Our friends at BanBros Commercial Inc. invited us to take take a look and review the Thunderobot Iger E1. The chinese brand, Thunderobot, is a pretty new brand that offers somewhat very affordable non-RTX and RTX-laptops. In this article, I will give my quick impressions about this relatively new brand’s product.
Thunderobot Iger E1 Specs and Price
| Display | 15.6″ FHD IPS |
| Processor | Intel i5-10210U, 15W TDP |
| Graphics | Intel UHD Graphics |
| Memory | 8GB DDR4 |
| Storage | 512G NVMe SSD |
| Ports | 2x USB2.0 TypeA; 1X USB3.1 Gen2 TypeA; 1X USB3.1 Gen2 TypeC; 1x HDMI; |
| Keyboard | None Backlit Full size Keyboard |
| Battery | 36Wh |
| Charger | 45W AC Adapter |
| Connectivity | IEEE WLAN Standard : 802.11ac/a/b/g/n / 2.4GHz/5GHz Bluetooth 5.0 |
| Price | PHP 42,500.00 |
Thunderobot Iger E1 Unboxing and Device Walkthrough
Unboxing the Iger E1 was rather an ordinary experience. The laptop was packaged as usual, devoid of any fanciness like that ones that Apple give to its consumers. Thunderobot isn’t Apple – I get that, and this isn’t something that I see negatively on the company. There isn’t anything much inside the box: you get the laptop, a 4W AC adapter, a few documentations and a display cleaning cloth.
Despite the experience, it’s very interesting to see how Thunderobot packaged this as a laptop that can easily be afforded by people with limited budget.
Now, here’s a quick walkthrough of the device.
Build and Display
You get this huge Full HD 15.6 IPS non-glare type display. The laptop has thick top and bottom bezels, with 83% screen-to-body ratio. The display can be laid flat up to 180-degrees, which helps give the security that its hinges will not easily crack when the display is accidently pushed away more than usual.
The device is made of metal – according to Thunderobot – but it feels like plastic. This is not necessarily bad though. The frame flexes when pushed, which can be a build issue for a lot of people. There are notable display and frame flexing on top of the keyboard and beside the trackpad, which are traits that you have to keep note of.
I also subjected the Iger E1’s display to display analysis test using our calibrating tool. You can check out the result of our test below. The laptop’s display on reached 65% of sRGB. Tone response is acceptable, while brightness quality is just right for its price.
Keyboard and Trackpad
There are a few things that I like about the Iger E1, and one is its keyboard. It isn’t exactly perfect but I love the fact that Thunderobot tried to give what consumers usually need on a laptop. This type of keyboard is usually seen on Lenovo gaming laptops, and there’s a reason for that: the numpad is essential for both productivity and gaming. The keyboard has additional Function keys available, with some that give visual prompts. Good job!
Thanks to its full layout, its keyboard is definitely going to be considered a godsend for a lot of people. It has a few drawbacks though, which can pose an issue getting used to it if you’re coming from a 60% to 70% layout and the lack of keyboard backlight.
Iger E1’s trackpad is huge! It extends from space bar to menu key, which is exactly what I want on a trackpad. It’s good but it lacks multitouch, which makes it unbelievably difficult to use especially if you’re into using productivity apps. Fortunately, this laptop packs a lot of ports that you can use with your peripherals.
I/O
As mentioned earlier, the laptop is packed with a lot of ports, including a USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type C.
On the left side of the device, you’ll find LAN port, Micro SD slot, 2 USB 2.0 Type A, SIM port and a 2-in-1 3.5mm headphone port. On the right side, you get an HDMI input, USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type A and the USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type C. Again, good job, Thunderobot team!
I honestly do not like MicroSD slot on laptops because I prefer the one that I can fit my SD cards to. However, this is not something that I will complain hard about because it’s good have to an option like this than not have anything at all. Before I forget, the laptop also allows 2.5 SSD expansion, which I discovered upon opening it up.
Sound and Multimedia Playback
Iger E1’s single speaker setup gets a a max of 83db and an average of 60db in a 50db room. I would say that it’s pretty standard on laptop nowadays. However, sound has shallow depth and bass when listening to music or watching videos on Netflix. In the case of Iger E1, you will either need a pair of earphones or connect it to an external speaker for better sound amplifcation.
In terms of multimedia playback, I did not have trouble watching YouTube videos. However, I needed to fix a Netflix error, which required me to disable Widevine and enable PlayReady DRM for Windows 10. For some reason, the lack of Widevine DRM removes the laptop’s ability to stream videos at 1920 x 1080. This is something that you keep in mind when you buy this laptop.
Battery Life
The laptop’s battery life is really good, and that’s partly because of its chipset’s 15 TDP setup. It’s a very limiting situation, but it extends the fully-charged untethered experience of the laptop. In my experience, battery percentage drop rate is 15% per hour while streaming videos on Netflix at Balanced Performance with 100% brightness and full volume.
Performance and Benchmark
Iger E1 is powered by an Intel i5-10210U. It isn’t exactly the most powerful for its price but can be definitely be a capable one for day to day online and productivity activities.
I ran a few benchmarks on this laptop and here’s what I found out.
SuperPI is a single-threaded benchmark application that lets the CPU calculate Pi(π) to the nth digit. In this benchmark, we selected the Pi calculation to 32M, the highest available for the app.
wPrime is a benchmark tool similar to SuperPI, but the former takes on finding prime numbers using Newton’s Method. The benchmark is set to calculate 1024 million prime numbers, and the performance is measured according to calculation time.
Maxon’s Cinebench benchmark is one of the most iconic benchmark applications used by reviewers and enthusiasts.
The Cinebench R20 use the latest rendering architectures, including Intel’s Embree ray tracing technology and other advanced features from AMD and Intel that allow users to render the same scene on the same hard. Cinebench R23 uses a larger and more complex testing scene than Cinebench R20 by about 8x computational power and requires 4x the memory. In this case, I only benchmarked with Cinebench R20.
Geekbench is a multi-platform benchmark that’s used to gauge CPU performance and compare them across Windows, Mac, and Mobile. Geekbench 5 is the latest version and doesn’t rely on memory as much compared to the previous Geekbench 4, making it a great tool to measure both single-core and multi-core CPU performance.
V-Ray Benchmark is a stand-alone version of V-Ray developed by Chaos Group. It is designed to test the CPU and GPU by rendering sample scenes at a fixed amount of time. V-Ray is a plug-in mostly utilized by 3D computer graphics software applications mainly for industrial design, product design, architecture, film, and video game production. V-Ray is not limited to 64-threads as it supports multi and mega-threading.
Corona Renderer is an unbiased photorealistic render available for Autodesk 3Ds Max, Maxon Cinema 4D, and as a stand-alone application. Its popularity, similar to Blender, led Chaos Group to develop a benchmark version of the app which runs using Corona Renderer 1.3. Workstation systems, especially CPUs, can utilize Corona Benchmark as up to 72 threads can be used in the benchmark, making it very suitable for CPUs with various price segments.
Initial Thoughts
Thunderobot Iger E1 offers interesting features that are readily accessible to anyone who needs a laptop for both work and study. It may not be the right laptop for you to play triple A titles, but should be good enough for casual games.
I’ve got to give it to Thunderobot for trying to balance the situation by giving consumers a full keyboard setup, good battery life and a host of a few ports and storage expansion that some laptops lack nowadays.
Thunderobot Iger E1 is now available for PhP40,000. You can check out the link here in case you’re interested.
Giancarlo Viterbo is a Filipino Technology Journalist, blogger and Editor of gadgetpilipinas.net, He is also a Geek, Dad and a Husband. He knows a lot about washing the dishes, doing some errands and following instructions from his boss on his day job. Follow him on twitter: @gianviterbo and @gadgetpilipinas.
