ORIGIN EON13-S Pro Reviews

Origin’s Eon 13-S is, in many ways, an excellent gaming laptop. There’s plenty of performance on tap for modern games, even at maximum detail, and the high-quality display makes media look its best. At the same time, though, the laptop remains enjoyable to use on as any everyday basis because of its pleasing keyboard and high maximum display brightness. Origin actually sells a version of this laptop as a portable workstation, and it’s easy to see why. There’s just one big, fat, massive problem; price. Our review unit’s MSRP of $2,030 is a lot to ask for a white-label laptop with an Nvidia GTX 765M graphics chip. Alienware’s M14x can be had with almost identical hardware for less than $1,800 and the AVADirect version of this laptop goes for $1,750 when upgraded to the same processor (the version we reviewed, which had a slower quad-core and eight gigabytes of RAM, was just under $1,200). Even the Razer Blade, which is a bit slower but also far more portable, starts at $1,799. What does the extra money Origin asks provide? Not much. The Eon 13-S has the same meager one-year warranty offered by competitors and isn’t bundled with any games or other value-added features. The only significant boon is Origin’s 24/7 support, a helpful hand that competitors can’t match. But is it worth hundreds of dollars? We don’t think so.