iBuyPower Valkyrie CZ-28

The iBuyPower Valkyrie CZ-28 gaming laptop is a gamer, giving you high-end gaming prowess and little more. Offering the CZ-28 Valkyrie potent gaming performance for a lower price, adding more affordable AMD hardware for the elite level of play. While it has a few small compromises, such as diminished productivity power does more than enough to play the front, give you the strength for even demanding titles.

design
The iBuyPower Valkyrie CZ-28 measures 2.2 by 16.9 by 11.3 inches (HWD), and weighs 6.9 pounds. It is nowhere near as portable as trim Razer Blade (2013) ultraportable, but for a common gaming laptop, not terribly heavy. The laptop features a 17.3-inch display with 1920-by-1080 resolution. The display offers good visibility from the reasonably wide angle, and maintains matte finish glare and reflections on the bay.

The laptop lid is dressed up in black brushed aluminum, but inside, the palmrest and full chromed speaker grills, metal is imprinted with a textured pattern. The pattern is a series of triangles, share triangular motif seen in recent entry-level desktop iBuyPower, the iBuyPower outbreak a960 (AMD A10-6800K). Most people are not as familiar with some products iBuyPower, but it's still a nice touch, and it is more visually interesting than plain brushed metal. The aforementioned chrome-grilled speakers joined by an integrated subwoofer and get extra help from improving software Creative Soundblaster Cinema. The result is crisp, clear sound and bass that can be felt (slightly) as well as hear.

The full-size keyboard and numeric pad is backlit for playing dim light, and each chiclet keys are slightly sculpted for a more comfortable typing experience. WASD and arrow keys are also highlighted, with red accents around the edge of each keycap, but unfortunately, it is highlighting printed directly on the keycap and not Moonlight by the backlight. There are some oddities that we witnessed other iBuyPower machine also - like Valkyrie CZ-17 - like the fact that the Windows button is found on the right side of the keyboard rather than the left, and the arrow keys to think a little crowded, sandwiched between a regular keyboard and numeric pad.

The accompanying touchpad is relatively large, and supports multitouch gesture and Windows 8 commands like swiping from the edge. Thankfully, though most players will opt for a purpose built gaming mouse, the physical left and right mouse buttons are separate from the touch surface. Less favorable, however, is the fact that the keys are combined with a button bar and covered with chrome finish shows every smudge and fingerprint.