Pioneer DreamBook Power X370 RTX 4090 review

This site’s very first review was of a beefy Pioneer Dreambook but, sadly, we weren’t overly impressed with the performance and value proposition. However, the Pioneer DreamBook Power X370 RTX 4090 looks like a totally different proposition. It’s got the latest and greatest everything and, even though it’s not cheap, it’s got a great chance of being the Highest Performing Laptop that we’ve seen yet.

Specs

Screen	17.3-inch, matte, 240Hz, 2,560 x 1,440, IPS display
Processor	3.9-5.4GHz Intel Core i9-13900HX CPU
Memory	32GB DDR5-4800 RAM
Graphics	16GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPU
Hard drive	2x 1TB PCIe NVMe
Connectivity	Wi-Fi 6E Bluetooth 5.2 2 x Thunderbolt 4 1 x 2.5GbE network port 2 x USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 1 x HDMI 2.1 1 x mini DisplayPort 2 x 3.5mm audio
Speakers	2 × 2 Watt
Extra Security	N/A
Webcam	Full HD
Battery	99Wh
Dimensions	396 x 280 x 25mm
Weight	3.44 KG
SKU	X370

Features, Ergonomics and Design

The Pioneer DreamBook Power X370 is very big and very black. The exterior chassis is all plastic but it’s very rigid – despite the substantial weight. There’s zero flex in the base. There is a little flex on the lid when a twisting force is applied, but that’s normally what we’d expect from a 17.3-inch laptop screen. The DreamBook decal looks nice, but history tells us that the letters can peel off if they snag on anything. Also note that it’s (still) a bit of a fingerprint magnet.

Opening the Pioneer DreamBook Power up reveals the huge, matte, 17.3-inch screen. It has a UHD 2,560 x 1,440 resolution, a 240Hz refresh rate and is G-Sync compatible, so gamers should be salivating. It certainly displays a crisp and clear Windows Desktop. Multimedia looks generally impressive thanks to vibrant colours and decent contrast which retains detail in both light and dark areas. Just note that there’s fine banding in many colour transitions which gets significantly worse in monochromatic transitions.

Meanwhile, the speedy refresh rate, fast pixel response time (and G-Sync compatibility) ensure that fast moving objects are rendered very crisply and clearly (without suffering from image tearing).

Above the screen is a Full HD webcam with dual-array, noise cancelling microphones. It’s very impressive indeed, capturing a sharp image, even in low light, and crisp and clear audio, even in noisy environments.

The Pioneer DreamBook Power’s Scrabble-tile keyboard is very comfortable and accurate to use for both extended typing and gaming sessions. We like that it’s got full-size arrow keys and that there’s a number pad too. We like the dark-topped key caps with translucent sides as they work very well with the per-key RGB lighting. The Control Center app lets you customise lighting and effects.

The DreamBook Power X370’s trackpad is large, smooth and accurate. The buttons are a little stiff but no in an annoying way.

The main disappointment is the twin, two-Watt speakers. These are quiet and have little bass which is especially surprising in a chassis this large.

Performance

Inside the Pioneer DreamBook Power X370 is an Intel Core i9-13900HX processor which has 8 Power cores, 16 Efficiency cores and 32 threads. It typically utilises between 45 and 157 Watts and operates between 3.9 and 5.4GHz.

It’s partnered with 32GB of powerful DDR5-4800RAM and two 1TB NVMe hard drives (there’s an additional slot for a third and Pioneer can also set them up in RAID 0, 1 and 5 configurations).

In the general-computing, PCMark 10 test it scored a massive 9,044 meaning the Pioneer DreamBook Power is the first laptop we’ve seen to be ovEr 9,0o0(!) It’s even significantly ahead of the Lenovo Legion 5i Pro (Gen 8) which had a similar processor and memory!

In our CPU rendering tests it scored 4,812 in Cinebench R15 and 27,136 in Cinebench R23. These too, inch ahead of the Legion 5i to become the fastest scores we’ve ever seen. So, it’s a clean sweep for the Pioneer DreamBook Power X370 in our 2D tests.

Thanks to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 (with 16GB of GDDR6 RAM), the Pioneer DreamBook Power X370 also obliterated all of our 3D gaming tests too… almost.

In the difficult 3DMark ray-tracing tests, it scored 13,751 in Port Royal, which is an average of 135fps! Good RTX 3080 Ti laptops would be struggling in the low 80fps! In the newer Speed Way test it scored 5,662 (average 56.62fps) which compares to previous bests from 3080 Ti laptops of around 35fps!

In the 3DMark Time Spy and Fire Strike Extreme tests, which ape AAA-gaming titles, the Pioneer DreamBook Power scored 20,657 (average 135fps) and 24,441 (average 115.7 fps). Again, if a 3080 Ti got above 80fps in those tests we’d say it was a market leader!

In the 3DMark Night Raid test, which looks at the performance you can expect from casual and competitive games, it scored 72,290 which is an average of 915.3fps! The previous highest was the 4070-sporting Legion 5i with 745fps.

The only blip was in the odd-ball CS:GO test where it averaged a highest-ever 550fps (nothing before has breached 500fps) but the 1% Low Score (which is used when smoke and fire grenades start exploding and the system gets stressed – usually in the slowest one per cent of frames) was 111fps. This was beaten by the 123fps of the 12^th-Gen Asus ROG Strix SCAR 17 SE which had a 3080 Ti GPU and an i9-12950HX CPU.

The Pioneer DreamBook Power X370 is generally quiet, with a mild, background swoosh sound coming from the fan when idling in Performance Mode. Nonetheless, it can ramp up to a loud swoosh when under heavy load, though. Fortunately, this quickly rescinds when things get less hectic. It can still be set to Quiet Mode if you can’t afford for fans to make a noise, though.

Connectivity

Inside there’s Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2. It all amounts to an impressive, latest-gen complement of connectivity.

Portability

We don’t expect much from 17-inch gaming laptops but, even so, the Pioneer DreamBook Power X370 surprised us. It weighs a whopping 3.44KG which is almost half a kilo more than an Asus ROG Strix SCAR 17 SE and is even heavier than the 3.3KG MSI Titan. Meanwhile, the power brick and cables add another 1.157KG to the bulk. In short, it’s big and heavy.

Still, the max-size, 99.9Wh battery kept it running our PCMark 10 Modern Office test for an impressive 10 hours 11 minutes. That’s more than a day out of the office and much better than many big gaming laptops.

It’s very solidly built and should survive life on the road, but be gentle with the lid and don’t expect the Dreambook decals to last too long.

Conclusion

Pioneer has a useful configurator on its site for customising your DreamBook Power X370. Ours had nearly a top-end spec and costs $6,356. That’s not cheap but it’s also significantly less than other premium flagships from the usual brands which it will be competing with.

It means that the Pioneer DreamBook Power X370 is our new Number 1 laptop! Its superlative power, decent features amount to very good value that ultimately trumps its portability deficiencies and disappointing speakers.

Just note that, in our testing lab, the latest and greatest, similarly spec’d Asus ROG Strix SCAR has been sneering at the Pioneer DreamBook Power X370 from across the room. It will be interesting to see who’s top dog next week.

Pros

Amazing 2D performance
Superb 3D performance

Cons

Weak speakers
Very heavy

Results