Maingear Pulse 15 3K Gaming Laptop Review
Noise, Cooling, and Battery Life
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In an attempt to quantitatively measure the Pulse 15's battery life in a controlled benchmark environment, we ran Battery Eater Pro. This test is designed to tax a laptop’s resources to give a feel for how long the laptop’s battery will last under heavy use. For the test, we set the Pulse 15's display to 50 percent brightness.
One of the disadvantages of running a higher resolution display is it means there are more pixels to light up, which in turn leads to lower battery life. As a result, the Maingear Pulse 15 only lasted a little over an hour in our BatteryEater Pro benchmark. On the plus side, that's better than most of the last generation gaming laptops. We also ran the Pulse 15 through PCMark 8's battery life test, which loops the Home test until the battery runs low. In that test, the Pulse 15 lasted 1 hour and 38 minutes.
Keep in mind that these benchmarks represent worst case scenarios in which the core components are continually stressed. Granted, if you're playing games on the Pulse 15, it won't be long before you need to tether the laptop to a wall socket. But for general purpose computing chores -- surfing the web, using productivity apps, checking social media, and even rocking out to a streaming playlist -- a few hours of run time is a reasonable expectation.
Cooling and Noise
By definition, the Pulse 15 is a laptop. However, we wouldn't advise laying it on your lap, especially if you're hoping to remain fertile. The Pulse 15 runs hot when gaming -- as in, it will hurt your hand to touch the underbelly. This is despite the cooling fan ramping up to full blast (and volume) within seconds of firing up a game or GPU intensive task. To the Pulse 15's credit, it does a good job of blasting hot air out of the side vent, but it comes at the expense of noisy cooling. It won't be a factor if you're rocking headphones, though anyone within ear shot will hear the constant whir of the fan.
