Portable One SXS37 Review

by Kevin O'Brien

The Portable One SXS37 is a 13.3” multimedia notebook, offering a ton of features in a lightweight package. With features such as an optional transreflective TrioView display for outdoor viewing, many external ports, and easy internal access for upgrades this notebook should be a hit with more demanding users. Read on to see how this notebook stacks up against the competition.

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The SXS37 offers a pretty wide range of options to let users design their system just the way they want it. Processors range from the 2GHz Intel T7250 to the 2.4GHz T7700. Two display options are offered, both with the WXGA resolution, and one being a transreflective TrioView screen for outdoor use. For the operating system users can choose between Vista Business or Ultimate, as well as XP Professional.

• T7250 2.0GHz 2MB L2 800MHZ FSB (Optional 4MB L2)
• 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 Memory (4GB Max)
• Cinematic 13.3" UVA WXGA TFT(1280 x 800) Widescreen Display
• Nvidia GeForce 8400M G 256MB VRAM
• 100GB SATA 7200RPM Shock Mounted Hard Drive
• 1GB Intel Turbo Memory
• Super Multi Dual Layer DVD±RW Optical Drive
• Three USB 2.0 Ports, IEEE 1394 FireWire & e-SATA Ports
• Integrated Card Reader & Express Card Slot
• 10/100/1000 Gigabit LAN
• Integrated Bluetooth 2.0+EDR (PAN)
• Built-in Biometric Fingerprint Scanner with TPM
• Windows Vista Business
• 12.6"(W) x 9.25"(D) x 1~1.35"(H);4.3lbs w/ 6-cell battery advertised (4lbs 13.3oz actual)
• Base price: $1,399

Build and Design

The Portable One SXS37 has a very sleek and high contrast design. Our review model has a high gloss black lid with a jagged edge/sawtooth which is barely noticeable unless you look closely at the lid. The trim and keyboard surround is a matte silver, leaving the bottom of the chassis matte black.

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Chassis strength is top notch, with an alloy framework keeping the notebook quite rigid. The body of the notebook is also designed with tuners in mind, with full access to almost any part you would want to mess with. After removing five screws, you gain access to the hard drive, ram, both mini-pcie slots, heatsink/processor and anything else that might be of interest. This notebook ranks up there on one of the easiest systems to work on, and there doesn’t appear to be any warranty voiding stickers in place.

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Screen

The screen on the SXS37 is very bright and vivid, just what most users would expect from a multimedia notebook. Vertical viewing angles are average, with a narrow optimal viewing range. Horizontal viewing angles are better, with colors only getting darker, but not inverting. Screen brightness is more than enough to view in a bright office setting. My brightness setting was about two or three notches down from maximum.

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Display protection from the top cover is average, with moderate finger pressure on the back causing ripples on the screen. The screen hinges feel pretty sturdy, and they alone keep the lid shut during transport, as no clip is present. You can almost open the lid with one hand, but you need two to get past the initial tension holding the lid closed.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The keyboard typing surface has plenty of support, and only flexes slightly when you jam down on keys. Spacing and key size is perfect, with no area of the keyboard feeling cramped. Key presses are very quiet, letting you type pretty fast without disturbing those around you. Regarding the keyboard layout, one area that might be of concern for some people is the placement of function key at the bottom left, instead of a control key.

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The touchpad surface blends into the palmrest, with only a height change to define the area. A vertical line is printed for the scroll bar section, but you can adjust the width of the scroll area considerably in the settings. Using the Synaptics control panel section, you can also adjust many other features of the touchpad, including the most important item, sensitivity.

The touchpad buttons have shallow feedback with an audible click when pressed. The fingerprint reader is located in-between the two touchpad buttons. Compared to other Synaptics based notebook touchpads, this particular version I had to crank the sensitivity for smooth tracking, where I would have normally used the stock settings.

Ports and Features

The SXS37 comes with a wide range of ports that most people come to expect on notebooks these days, including an e-SATA port for external high-speed storage expansion. One item not seen on this notebook though is HDMI, but isn’t completely a deal breaker considering VGA is still capable of pushing HDTV resolutions.

The optical drive on this notebook would be considered a “fixed” drive, but could be easily upgraded by removing a set screw and replacing it with something else of the same size.

Port selection around the notebook is fairly good, with most almost all free-space used by some type of port. Going around the notebook we find the following connections or features:

Front: Speakers and indicator lights. (view large image)

Back: Modem jack, LAN connector, AC power, and Kensington Lock Slot. (view large image)

Left: VGA, CPU/GPU exhaust port, one USB, and headphone/microphone jacks. (view large image)

Right: Optical drive, e-SATA, one Firewire 400, and two USB ports. (view large image)


Performance
Overall system performance was very nice, with 2GB of RAM and its 7200 rpm drive really helping out. One aspect of this notebook that didn’t do too well was the graphics card, even with its larger 256MB of video memory. Compared to the Dell XPS M1330, which scored a 1,408 in 3DMark06 with the same card and half the video ram, the SXS37 was only able to 1,111. Even though its graphics performance was lacking, it still had a higher PCMark05 score.

Here is how the SXS37 stacks up against the other notebooks in its class:

wPrime is a program that forces the processor to do recursive mathematical calculations, the advantage of this program is that it is multi-threaded and can use both processor cores at once, thereby giving more accurate benchmarking measurements than Super Pi.

Notebook / CPU	wPrime 32M time
Portable One SXS37 (Core 2 Duo T7250 @ 2.0GHz)	41.908s
Sony VAIO NR (Core 2 Duo T5250 @ 1.5GHz)	58.233s
Toshiba Tecra A9 (Core 2 Duo T7500 @ 2.2GHz)	38.343s
Toshiba Tecra M9 (Core 2 Duo T7500 @ 2.2GHz)	37.299s
HP Compaq 6910p (Core 2 Duo T7300 @ 2GHz)	40.965s
Sony VAIO TZ (Core 2 Duo U7600 @ 1.20GHz)	76.240s
Zepto 6024W (Core 2 Duo T7300 @ 2GHz)	42.385s
Lenovo T61 (Core 2 Duo T7500 @ 2.2GHz)	37.705s
Alienware M5750 (Core 2 Duo T7600 @ 2.33GHz)	38.327s
Hewlett Packard DV6000z (Turion X2 TL-60 @ 2.0GHz)	38.720s
Samsung Q70 (Core 2 Duo T7300 @ 2.0GHz)	42.218s
Acer Travelmate 8204WLMi (Core Duo T2500 @ 2.0GHz)	42.947s
Samsung X60plus (Core 2 Duo T7200 @ 2.0GHz)	44.922s
Zepto Znote 6224W (Core 2 Duo T7300 @ 2.0GHz)	45.788s
Samsung Q35 (Core 2 Duo T5600 @ 1.83GHz)	46.274s
Samsung R20 (Core Duo T2250 @ 1.73GHz)	47.563s
Dell Inspiron 2650 (Pentium 4 Mobile 1.6GHz)	231.714s

PCMark05 comparison results:

Notebook	PCMark05 Score
Portable One SXS37 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7250, nVidia 8400M G 256MB)	4,700 PCMarks
Sony VAIO NR (1.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5250, Intel X3100)	3,283 PCMarks
Sony VAIO CR (1.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7100, Intel X3100)	3,612 PCMarks
Lenovo ThinkPad X61 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100)	4,153 PCMarks
Lenovo 3000 V200 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100)	3,987 PCMarks
Lenovo T60 Widescreen (2.0GHz Intel T7200, ATI X1400 128MB)	4,189 PCMarks
HP dv6000t (2.16GHz Intel T7400, NVIDA GeForce Go 7400)	4,234 PCMarks
Fujitsu N6410 (1.66GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400)	3,487 PCMarks
Alienware M7700 (AMD Athlon FX-60, Nvidia Go 7800GTX)	5,597 PCMarks
Sony Vaio SZ-110B in Speed Mode (Using Nvidia GeForce Go 7400)	3,637 PCMarks
Asus V6J (1.86GHz Core Duo T2400, Nvidia Go 7400)	3,646 PCMarks

3DMark06 comparison results:

Notebook	3DMark06 Score
Portable One SXS37 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7250, nVidia 8400M G 256MB)	1,111 3DMarks
Sony VAIO NR (1.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5250, Intel X3100)	504 3DMarks
Toshiba Tecra A9 (2.20GHz Core 2 Duo T7500, NVIDIA Quadro NVS 130M 256MB)	932 3DMarks
Toshiba Tecra M9 (2.20GHz Core 2 Duo T7500, NVIDIA Quadro NVS 130M 128MB)	1,115 3DMarks
Sony VAIO TZ (1.20GHz Core 2 Duo U7600, Intel GMA 950)	122 3DMarks
LG R500 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS 256MB)	2,776 3DMarks
HP dv2500t (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS 128MB)	1,055 3DMarks
Dell Inspiron 1420 (2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7500, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS 128MB)	1,329 3DMarks
Sony VAIO FZ (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100)	532 3DMarks
Dell XPS M1330 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS 128MB)	1,408 3DMarks
Samsung Q70 (2.0GHz Core 2 Duo T7300 and nVidia 8400M G GPU)	1,069 3DMarks
Asus F3sv-A1 (Core 2 Duo T7300 2.0GHz, Nvidia 8600M GS 256MB)	2,344 3DMarks
Alienware Area 51 m5550 (2.33GHz Core 2 Duo, nVidia GeForce Go 7600 256MB	2,183 3DMarks
Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Xi 1526 (1.66 Core Duo, nVidia 7600Go 256 MB)	2,144 3DMarks
Samsung X60plus (2.0GHz Core 2 Duo T7200, ATI X1700 256MB)	1,831 3DMarks
Asus A6J (1.83GHz Core Duo, ATI X1600 128MB)	1,819 3DMarks
HP dv6000t (2.16 GHz Intel T7400, NVIDA GeForce Go 7400)	827 3DMarks

HDtune results:

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Heat and Noise

Operating noise from this notebook was slightly above other notebooks, but only under stress. During periods of idle activity the fan would cycle on its lower speed most of the time, only ramping up on occasion. Heat output was average for a smaller notebook with dedicated graphics, but the notebook tended to cope well under stress. The palmrest would get mildly warm, but nothing too obnoxious. Vent temperatures were pretty warm, but you never noticed it unless you had your hand in a direct path of the air.

Top temperatures in degrees Fahrenheit. (view large image)

Bottom temperatures in degrees Fahrenheit. (view large image)

Battery Life

With screen brightness set to 75 percent, wireless on, and mild internet use the system managed about 2 hours and 24 minutes. This was using the 6 cell 11.v, 5200mAh battery, but I would have really enjoyed seeing above 3 hours of life for a bit more off the grid use.

Software and Support

Hands down probably my best experience with this review was dealing with the support staff at Portable One. We had a few hiccups relating to software when I started to use the notebook, and email support had near instant response. They have a very friendly staff to work with for oddball problems that you might come across.

The notebook has minimal bloatware, if any at all. The only included software on our review machine was really just the bits needed to run hotkey features, and the fingerprint scanning program. Upon opening up the task manager I found only 64 processes running. Recovery software is all provided on discs, unlike on-drive recovery solutions found on many notebooks these days.

Oh, and for those of you who care, the two megapixel webcam produced better than average image quality. However, I noticed some unusual pattern noise in the background of some still images and my skin and hair looked a little orange in some video.

Sample still image from the built-in webcam. (view large image)

Conclusion

For a small multimedia rig the Portable One SXS37 offers a couple features not commonly found on other 13.3” notebooks. One particular feature is the optional transreflective screen, which would give this notebook quite an edge for outdoor use, where many standard screens gets washed out. Another is the super easy to upgrade layout of the bottom of the notebook, giving you access to more than even the more avid techies would want to mess with. Overall this notebook has a lot to offer, backed up with great support.

Pros

• Sturdy build quality, strong allow chassis
• Very easy to upgrade and mess with internally
• Great support staff

Cons

• Fan can be annoying at times
• Touchpad really needed its sensitivity ramped

 

Thanks for the review.

This was an attractive-looking notebook in both appearance and specs when it was first announced, but it took a long time to arrive.

I see that the actual weight is somewhat more than advertised. The notebook looks thicker than the advertised dimensions. Are these correct? Also, does the front-to-back dimension include the battery?

Performance is very similar to the Samsung Q70, which also has the 8400M G. Battery life seems to be similar to the Q70 which I couldn't persuade to go past 3 hours.

Overall, the key strength, as you have noted, is accessibility to the key components. However, another strength is the better port arrangement than the similar Asus W7 because the fan exhaust is at the back left and the "mouse area" (front of right side) won't get cluttered with obstructions.

John

 

Yea the depth ends up being closer to 10" with the battery.

 

Just a note, there is one slight error (emphasis mine):

Actually, the XPS M1330 uses the 8400M GS, which has twice as many stream processors and thusly should post better numbers - in fact, I'm surprised the 8400M G came as close as it did.

Also, do you know if this is GDDR3 or DDR2 VRAM?

Other than that, it looks like a very nice notebook, though I'd probably rather get the aforementioned XPS M1330 unless build quality was a major concern.

 

Nice review Kevin. Looks like a cross between an Asus and a Sony SZ.

I would rather get a small notebook with integrated graphics vs. a dedicated card because the 8400M-G is such a weak chip it can hardly play newer games. With integrated graphics, heat output and power consumption are both reduced. I am impressed that this notebook did a good thermal job.

 

Info:

Part number: HYB18T512161BF-22

Category:
Memory
-> DRAM
-> SGRAM

Description: 512-Mbit x16 GDDR2 DRAM
Advanced speeds up to 500MHz for graphics applications.
Double Data Rate2 (DDR2) optimized for Graphics.

 

This looks very much like a C90S in miniature. I still prefer the W7S, for the better styling. Plus, I assumed it would have better build quality. And it was cheaper.

The easy upgradability is very very nice though.

 

Here are couple of quick snap shots of the SX & SZ so you can see dimensions side by side:

http://www.laptopsinc.com/docs/sxsztop.jpg
http://www.laptopsinc.com/docs/sxszside.jpg

The W7 styling is very similar, but I like the infused IPS gloss black / silver infused paint and the that the 2.0 rotating web cam does not protrude outside of the encasing like the 1.3fixed one does on the w7, not too mention that the SXS37 has much better design for thermal and layout. Great machines all of them!

 

well it's originally asus barebone S37S, I purchased one and recently sold to a friend. it's pretty portable, however there is ( in my opinion) a problem with heat issue that i dont' like because the Heatsink is only using one piece of large copper near the fans so it's getting pretty hot. I used a 1.5ghz pull from my dell and the computer gets warm under normal use. If throw in a T7100 or T7300, fans keeps on running like crazy heats from the air vent is really warm. With fans running like this batter won't be good ... it only lasts me up to 1 hr to 1:30 . I've tried different settings and cpu so i dont' know wheather my unit is defective or not. Anyway, i sold it to a friend, he doesn't use it for heavy task much so it wont be a problem. If power user like me, the heat of this laptop is somewhat disadvantages of making me keep this laptop for long.

This laptop is a small version of C90S with similar lid imprint style and color wise.


You can purchased this one at excaliber PC for 600$ + CPU 200$ off ebay +60$ ram +100$ hdd +20$ - 50$ on wireless of 39 or 49 series, + DVD drive 55$ + a copy of windows if needed or use the one available from ur old desktop. Total for this configuration is around top 1100$ . NOt a bad deal for a small 13" compared to Dell.

About the touch pad at the conclusion, i pretty much like the touch pad if you use window's driver rather than using synnaptics driver included, it's pretty accurate compared to the COmpal and sony ones i've used through.

ANother pros is considering the components and the parts that you can put together by your own, you can have a decent powered PORTABLe machine for a reasonable low price of 1100-1200 depends on configuration. Comopared to the base of Dell M1330 , this one is better in pricing .

 

There is a huge difference between ours and barebones types, kind of a slap in our face every time we see someone compare such, sorry if I take it personally. As for your 'heat issues' there is virtually none comparing ours to similar units in its class, even the lesser power units get hotter than these; we have some of the best engineers in silicon valley here that have always assisted us with improving thermal design; we invented various fixes for a lot of the issues with various laptops over the years, a lot of them you can search and even buy online. Thermal design mods and fixes have always been the number one priority over here with small powerful machines, which we specialize in and these machines run very cool for what they have in them even comparing them with units that do not have dedicated gpu’s…

 

Great review.

How cute my c90 has a little brother now. Hope the c90 doesn't bully it around too much...

 

Is this a rebranded Asus? Looks soooo cute!!!

 

Its based on the barebones Asus S37s, but is apparently modified to have better cooling, and is better built than the barebones.

The ports on the left side of the S37s are essentially identical in location to the ports on the right side of the W7S, except that the USB port is next to the VGA on the W7.

 

Only if it has WWAN and pointing stick like on business class notebooks...

 

thanks for helpful info portable 1. . I'll try to mod it by myself if i have the skillzz hehehehe.

WEll if portable1 moded it so it may be different with my unit then.

 

Thanks for the review Kevin.

I guess I am one of the few who is not very fond of the design. But the performance is quite good for that kind of size. I especially like the performance of the hard drive. Speaking of which, I think you made a typo in the spec list - shouldn't it say 100GB 7200RPM drive?

 

That hard drive is ridiculously fast, nearly twice as fast as my 5400RPM drive. Makes me want to upgrade up to a 200GB 7200RPM drive. Maybe I'll do that when I upgrade the CPU to Penryn, since I'll be voiding the warranty anyways.

 

I recently purchased one of these in white. I was really happy with it at first but I've only recently really started using it and it gets more frustrating. The SXS37 is my secondary pc, I have a desktop I do most of my work on. The laptop is for when I travel, which is often. I save most of my data on an external drive, and I use my MP3 player a lot. I just found out my portable external does not work with my new laptop, which I can understand. But now it won't even recognize my MP3 player. And I've tried different brands, it doesn't work with either. My portable workstation isn't so portable anymore, plus I have to find stuff that will actually work with it. Which after putting down $1500 in total, I just don't want to spend anymore right now. Maybe its b/c I'm not really tech savvy or just bad luck but I've never really had this many problems with just getting a laptop to work before.
The positive: works great running high graphics, easy to travel, keyboard design…the usual good stuff. And the guys at PortableOne are great, they answered my emails promptly and I've never been put on hold when giving them a call. They tried figuring out why the laptop wouldn't recognize my external, in the end we just assumed it didn't have enough power to run it. But why it will not recognize my MP3 player, I don’t know….What else can it not do? Yeah, I’m frustrated.

 

I'm really interested in this notebook, but I was wondering if anyone had bought the additional 9-cell battery, and could tell me whether it was worth it for what I presume may add substantial weight and heat (not to mention costing $100). The extra battery life sounded great, but I want to make sure it's the right thing to do.

Thanks for the great review! I'm really impressed with the design and features of this laptop.