For those who are interested to know, the larger 63w battery can be purchased and installed into both the APEX 15R & 17R at the cost of SGD 112 (all inclusive).
Anyway, I have been using the APEX 17R since earlier this month,
and strangely the model is now MIA from Aftershock front page.
My feedback after using it for some casual gaming, a few live streaming session as well as 3 video projects.
1. The 17inch screen is pretty and color are nicely displayed, great for color critical applications
2. This laptop is ways faster than what you need for all kind of heavy OBS, Zoom, Skype calls usage and etc. I've even tried OBS screen-cap Zoom, as well as walking around in a game - CONTROL (With RTX Rays turned on) then stream-out. Everything still reasonably fast and responsive.
3.
The drivers pre-installed and provided by Aftershock (As of time of writing) is bare minimum and outdated. Worst is I don't think they will be kind enough to update it as frequent as larger corp. such as Dell, Asus and etc
4. For some reason, the THX software 'enhancement' is missing compare to the 15R.
This was originally and STILL 'advertised' in the product page.(Which can still be accessed via
https://www.aftershockpc.com/welcome/Productinner/apex-17r-lite) However they can be rectified.
5. You cannot simply download the latest Nvidia drivers and install directly. The generic driver does not have the hardware ID for aftershock (Which is common for least well known/smaller DIY brands).
This is the BIGGEST disadvantages to me, and still do. Coz Aftershock only provided VERY outdated Nvidia driver dated back to April 2020. You can of course spend lots of effort modifying the driver to manually add the ID, but its ways too troublesome for me.
The WORST part, the latest Adobe Premiere Pro CC flagged the provided driver as incompatible/critical. It might randomly crashes and you will need v451 or newer nvidia driver to fix. Which wasn't provided from AS still Luckily I found a workaround for this... which bring us to next point,
6. As we all know, Aftershock sourced this model from ODM Tong Fang, which happen to be the same as Eluktronic RP-15 & RP-17,
I have downloaded and installed newer drivers that confirmed WORKED for my APEX 17R from https://www.eluktronics.com/rp-15-rp-17-drivers/ . I've updated the Control Center (Which you can see the screenshot below), NVidia Driver, and added THX to my APEX 17R via the files from Eluktronic. For AMD, the generic AMD Adrenaline software will work directly, and that will also be updated. Unfortunately, the Nvidia driver from Eluktronic is also not the latest, latest. It is currently modified from v451, which is the recommended version for Adobe, so at least that will work for me.
Side note:
- 512Gb storage really is TOO LITTLE. I've added a 1TB NVME from HPEX950 to it, worked flawlessly. My primarily usage of this laptop is video editing, with light entertainment on-and-off.
- The built-in speaker is crappy sounding. Hollow with virtually no bass. the THX driverss did not help, it just made it louder. The individual 3.5" out worked, but the quality of the audio DAC is OK-ish, I tends to plug in my spare Creative SXFI with USB as my primary sound driver/output tho, sounded much better.
In short, if you are confident that you at least has some knowledge, or effort to solve these issues manually, the laptop is still a good deal for the package. However, if you are not well-verse in these softwares, nor do not have the time to research on your own, BETTER don't buy this, and go with more, well known brands such as Dell, Lenovo, Asus and etc.
