Ben
GBShockingly cheap construction. What has happened to Falcon Northwest?! I have been a customer and fan of Falcon Northwest for over about 15 years. My builds were always essentially maxed out in every area of performance and quality. When I decided to buy a high end gaming laptop for my son I went back to FNW, hyping them up to him as the best of the best. I explained that even though it might be a little more expensive, we could get a monster of a laptop that has a quality on a different level then the mass produced machines of the regular companies. Unfortunately, when I received the laptop I was shocked at the cheap construction. The whole thing is made of flimsy plastic. The screen is supported by a thin piece of plastic and noticeably flexes when it is opened and closed. In most laptops, when you tilt the screen back to it's limit, it tips the laptop back. This feels like if you open it to fast, you will literally snap the screen off. The keyboard feels like some Chinese generic knockoff of a better keyboard. I felt so bad for my son because it looked and felt so cheap. I just started apologizing and getting him to focus on it's performance rather than it's looks. From the beginning I had concerns about its durability. Plastic pieces fell off the hinges in the first month. And then the laptop tipped off a coffee table onto the carpet and landed open on the keyboard and screen. In any other laptop this would have absolute non-issue. But with this laptop it kind of came unglued and all the plastic pieces unsnapped. Seeing the inside where the hinge is glued to the plastic leaves me shaking my head at the design choices. I am an professional engineer who has appreciated Falcon Northwest for the quality of their computers for a long time. I have no idea what happened in the company for them to think that this was the kind of product they wanted to represent their business. The protection plan doesn't cover accidents, and this was clearly caused by an accident. But the extent of the damage is due to the incredibly poor build quality. Even though this is a brand new computer, I honestly don't know if it is even worth sending back to be fixed.
Marc
GBI purchased a FNW Fragbox I purchased a FNW Fragbox about 5 years ago and it's been rock-solid ever since. I never had to use any of their customer service or tech support and I suppose that shows how good this PC was out of the box. It's a really nice blend of power and portability. This will probably remain my form factor for all future primary workstations, though I have decided to have a handy back-up system in addition. I will pick up a DRX laptop this year, I hope it's as stable as my Fragbox. Follow-up posting: I picked up the FNW DRX laptop a few weeks ago and what a monster it is! A bit on the heavy side but it packs some serious CPU firepower and significant hardware features. The cooling fans are quite interesting, they seem powerful enough to turn the thing into a hovercraft if you crank them up high enough, but they are whisper quiet mostly. I like the dust exhaust feature on start-up, cool idea.
Quadrae Cline
GBExtremely professional cable⦠Extremely professional cable management, high quality metal case, delivered on time, computer in perfect condition on delivery and much more positive things that I'm too lazy to type. In short, thank you!
Dominick Mastri
GRThe system arrived in a working but unreliable condition The system arrived in a working but unreliable condition. After MANY hours troubleshooting with their tech support, they determined the video card was no good. They shipped me a new one, I popped it in, and things were looking good. Until the system refused to boot one day. After more hours troubleshooting, they helped me determine that one of the m2 SSD drives was bad. Again they warrantied but seriously for all the money I spent having to spend so many hours of my own time troubleshooting is infuriating. 100% wish I did my own build.
Tlaloc
GBGreat customer service Before purchasing a computer I emailed support to ask questions that would help inform my purchase. the person I was put in contact with answered my question, read in between the lines and answered questions I wasn't willing to ask outright. when my computer was delayed in was given a clear explanation as to why and how long I could expect to wait. the final thing reason I am giving a five star review for this is that I both know for certain I was speaking with a human and that he wasn't using a script. Thank you Warren Bowdoin!