb93 Posted Dec 14th 2009 8:06AM]

Fugly

[N900 Posted Dec 14th 2009 8:12AM]

QTX9300 and a 280M are NOT worth $5000. Go get an Alienware with 260M and i7, or better yet, an XPS 16 with i7 and HD Radeon. Radeon can handle some good games. This is a ripoff; who's making this, Psystar???

[Sduburuhly Posted Dec 14th 2009 8:39AM]

The price is crazy!

[NewL Posted Dec 14th 2009 8:51AM]

Awesome product philosophy: design is for 8-10 y/o boys, price for 60+ y/o CEOs with way too much money...

[surgex Posted Dec 14th 2009 9:48AM]

For a core 2 extreme and two 280M?
Haha! What a rip off! Much better CPUs and GPUs out there, this is lame as hell. I agree with above, Radeon HD with nehalem based CPU will do just fine.

[isotrex Posted Dec 14th 2009 9:53AM]

Seriously, only an idiot would fall for this.

[smiller815 Posted Dec 14th 2009 12:03PM]

This is just ridiculous.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 14th 2009 1:48PM]

Buy an Asus high end gaming laptop, save $3,500, call it a day.

[Solidstate89 Posted Dec 14th 2009 3:09PM]

I don't understand why one would even bother reviewing this laptop, it's the exact same model that Alienware uses, that Sager sell,s that XoticPC sells, that CyberPowerPC sells, etc etc etc. All these gaming laptops from boutique companies are all rebrands. Digital Storm sells Compals, Clevos and a few Asus brand laptops, that are rebranded with their image. Alienware, Falcon NW, Sager, et all are all the same. They don't make any of their own laptops. They just purchase the base models from Compal or Clevo, and put their own name and paint job on it. Or put some stupid gaudy fins and giant ass vents like Alienware does.

Same laptop. Different rebrand.

[unacceptable Posted Dec 14th 2009 5:12PM]

/\ Agreed the same laptop can be purchased for much less from Xotic, or you could just go with the Sager NP8690 w/ Core i7, and a sigle gtx 280m for around 1800, and it's a 15"er and not a honking 18".