MALIBAL Reviews

Just wanted to thank MALIBAL for my new Lotus P150HM. I've been playing around with it for a few days now and there are no problems with it as far as I can tell: zero dead/stuck pixels, great CPU and GPU temps while gaming (I opted for the IC Diamond), no driver issues for Win 7 64-bit.

The highlight of the laptop is the 95% color gamut screen. Blows all other TN panel screens away. I'll even say that it's really hard to tell the difference between it and an IPS screen unless they are side-by-side. Hopefully all TN panels look this good in the future otherwise I've been spoiled.

 

8-bit TN panels are very premium, and are only used as far as I know in the Vaio Z series.

Even the X220 IPS panel uses 6-bit, thus the consumer-grade color gamut.

Studio XPS RGBLED's are said to use 6-bit.. (Although I doubt it, at least 8 bit)

M17x's RGBLED uses 8-bit,

and the dreamcolor/premiercolor IPS screens use 10-bit.

So not much of a difference there with some of the RGBLED screens of the past, the AUO 95% gamut screens are just as good as the previous gen top-of-the-line displays.

 

Howdy All,

My Malibal has arrived - and is currently being forced to have Windows installed on it. So far, all looks in perfect condition - with no detectable pixel issue whatsoever (that I can see so far). All items were of course, shipped too - and I am extraordinarily happy they included a Australian option for the power cord.

The machine itself actually looks better than I thought it would - not to mention lighter than I thought it would be too. The power supply is of course a brick like thing, but whatever - that's why I got two! (one for work, one for home/travel).

I'll update once again when everything is installed, and run some tests on temperature etc.

My thanks to Malibal for a to date, totally easy purchase.

 

I have never heard of Malibal before today. I found them while I was looking up gaming laptops and have been very impressed with the reviews and positive feedback thus far. Now I am considering a Malibal Nine X7200 for getting back into computer gaming. Everything so far looks promising!

 

I wouldn't get Malibal Nine right now, because a newer generation model will be released very soon to replace it. In addition, are you sure you have a real need a desktop grade CPU in a laptop? It certainly comes with some sacrifices like battery life. MALIBAL has a lot of other great options for gaming.

 

What are the specs of your machine wandarah?

 

Soon as in approx. 2 month

 

15.6" Matte Display - Intel Core i7 2760QM - Radeon 6990 - 8GB 1600MHz RAM - 500GB HDD (Hybrid)- IC Diamond 7 Thermal Compound

Cranked up Total War Shogun 2 last night - and appeared to be able to run battles on Ultra settings, with all bells and whistles turned on. With no slowdown that I could see - but this was just one small test.

Did the same on Empire Total War and while I appeared to be able to run battles at Ultra everything - there was some slow down toward the end. As with all Total War games though, it's the Campaign Map that can be a killer. So - to deal with this I've had to use a mixture of Ultra and High settings - with VSync and Ambient Shadows turned off. I also dropped AA and Texture Filtering down quite a bit - the impact of this visually appears to be well...almost nil. I spent a long time switching between 16x Anistropic Filtering and Trilinear trying to find much of a difference...maybe I'm blind

I'll be grabbing BF3 this weekend - but it's my understanding that you can pretty much ramp it up without much impact.

During these tests my GPU didn't break 80 degrees.

At work today I'll be running 4xServer (SQL, Exchange, Enterprise Vault, Active Directory) Virtual Machines - and considering my old Dell could handle this (just, and painfully) I expect it to be a breeze.

If there is one draw back - I just got stock Audio - and it's not much to write home about, this was pretty much expected and I haven't played with the settings too much. Via headphones it's ok, but it seems to be a lot quieter than my old Dell. Relatively minor thing though.

It really fulfils everything I could ask for so far. My old laptop was Dell Studio 15 - so I'm sure you can appreciate what a blast this step up is.

Totally satisfied so far!

 

See wandarah, I told you everything would work out.

 

It's true. They did!

 

Wooooo. Just received my shipping confirmation.

The order was placed, a day or day and a half to build, and shipment. Extremely quick turnaround. I'm hoping that I like the 17" Satori... I'm having remorse thinking I should have stuck with the 15.6" Lotus... but I don't think the footprint is too much bigger, right?

Thanks for the quick turnaround Malibal.

 

Hey, that's what the 30 day satisfaction guarantee is for!

 

Ah hah! Exactly. Didn't even think of it. Surely the difference between 15.6" and 17.3" isn't that vast, right? hah. I like the brushed look of the 17.3" though, and a little extra screen space may be nice. We'll see. Looking forward to it.

 

Take a look at a picture I took when I just received my unit.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...ally-clevo-p151hm1-malibal-3.html#post8207863

The size difference of 15.6 and 17 are not that big, but the size difference between 14 and 15.6 seem to be much bigger. 14 inch laptops remain to be my best favorite and will probably choose 14inch again for my next laptop. The size & weight is just right.

 

Hello again.

No, I am not a sock account (nor do I actually know what that is). I corrected the Malibal laptop's issues myself under recommendation of a previous rep. I was a bit miffed as I have had a Toshiba for many years now that never had an issue but then I get this laptop and it craps on itself within a few days. That said, the laptop is now running fairly smooth. The thing stays cool and the 560m runs very quiet even when put to some heavy use.

I did just have a blue screen/1033 go off on me a moment ago which prompted me to come back here. I put the laptop on sleep mode, the screen darkened, but the machine never turned off and after a number of minutes the blue screen showed up. And there isn't exactly a whole lot on this laptop. I'm not very technically savvy, just worried that the system is showing cracks before it busts. Let's just say I'm not dumping my older laptop anytime soon.

 

Sser, you were never called a sock account - that was another user. I said your post seemed odd, in that you said you have a brand new GPU, that was defective - however - you never contacted us about it and said you weren't going to RMA it.

Anyway, if you need help troubleshooting the BSOD, there is an article in our KB that may help you out. You can also open a ticket on our site for further assistance.

 

I joined just to write this:

I've been looking at multiple companies here recently because I wanted to purchase a truly customized laptop that would perform to my expectations. I looked at Alienware and OriginPC, and eventually wound up finding Malibal.

Not only did Malibal offer a ton of options the others didn't, but they offered them for a price that didn't break the bank. I was able to build my dream system for less than I had originally anticipated and I'm now looking at ordering from Malibal before this week is out. I contacted their Chat support to ask a few questions and the person I talked to was fast and polite.

I'm glad I found Malibal, and I have no doubt that I'm making the right choice by giving them my business. I'll post a follow-up review as soon as I get my new machine!

 

Hey malibal, I know you want my business ;] haha jk but if you could take a look at my threads and give me a reply that'd be awesome. I'm trying to get everything ready so I can place my order a s a p!

 

I just purchased my a laptop from malibal.

And I am really pumped for it to come. They matched my price with other companies and answered all the questions I needed. Great customer service and now I hope this is a continued thing down the road in 2 years after I have had my laptop for a while.

I am confident that I made the right choice in my purchase.

 

Why 5 posts? Ive been a member since 2007, and I have posted but twice. I just read,read, add more reading. Doesn't make sense to me.

 

Because the forum doesn't enable personal messages until you make 5 posts.

 

I have been researching the Clevo laptops for over a year now and finally decided to pull the trigger on the P170HM. As near as I can tell Malibal has the best price on what I suppose you could call a bare bones model.

I've checked out each of the vendors out there and it seems like there's always some portion they won't remove. My plan was to buy the laptop with no RAM, no hard drives and no OS.

Here's what I found most interesting... I was in the middle of configuring the Satori on Malibal's site and realized I didn't have the option to remove the RAM and hard drives so I started a chat session to ask if I could order one without. (something I had done with other sites as well) Their answer was yes, I could and it would save me $90 total. What I found most interesting was that only minutes later, they'd added those options to the page! I thought that was pretty cool.

I plan on ordering the laptop this coming Monday and I'm pretty excited about it.

Wish me luck, this thing is gonna be awesome when everything comes together.

 

Just a final update: Been thrashing my P150HM for a couple of weeks now. With BF3 for fun, and *piles* of VM Environments for Work - runs like a beast so far.

My greatest annoyance so far is that the quality of the Audio sans Headphones is not so much poor, as it is *quiet* - very odd (yes I've turned it up!) - until you load up, say BF3, then it blasts. Not sure what's going on here.

My highest temperature recorded on the GPU is 82. This appears to be within acceptable limits.

So, signing off with a cheers Malibal and I hope my machine lasts and lasts. Adios!

 

It's pretty amazing how fast they seem to respond to everything, the longest time I've read about anyone having to wait for an answer was like 65 minutes

 

My experience so far...

I will try to update this (or post a continuing review) once I actually get my laptop. I'll be home on leave with a in' new laptop, though, so my apologies if my priorities lie elsewhere at the time.

Anyway, I decided to order the Nine x7200. In my attempt to achieve a discount on the already $3000+ laptop, I opted to pay in cash via a bank wire. I placed my order, tried to send the transfer, but due to issues with my bank, I could only send a maximum of $2500 per business day. I wasn't sure if I was allowed to send multiple payments, so I searched the website for an answer. I did not find an answer, but DID find that they offer a military discount (I'm active duty in the Navy and currently forwarded deployed on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific).

I emailed Malibal asking them if I could split my payments and to ask if I could cancel my order so I could re-order the laptop, this time with my military discount (I didn't tell them that was why). I got an email back the next morning saying that I could, in fact, send multiple payments and that they were able to modify my current order so I didn't have to cancel. I asked for my military discount and about 7 hours later, I got a response informing me that the discount was added--no questions asked (seeing as I'm emailing from an official .mil email address, I guess that was enough verification for them). At this point, I was able to send my payments through.

Unfortunately, here's where the next hiccup comes. As I said, I could only transfer $2500 a day, so my second payment had to be dated for the next day, and it takes a few hours for my bank to process those payments. This is neither my fault nor Malibal's fault, but that further delayed the time it took for them to get the payment and that means I'm closer to that deadline of a 7 day grace period for payment before the order is automatically canceled. I've emailed them twice, both last night and earlier this morning, asking if they've received my payment and if they could update my order status to reflect it so that it doesn't get canceled (I'm on day 7). I've yet to get any email back confirming or denying my payment. More importantly than my order getting canceled, but now they [should] have my money. Not that I expect Malibal to be so underhanded as to rip me off like that, but it is slightly unsettling to think that I've done my part and paid in full and still have not have my order updated or at least gotten some sort of feedback via email from their customer support.

While Malibal has been very helpful with my questions and were able to apply my military discount without any fuss, their response time has been insanely slow (unlike what I've read about in this thread). Perhaps it would be faster if I utilized their live chat or ticket system, but for some reason, I get an Error 64: Host Unavailable whenever I try to load either of those. I'm not sure if this is an issue with the website or an issue with the server I'm using to connect to the internet (believe it or not, our internet technology on board my ship is fairly lacking). That means I'm stuck with email, and if their email support is this slow, I might get screwed over. I'm not passing total judgment on the company's support just yet, but this has been my experience thus far and it's been both satisfying and frustrating.

To be perfectly honest, the main reason I opted to write this "review" was to hopefully garner some attention from Malibal through something other than email simply because it's been so sluggish. But I feel like it's still a valid review in that it's both honest and unbiased, but also because I've read nothing but that Malibal's customer service is incredibly fast, and it's been incredibly not for me.

 

We replied to your email about 20 minutes ago. The payment still has not shown up on our account. Contact your bank to make sure they didn't mail us checks. Also, our response time hasn't been insanely slow. Every email you sent (that required a response) was responded to within 24 hours, even on weekends and more than half of them were responded to within a few hours... even at 4AM local time.

 

Okay, perhaps "insanely slow" was more of a reference to the reputation of you guys responding within minutes, or an hour at best. While I wouldn't call waiting an entire day unacceptable, I wouldn't say it's all to expeditious, either. Either way, the customer service has been helpful with each reply, so I'm not really complaining. Just sharing my experience.

Also, I've contacted my bank and figured out the issue with my payment, so once I gain access to my email again (servers down for maintenance), I'll hopefully sort out this payment issue.

 

Hello,
I wish to give my review of MALIBAL.com because I just recently ordered (placed 22 Feb 12) a P180HM . Their customer service has been outstanding. They have been very quick to respond to me (within 12 to 24 hours) and they are always courteous. Most of the time I recive a response within an hour. I even contacted them 24 Feb 12 and requested to upgrade the CPU and they were helpful and courteous to me (and I got my upgrade).

I have been “cruising” this website forum for about 2 months and I have noticed their response to hardware/software problems has been superb. They are quick to respond and willing to work with the customer one-on-one to resolve issues. My comparison of them is based upon other laptop builds I have owned over the last decade (Acer, HP, DELL, ASUS, MSI) . I will update this concerning quality hardware construction once I receive the P180HM.

 

I ordered my first laptop From MALIBAL last week, and there were a few issues with the order that were somewhat odd. With MALIBAL customer service crew kicking it into overdrive for me everything got sorted out and order submitted.
I have already reccommended several friends to buy from them. I will be buying from them again without a doubt!

Now the hard part is just waiting for it to get here so I can get my mitts on it!

 

Ordered my first Malibal laptop earlier this year. Despite some delays with the chassis, they were extremely helpful on the phone when I called in requesting updates and even changing my order after having placed it.

They were even kind enough to throw in an 'upgrade' due to the OOS chassis (ordered a p151 but ended up with a p150) and I've had no issues as of this first month. Thanks again guys

 

Received my MALIBAL lotus this afternoon! Hands down best computer I've ever owned. I will for sure be buying from them for years to come. I want to thank them for helping me with parts selection and their OUTSTANDING customer service. My only regret is i didn't have more money to spend!

 

I saw on the first page someone commented on not getting the NBR discount because of low post count/etc. Does anyone know what exactly their requirements are on getting the NBR discount? Also is there any other way to get free shipping aside from being on NBR from malibal?

 

Hi, you need at least 5 posts, then you can PM us for discounts.

 

Just ordered a P151HM, must say that Malibal is indeed the best Customer Service I have encountered thus far, compared to that of Alienware and IBuyPower. And I trust that they would professionally handle a Clevo laptop.
Hope they won't disappoint.

 

Question is the p151hm still available through Malibal? I see it listed where XoticPC has already taken theirs down.

 

Hi, yes we still have the Lotus P151HM1 available.

 

i am new to custom built laptops and i am quite impressed with what malibal offers, i will soon get my hands on a lotus customized baby. I do just have one question which might not actually be related to the malibal in particular but here we go, I am a graphics designer and work a lot with the adobe suite, usually i have about2-3 programs running at the same time. Is the difference from an (8GB) 8192MB, PC3-12800/1600MHz DDR3 - 2 SO-DIMM to a (12GB) 12288MB, PC3-12800/1600MHz DDR3 - 3 SO-DIMM noticeable?
I also dont quite understand when it says Empty Hard Drive Caddy does this mean it comes without the cd drive? will this make the laptop lighter at all? more room for it to "breathe" in the shell?

Im not a complete genius just some questions
cheers!

 

The only difference between those two RAM choices is in the amount of RAM you'll have to use. You either get 2 or 3 sticks of RAM, which gives you 8 or 12GB total to use. Since they're both rated at the same speed, it's just extra total if you need it. Virtual machines and video/photo editing can sometimes use up quite a lot of it depending on the exact work you're doing.

The empty hard drive caddy is used when you want to install a HDD/SSD in the optical bay and don't mind losing the optical drive. It's just the adapter (caddy) needed to fit the drive into the bay. Leaving out the optical drive will make the laptop lighter, but not significantly.

 

if youre using 2-3 adobe programs at the same time id recommend at least 12 or even 16 gb of ram.

 

I just stumbled on this thread and all of these comments seem to have convinced me to go with Malbal, even though I was not looking to spend that much! Is there a video to show how the matte screen looks V the glossy? I prefer the matte and am thinking to go with P151HM1, which I think only comes with that?

 

it looks to me that the p151hm1 comes only with the glossy screen, no matte option, unlike the p150
maybe I just missed it though.

 

I can't stress it enough how pleased I am with Malibal's level of professionalism. They seem incomparable to bigger companies like Dell and HP because Malibal's customer support seems like it actually wants to help you get the best machine for your money, while the other companies make it seem like a chore to help you. I was iffy at first, but after having Malibal's customer service work with me directly to farther explain some things to me and answer my questions, I'm positive that these are the people I want to buy my next machine from.

 

After reading a bunch of reviews in this thread, I think I'll go with Malibal. Sadly I'll probably have to wait a few more weeks until the new models come out, then I can start ordering. Can't wait lol.

 

Noooooo Malibal stopped offering the 6970M for the P151HM1

 

Yeah I've been noticing that they keep changing some options about every 2 or 3 days or so. So if you want something, I suggest you grab it when you see it before their stock is depleted (unless that has already happened).

 

But their 6970M stock hasn't depleted, since the P150HM still had the option last time I checked.

Unles the 6970M for the P151HM and the P150HM are different models.

 

My order arrived last Friday and I've been having so much fun I forgot to pop in and give my thumbs up to Malibal. I've never worked with a company with such quick response times, or build times for that matter. Great machine, great price, great customer service.

 

I'm thinking of getting a laptop with Malibal. Does anyone know when new models will be coming out? and if so are the P150HM going to be cheaper?

 

I believe the new models are up on their site now, not sure if they have them in stock and ready to build though. From what I can tell the standard builds are less expensive than the HM versions.

 

Nope. The 8130/P151HM and the 8150/P150HM are pretty much identical. Any more questions, you can see my FAQ in the signature.

Mr. Mysterious