Voyo i7 review

Usage and performance

When it came to our benchmarks, we saw some fantastic numbers, mostly due to the use of a Core i7 CPU coupled with a dedicated graphics card. Its Achilles heel is obviously the hard drive which sends the storage-related test numbers spiralling downwards.

Overall, this is a likable laptop, solidly built, with a great keyboard, a decent numeric keypad and a touchpad that does the job pretty well. The keyboard is backlit and the keys have generous amounts of feedback and spring. The screen, despite being a TN panel, is fine for everyday use.

What irked us most was the noise this notebook makes. The high-speed fan fires up as soon as the processor and/or the GPU tackle a heavier workload, and although Voyo says that it is a ‘smart fan’ with dual copper pipes, the noise it generates is certainly annoying.

To make matters worse, the hard disk often kicks into life and clatters its way through file shifting operations and page-swaps under load. The submachine-gun-like sound it produces reminded us of the glorious days of Windows XP when hard drives still ruled the roost. That said, you can yank it out and put an M.2 SSD in its place.

The machine’s battery life was surprisingly good given the fact that it runs a hard drive and a dedicated graphics card. At just over four hours, it is more than adequate for everyday tasks.

Competition

The market is not exactly awash with Core i7 laptops with a Full HD display, 8GB of RAM and a dedicated graphics chip for less than £500. That said, given the growing popularity of Core i5-8250U processors (which should outperform the Core i7-6500U), we expect that situation to change fairly soon.

As a general rule of thumb, the more expensive a laptop is in China, the more competitors it will have in the UK.

For example, the Dell Inspiron 15 5570 is the closest rival at £653 ($920). It comes with the Core i5-8250U and 8GB of RAM, a Radeon 530 GPU, along with a 256GB SSD plus a very similar design to the Voyo i7.

The Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro, which has the same specs as above bar the GPU (a GeForce MX150), costs around £640 ($900) when sourced from China, and has a fingerprint reader with another MacBook-like design.

At the time of writing, the most desirable laptop in this price range remains the MSI PL62 7RC which has a much better CPU (quad-core Kaby Lake) but also a faster GPU – the GeForce MX150 – and a price tag of only £600 ($845).

Our business take

The Voyo i7 has an attractive price tag for business users, but a corporate laptop is far more than the sum of its parts. The i7 doesn’t come with Windows 10 Pro, for example, and neither does it have an encrypted SSD (although you can always swap the hard disk for an SED or use a software solution) or a fingerprint reader.

The i7 is a great desktop replacement with ample storage space (even if it does use a hard drive) and screen real-estate, plus a numeric keypad, which is a rarity on laptops these days.

Final verdict

Overall, the Voyo i7 is an impressive laptop with plenty of things to love about it, and a few things that make us frown. It is well designed and built, with a decent set of components, but we still don’t know why the manufacturer chose to use a hard disk when a smaller SSD would have produced a far more potent and balanced portable. For now, let’s just say that it is a fast laptop, slowed down by its storage subsystem.

Let’s hope that Voyo swaps the CPU for a Core i5-8250U and replaces the HDD with an SSD, and we’d love to have a smaller version of the i7. Doing so is likely to bring down the bill of materials and thus reduce the asking price, bringing it nearer to £400 ($560).

• We’ve picked out the best business laptops of 2018