Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
So Ladies and gents I finally got my P34G v2 :laugh:
I have to say it is much better than I thought it would be in some areas and worse in others, Now I am not a professional reviewer and this is actually the first review I write. Before this laptop I owned an Asus ROG G75VW and will be doing some comparisons to the 17 inch beast with GTX 670M.
Size:
I am not going to write the dimensions here as I am sure you will find them everywhere, but I will say that it is much lighter than I had expected, (and lighter than people thought before they tried to pick it up), it is truly thin and has a very nice profile, it looks like a sexy business laptop to be honest.
The power brick is also A LOT thinner and lighter than I have seen on videos (did they change it, or does the camera add pounds lol) I was considering buying a thinner replacement, but i decided to wait until I received the laptop to see it for my self, I was VERY glad i did, its small, light and thin enough to be very easy to take around.
Screen:
The screen is really good, and has much better colors than my older G75VW, and it has amazing viewing angles, but the brightness doesn't get anywhere near the G75VW (maybe as high as 60% of its brightness levels, then again it is a laptop with a 3d screen and almost twice the brightness of most laptops)
but to counter that it has an excellent anti reflective screen, only down side to it though is while reading on a white page (as you and I are doing right now) it looks a bit grainy, this grainy feel disappears when playing games or watching movies.
One weird phenomena is that for some reason when ever I play skyrim (more on playing games later) I get this horrible light bleed from the top right of the laptop, it doesnt exist while watching videos or doing anything else, (I even full sized a black image and saw no light bleed what so ever). Will do more testing and report on that later.
Build Quality:
Ok this I didnt see coming, from all the pictures and videos I have seen and some of the comments I read, I thought the laptop would feel cheap, but it actually doesn't. it feels rock solid, almost zero keyboard flex (I say almost zero cuz at the end of the day its plastic and plastic flexes ever so slightly), even though the keyboard area and palm rests are plastic, they look, and dare I say feel metallic.
I love the design and feel of this machine, its just very slick, and has an excellent "made for business" look (great if you want a stealth gaming laptop for work or study).
The area that I really dislike about the laptop is bottom, it just honestly looks ugly compared to the rest, thank god its always pointing down :laugh:
Fan Noise:
Interesting thing is the fan can barely be heard when doing heavy load gaming (when fans are placed on auto) when using the net or doing word processing the fans are completely silent, although every 5 minutes or so u can hear them (not loud but audible) for 5-10 seconds and they go silent again (putting them on stealth settings takes care of that). I haven't had any of the problems mentioned for the previous P34G model in the fans department and I am very happy with them.
Heat levels:
When gaming, the keyboard and palm rest stay surprisingly very cool... the bottom not so much especially in the ram area so dont play with it on ur lap unless u have a nice cooling pad to put under it (its not OMG my legs are melting hot, it just gets uncomfortable)
While surfing, sadly the bottom is hot still, again in the same ram area (if placed on max fan setting it gets really cold but loud) the reason might be my 16 GB ram upgrade (it comes with 8), but I am not 100% sure about that and I am not going to remove my ram to test it out.
Features:
Ok one thing to keep an eye out for, the 128 gb mssd actually comes with 60 GB free only, as for the 1TB I have no idea as I upgraded to 2TB through xotic (and that shows up with 1,81 TB not an actual 2 TB, I know the math behind it, but if its not false advertising it sneaky advertising by hard drive manufacturers)
other than that the only bloatware it comes with is by Gigabyte and its actually VERY useful, the smart manager makes changing the laptops settings so simple and easy. The smart update is a very valuable asset to me, it just looks for all the latest drivers for you laptop and it installs them for you if you choose so.
last but not least the lan optimizer has amazingly and truly made a huge difference on how fast I brows the net and stream videos, I am yet to test it out in online gaming but so far I am very impressed.
I love the auto brightness and auto on/off for laptop keyboard light (u can turn them to manual if u prefer).
The camera is nothing to write home about, it would be horrible for taking photos or vidblogs, but it would be alright for skype calls.
Audio, is loud and clear, (as loud or slightly louder than my G75VW) its nothing ground breaking but its loud and clear enough for a laptop I would say
Battery life
I heard in some online reviews that this laptop is supposed to give u 6 to 7 hours battery life, but truth is on battery saver mode, and while only surfing the net, windows battery indicator tells me I have 3 hours left.
This was a huge let down to me since I expected an amazing 6 to 7 hours wireless experience, maybe I got a defective battery? I really dont know... but its not as long as I have heard some have said.
Gaming:
This laptop really can handle it all, games run slightly better than my older G75VW (runs everything on ultra and only the most demanding on very high), and I played on it Skyrim (i know its not the best to test, but it is very heavily modded graphically with over 30 mods.) it ran it on ultra like it was nothing at all.
gaming on this laptop has been a very pleasant experience, and without a doubt much better than I had expected.
I hope I have covered everything you needed to know, again I am very new at this so please let me know if you would like any extra info
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You couldn't read what I wrote under the bolded
Battery life section?
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I dont know what easy screws are, but its pretty much like all other laptops i owned, just regular screws.
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@Sebi: Don't wanna seem impatient, but WHERE ARE YOUR NEW OC VIDEOS??
Can't wait for them any longer...
Another question to all owners so far:
How would you describe the colors and picture quality on your P34G v2 notebooks?
Super wide viewing angles are nice, but not soo important to me. To me much more important is a vivid screen, clear and saturated colors, good contrast and so on.
I know, in most cases that's a weakness of matte displays, but coming from a very vivid, brilliant color glare macbook screen, i don't wanna loose too much screen quality in this regard...
EDIT: Ups, sorry. Just realized, this should have been posted in the main P34g v2 thread. sorry for that.
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Nah dude feel free to ask whatever u want on this thread
Ok honestly, the screen and colors are really amazing for a mat screen, and I got a lot of good comments about it, the wallpaper looks as though it is a very good quality printed poster rather than a digital wallpaper on a screen (lol thats a good thing)...though at the end of the day its NOT a retina display and its not a glare screen... but the anti reflection alone is enough for me to make up for anything missing on that side. -
Damn, I did NOT know about that! thanks! that makes so much sense! I did buy it from the US. the reviews must have been on euro versions. (why make 2 different battery versions is beyond me tho)
Wonder if I can buy the battery from some where and upgrade it myself... 3 hours is just horrible for a portable laptop, I bought this to be my travel work laptop with hotel gaming nights so three hours has been a pain more than you think.
If anyone knows if the battery upgrade is doable and if anyone knows where to buy the 61wh from please let me know :hi2: -
Thanks, mate, for your reply!
Indeed that sounds very good. I know glare sceens normally are more vivid and clear in colors, but your're right. Anti glare is a must for me as well. Although the display quality of my macbook screen (non retina) is very clear and vivid, the reflections in bright rooms or on outdoor usage are very annoying. I'm of good hope for the P34g v2 screen.
Feel a bit sorry for you But i'm of good hope that you should be able to upgrade the battery, as the chassis should always be the same i guess... So a replacement should be doable.
The german reseller Schenker (mysn) offers the P34G v2 under its own label "Schenker XMG C404" with the new 61wh battery, as well as Gigabyte will do shortly as i mentioned in my previous post. Although i doubt that Schenker will sell the batteries separately you just could give it a try and shoot them a request though. But my first attempt for this request would be Gigabyte support for sure.
Good luck for your search!
Ah. Please let me shoot another question on you: You wrote some lines about fan noise, but what do you think about the turbo mode aka max fan speed? I know it's quite audible, but in your opinion, is it (too) loud or still good acceptable (without headphones)? -
Thanks for the suggestion I will try contacting them for sure
I mostly play with the fans on turbo (not needed but I feel the GPU is safer its silly i know but I paid a good bit and I like to be safe than sorry lol), without headphones with the speakers loud I can't hear the fans at all, unless I am really really trying to hear them or the game goes silent
they are loud but not as loud as u think and not as noisy as you would imagine (more like an AC on high fan sound than a hair dryer or vacuum cleaner when it comes to the the type of noise it makes, not the loudness)
It might be worth noting that I also got the Diamond thermal paste from xoticpc, might be worth getting or adding ur own I think there was a youtube video on how to do that somewhere.
It is a fantastic laptop, my only problem with it is battery life and how uncomfortably hot it gets at the bottom in the middle of the laptop, even while just surfing the net (keyboard, mouse and palm rest are always cool tho even when heavy gaming) turbo mode makes it very cool but its too loud when u are just going online (again, maybe due to my ram upgrade it gets hot there?)....
UPDATE: I placed the fan on turbo to test it out while typing this, funny thing is I forgot it was on! not that I couldnt hear it but I guess I just zoned it out, also the keyboard stops being room temp and actually becomes cold this way! lol
Best of luck! you might also want to check out the SAGER NP7338 its not as thin but its an inch smaller and a very good laptop (It was a very hard choice between both for me) alternatively if you have the cash wait for the Asus new ROG ultra thin laptop, though it will be a 15 inch laptop, it will have a 4k screen and probably cost a ton of cash but Asus ROG series are always worth it (truly great laptops).
If you have any questions please dont be shy to ask would love to help out.
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Thanks, dude! You're very helpful. Very appreciated! :thumbsup:
Doesn't sound silly to me at all. In fact i plan to go for turbo fan mode for gaming as well.
IMO a laptop should be able to choose automatically the needed fan level in regard of heat, but the user 'Sebi97' reported, that when he played once on auto fan and his vents were blocked a bit the temps rose and finally the GPU started throttling, because the fan didn't step up to the max fan speed, but staying one or two steps below.
Having respect for Gigabyte as they heard our complains about the loud fan of the predecessor and fixed that issue, it's not the right decisson to stay on lower fan speeds while the temps rise and finally let the GPU throttle to keep the temps.
Therefore i plan to use turbo mode as well. And like you described i hope and think it should be in an acceptable range.
Full fan speed of my macbook pro under gaming is very audible as well, but it's still absolutely ok for me. So i guess, if it's about the same or only a bit louder than that, it would be fine for me.
Indeed i thought about repasting with IC Diamond as well. If you don't mind, could you tell me your temps under heavy gaming (don't know if you have some quite demanding titles like crysis 3, far cry 3 or similar)? With your repaste and turbo fan mode the temps should be pretty good i guess?
Thanks for your suggestion, but 14 inch is the smallest i wanna go, because in fact it's my desktop replacement (probably i'm going to plug in my external monitor many times to use both displays though).
I already thought about the Clevo P150SM, because i don't really need something very portable, but i don't see any advantages in that, because i would configure it with the same 4710 CPU, 16 Gb RAM and the 250GB Samsung EVO like i wanna do on the P34g v2. Only on GPU i would go for the 870m, but as it's still Kepler it's pretty hot with 100W TDP...
I also like the overall stylish look of the Lenovo Y50, although i don't like the red keyboard (backlight) and the glossy screen bezel. The soundsystem seems to be quite good on that. Sound on the P34G v2 unfortunately is quite average as i read/heard so far?
Unfortunately the matte screen on the Y50 seems to be relatively cheap. As the display is one of the most important compontents on a laptop, that seems to be a big plus for the P34G v2... hard decision!
The bit grainy look you mentioned on your screen, is that quite noticeable and does it a bit mess up the sharpness / high resolution of the screen?
Lastly: Are you really sure the base unit and palm rests are made of plastic? I thought i would be aluminum...?
sorry for the long post...
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LOL You are more than welcome, no worries, I fully understand ... I went through exact same things u are going through before I made my purchase, though at the time I couldn't find any good info out there and no one answered my questions with real answers, so I am very happy to help anyone in the same shoes I was in.
Ok first of all I would love to give you temps, but I am not sure how to do so, let me know how and I will run a few games and let u know
The palm rest and keyboard area is defiantly plastic, but it is a very rigid one, its very hard to tell by looking at it or using it that its plastic (and plastic is a good thing in this case as this is probably one of the reasons it stays so cool during heavy game play)
The back of the screen is a very nice aluminum though over all it doesnt feel or look cheap in person (looks much better than pics and vids to be honest)
The Audio is AMAZING (for a laptop of course)... its very loud and really covers the fan noise well when playing (I don't know if the speakers are different like the battery between NA and EU versions) I am surprised anyone has anything bad to say about them. I like that they are placed on right and left side of the laptop on the side under the trackpad... its a GENIUS idea, the speakers are much closer to you when playing or watching a movie making the sound better (they look like vents and are hidden from ur palms so u will never cover them)... many people think the speakers are the areas on the right and left of the round power buttons but those are actually vents to suck air in
I would say careful of the Samsung EVO, they are very fast true but a lot of people have been saying they heat up much more than other MSATA, Thats why I didnt pick one up, I was planning on the 1 TB EVO, but I ended up keeping original Msata and went with the 2TB 5400RPM Samsung Spinpoint M9T (SATA - 6GB/s) and btw its a fantastic and surprisingly fast HD, highly recommended
And last but not least the grainy look was annoying a bit when I first started using it, but I can honestly say I am VERY used to it now I dont even notice it, though as I said before it only shows on white screens, it looks like one of those protective screen covers... but once u are watching a movie or gaming the "grainy" effect is all gone.
The best way I can describe it is it looks clear as a very well printed paper, its a very appealing look and I enjoy it a lot as I feel the matte screen gives me much less eyestrain, and the colors do look fantastic with the 72% NTSC Gamut screen
The wifi card btw is a great one, I wouldn't recommend upgrading it if you ever thought about that. -
Hey ZK85
For monitoring hardware temps i would recommend to use the free software "CPUID HWmonitor", which is used by the most of the people here, too. It shows average and max temps of your components like CPU and GPU. Just open the program, leave it in the background and start your game.
Would be great if you could measure your temps, when your're playing a demanding game for a period of time, like at least 30min or better 1h or so.
So, i would say, if you have a bit of time and maybe want to play that game sometime anyway, just monitor the temps and please let me know them.
The material on the base being plastic surprises me a bit indeed as i guess it everywhere else was mentioned to be aluminum. Although i already had some notebooks where you couldn't say for sure if it's plastic or aluminum or maybe a aluminum alloy on the case. But anyway, that wouldn't be a Dealbreaker for me. If the chassis is quite solid as you say that's the most important point for me.
Thanks for your tip about the Samsung EVO, but i meant the 'normal' 2.5 inch version. I don't need so much storage and therefore i'm going to replace the 1 TB harddrive with the 250gb samsung EVO. It's the most popular SSD and i think a very good value for the money.
Thanks again for your effort you put into this thread to tell your experiences and to reply to questions so extensively. :thumbsup:
Glad that you're happy with your P34G v2
EDIT: Almost forgot that. Regarding temps monitoring: Sometimes HWmonitor doesn't recognize the GPU. If that's the case, the free tool MSI Afterburner can be used to monitor the GPU temps.
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I will try with another program if u can give me a goodone for gpu/cpu not sure if this right
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Sorry for the late reply. Maybe you just could make a screenshot of HWmonitor after gaming?
Are you sure, that HWmonitor doesn't recognize your GPU? Sometimes that occurs, but in most cases it should be listed.
See that screenshot: (in this case it's the 'Radeon HD 5850').
The CPU temps should be listed in any case (right above the gpu in the screenshot. The 4 cores of the i7 CPU)
Would be nice, if you could make such a screenshot too after 1hour or longer of gaming.
If HWMonitor really doesn't list your GPU, i would recommend MSI afterburner. That tool is for tweaking and overclocking, but you also can just monitor your GPU temperatures.
As you can see in that screenshot, it lists your GPU temperature at the top right side with a graph and also monitors the min (green) and max (red) temperature.
So in case of HWmonitor not listing your graphics card, MSI afterburner could be a valid alternative.
Thanks in advance, mate!
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How is the keyboard for typing, can you type quick and error free? Would you feel comfortable studying/working on it?
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yeah i am pretty sure the gpu doesnt show.
in the report i posted u should find the gpu and cpu temps... both max and average. if i ever get to install both programs and test them out i will let you know.. for now i hope the report i posted will help u.
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it took like half an hour to get used to from my previous laptop, its a good keyboard an i have no trouble typing on it even with my giant hands I have no trouble using it at all
Richdog likes this.
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Could you please point me into the right direction?
I don't really find the temps... neither for the 860m nor the CPU... -
GPU Core : 55 (Current Temp) 37 (Min Temp) 78 (Max Temp)
Same as above
| +- CPU Core #1 : 63 41 90 (/intelcpu/0/temperature/0)
| +- CPU Core #2 : 62 40 90 (/intelcpu/0/temperature/1)
| +- CPU Core #3 : 60 38 90 (/intelcpu/0/temperature/2)
| +- CPU Core #4 : 63 39 89 (/intelcpu/0/temperature/3)
| +- CPU Package : 64 45 90 (/intelcpu/0/temperature/4)
So mostly in 60 range for cpu and 55 for gpu.
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I've a new P34G v2 but I have problem with bleeding screen. Whats about other users, do you have the same light effects on screen? Is this a factory fault or what?
Quick Review P34G V2 / P34GV2
Discussion in 'Gigabyte and Aorus' started by ZK85, Jun 22, 2014.
