Logical Blue One & Affordable Laptops

Introduction
I've had a Clevo Horize P150HMB for 2.5 years now and the poor thing has been knocked about, smashed into tables, slid off my car seat and had my fiances cat sit on it, to name just a few of it's hardships. Needless to say it's battered and worn out, so I spent some time looking for a new laptop. I'm in the same situation as a few other people on this forum with my old laptop still being more than powerful enough for my needs but wanting something smaller and newer, so naturally the W230st caught my eye. This is the little adventure that followed.

Logical Blue One / Horize
I decided to order from Logical Blue One / Horize because I had ordered my previous laptop from them and it had been an easy, hassle free purchase, in spite of the fact they have a 15 business day build time. So I ordered and paid them my money, which cleared on the 3rd October. That's when things started to run downhill. I received no further contact from LBO for 13 days, and my order page was still only at the “Payment Accepted” stage. I emailed them on the 16th October to see what was going on and received a prompt email asking me to be patient because it is a popular model.

While I wasn't exactly happy about the delay I tried to be understanding because I doubt there's a person alive who hasn't slipped up or fallen behind with their workload at some point and nobody likes being in that spot with people yelling at you to hurry up. I did however mention I needed the laptop by the 25th October. This was my own fault since i'd managed to sell my old P150 for $1200 (I paid a little over $2000 for it 2.5 years ago, so I felt that was a pretty good deal) and needed to hand the laptop over by that date. Sadly that date came and went and since I need a portable computer for work I had to find another computer, which ended up being a second hand MSI GE40 which, while not quite what I’d wanted would hopefully at least do the job.

It was around this time that Jack (LBO's manager) emailed me saying that they had had to send back a batch of W230st's because of defective Vram. It was now the 7th November, over 5 weeks since my initial order. I finally gave up and cancelled my order. Jack was very prompt and helpful with the refund.

From my emails with various LBO staff I got the impression of a business in turmoil, although nobody said as much. It felt almost like Jack had gone on vacation for a month and come back to find chaos. The people answering emails didn't seem able to give information on orders beyond asking for patience and saying they were doing their best to fill orders. When Jack got involved he had to ask his build team why the w230st's were late and only then discovered a batch had been returned due to defects. At this point I have to admit I have very little experience in companies that build and sell laptops, but I was surprised that Jack wasn't already aware the laptops had been found defective, since returning a batch seems to be a drastic (although in this case unavoidable) step.

I have no desire to bash LBO, as I said earlier we all get in trouble sometimes and LBO has served myself and many other Australian buyers well over the years. Once they get the kinks worked out I have no doubt they'll be back to providing the top notch service that we've experienced in the past.

MSI
Here I have no problem bashing. The MSI GE40 I received ran hot, even after repasting, 95+ degree temperatures were common during Starcraft 2 and those temps transferred through to the keyboard and palmrests. The screen was also a disappointment, it was much more difficult than I expected to come down to 900p after using 1080p for so long. I would say that this laptop and I just never really got along. Hopefully (or not, I guess lol) some of you have had laptops where there were flaws that just bothered you constantly, no matter how hard you tried to ignore them. This was mine, and on the 12th December it was resold to another poor soul.

Affordable Laptops / Metabox
After deciding that the GE40 and I were simply not going to see eye-to-eye I elected to have another go at getting my hands on the W230st, the Razer Blade being out of my price range and the Alienware 14 heavier than I wanted.

This time I placed the order with Metabox through Affordable Laptops, who are the other main Clevo reseller in Aus. 3 days later my payment cleared and I got an email saying that my build would take approximately 5 business days, along with a phone call at work from AL asking whether I wanted the company name on the invoice (for tax purposes) since they'd noticed I while I had my name on the order I was having it shipped to a business address rather than a home, which was an unexpected but appreciated courtesy.

Sure enough, 5 business days later I get an email from AL saying that my laptop has been shipped, I go to the tracking website and find it's already with the local courier. It had been shipped from Perth at 5:30pm on the 4th December and was delivered to me in Geelong (around 3,400km and literally on the other side of the country from them) at 1:30pm on the 5th December. Impressive service, especially after my last few weeks of hassles and disappointments.

It feels almost unfair that the Affordable Laptops section of this review is short, compared to the Logical Blue One. But the truth is simply: I ordered, I paid, they built the laptop to my specifications quickly and diligently, and then proceeded to fly it across the continent and have it delivered to me less than 24 hours after it left their testing floor.

Conclusion
It's now almost 2 weeks since my Metabox W230st arrived and I couldn't be happier. Far cooler than the GE40, no dead pixels on the gorgeous screen. I had some teething problems getting used to Windows 8.1 but that's hardly the laptops fault. I'm still fiddling with GPU overclocks but the CPU is stable at -80mV. Starcraft 2 temperatures max out at 71 degrees for the CPU and 68 on the GPU.

I would also like to extend a thank you to HTWingnut for both the review of the W230st which helped me deceide to buy it, and for the assorted instruction videos on how to use Intel XTU and otherwise tweak the laptop.

 

It's great to see more feedback from Aussies, great review. Welcome to W230ST family, drop by the Owner's Lounge

By the way was there a big difference in price between those 2 resellers or were there somewhat similar?

 

Thanks Ellatan Still reading through the owners lounge haha. There was a bit of difference in price. For my specs: (minus the SSD I already had)

LBO: $1795 + $29.95 shipping = $1824.95
AL: $1690 + $30 shipping = $1720

That's including a 3 year RTB warranty on each. I chose LBO as my first pick despite the price because I'd dealt with them before, but it turns out I got a bit more value from AL. A couple of differences were that LBO offered the AC wireless as a $49 upgrade, while AL had it for just $19 and that Windows 8.1 Pro was $199 at LBO but $179 at AL. My lesson of the day is that it pays to shop around