Maingear Pulse 11 and Origin EON11-S review

The 11.6-inch Maingear Pulse 11 and Origin EON11-S represent a decidedly different class of gaming notebook. Their focus on portability stands at odds with the category’s traditional modus operandi, which typically involves stuffing heavy, power-hungry components into plastic battle tanks. We’ve seen machines this small before — the recently retired Alienware M11x, for example — but gaming notebooks this small are still a rare breed.

As both machines are variants of the same Clevo model, there isn’t much variation between them. They’re plain, chunky machines that aren’t so much ugly as unassuming. When shut, the only telltale sign that there’s some serious horsepower lurking under the hood is the large copper vent that dominates the left side of the chassis. The palm rest, lid and touchpad are covered in a rubbery material that’s satisfyingly grippy, and the entire ensemble is very easy to tote around. At 3.7 pounds they aren’t exactly light, and rather husky at an inch and a half thick, but you can easily carry both before approaching the heft of machines with larger displays. The battery forms a slight bump on the underside of the chassis, popping it up at a very slight incline. It’s not enough of an angle to make a difference while typing, but it can serve as a comfortable faux-handle to wrap your fingers around while you’re carrying it; a pair of latches keep the battery locked into place.

Behemoths like the Samsung Gamer 7 and MSI GT70 work some metal into their frames, improving their sturdiness while adding to their overall weight — a negligible drawback when you’re already over seven pounds. I can’t say I fretted about doing any lasting harm to the Pulse 11 and EON11- S, but there’s quite a bit of flex in the lid, and the entire base seems to sink when you apply pressure to it.

Port selection may prove limited for some, though this isn’t really surprising given the size. On the right you’ll find a USB 2.0 port, Kensington lock slot, and a spot for the power adapter. On the left, there’s a pair of USB 3.0 ports, microphone and headphone jacks, Gigabit Ethernet, an HDMI port, and a VGA socket. The SD card slot sits on the front lip. You’re losing one USB port right off the bat if you decide to toss a mouse into the mix (you’ll want to), which leaves you with a pair of USB ports. Larger gaming machines have the real estate to offer DisplayPort sockets, more USB ports, and optical audio outputs — if your use case involves plugging a lot of peripherals or displays in, you’ll want to keep this in mind.

As expected, the only differences between the two variants revolve around branding — Maingear etched their company name into a band on the lid of their machine, while a simple "Pulse 11" is etched into the wrist rest. Origin’s company logo (a simple "O") is stenciled onto the lid, with the word Origin appearing on the bezel just below the screen. It is worth noting that Origin offers a few different options for the lid, including an option to upload your favorite color should their options not suffice. Both companies included comprehensive manuals and a complimentary t-shirt. Origin’s price-as-configured is a bit higher, but it included an external Blu-Ray burner and a $30 premium for the comically large wooden crate the notebook arrived in.

The grippy texture that makes the machine so easy to tote is decidedly less useful on the touchpad. Pinching, panning, and even scrolling web pages becomes a chore, with the mouse cursor occasionally stuttering haphazardly across the screen. Apply some extra pressure and the touchpad picks up gestures a little more reliably, but it’s far from a satisfactory experience. I generally expect to reach for a mouse before long with every gaming laptop I get my hands on, but the functionality here is especially frustrating.

Things don’t get much better with the keyboard, though there’s a limit to what you can expect in such a small space. I may be cursed with oversized paws, but I can’t imagine anyone being especially comfortable on these diminutive keyboards. The bulk of the chiclet keys are a millimeter or two smaller than those on a full-sized keyboard, while others — like the question mark and arrow keys — are woefully narrow. I found the dissonance a bit jarring as my fingers worked their way around the tray, but it’s an expected facet on a chassis this small. The keys offer a satisfying amount of travel with every press, and while they feel a bit mushy everything is ultimately bearable. That’s hardly a glowing recommendation for what’s arguably the most important part of the a gaming notebook, but it ultimately gets the job done. The keyboard isn’t backlit, which is a shame — the gaudy light shows served up by the Alienware M17x aren’t mandatory, but given their small size I would have appreciated being able to see the keys in the dark.

Performance was helped along by 120GB solid state drives: a Corsair Force GT in Origin’s EON, and an Intel SSD 330 series in Maingear’s Pulse. I measured sequential read and write performance with the AS-SSD benchmark: the Origin machine served up 500 MB / sec read and 128 MB / sec write speeds, while Maingear’s offering delivered 470 MB /sec read and 125 MB / sec write speeds. Both machines booted up in about twenty seconds, and woke from sleep in about three.

So how do these lilliputian machines hold up on games? Rather well, actually: 39 frames per second on Battlefield 3 at High settings, on the native 1366 x 768 pixel resolution. In The Witcher 2, the machines earned an average of 24 frames per second on the Ultra setting at their native resolution. Getting to a smooth 30 frames per second was a simple matter of dialing back to the high setting, and disabling some of the more hardware intensive shadow and lighting effects. Just Cause 2 is decidedly less demanding: the machines earned just over 50 frames per second.

You can certainly expect better performance from larger, more capable machines like the Alienware M17x or the Samsung Gamer 7, both of which will also offer superior audio and larger displays with higher resolutions. But results like these coming out of an 11-inch shell is nothing short of tantalizing, particularly for anyone who’s looking for an understated LAN party machine. As an added bonus, the GeForce GT 650M will continue to perform even while unplugged, though it does take a toll on battery life.

The standard configuration starts at $999, but is limited to 4GB of RAM and slower processors — a paltry dual-core Pentium CPU from Origin, and a Core i5-3320M from Maingear. As for software: well, there isn’t any. Maingear adds desktop shortcuts to OpenOffice and Microsoft Security Essentials, and Origin includes Cyberlink PowerDVD 12 to make use of the Blu-ray burner, but both machines are blissfully pristine.