Bigger often means better but opting for the larger things in life often carries a premium, 18in gaming laptops included. Offerings like PCSpecialist Recoil 18 are a welcome sight, bucking the trend of astronomically high price points to deliver a portable system that’s as big on value as it is form.
PCSpecialist Recoil 18
From £2,047
Pros
- Strong CPU & GPU combo
- Great connectivity
- Well-calibrated display
- Solid build quality
- Good value for money
Cons
- Base SSD is slow and small
- Middling speakers
- No automatic refresh rate switch
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How we test and review products.
Spending several weeks with Recoil 18 has warmed me to the idea of living with an 18in gaming laptop in place of my longstanding 16in system. For one, it proves that such a size doesn’t have to break your back or bank, but it’s the sensible configuration both above and under the hood that seals the deal.
Specs
Recoil 18 is available starting from £2,047. While the starting specification packs a punch, you can upgrade key components for more power, including your graphics card, RAM, storage, and more.
| PCSpecialist Recoil 18 | |
|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX |
| GPU | Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Mobile |
| Display | 18in IPS (2560×1440 / 240Hz) |
| RAM | 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5-5,600* |
| Storage | 2TB Samsung 990 Pro PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD* |
| Battery | 98WHr |
| Connectivity | 2.5Gb/s Ethernet (x2) 3.5mm audio combo output (x1) Bluetooth 5.4 HDMI 2.1 output (x1) microSD card reader (x1) Thunderbolt 5 (80Gb/s) Type-C (x2) USB 3.2 (20Gb/s) Type-A (x2) WiFi 7 |
| OS | Windows 11 Home |
| Weight | 3.6kg |
| Dimensions | 420 (W) x 320 (L) x 28mm (H) |
| Extras | ARGB backlit keyboard FHD (1080p) IR webcam Liquid metal thermal interface* |
| Price | £2,266.00 |
For this review, I’m rocking a Recoil 18 with improved RAM, storage, and thermal interface. I’ll discuss the specifics of each component and these upgrades in due course. This configuration is naturally more expensive than the base model, but not by much, and I’m now working with a £2,266 system.
Design
In a world where manufacturers can’t help but make the design of their 18in gaming laptops as loud as possible, there’s a welcome air of minimalism about Recoil 18. Open or closed, it feels comparatively slick and mature, with minimal RGB and a stealthy PCSpecialist logo engraved on its lid. This is a system for those who prefer a more subtle approach and I greatly value that.
The laptop arrives with its keyboard and light bar set to ‘Wave Mode’ but it’s possible to customise or turn them off via the included Control Center software. Strangely, the app doesn’t show up in Windows Search, accessible only via the system tray in the bottom right. I pinned it to my desktop and taskbar to make it a touch easier. Adding to my frustrations, there’s no ‘static’ effect for the keyboard, but I found a workaround in the per-key submenu.
As you’d expect from a laptop this size, Recoil 18 demands a chunk of room wherever it goes. The chassis measures 420 (W) x 320 (L) x 28mm (H) and weighs around 3.6kg. It’s a big and heavy lad, even relative to competitors, so prepare your backpack and desk space accordingly. However, such heft does provide a properly premium feel to the construction.
On that note, the build quality is nothing short of excellent. The system rocks a metal lid and plastic body featuring a rubber-style coating, which show no signs of creaks, flex, or wobbles. This combination is common but PCSpecialist executes the combo to a wonderfully high standard. My only complaint is that you’ll need to keep a cloth handy as Recoil 18 is a fingerprint magnet.
Like other laptops, I’ve written much of this review using Recoil 18’s keyboard. It’s about as good as you could hope from membrane, and I’m thankful that all secondary functions are legible in all lighting conditions thanks to transparent cutouts. Most importantly, though, the edges of the chassis aren’t so sharp as to create discomfort while typing for extended periods.
I typically listen to music while I write, and it’s here that I have my first gripe with Recoil 18. The laptop comes with a 4.1 speaker array comprising four tweeters and a single woofer. All of these drivers are downward facing, with two skewed slightly sideward. This can create a muffled listening experience depending on the surface beneath, making me wish there was at least some upward firing audio.
Putting on My Chemical Romance’s Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge (Deluxe Edition) or Hans Zimmer’s Interstellar soundtrack both left me wanting to grab my headphones instead. Built-in solutions more often than not sound muddy, but the implementation here bears the brunt of responsibility as almost everything sounded better while holding the laptop mid-air. To be clear, I’m glad there are speakers should I need them but I’d always prefer to don some cans for fuller enjoyment.
Recoil 18 offers oodles of connectivity, with smart placement of ports to boot. Starting around the back, you’ll find an HDMI 2.1 output, two 2.5Gb/s Ethernet connections, and the laptop’s barrel plug snug. Manufacturers not placing headers on the rear of 18in laptops is a pet peeve of mine, especially for the power cord, so I’m happy to see PCSpecialist make use of the space given the extended form factor.
Finding your USB Type-A and Type-C ports is easy with one set on the left and the other on the right. Better still, all Type-A connections operate at 20Gb/s while both Thunderbolt 5 inputs charge ahead at 80Gb/s, so you needn’t worry about searching for the faster one of the selection. Finally, a 3.5mm combo jack and microSD card reader round off this solid selection, with my only wish being the latter was full-size.
Finally, as a Core Ultra Series 2 system, Recoil 18 naturally comes with the wireless niceties that are Bluetooth 5.4 and WiFi 7. Downloading files and games was nice and fast on my gigabit WiFi 6E network and connecting controllers as well as headphones was similarly breezy. I’d also like to give a brief shoutout to the physical webcam cover. Having an FHD IR cam is useful for Windows Hello and serves me well for video calls, but I’m glad to know there’s a tangible blocker keeping ne’er-do-wells out in a worst case scenario.
Screen
Spending hours playing, watching, or writing content on Recoil 18 is a delight thanks to a bright and vibrant screen. PCSpecialist forgoes fanciful Mini LED or OLED panel in favour of a more-standard IPS. While I’d prefer a more premium option, this display does keep costs down but, more importantly, is impressive on its own terms thanks to excellent calibration.
| Benchmark | Result |
|---|---|
| AdobeRGB | 87% |
| DCI-P3 | 99% |
| sRGB | 100% |
| Brightness | 33-644nits |
| Colour Accuracy | 0.97 (Avg. Delta E) |
Measuring at 18in across, the screen produces suitably crisp images with a native resolution of 2560×1600 and 168 PPI (Pixels Per Inch). However, it’s the panel’s 240Hz refresh rate that truly elevates the experience, making for a snappy and sharp screen in games and general use.
Placing my DataColor SpyderPro on Recoil 18’s screen reveals the display’s wide gamut qualities, covering 100% of the sRGB colour space, 99% of DCI-P3, and 87% of AdobeRGB. Such values would make for a rich HDR experience but PCSpecialist rightly curtails support in lieu of any local dimming solution.
This panel doesn’t trade accuracy for its potent punchy qualities. At 100% brightness, average Delta E values top out at a practically imperceptible 0.97. In fact, only one colour of the 48 test hues exceeds a Delta E of 2.0, making for an excellent overall result.
Peak brightness levels of 644nits make sitting outside with Recoil 18 no issue, allowing me to enjoy a welcome spot of British sunshine while writing up this review. Of course, the IPS panel can’t escape the inherent weakness of its DNA, namely contrast, which clocks in at a decent-enough 1,270:1 for an IPS panel.
Performance
Recoil 18 ships with three power profiles: Performance, Quiet, Entertainment. The latter is PCSpecialist’s default selection, which is a balanced profile under a curious pseudonym. These options tweak power limits and fan curves for both CPU and GPU but there’s no easy way to parse what exact changes they make in the Control Center software.
Each power profile has its own automatic fan curve but you frustratingly can’t see how its structured. Thankfully, for the tweakers among us, Control Center does provide the means to craft custom curves.
For the benchmarks below, I’m using the stock Entertainment profile to illustrate an out-of-the-box experience with Recoil 18. I’ve also applied the latest Windows 11 updates (26100.4349) and installed the most recent GeForce Game Ready Driver (576.66), complete with Laptop GPU TDP fixes from Nvidia, available at the time of writing.
CPU
Core Ultra 9 275HX is technically Intel’s second-best mobile processor, sporting 24 (8P+16E) cores and 32 threads that can turbo up to 5.4GHz. However, whack a 100MHz overclock on its CPU cores and GPU and you’ve plugged the gap between 285HX performance.
PCSpecialist feeds Core Ultra 9 275HX up to 130W in Entertainment mode, from a base TDP of 46W. This is shy of its built-in 160W maximum configuration, but such reductions are reasonable in service of acoustics, efficiency, and thermals.
| Benchmark | Entertainment | Performance |
|---|---|---|
| Cinebench 2024 ST | 129 points | 131 points (+2%) |
| Cinebench 2024 MT | 1,303 points | 1,746 points (+34%) |
The processor turns in a strong single-core score of 129 points in Cinebench 2024, but falls strangely short of expectations in the multi-core benchmark with a score of 1,303 points. Taking a peek behind the curtain, the issue stems from power as the processor falls to 46W in this test despite the workload.
Swapping to Performance mode, with a TDP range of 135-150W fixes this issue and increases multi core performance by a massive 34%. This profile makes the laptop run loud in a bid to keep Core Ultra 9 275HX cool but such is the price of higher processing power. Gratefully, this is the only benchmark in which the Entertainment mode noticeably lags behind.
The remaining scores place Core Ultra 9 275HX somewhere in the region between Core i5-14600K and Ryzen 9 9900X. That’s performant company to keep, and I’ve little doubt the processor will please those in search of plentiful portable power.
| Benchmark | CPU (score) | GPU (score) | NPU (score) |
|---|---|---|---|
| GB AI FP32 | 8,212 points | 4,599 points | 8,102 points |
| GB AI FP16 | 8,085 points | 7,654 points | 8,546 points |
| GB AI Quantized | 16,002 points | 11,839 points | 13,461 points |
Nestling alongside those CPU cores are integrated graphics as well as a Neural Processing Unit (NPU). Running an identical OpenVINO benchmark on all three subcomponents highlights how the AI accelerator can push FP16 performance higher than the processor. While the NPU falls slightly behind in FP32 and Quantized runs, it’s far more efficient with a fraction of power behind it.
There’s no escaping the fact that GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Mobile will outperform Core Ultra 9 275HX in most deep learning workloads. However, having a more power-efficient setup in a pinch is always welcome.
Gaming
Without further ado, let’s see how Recoil 18 gaming performance holds up across rasterised and ray traced workloads. I’ll explore how frame rates vary across QHD+ and FHD+ resolutions in addition to seeing what difference DLSS 4 can make under extreme rendering demands.
| Benchmark | Score |
|---|---|
| 3DMark Steel Nomad | 3,625 points |
| 3DMark Speed Way | 4,122 points |
3DMark helps establish how RTX 5070 Ti Mobile compares to desktop graphics cards. Nvidia cuts this model from the same GB205 cloth as RTX 5070, but these Steel Nomad and Speed Way results are in fact closer to RTX 5060. Though performance closely mirrors the budget GeForce, 12GB of VRAM will make all the difference in some scenarios.
The Blackwell architecture at the heart of this GPU unsurprisingly scores higher in Speed Way, as 4,122 points demonstrate its ray tracing chops. It’s no slouch when it comes to rasterisation, though, earning 3,625 points in Steel Nomad. Solid performance considering there’s only 115W at play here.
| Benchmark | 2560×1600 (QHD+) [Min. / Avg.] | 1920×1200 (FHD+) [Min. / Avg.] |
|---|---|---|
| Assassin’s Creed Mirage | 68fps / 96fps | 80fps / 122fps |
| FFXIV: Dawntrail | 59fps / 105fps | 58fps / 141fps |
| Forza Motorsport | 38fps / 49fps | 55fps / 72fps |
| Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord | 101fps / 149fps | 135fps / 219fps |
| Rainbow Six Extraction | 82fps / 139fps | 123fps / 214fps |
Recoil 18 delivers expectedly solid results across the Club386 benchmark suite. Average frame rates at QHD+ are either north or close to 100fps in four of the five games tested, with Assassin’s Creed Mirage proving the only rasterised exception.
Forza Motorsport pushes RTX 5070 Ti Mobile to its limits but the GPU doesn’t spin out, crossing the finish line with 49fps. Dropping down to FHD+ sees the racing game zip along at a more comfortable 72fps, demonstrating that lower settings or upscaling would help plug the gap at QHD+.
The 12GB frame buffer plays a crucial role in making reliable frame rates at FHD+ and QHD+ possible, even with ultra settings at play. I frankly wouldn’t recommend anything less-powerful than RTX 5070 Ti Mobile for a display like this. With this in mind, I’m glad to see PCSpecialist set the minimum possible specification at that GPU.
| Cyberpunk 2077 RT Overdrive | 2560×1600 (QHD+) [Min. / Avg.] | 1920×1200 (FHD+) [Min. / Avg.] |
|---|---|---|
| Native | 13fps / 15fps | 23fps / 26fps |
| DLSS Quality | 28fps / 32fps | 44fps / 50fps |
| DLSS Quality + FG x2 | 51fps / 59fps | 83fps / 93fps |
| DLSS Quality + FG x3 | 74fps / 83fps | 120fps / 132fps |
| DLSS Quality + FG x4 | 94fps / 106fps | 153fps / 168fps |
Path tracing is as beautiful on the eyes as it is brutal on GPUs. Expecting playable frame rates from Cyberpunk 2077’s RT Overdrive mode using RTX 5070 Ti Mobile at native resolutions is unreasonable, as the data above shows. However, it also serves to demonstrate how DLSS Super Resolution can prove transformative to otherwise unplayable levels of performance.
Starting from slideshow average frame rates of 15fps and 26fps, DLSS 4 in Quality mode provides the necessary breathing room to make path tracing playable at both QHD+ and FHD+. You can reasonably push performance even further through other Super Resolution presets with minimal impact on image quality thanks to Nvidia’s new higher-quality Transformer upscaling model.
DLSS Frame Generation, Single and Multi, can improve motion clarity but requires a base average frame rate of around 60fps to keep latency at reasonable levels. RTX 5070 Ti Mobile doesn’t reach the threshold at either resolution using DLSS Quality, but switching to Balanced should plug the gap for FHD+ at least.
Storage
By default, Recoil 18 storage is on the slower and smaller side with sequential read speeds of 3,200MB/s and 256GB of space. This makes upgrading to an alternative drive a must in my eyes, if only to increase capacity to levels more accommodating of an operating system and modern games. Opting for a 1TB model of the same SSD only costs an additional £38 and is well worth doing so.
| CrystalDiskMark | Samsung 990 Pro 2TB |
|---|---|
| Sequential Read | 7,133MB/s |
| Sequential Write | 6,656MB/s |
My selection, Samsung 990 Pro 2TB, is an excellent choice of storage by any measure. Running in Recoil 18, the drive reaches advertised speeds and will make short of any loading times. Opting for the SSD does raise the cost of the laptop by £108, but that’s a reasonable price considering the going rate on its lonesome from other storefronts.
Should you already have an M.2 NVMe drive you’d like to slot into Recoil 18, you’ll find another slot ready to receive more storage by venturing into the innards of the laptop.
Vitals
Important as frames per second and scores are, any amount of performance is for naught if it comes at the expense of usability. Thankfully, Recoil 18 effectively regulates noise, power, and temperatures, regardless of how much stress it’s under.
| Idle | Load | |
|---|---|---|
| CPU temperature | 43°C | 84°C |
| GPU temperature | 37°C | 67°C |
| Noise | ≤30db | 33-52db |
| Power consumption | 47W | 132-239W |
Pushing the CPU alone in Cinebench 2024 sees processor operating temperatures spike from 43°C to 84°C. As mentioned earlier, the system prioritises acoustics while in its default power mode, meaning that noise levels don’t exceed 33dB as the chip sweats away under load. With the charger attached, you can expect power consumption to peak at around 132W in this scenario.
Gaming requires grunt from both GPU and CPU, so it’s unsurprising to see the amount of ‘leccy running through the laptop rise to 239W in order to accommodate both components. Stressing RTX 5070 Ti Mobile doesn’t incur huge amounts of heat as the pixel pusher works at a relatively cool 67°C in Cyberpunk 2077 but is noisier at 52dB.
Note that these temperatures are in part thanks to the application of Recoil 18’s liquid metal interface. Without standard thermal paste to compare, it’s impossible to say how much of an improvement it provides, but even shaving a few degrees is welcome.
Battery
There’s no avoiding how much power gaming laptops consume considering the hunger of their high-end components running at full whack. That said, you can’t hope for more juice to rely on as Recoil 18 packs a 98WHr battery under its proverbial belt.
The amount of battery life you get out of this system will depend on how you’re using it. Naturally, gaming proves an enormous drain on Recoil 18’s reserves, with the laptop lasting 1hr 46mins up against PCMark 10’s benchmark. However, general use results in a more reasonable uptime in the region of five-and-a-half hours based on my experience.
PCSpecialist imposes a welcome battery limitation, improving the lifespan of the cell by capping it at 80% charge, but company’s Control Center could go a step further. Many competitors provide the means to automatically switch from a higher refresh rate to a lower alternative swapping from A/C to battery. I’d love to see this feature appear in future models to improve battery life, as it’s sadly missing on Recoil 18 despite the inclusion of Nvidia Advanced Optimus.
Conclusion
It’s difficult to fault PCSpecialist Recoil 18 as it provides so much value at such a high-quality. Even with frankly necessary adjustments to its base storage option, the system remains one of the most affordable and attractive 18in laptops on the market, starting at £2,047.
Core Ultra 9 275HX and GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Mobile work together harmoniously, providing enough horsepower to deliver compelling gaming experiences at both QHD+ and FHD+ resolutions, going further with support of DLSS 4. The images they output look great on this laptop too thanks to its sharp screen, whose limitations are easy to forgive thanks to its excellent calibration.
I wish the speakers were stronger, but at least they won’t be fighting against a hurricane of fan noise as Recoil 18 respects the acoustic and thermal sanctity of your home. It’s simple enough to connect a set of headphones via 3.5mm or USB anyway, making this a flaw that’s easy to manage.
Smaller alternatives with similar specifications are available from PCSpecialist and elsewhere, but those wanting a bigger 18in laptop that packs plenty of value should certainly have Recoil 18 on their radar.
