It’s been a while since I have posted in this here section and that’s because the last couple of years I have been working away on my trusty Clevo W3508. The problem is that machine was starting to look tatty with a little wear and tear here and there and fans that are starting to get a little noisy.
I decided it was time for an upgrade, now the machine I am replacing was no slouch with decent specs, it has a 15.6” 1080p screen, i7 4700mq, GTX 765m & Intel 4600 with a Crucial 480gb M500 and a 1tb Mech drive so I wanted something newer and faster.
I looked at the options from MSI, Asus, Microsoft etc but nothing really gave me exactly what I wanted so I started looking towards offerings from Clevo again. A week ago I decided on the spec and put in an order. Enter the Clevo P650, I decided on this chassis because of its scalability and put together the following spec:
15.6” 4k PLS Panel in a gloss finish
I7 6700HQ 2.6ghz with 3.5ghz Turbo
16GB HyperX Impact 2133 DDR4
NVidia GTX 970m – 6GB DDR5 & Intel HD530
256GB Samsung SM951 M.2 with claimed speeds of 2150MB/s Read and 1260MB/s Write
Intel AC-8260 M.2, Bluetooth and Gigabit LAN
2x Sata Drives, 1x M500 480GB and 1x 1TB Mech
Huawei MU736 3G Module
Backlit Keyboard
FingerPrint Reader
Standard ports include:
2x mini display port
1x hdmi
4x USB 3
6 in 1 card reader
I thought I would throw a few photos up of old vs new and perhaps throw a few benchmarks up to see how far things have come along in the last few years. First I thought I would put together some first thoughts and a few pictures of the machine. I am no photographer and the lens on my phones camera is shattered so this is about the best it has got, I will start off with the two machines side by side, new on the left and old on the right so you can see what I am comparing:
The New Machine
Build Quality
At first when looking at the pictures I wasn’t totally convinced and was concerned about the build quality. I put the order in anyway and waited the week for delivery, I needn’t have worried really the machine arrived and when I unpacked it I was pleasantly surprised by its aesthetics and its build, it’s not too garish and is thin and light enough to carry around.
Typing this review on it now the keyboard is nice, it is backlit and has 6 different brightness settings which is a nice little touch, the keys are well spaced and you get a proper number pad which is a must on any 15.6” machine. If I were to be really picky I would say you can feel a little bounce in the middle like you get in many laptops, more so than the W3508 that it replaces but it is not so bad that it is of any concern. If I do any heavy typing the laptop will be docked so this really isn’t a problem.
The Lid of the machine also isn’t quite as rugged as the machine it replaces and shows a little more flex than I think it really should with the lid open, with the lid closed you get a little flex in the middle if you push down but again I am nit picking more than anything here.
I wanted to get a look inside to throw a couple more hard drives in so I took the back off and the build and cooling solution I thought were very good, 3 well positioned fans with a stack of heat pipes should keep it nice and cool.
Display
The display in this machine is the best display I had the option of putting in. it’s a 4k PLS Screen from Samsung which runs at 3840x2160, 48hz. When buying the machine the screen was something that I deliberated over for a long time. In fact I first ordered it with a 3k screen then changed it to a 4k later.
Having a 4k screen is all well and good when the screen size is relatively big but in a 15.6” screen unless you see through magnifying glasses you are going to want to be using some scaling options for the desktop. This introduces other issues as not all apps do very well when scaled and from time to time you notice certain apps and installers that just look a bit blurred or disjointed. The default scale on the monitor was 250% which basically mimics 1080 resolutions and the screen does do quite well scaled like this.
I like things a little smaller and like more real estate so I scale the display at 150% in the desktop which I think is about the smallest you can get away with and in my opinion it really is lovely to work with. Other than the above the screen really is one of the best I have used on a laptop, it is bright, sharp, has great colour reproduction and scales really well.
Performance
I think the specs of the machine speak for themselves really, there is a faster processor option but I thought that the 6700 was really enough for me and coupled with 16GB of HyperX DDR4 it really should have enough grunt to run all the virtual machines, dev environments and heavy applications that I need for work while also being able to rip through photoshop, video editing or the occasional game should I need it to. The disk performance through the M.2 slot should be stellar and should also outperform the two disk ssd raid 0 array in my desktop. I guess I’ll throw a benchmark in from my desktop when I start to line up a few benchmarks later on.
Benchmarks
I have no idea what benchmarks are even relevant these days, I have plenty of games on steam and some have benchmarking tools so I’ll start compiling a little list and getting on with it.
So far I am thinking:
CrystalDiskMark
PC Mark?
3D Mark?
Ashes of the Singularity
But a few more ideas would also be nice.
TBC...
I decided it was time for an upgrade, now the machine I am replacing was no slouch with decent specs, it has a 15.6” 1080p screen, i7 4700mq, GTX 765m & Intel 4600 with a Crucial 480gb M500 and a 1tb Mech drive so I wanted something newer and faster.
I looked at the options from MSI, Asus, Microsoft etc but nothing really gave me exactly what I wanted so I started looking towards offerings from Clevo again. A week ago I decided on the spec and put in an order. Enter the Clevo P650, I decided on this chassis because of its scalability and put together the following spec:
15.6” 4k PLS Panel in a gloss finish
I7 6700HQ 2.6ghz with 3.5ghz Turbo
16GB HyperX Impact 2133 DDR4
NVidia GTX 970m – 6GB DDR5 & Intel HD530
256GB Samsung SM951 M.2 with claimed speeds of 2150MB/s Read and 1260MB/s Write
Intel AC-8260 M.2, Bluetooth and Gigabit LAN
2x Sata Drives, 1x M500 480GB and 1x 1TB Mech
Huawei MU736 3G Module
Backlit Keyboard
FingerPrint Reader
Standard ports include:
2x mini display port
1x hdmi
4x USB 3
6 in 1 card reader
I thought I would throw a few photos up of old vs new and perhaps throw a few benchmarks up to see how far things have come along in the last few years. First I thought I would put together some first thoughts and a few pictures of the machine. I am no photographer and the lens on my phones camera is shattered so this is about the best it has got, I will start off with the two machines side by side, new on the left and old on the right so you can see what I am comparing:
The New Machine
Build Quality
At first when looking at the pictures I wasn’t totally convinced and was concerned about the build quality. I put the order in anyway and waited the week for delivery, I needn’t have worried really the machine arrived and when I unpacked it I was pleasantly surprised by its aesthetics and its build, it’s not too garish and is thin and light enough to carry around.
Typing this review on it now the keyboard is nice, it is backlit and has 6 different brightness settings which is a nice little touch, the keys are well spaced and you get a proper number pad which is a must on any 15.6” machine. If I were to be really picky I would say you can feel a little bounce in the middle like you get in many laptops, more so than the W3508 that it replaces but it is not so bad that it is of any concern. If I do any heavy typing the laptop will be docked so this really isn’t a problem.
The Lid of the machine also isn’t quite as rugged as the machine it replaces and shows a little more flex than I think it really should with the lid open, with the lid closed you get a little flex in the middle if you push down but again I am nit picking more than anything here.
I wanted to get a look inside to throw a couple more hard drives in so I took the back off and the build and cooling solution I thought were very good, 3 well positioned fans with a stack of heat pipes should keep it nice and cool.
Display
The display in this machine is the best display I had the option of putting in. it’s a 4k PLS Screen from Samsung which runs at 3840x2160, 48hz. When buying the machine the screen was something that I deliberated over for a long time. In fact I first ordered it with a 3k screen then changed it to a 4k later.
Having a 4k screen is all well and good when the screen size is relatively big but in a 15.6” screen unless you see through magnifying glasses you are going to want to be using some scaling options for the desktop. This introduces other issues as not all apps do very well when scaled and from time to time you notice certain apps and installers that just look a bit blurred or disjointed. The default scale on the monitor was 250% which basically mimics 1080 resolutions and the screen does do quite well scaled like this.
I like things a little smaller and like more real estate so I scale the display at 150% in the desktop which I think is about the smallest you can get away with and in my opinion it really is lovely to work with. Other than the above the screen really is one of the best I have used on a laptop, it is bright, sharp, has great colour reproduction and scales really well.
Performance
I think the specs of the machine speak for themselves really, there is a faster processor option but I thought that the 6700 was really enough for me and coupled with 16GB of HyperX DDR4 it really should have enough grunt to run all the virtual machines, dev environments and heavy applications that I need for work while also being able to rip through photoshop, video editing or the occasional game should I need it to. The disk performance through the M.2 slot should be stellar and should also outperform the two disk ssd raid 0 array in my desktop. I guess I’ll throw a benchmark in from my desktop when I start to line up a few benchmarks later on.
Benchmarks
I have no idea what benchmarks are even relevant these days, I have plenty of games on steam and some have benchmarking tools so I’ll start compiling a little list and getting on with it.
So far I am thinking:
CrystalDiskMark
PC Mark?
3D Mark?
Ashes of the Singularity
But a few more ideas would also be nice.
TBC...
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