My 10 day 11xR2 review

Had my m11x r2 for about 10 days,

History: coming from a r1 7300 OC enabled, which was coming from a 15" MBP for 2.5 years

Use: Primarily as general use, heavy MS office use, music and occasionallt gaming on the go.

Other: Have a AMD 1090T 6core, OC @ 4.2 Ghz (past month, stable OCCT verified and Prime stable) HD 5970 , 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD w. 40GB SSD with OS Win 7

This is not a direct comparison to r1..that's been done to death, but will draw on comparison for relevant illustrative purposes.

General Use: Laptop, aimed at its target audience, is absolutely a best buy. It games well, well do well at productivity and general use. The OC i7 is at 164 since I took delivery, this is the only time I will contrast with the 7300, the r2 is generally faster, feels snappier, and I have never had a BSOD. Noticably so.

Battery: yes there is a battery hit, but something I think others ahve negelected to point out is that at any given moment, depending on the use of the CPU the battery indicator values will have wide variances. This is likely due to speedstep or throttling of the CPU, while writing this CPU-Z shows it being downclocked to below 900MhZ all the way up to 2.7 Ghz, the best indicator of battery life is real world performance, and sitting in this starbucks after a night of full charge has me getting 5.5 hrs, my use RIGHT now: about 40% brightness, wifi on, itunes w/headphone, web-browsing with music download and watching about 10, 5min game reviews on you tube, in between reading pdf files for school. no backlit.

Build quality: same as r1 I had before. A little less than my previous MBP

Design:

Touchpad: anyone that comes from a MBP that compliments a PC touchpad is BIG deal, as apple has that on lock. This touchpad is great, responsive and
feels 'premium' if you will. Pinch to zoom, is supported and works great.

Keyboard: my r1 had a weird warpping of the keys toward the center of the keyboard, my r2 does not do this. Customizable backlight is a plus, anyway you take it. Keyboard tactile sensation is solid, I like it alot.

Screen: not as good as my MBP. Not nearly as horrible as I see posters on here insinuate. The screen is glossy, but not unbearably so. The resolution is good, contrast is okay, it is made of plastic not glass. Size is not a bother to long reading sessions, but can require a lot of scrolling for long texts. In general the screen is not an issue, for general use or gaming, however, its not a big plus either..

Sound: Haven't had any issues, but for what I believe to be a not too tighly gripping audio jack. I can still isolate footstep ddirections in MW2

Gaming: the game plays all the games I want; incld RE5, DOW, JC2, Dragon Age, (yeah, I went at the Steam sale hard)...okay Optimus has issues now, but for the real PC crowd, guys that have experience in building and tweaking systems, driver immaturity is a fact of life. Ppl returngin the machine because of a couple glitches, in my opinion, are being short sighted. But hey to each his own. The 335 is okay for gaming, but is the clear bottleneck of the system. It will get better.

Portability: leagues better than hauling my MBP. Foot print smaller than MBP 13"

Overall: machine has been great to me thus far, no issues that I couldn't figure out (but may be intimidating for new comers). I have found its functionality to be refreshing, and its looks to be appealing. I think I saw one of this board's member posting over on a mac board: sayin he was returning his for a mac. I thought to myself for a moment, then realized, that not for one moment since using this machine and win 7, had I missed leopard. Actually, I find win7 to be a pleasure to use, and far more customizable than Leopard. Macs are cool, but IMO the m11x is a better product when keeping the target audiences in mind. For eveytime I have wondered if I could do something in windows...I have found a built in answer. Win7 works remarkably well with the 11x, not one single crash!! For the target audience (gamers on the go), this is a winner...for casual user..it's a winner, for students..weigh all this against then simple fact that for the price, but less gaming..you can get a faster machine with better battery life.

Am I glad I returned the r1 and got the r2, damn RIGHT!! Optimus will improve performance, and support for games, THAT'S WHY THEY MADE THE THING!! That's like building a car and not planning to refuel.


Price: My setup with i7, 320 GB HDD, 4Gb Ram, BT , & overnight was $932, VERY WORTH IT. A+ for value. Also got a squaretrade 3yr warranty with accident protection for $160, b/c if I had to deal with dell anymore than I did for support I would shoot myself. Happily..

 

Very and extremely well thought out guide my friend. I've been sitting on the fence for a while thinking about whether or not to buy one, but I think you finally pushed me over to getting it.

Thank you so much for your insightful review =)

I have a question, however. When you buy overnight shipping or 2 night shipping.. from the moment you order your m11x, does that mean you'll get it in 1 or 2 nights?

Or you'll get it 1-2 days after they're long--time-it-takes-to-build-it building date?

 

The overnight delivery was after a 2 week build time. Shipping other wise would reguraly run $69..but I bought mine when they had free shipping

 

Great review, thank you!

One question, have you noticed any problems with the hinges as was mentioned in the other thread?

Other than that I can't wait for my little machine to arrive !

 

One more question, how's the heat for you? I'm worried because some people say the heat is unbearable, and others say the machine runs cool.

 

My hinges are fine, yes they do touch the keyboard when closed, where as my r1 would leave 5 lines vertically, the r2 leaves only 2, but the overall take home is that most units will have the keyboard touching. Which is not a big deal.

It does produce more heat than I recall from the r1, but FAR FAR less than trying to game on a MBP...after 20 mins on bioshock you could fry an egg on one of those things.

 

+1 Rep.. great review. Hope you enjoy it and keep us posted on how it performs in upcoming games, apps/productivity and any other fun stuff.

BW, StevenX

 

Good on ya man. Great review. To the point and correct. The only Intel/Windows based PCs I buy anymore are Alienware, just for the reasons you state. I do feel the Unibody MBP machines "feel" better than Alienware Laptops for the most part but I agree entirely about the Alienware/Windows 7 opinion you have. Windows 7 is pure pleasure to use (and I LOVE Snow Leopard and Mac OSX). Again, thanks for the spot on review.
-joe-

 

"Price: My setup with i7, 320 GB HDD, 4Gb Ram, BT , & overnight was $932, VERY WORTH IT. A+ for value. Also got a squaretrade 3yr warranty with accident protection for $160, b/c if I had to deal with dell anymore than I did for support I would shoot myself. Happily.."

How the hell did you get it for so cheap? I'm configuring the same system as you and getting $1100+ everytime.

 

I got it for around the similar price ~$940+(if I removed the GOBI & Win Pro upgrade in my order to make a similar comparison). I believe we used a combination of EPP discounts available than, but may not be available at this time. But it did take me quite a while to find it. Best of luck to your search . If you don't find any discounts available now, and if you are in no rush, than just wait till one comes around again....Best wishes.

 

I have a question about heat in the R2 (but also the R1 too). Many people here have said that the R2 gets hot. Will this be a problem in hot and humid countries? How much does the external environment affect heat?

 

Ambient temperature does have a pretty significant impact on any computer's ability to manage heat. However I suspect it would have to be an excessively hot environment before you'd be exceeding the thermal limits on either system. the R1 runs much cooler than the R2 and has better battery life. Performance is, in general, very comparable either way.