A powerful gaming machine concealed in a grown up design

The Rock Xtreme 685 (£1609 inc. VAT) is a wolf in sheeps clothing. With its matte black design, rubberised coating and sharp angles it looks like any self respecting grown up laptop. There’s even a fingerprint scanner sitting between the mouse buttons.

Don’t be fooled: this is a custom made gaming monster with enough power to keep playing long after other machines haw given up and gone home. Not literally, mind the battery life's only 96 minutes. However, in those 96 minutes, you have power courtesy of a quad core Intel Core i7-2860QM CPU and a AMD Radeon HD6990 graphics card assisted by 6GB of RAM.

The graphics card in particular is a heavy duty beast. Released last year, it adds an extra 2GB of dedicated video memory to the 2GB already shared with the Intel CPU. In real terms this means that practically any game will play seamlessly on this machine.

Adding to the experience is the bright, LED-backlit screen. It has a full 1080p pixel resolution of 1920 x 1080 so high definition content - including the latest games - looks fantastic. Although the screen size is 15.6-inches, it feels wider thanks to the thin bezel each side.

Tough as nails

Viewing angles aren’t fantastic, but the screen feels resilient on its hinges and is surrounded by a tough chassis. The rubberised coating on the lid and palmrest both avoids grubby marks and feels comfortable to use. There’s no different coating for the touchpad, although it is indented slightly to mark it out. We found it fine to use, but you’re going to want to invest in a USB mouse for gaming.

The keyboard is a standard isolation style layout with a numeric keypad. We detected a minimal amount of flex in the centre of the board, but this isn’t noticeable during general typing.

In terms of gaming, connectivity delivers the goods. There are four USB ports (two of which arc the faster USB 3.0 format) for peripherals as well as an eSata port that doubles as a fifth. You can also connect an external monitor or HDTV through either the HDMI or DVI port on the rear of the laptop. There’s also an Ethernet connection and a 3 in 1 media card slot for expanding the 750GB hard drive.

Rounding out the features is a built in Blu-ray optical drive for enjoying high definition content. Also worth mentioning is that the Rock Xtreme 685 comes with a three year ‘collect and return’ manufacturer’s warranty.

As a gaming laptop, there’s no doubting the Rock’s capabilities. But the design and build quality is far less ostentatious than rivals like the Alienware M18X or MSI GT683DX. If you want blinking LEDs and glossy surfaces then look elsewhere. But if you want an awesome gaming laptop that can also double as a serious work machine, pick this up right away.