The Corsair Voyager a1600 (begins at $2,532; $3,217 as examined) is the American firm’s first excessive-finish gaming laptop computer. Its faultless aluminum construct and Cherry MX mechanical keyboard make a robust first impression, and a streaming-centered contact macro bar is one thing we’ve seen from no different gaming laptop computer. Unfortunately, middling efficiency holds this pioneer again; its all-AMD {hardware} doesn’t stand as much as the Intel and Nvidia silicon within the Acer Predator Triton 500 SE, and for much less cash, the Lenovo Legion 5i Pro Gen 7. But if streaming and Team Red set your sails, the Voyager a1600 might but be your ship-of-the-line.The Design: Trademark Corsair (But You Can Carry It)Corsair’s stylish, fashionable design language from its desktop elements and peripherals spills over into the Voyager a1600. This laptop computer is a visible standout and appears each bit its premium worth.Origin PC additionally sells variations of this identical laptop computer, branded beneath its personal title. (Origin is a subsidiary of Corsair, acquired in 2019.) Our take a look at-mortgage unit has a flashy UV lid print that is accessible when ordering via Origin.The aluminum chassis has wonderful craftsmanship and energy. At 0.78 by 14 by 11.3 inches (HWD) and 5.3 kilos, it matches the elite Predator Triton 500 SE save for an inch higher depth for its macro bar (to be mentioned shortly).A cinematic 16-inch, 16:10 facet ratio display screen differentiates the Voyager a1600 from laptops utilizing narrower 15.6-inch, 16:9 screens, such because the Alienware x15 and the Razer Blade 15 Advanced. A 2,560-by-1,600-pixel decision permits wonderful element with out being overly demanding for gaming.This display screen has all of the gaming tech you may ask for, together with a blistering 240Hz refresh fee, AMD FreeSync Premium body-fee-smoothing, and an anti-glare floor. The image is first-fee; our DataColor SpyderX Elite registered 342 nits of peak brightness and 99% protection of the sRGB gamut.A Streamer’s Secret Weapon: The Macro BarThe Voyager a1600’s defining function is its macro bar. It has 10 contact buttons and a small middle show above the keyboard.The bar is a shortcut strip aimed squarely at streamers. Corsair built-in the buttons with the Elgato Stream Deck app. (See our evaluation of the standalone Elgato Stream Deck, which is a helpful programmable add-on button panel; Elgato is one other Corsair property.) But you should utilize the app to tug and drop shortcuts for nearly something, even your personal creations.The button colour is customizable within the Corsair iCUE app, which additionally controls the contact bar’s show. It can present time, element temperatures, CPU utilization, and extra. Touch arrows on both facet allow you to change to different modes.I discovered the macro bar genuinely helpful. As its shortcuts can be utilized for something, I even arrange an workplace profile to launch my regular apps and instructions. My nitpick is that the bar has no bodily separators between buttons and no audible or haptic suggestions. Though the buttons by no means didn’t register my contact, I nonetheless missed bodily reassurance of a faucet.Above the show, a pointy 1080p webcam with a privateness shutter and a quad microphone array improve this laptop computer’s streaming focus. There’s additionally a devoted digital camera app with all types of wonderful-tuning management, together with white stability, and the Elgato Stream Deck app has microphone shortcuts. Though the cam doesn’t help infrared for facial recognition, the Voyager a1600 has a fingerprint reader constructed into its energy button for getting round typed-password logins. Corsair will get a nod for together with a devoted energy button as an alternative of creating it a keyboard key, which, after we see that type of design, at all times looks as if value reducing.Dolby Atmos-tuned audio system, in the meantime, straddle the keyboard with ethereal sound however minimal bass. The Dolby Access app has a number of equalizer settings and a dynamic mode (the default) for those who don’t care to tinker.The Keyboard: A Cherry MX On HighCorsair’s experience designing keyboards additionally discovered its approach into the Voyager a1600. The Cherry MX mechanical keys are a tactile delight, emitting subdued variations of the clicks and clacks you’d get from a desktop mechanical keyboard.The iCUE app affords per-key RGB lighting management and allows you to reassign keys. There are even settings to disable doubtlessly recreation-disrupting shortcuts comparable to Alt+Tab, Alt+F4, and, in fact, the menu-popping Windows key. You can create layered lighting results and save limitless profiles.The touchpad additionally stands out. It’s a whopping 6.1 by 3.9 inches, bigger than any I keep in mind seeing on a gaming laptop computer. It has a sturdy glass floor and exact clicking motion.The two Thunderbolt 4 ports are an surprising bonus on an AMD laptop computer. Also unfold throughout the left and proper edges are a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port, a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port, an audio jack, and an SD card reader. The 230-watt energy adapter connects on the left.The ports are correctly located in the direction of the rear so plugged-in peripherals’ cables don’t doubtlessly intrude in your area for mousing across the sides of this machine. Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth are additionally in-built, as is, uniquely, a Corsair Slipstream module. The Slipstream performance enables you to join supported Corsair peripherals with no dongle, sparing USB ports.Bon Voyage: Testing the Corsair Voyager a1600The Voyager a1600 seen and examined here’s a custom-made model from Corsair’s Miami-based subsidiary Origin, a builder of excessive-efficiency PCs. A uncommon all-AMD gaming get-up, it has an eight-core, 3.2GHz (4.7GHz enhance) AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS processor, 32GB of DDR5-4800 twin-channel RAM, and a 12GB Radeon RX 6800M graphics card. It matches as much as two storage drives; ours has a single 2TB PCI Express 4.0 stable-state drive, particularly a Corsair MP600 Pro XT, loaded with Windows 11 Home. The laptop computer is backed by a one-12 months guarantee.All-AMD {hardware} is refreshing in a market dominated by Intel and Nvidia. In truth, I discovered no different laptop computer providing a Ryzen 6000 collection CPU and a Radeon RX 6800M graphics at evaluation time. The Alienware m15 R7 is shut; it’s $2,699 with a Ryzen 9 6900HX and an 8GB GeForce RTX 3070 Ti. On the Intel facet, the Razer Blade 15 Advanced instructions $3,299 with a Core i9-12900H, a GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, and an OLED display screen, however you get simply 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD for that cash.The Ryzen 9 6900HS CPU within the Voyager deserves a callout. It’s rated for 35 watts, not 45 watts just like the Ryzen 9 6900HX, so it seemingly received’t carry out as properly. However, gaming efficiency shouldn’t be affected a lot since video games not often max CPU utilization for prolonged durations.The Voyager a1600 handles its warmth properly as proven on this picture from our Flir One Pro throughout a 3DMark Time Spy stress take a look at. The peak temperature of 110 levels F isn’t in an space you’d put your arms, and even that temperature is within the acceptable vary.Rear exhaust vents guarantee warmth is refrained from the consumer. The followers are audible throughout a lounge however no louder than these of different gaming laptops I’ve examined. Just take care to not block the fan intakes on the underside.Upgrading the Voyager a1600’s RAM and storage is feasible by eradicating the underside panel, secured by Philips-head screws. (Take care to notice the place the screws got here from, as they’re not all the identical measurement.) Inside you’ll find two M.2 Type-2280 slots and two SO-DIMM RAM slots. The latter settle for as much as 64GB of RAM (two 32GB modules). Customizing via Origin permits as much as 8TB complete storage (within the type of two 4TB M.2 drives).Now onto testing, the place the Voyager a1600 faces the Acer Predator Triton 500 SE, the Lenovo Legion 5i Pro Gen 7, the MSI Vector GP66, and the Razer Blade 15 Advanced Model, all 15- to 16-inch gaming laptops with Intel Core-class processors and Nvidia RTX 30-collection Ti graphics, so it’ll be an uphill battle for the Corsair.Productivity and Content Creation AssessmentsOur first take a look at is UL’s PCMark 10, which simulates quite a lot of actual-world productiveness and workplace workflows to measure total system efficiency and in addition features a storage subtest for the first drive. The Voyager a1600 made mincemeat of the primary take a look at, the place we contemplate 4,000 factors an indication of stable productiveness, and its storage rating suggests its 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD is a wonderful performer.Our different three benchmarks concentrate on the CPU, utilizing all accessible cores and threads, to fee a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon’s Cinebench R23 makes use of that firm’s Cinema 4D engine to render a fancy scene, whereas Primate Labs’ Geekbench 5.4 Pro simulates fashionable apps starting from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine studying. Finally, we use the open-supply video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to transform a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p decision (decrease occasions are higher).Our last productiveness take a look at is Puget Systems’ PugetBench for Photoshop, which makes use of the Creative Cloud model 22 of Adobe’s well-known picture editor to fee a PC’s efficiency for content material creation and multimedia purposes. It’s an automatic extension that executes quite a lot of basic and GPU-accelerated Photoshop duties starting from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving a picture to making use of masks, gradient fills, and filters.CPU efficiency is the Voyager a1600’s weak spot. The Ryzen 9 6900HS is a 35-watt chip as I famous, and although Intel’s energy scores aren’t the identical, the Core H-class chips carry a forty five-watt base energy and might clearly stretch their legs extra. The Voyager a1600 would have ideally used a forty five-watt Ryzen HX-class chip, however that may have meant extra warmth.Graphics and Gaming TestsFor Windows PCs, we run each artificial and actual-world gaming checks. The former contains two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark, Night Raid (extra modest, appropriate for techniques with built-in graphics) and Time Spy (extra demanding, appropriate for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs). Also looped into that group is the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which we use to gauge OpenGL efficiency.Moving on, our actual-world gaming testing comes from the in-recreation benchmarks of F1 2021, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and Rainbow Six Siege representing simulation, open-world motion-journey, and aggressive/esports shooter video games, respectively. On laptops, Valhalla and Siege are run twice (Valhalla at Medium and Ultra high quality, Siege at Low and Ultra high quality), whereas F1 2021 is run as soon as at Ultra high quality settings and, for Nvidia GeForce RTX laptops, a second time with Nvidia’s efficiency-boosting DLSS anti-aliasing turned on.The Voyager a1600 struggled to be aggressive throughout the board. The Razer underperformed for its {hardware} (seemingly energy and/or thermal-induced throttling) however the others, particularly the Lenovo and MSI, are extra consistent with expectations for this elite tier. The solely semi-vivid facet is that the Radeon RX 6800M has a bigger 12GB body buffer than the 8GB RTX 3070 Ti.We run the true-world gaming benchmarks at 1,920 by 1,080 pixels for comparisons’ sake, however you’ll wish to play on the Voyager a1600’s native 2,560 by 1,600 pixels for the sharpest image, the place I noticed 44fps in each F1 2021 (Ultra, AMD FSR enabled) and Assassin’s Creed (Ultra) and 93fps in Rainbow Six (Ultra). The sub-60fps within the former two suggests the settings are too demanding; the video games weren’t unplayable, however you’d wish to scale back the standard settings a bit to clear 60fps on common.Battery and Display TestsPCMag checks laptops’ battery life by enjoying a regionally saved 720p video file (the open-supply Blender film Tears of Steel) with display screen brightness at 50% and audio quantity at 100% till the system quits. Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting are turned off throughout the take a look at.We additionally use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its software program to measure a laptop computer display screen’s colour saturation—what proportion of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 colour gamuts or palettes the show can present—and its brightness in nits (candelas per sq. meter) on the display screen’s 50% and peak settings.Almost 5 and a half hours of unplugged life is suitable for a contemporary excessive-finish gaming laptop computer. The MSI didn’t obtain half that, although the Lenovo confirmed a lot better stamina. On the show facet, the Voyager a1600 confirmed stable colour replica and passable peak brightness. Its 50% brightness is downright dim, although, and that’s the setting we use to check battery life, so count on a noticeable drop in runtime for those who enhance brightness a lot previous that mark.Heavy on Features, Light on EnergyCorsair’s Voyager a1600 makes inroads into maybe the hardest laptop computer phase: excessive-finish gaming. Impeccable high quality, wonderful enter gadgets, numerous connectivity, that devoted macro bar with Elgato synergy, and an incredible display screen are simply a few of its highlights. In truth, this primary from Corsair excels in all places however uncooked efficiency.Its all-AMD {hardware} is commendable however simply isn’t aggressive with the Intel Core H-class processors and Nvidia RTX 30 Ti graphics silicon that dominates like-priced gaming laptops. The Acer Predator Triton 500 SE stays a favourite and the Lenovo Legion 5i Pro Gen 7 performs higher for heaps much less. Overall, although, there’s no denying that the Voyager a1600 is succesful, and that is a formidable debut by Corsair; it wants a efficiency booster to widen its enchantment.
https://uk.pcmag.com/laptops/142486/corsair-voyager-a1600
