PC Specialist Defiance III Review

Interior

The Defiance III is a Sager P650RP-based unit and encouragingly uses a trio of fans in the cooling system, which is much more elaborate than the 14in MSI, with a monstrous twin fan unit expelling air at the rear.

The fan vents also open wide enough for unrestricted access and the fans are completely visible - again a better design than the MSI, which obscured the vents here.


The primary SODIMM slots are located under the keyboard, but an additional pair are found by removing the base so adding extra memory is simple, if unlikely given our model's 16GB standard offering.


There are actually two M.2 ports - one for PCI-E SSD and the other for SATA-based ones and both are easily accessed and while the double-stacked 2.5in bays add to the depth of the unit, this has clearly made more space for the cooling system and battery. Whether you want to order all the drives yourself or get a barebones unit and kit it out, there's loads of flexibility.


The battery initially appears quite large so we were surprised with a capacity of just 60Wh, but removing it reveals that only a small section on the end is actually the full thickness, the rest is just 9mm thick to make way for the touch pad circuitry underneath. Thankfully this didn't get too hot under load and the same can be said for the rest of the chassis - it was pretty warm but not lap-scorching.