Lg P-300 13.3' Inch Notebook Review

So, after waiting a LONG time to see Dell bring in the Penryn processors, well, LG launched its own Penryn Xbook P-300. So fast that Futureshop Canada sold it before LG’s own site had it listed!!! Pics abound on google, but they were initial media release.

My initial impressions was that the box was too light. In fact, almost empty. Inside, packed almost as nicely, and as neatly as a Macbook / Macbook Pro, was this little toy slightly heavier then a book- not a biochem book. Turned it on, and, SURPRISE: it asked me how many partitions I wished for. Since when would a manufacturer ask me that? Opted for one, and it proceeded.

The next hours and days turned out a total shock: this PC looks like something that went missing from an Apple boutique: it is light, elegant, fast, equipped, and a beast at productivity and benchmarks… Right now, the folks at Dell and Sony are undoubtedly loosing sleep, as the LG P-300 is leaving the next upcoming Dells and Sony far, far behind.

So, $ 1699 on special, $ 2460 total (Canadian) with 3 yr waranty. Windows Vista Home Premium, 8300 Penryn, 2 GB RAM, LED, 256 MB 8600 GS (the difference between itself and the 8400 is akin that of a Ford Taurus and a Porche or Corvette). BTW, the VGA memory is TURBOCHARGED, and the RAM itself is dual channel.

Chip is fused onto mobo. Also, plse, no more 64 bit questions, check Tomshardware.com (RAM section) as to the reason why 32 bit Vista beats 64 bit Vista at less than 8 GB onboard... So mounting 64 on this machine, or the Dell XPS is going to DECREASE performance due to the larger memory footprint. 64 bit Vista begins to be efficient only around 8 Gb dual-channel. So, back to the chip. Likely, by fusing it, LG guarantees a more efifcient cooling. Since Vista runs faster on it than I have ever seen XP run on some machines, why would LG have created a more complex socket? So I think LG planned this system brilliantly - fused chip, powerhouse mobile gaming card and all cooled with a special technology (read below). Remember that even the slower 5450 2Mb Intels run Vista well, so do not reject the T8300 just because of the 3 Mb cache. In benchmarks, the T9300 and T9600 barely exceed it by 5-10 percent (select tests), all scoring nearly equal in most. Either case, the Penryn T8300 beats soundly the Santa Rosa T7500 with its 4 megs.

Hard drive and RAM: upgreadable. 7200 RPM will do more wonders than a faster processor. 4Gb dual channel (3.2 recognized) on a a number of applications on 32 bit Vista will outperform 64 with 4 Gb.

OS INSTALLATION: A BEAUTY. NO BLOATWARE AND JUST 4 BASIC LG PROGRAMS FOR TOUCHPAD, CAM, MAGNIFIER AND INTELLIGENT UPDATER. A registry as clean as installed by oneself…

LED screen, tilts better than the Dell, glossy but the brightness removes the reflections, crisp and none of that uneven distribution of color that affected the MacBook Pros in 2007.

SUPER LIGHT AND SUPER COOL: it has 3 (THREE) FN fan control settings, (FN + F11) Silent, Normal and Cool. I went ‘Cool’ trying to abuse the machine, and its whisper was still below that of the competition. At Normal, you forget the machine is on…. Faithful to the LG notebook partnership with IBM in the 1990s, this machine has some other scary features. CARBON NANOTUBE cooling technology instead of the heavier copper pipes is the main reason why it is so light and cool. By now, Dell’s nonexistent native R & D cell is scrambling…I know this from undisclosed LG sources, they kept it a secret till the release. For the rest, it feels light yet solid

SILICONE MOUNTED KEYBOARD. Hence it being so quiet.. Lemme see, have I not seen this somewhere? (MAC). Dells also added it recently, I found it underneath one of their XPS keyboards.

SUPERIOR CONSTRUCTION: most laptops in the world (including Dell and HP) are MADE IN CHINA. Allright, they still call themselves Taiwan. The P-300? S KOREA! The country that launched the LCD panel revolution. So, please, no racial bigotry against the Koreans, please check all your electronics at home, chances are they are full of lead and made in China.

NO NOISE, NO VIBRATION, man, this thing is unreal. Again, almost a Mac. NO, it beats the Santa Rosa MacBook Pro I reviewed a while ago. Well, I lied, in nearly perfect silence you can hear the Cool fan option. Add a few surrunding decibels (such as a fridge humming or a wife yelling) and the laptop becomes inaudible.

Gaming benchmarks? Am embarrassed to admit that it thrashed my desktop with NVIDIA 7600 Pro in 3DMark 003, 2005 and 06. BTW, the 8400 GS cannot do most of the tests 3DMark offers.

Photoshop CS3? Loads in 8 seconds. Actually, earlier had the surprise once back from work to start surfing until I realised that Photoshop 3, Microsoft Word and web pages, Aero max were all running, and had not realised that Photoshop and Word were still on (too many taskbar buttons). The machine never slowed down although the programs had been active for 14 hours.

Perhaps another awesome feature is LG Intelligent Update. This tiny program updates all hardware drivers and … the BIOS as well. All with one or two clicks (or automatic if opted). None of that driver hunting, LG really pulled a rabbit… The year does not matter, now or 5 years from now, this machine will update its drivers to the latest once the OS is installed and connected for the first time to the net. I know, I know, the geek inside me wants full control, and customization of everything. but the professional inside wishes one thing, and only one thing from a laptop: that it may run well, no headaches, sort of like a Macbook, but with Microsoft's reach. Well, this one does it. If I was a betting man, I would say LG dissected the Macs amd Vista for two years, and gave birth to this synergy of OS and hardware.

HMM, bsides LG controlled drivers, I know the two other things people hate about it already. First, the tacky lines (which you forget right away). But who cares about some lines with an interesting s*x appeal? You guys are not interested in turning heads like it happened to me, it makes one loose focus.

Second, the external DVD drive, one reason the whimpy Macbook Air is getting so many bad reviews. Well, first, the P-300 is NOTHING like the AIR, beating it in power, graphics or storage. So the LG comes with this tiny, sexy external drive… I only used it three times, to install Word, tests the DVD and burner. End result? Can do without the DVD drive. Got used to not having one very quickly. Mostof my software is via USB or wireless. Dear readers, please remember: SLOT DVD DRIVES DIE OFTEN. This means returns, RMAs and waiting for repairs. Or, the P-300's external DVD plays movies perfectly installs programs perfectly and, dare I say, rips perfectly?

So, like Apple, LG is thinking to the future, with wireless and USBs as the key means for mass transmission.

Battery time: several hours, 2.5 to 3 with a DVD. Bear in mind that I tested the 6-cell, and this 6 cell beats many 9 cells of the competition. Turn off the touchpad ( FN+ F5 and the wireless - FN + F6, and you get 3.5 hours easily watching a movie)

Wireless N - my far away neighbours hate me again.

HDMI, + three USB ports.

And, for the first time, made Vista seems like the Leopard I wished it to be: fast, snappy, responsive, quiet, and never overloaded.

All on a P-300, Penryn T8300 3 Mb cache, 2Gb RAM.

DO NOT LOOK AT THE PICS HOPING TO GET AN IDEA. Pictures do not do it justice, again, that was part of the surprise I had.

Only item Dell outshines it on: the Complete Care offer, which LG or suppliers do not offer. So now, it's a question of wanting the more expensive machine with weaker graphics and complete warranty, or the new powerhouse with only up to 3 years parts, labor and technical support.

Perhaps the best moment occured earlier on 24 february when I asked a Dell rep "When are you guys going to add the 8600 GS, DDR 3 on the XPS 1330?" And he replied "Never. Can't be done because of the heat, and if Apple has not done it with the Pro, nor will Dell." His jaw dropped when I showed him the LG P-300. Should have been merciful, I knew he was not a tech.

BTW, LG will help you in most countries (hint to travellers). To sum up? Went out to buy the Dell I researched so much, decided on an Apple and, instead, got entrapped by this siren. Vista now has a future.



Meteor

 

any pix???

 

Just about anywhere, bu they are generic. Remember that LG kept it such a secret that they released it before they announced it.

 

You sound like you're promoting the P-300, rather than reviewing it.

 

Any academic review, by definition, involves weighting the pros and cons of a product or and argument, evaluating its merit and, should it turn out valid, highlight why. I certainly listed three cons vs the P-300, which removes the commercial possibility of `promotion.` If the review sounds as if I am promoting it, then it is thus as the positive points of the P-300 exceeded significantly the negative ones, and they are due, exclusively, to the performance and characteristics of this machine, the 6th I reviewed in three weeks.

So, chances are high that the reason you might hear so much about Ferrari, MacLaren or Renault in F1 is not their being promoted more than, say, Honda or Red Bull, or Toyota (highest budget in F1). Rather the reason is that Ferrari, MacLaren and Renault exceed, significantly, the rest of the competition, itself with access to identical technology and tires but unable to come up with a better car design..

AND, for my last trip, I bought a Dell while still reviewing the LG, for one reason only: my foreign travel habits expose my machines to a high risk of breaking, and only Dell can cover that. Otherwise, I would have probably bought the P-300. But Dell has cleaned desert dust from notebooks no questions asked, and in one case, fixed a bullet pierced screen.

 

do you have shots of what the external optical drive looks like?

 

whoops spoke too soon, I found some pics if anyone is interested

source:

http://big5.pconline.com.cn/b5/www.pconline.com.cn/notebook/divide/0712/1171669.html






imo it looks sick, better than i expected (as in no stripes lol)

but looks kinda big relative to the laptop in this pic

 

meteor, can you do some photos? would be great.

 

Sorry guys, I cannot do photos for one reasn, I do not have a professional camera. As you know, a $ 350 digital camera does not have the filter required for good close-up resolution and shots. Anything else and I would end up with blurry shots. So, technologically, I cannot accomodate. However, as these machines are bought, professional grade shots will start surfacing.


meteor

 

Dude, not a bad review even if you were bashing Dell the whole time. I am not sure if I agree with your assessment on x64 Vista either since I have used both and find x64 runs speedier on the same hardware. And Tom's Hardware? I used to read him back when he didn't even have a domain name, and he got psychotic real fast while his ego reached for the moon. Anyway, the argument for or against x64 Vista is irrelevant to this laptop, it's a great piece of engineering even if it has a $hitty lid. Speaking of that, I agree you will forget about the lid in no time and yeah, I can do without an optical drive. Besides, LG is nice enough to bundle their drives like they did with the C/P series. Take that Apple. Losers.

Anyway, good review and thanks.

 

It is possible that the 64 bit tests you tried produced some speedier results, but I could argue that any clean install of Vista 32 bit will produce a snappier machine, if not due to the bloatware. However, numerous applications, such as encoding, or Photoshop, Office etc that emulate the 32 WoW in 64 do not run faster than on the 32..

As for LG, from the get go, they have a clean install, clean registry, and a machine designed around Vista's best features, and not some machine on which they threw Vista. Some reasons I bash Dell are, for exmple, misleading customers with the famous 3 Gb Dual-channel customization, which, in fact, does not exist (phone calls after phone calls made them get the message that they were misinforming their Canadian customers, so they corrected the site). Also, irked by their not addressing vibration and cooling issues reported by those using processors less able than the Santa Rosa (yours). BTW, I think you can upgrade your Santa Rosa, strongly recommend it, if only to enjoy the difference.

I also stripped a Dell XPS recently, and it also has Siliconce keyboard, I asssume they started implementing it recently. However, cooling wise, they are still behind.

I hope you like your 64 SSD, I know they are utterly noiseless, hope you never max it out.

 

why is it that everybody that owns such a thing cannot make some pics for the hungry crowd. i need piiics...

 

Well, I am already within the 10GB limit for my SSD. Yeah, I have tried clean installs of both 32bit and 64bit, I never use the stock OEM image although from what you told me about LG, looks like I would never have to do that with the P300. They pulled quite a coup with that, didn't they. Good for them! Amazing, really. Too bad they stiff us here in the Middle East with a T7500 only for the P300.

 

Here's 14 page long review with lots of pics (autotranslated with google). BTW, did you know they sell these with 8600M GT in China.

EDIT: Another review with some benchmarks (note the lower specs though) translated from korean.

 

The review is good, except for:

1. Dell bashing
2. Racism against China
3. Good pics can be taken with a $350 camera (of which I have one), you just have to know how to work it.

 

Negative, ther eis no evidence of racism against China in my review.

My point that Chinese manufactured goods feature questionable materials, possibly excess lead, nad questionable quality control, is not racism, it is not an opinion, it is a fact.

One should check very carefully the definition of racism before throwing that word around.

 

Your point is well-taken but perhaps the way you phrased it, came across as 'that'. I know that many a well-intentioned statements can be misconstrued by the unsuspecting public

China has tons of human rights violations, as well, but their economy is entirely fueled by our wallets. If we want them to do better, then we should look elsewhere for our life's needs. Yeah, that would be you, Walmart shopper

Anyway, I like this laptop.

 

I love Walmart, be it that most things there are Made in China. however, I returned two $ 8300 living room and kitchen furniture sets due to cracks, bents, dents, fingerprints underneath the varnish (yes, PRC worker fingerprints). Both sets and two months of trouble, went with Dinec, custom made Canadian. Costs x 2.5 more, but am 1000 times happier as it is actual furniture wood (not 1993 agricultural land deforested, dried Chinese wood).

Ironically, the British Industrial Revolution flooded the market with cheaper yet more solid goods. The current market revolution is a flood of cheaper, poor quality products. Let us remember that the EU caps Chinese impoort growth at 8% per year. Canada, unregulated, had a 350% growth last year in Made In China products. So, bad quality products coming in, and more outsourcing of jobs. I would be an idiot to say that it makes sense, when a billiong of European and Americans think otherwise.

Not everyplace makes good wine, no matter how hard we try.

 

ahem, topic?

 

Are there any online stores or references to the 8600M GT in this in China??

 

i don't have any actual online chinese stores links but you can see the vairous P300 models/configs listed on the very popular TaoBao site (for china) and Auction.co.kr site (for korea), just convert the Yuan or the Won number for your own reference via google or something

here:

Various configs in China and Chinese Buy-it-now prices
http://search1.taobao.com/browse/0/...-------40--commend-0-all-0.htm?at_topsearch=1

Various configs in Korea and Korean Buy-it-now prices
http://search.auction.co.kr/search/...%C7%D5%B0%CB%BB%F6&txtKeyword=lg+p300&x=0&y=0

since these are not traditional brick& moratar retailers, I'm not sure if their pricing is slightly cheaper.


is any1 that's able, planning to buy it from abroad and get it shipped across teh pacific? if you live in like Ontario canda, with the 13% tax, it's def worth it if you can get sneak it through customs

 

by the way, couldn't find any info about it:

does the keyboard got backlight?

 

not mentioned anywhere. i don't think so.

 

I don't know about this 8600GT thing--why would it be exclusive to Mainland China only? Just makes no sense. If anything, we have more fans in North America of high-end graphics in laptops. I think these are all TYPOS.

YMMV.

 

hey it's not a typo and not exclusive to china, S.Korea has it too.

basically there are many configurations of the P300, only 1 is being sold in Canada. The rest are only found in Asia

e.g.
LG P300-UP93K
LG P300-SP83K
LG P300-SP70K
LG P300-SP8WK
etc

 

Man, I am in Asia atm and the only SKUs I see here (UAE) have T7700 as the best CPU. Go figure.

Edit: I stand by my earlier assertion that the whole 8600GT thing is a typo.

Compare the current KR SKUs here:
http://www.lge.co.kr/cokr/product/c...cat2912&catid=ecat2912&mnid=prod000100010030&

You can't even find the P300 on the LG site in China so...
http://www.lg.com.cn/front.product.....laf?categoryId=cpc101075&parentIds=cpc101068

Now I realize (and the first post in this thread makes it clear) that LG is real slow in updating their sites but still, if we have several units listed in Korea and not a single one of them sports the GT, that is still something. Why would LG have the highest end SKU (P300-UP93K) listed without the 8600GT? Makes very little sense. Like I said, YMMV.