It's that time of year, when newly released components are seized upon by boutique gaming PC manufacturers and squeezed to extract every drop of improved performance and speed out of the hardware in the name of competitive gaming. At first glance, the Origin EON17-SLX (2014) ($3,676.34 direct) gaming laptop looks very much like last year's Origin EON17-SLX with a slight spec bump. However, on closer inspection, it's clear that the never-ending quest for more power has pushed the EON17-SLX (2014) to the front of the pack, making it our new Editors' Choice for high-end gaming laptops.

Design
As with most gaming laptops, the EON17-SLX is big and bulky, with a basic black exterior and soft touch matte finish across the lid. You won't find the flashy racing-style paint job of the Maingear Nomad 17 Ultimate here, though you will find one cosmetic feature familiar to muscle cars—tail lights. On the two back corners is a pair of red lights that glow menacingly whenever the EON17-SLX is powered on. Sadly, there's no turn signal.

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The keyboard features a backlight with seven colors to choose from and three distinct lighting zones. The touchpad glows and changes colors to match the keyboard, but it's a bit different than others we've seen. Not only does the pad have a separate button bar for right and left clicking—most systems these days have shifted to clickpads which combine the buttons with a clickable touch surface—but the EON17-SLX takes it a step further. The button bar is separated from the touchpad by a full half-inch, which takes a lot of getting used to. To the right of the touchpad is a built-in fingerprint reader for secure logins.

The EON17-SLX is hefty, weighing 9.3 pounds alone (12.3 pounds with the power adapter brick) and large, measuring 2.15 by 16.5 by 11.3 inches (HWD). While that's not terribly bulky compared with similarly sized gaming rigs, like the Alienware 17 or the Maingear Nomad 17 Ultimate, it's still too big for carrying further than the other side of the house.

The EON17-SLX (2014) features a 17.3-inch display with 1,920-by-1,080 resolution, and while there's a bit of a glossy finish to it, it doesn't seem to suffer from the mirror-like reflectiveness I saw on the previous iteration. Accompanying the display are built-in Onkyo speakers, complete with an integrated subwoofer. The combination sounds excellent, and is further helped along with some tweaking in the Sound Blaster X-Fi MB control panel.

Features
The laptop is outfitted with plenty of ports and connectors. On the left, there are jacks for headphones and microphone, an S/PDIF optical connection for digital surround sound, a Gigabit Ethernet port, and a Kensington lock slot. On the right, you'll find a combination USB/eSATA port, two USB 3.0 ports (one with power for charging devices), a tray-loading DVD+-RW drive, and a Thunderbolt port. That last item might surprise a few people, since Thunderbolt has so far been seen largely on Apple's Mac laptops and desktops, but now that same high-speed data connectivity is also available for Windows users. Whether or not you have the need (or the Thunderbolt-equipped accessories) to use it is another question. On the back of the system you'll find two additional USB 3.0 ports, a four-pin power connector, and an HDMI output.