Altyk L16F Review: Impressive French Innovation? Find Out Now!

Altyk is slowly making a name for itself as an emerging star in the laptop market, with a key selling point: it’s French. While the laptops are manufactured in China, like those of any other brand, it is the company’s French engineers who design and oversee their production. Additionally, the customer support is based in France, making it more accessible.

But is that enough for the Altyk L16F, the brand’s latest 16-inch model, to find its audience? Fortunately, the product itself is not lacking in compelling features.

Technical Specifications

Design

The Altyk L16F doesn’t reinvent the wheel in terms of ultraportable laptop design, but it executes the formula well. It features a fully aluminum chassis that’s just 1.4 cm thick and weighs a manageable 1.75 kilograms for a 16-inch laptop.

Moreover, the ultraportable from Altyk avoids the usual pitfalls of budget-friendly products. This means you won’t find any overly sharp edges on this model, which manages to remain both understated and elegant. It’s hard not to consider the design choices a success in this case.

Keyboard and Touchpad

Now, let’s discuss some less positive aspects. While most manufacturers have improved the actuation distance of classic chiclet keys over recent years, the Altyk L16F feels like a step backwards. The key travel is very short and provides little feedback, although the chassis is at least sturdy. The integrated numeric keypad is sufficiently wide for comfortable daily use, and the setup is backlit.

The touchpad, with a very large diagonal, is made of plastic but still offers good glide. However, the click mechanism is quite stiff, loud, and plasticky, slightly diminishing the illusion of a modern laptop.

Connectivity

On the left side, you’ll find an HDMI 1.4 port, a USB A 3.2 Gen 1 port, and two USB-C 3.2 Gen 1 ports that support DisplayPort and charging. On the right side, there’s another USB A 3.2 Gen 1 port, a USB A 2.0 port, a microSD card reader, and a combo audio jack.

The variety of ports is extensive, if not the newest, but still provides everything needed for any situation. It would be nice to see USB 2.0 ports phased out, especially as end-users may not be aware of the differences, but this doesn’t significantly detract from the overall utility.

Note that the laptop also supports Wi-Fi 6E.

Webcam and Audio

The Altyk L16F includes a basic Full HD webcam capable of 30 FPS. Its output is somewhat washed out and noisy, but it at least generally preserves colors accurately. The setup also includes facial recognition and a fingerprint reader for Windows Hello.

As for audio, it’s not particularly impressive. As is typical with this category of product, the audio specs tend to be overlooked. The speakers are positioned under the chassis, producing a sound that doesn’t even match that of budget smartphones, with a very metallic output. It’s advisable to use headphones.

Screen

The Altyk L16F features a 16-inch IPS LCD display with a resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels, giving it a 16:10 aspect ratio. The screen offers a standard refresh rate of 60 Hz and includes an anti-glare coating.

Using our spectrophotometer and the PortraitDisplays CalMAN software, we found that it covers 101% of the sRGB color space and 68% of the DCI-P3 color space, as claimed by the manufacturer. The maximum brightness measured at 325 cd/m² is just passable for a laptop if you plan to use it outdoors, although the anti-glare coating is effective here. The contrast ratio is measured at 1293:1, quite good for an IPS LCD.

The average color temperature is measured at 6767 kelvins, slightly too cool, with an excellent average delta e00 of 2.48 and a maximum deviation of only 5.61 in light blue tones. Although limited to sRGB, the color calibration is well executed. For office work, and strictly office work, the Altyk L16F delivers what’s needed.

Software

This is one of the most attractive aspects shared by all Altyk laptops: there is nothing negative to say about this section. Absolutely nothing. Why? Because the manufacturer relies on Windows 11 to manage performance directly.

But most importantly, it includes ABSOLUTELY NO adware. Zero. Nada. Nothing to uninstall, nothing consuming resources for no reason: we have here a clean Windows experience that reminds us that the OS isn’t so heavy when it’s not bogged down. This also saves potentially lengthy phone calls with parents and grandparents when troubleshooting.

All the more reason to no longer accept such deals from other manufacturers that are 100 times larger than Altyk. Thanks to them.

Performance

The Altyk L16F is equipped with an Intel Core i3-1220P, a 10-core SoC (2 performance and 8 efficiency cores) supporting 12 threads with a turbo frequency of 4.4 GHz. It also includes an Intel UHD Graphics part, reminding us that this is an early 2022 processor. It comes with 16 GB of DDR4 RAM at 3200 MHz, and 512 GB of storage on a PCIe 4.0 interface.

Benchmarks

In Cinebench 2024, we see scores of 422 points in multi-core and 93 points in single-core. It’s clear that we’re not dealing with a highly versatile laptop from the latest generation. However, for office applications, it’s essentially equivalent to the latest generations and will therefore suffice.

The 3D capabilities are where we sacrifice everything, with the Intel UHD Graphics performing very poorly, scoring just 748 points. Understand that you can use it to display your desktop on a remote monitor without issue, but forget about video editing or playing even the least demanding games. That’s not really the idea with this PC anyway.

Regarding storage, we’re pleasantly surprised: this is really the best that PCIe Gen 4.0 has to offer.

Cooling and Noise

Altyk has managed this aspect well. Even when operating at full power, the Altyk L16F’s fans remain quiet under all conditions. The chassis temperatures are also well managed, staying away from key areas and never exceeding 51°C.

Battery Life

The laptop is equipped with a 63.5 Wh battery that recharges using a supplied 65W power adapter.

With typical office use and the screen set to 50% brightness, battery life ranges between 6 and 7 hours. While not surprising for this configuration, it no longer reflects the latest advancements in x86 system autonomy. It’s adequate, although somewhat outdated.

Price and Availability

The Altyk L16F in our test configuration is priced at 649.95 euros. You can also find it in a Core i5 configuration for 749.95 euros.

Sold by LDLC, it also comes with a 3-year warranty with local support in the brand’s stores across France or in Altyk’s workshops in Nantes.