Micro Center's PowerSpec G313 Review

Micro Center's PowerSpec laptops are a pair of surprisingly low-cost gaming rigs. The $1,300 15.6-inch PowerSpec 1510 and $1,400 17.3-inch PowerSpec 1710 offer full-fat Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 graphics at a very reasonable price.

G-Sync, the nifty gameplay-smoothing technology that enables smoother frame rates and better resolution on Nvidia GPUs, is disabled by default on these machines, which means you have to jump through all manner of arcane hoops to activate it. We're not sure if Micro Center is intentionally limiting G-Sync functionality on the PowerSpec laptops or if they've simply been designed that way by Nvidia, but the decision seems counterintuitive.

Clevo keyboards are standard issue on the PowerSpec laptops, and they're fine, although the keyboard is slightly more shallow on the 1510 than the 1710. I'd recommend the deeper key travel of the PowerSpec 1510 over the more shallow keyboard of the 1710. The touchpads are also as good as ever, and the keys feel very comfortable to press.

Gaming-friendly features and ports

Like most laptops, the PowerSpec g313 offers a full complement of ports for gaming and multimedia. The left side of the chassis packs HDMI, a pair of Mini DisplayPorts and USB 3.1 port, while the right edge houses a lock slot, Ethernet, SD card and USB 3.0 ports, as well as mic and headphone jacks.

Battery life is decent, too. We looped a 4K video in Windows 10's Movies & TV video player with display brightness set to 250 nits or less, and it ran for 20 hours at that load.