[Review] Sager NP8652 / Clevo P650SG with 980m Initial Impressions and Review by HTWingNut

Yes, the P650/651 comes with this bracket.

 

Is this a photo of the screen, or a screen capture? At first, I was thinking "Wow, that is an incredible display!"....then I noticed the size of the pic was exactly 3840x2160 and I was like "Wow, he took the time to crop the photograph of the screen down to the exact screen dimensions....HEY...wait a minute..."

HT, any chance of posting a photo of the screen display itself?

Thanks for all of your incredible work by the way! You have been very instrumental in helping me figure out my next computer purchase.

 

Thanks a lot for sharing. Indeed 60hz 4k resolution. So looking sharp and crisp.
I'm now confused if IPS 1080p or a 4K Samsung or wait more longer on the 4k Sharp IGZO.

 

There was a rumor that there might be a higher capacity battery available for the unit? any confirmation or possibilities to check? Are batteries for laptops easily changeable and can they be interchanged if physical dimensions fit? the Gigabyte P35 seems to have almost double the battery, which is kind of sweet...

 

unlikely, since the battery is internal, thus has to fit under the backplate...

 

Does the panel have the "yellow" issue like Y50 UHD? mustard yellow?

 

Not that I can tell. Here's my Samsung 1080p IPS and the Samsung 4k IPS all white screens.

 

I have not heard any reports of it being off colour with any displays.

 

This display really is spectacular. I'd love to be able to get the actual specs of it though.

 

I am getting tired of waiting for the GX500 from asus.

As far as Sager's go, as i'm from Canada, is this model the thinnest gaming option for 15 inch with a 4k screen? I'm starting to consider other options.

 

For Sagers the NP8651 is slightly thinner, 1.13" vs .98". That model has a GTX 970M (3GB) vs this model 980M (4GB).

 

There is the MSI Ghost Pro with 4k, GTX 970m and is a svelte 0.78" / 20mm and 4.2 lbs. You can see my review here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/msi/765829-msi-gs60-ghost-pro-gtx-970m-6gb-review-htwingnut.html

 

Probably a better idea to get this Sager... The GX500 isn't going to be out till June 2015 or something and knowing Asus, it's probably going to have a 980M when everything else has a 1080M or whatever...

 

I have a Y50 4K, and only the yellow is off. MSI Ghost Samsung 4K has the same issue (yellow and refresh rate), as it's the same panel as Y50. So for this one, I see the refresh rate is 60Hz, but haven't ready any report on it's yellow. So probably Samsung fixed that?

 

Battery life? The battery seems small and is internal...don't know if I like this...with my Dell, sometimes I need to remove the battery to get it to boot right (at least quickly) after BSOD or other issue (probably because it is getting old)...any thoughts?

 

I didn't think of that. But you can always just hold down power button(5+ seconds) till machine forces shutdown.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk 2

 

Yep I definitely do that sometimes but at other times, I have needed to power down like that then remove from the power and battery for it to reboot correctly and quickly.

 

Ya I'm banking on having a solid machine I won't need to but like you I have run into situations needing to remove battery to shutdown and boot. Let's cross fingers that situation doesn't come on these new machines

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk 2

 

Yep, I think I am going to order one, too. The only real reservation I have right now is battery life. I just hope it is not like 1 hour or something.

 

Depends on usage. Gaming on bat will be less than 2 hours.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk 2

 

It's 3-4 hours with optimus!

 

Nice, nice...I knew that it was good just not that good...thanks!

 

What is meant by "One powered USB port, AC/DC" in "3 USB 3.0 Ports (One powered USB port, AC/DC)"? reading it here...

Sager Custom Laptops

Does that mean one of them is a high power port and the other two are low power or one of them can be powered by an external source or? Thanks.

 

Means one USB is Active even if the notebook is shutdown, IIRC.

 

Thanks, yep, that makes sense.

 

Nice review !

Schenker XMG P505 PRO (Clevo P651SG) Notebook Review - NotebookCheck.net Reviews

 

battery IS removable, just a lil bit more of a hassle, since u need to remove 14 screws for the backpanel and another 4 to remove the battery

 

Gaming will be about an hour. Usable life for for light surfing/office over 4 hours, more intense multi-media stuff (HD Movies, flash gaming, etc) about 3-3.5 hours.

 

Pleasantly surprised that the review included a nice comparison of the laptop against the P35x.

 

P35X is a very nice laptop and looks great but has issues, the P650SG is a that much better and with none of the issues ( mostly thermal throttling and excessive fan noise).

 

OK after doing a lot of thought the Samsung 4K screen has really got me thinking that this might be a good choice, has good response time, good color reproduction and is good value for the money .I think Pentile screens get a bad rap and really all the complaints are blown out proportion.
One thing I'm not sure of is how bright the screen is , HT if you can comment or post a pic of the screen at 100% and 75/80% brightness it would be great and you would have my eternal gratitude .

 

REVIEW POSTED IN FIRST POST

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...80m-initial-impressions-review-htwingnut.html

The preview was moved to the second post.

 

Thanks HT great review I love all the extensive tests... Looks like its worth going ahead and oc with barely any heat differential. Thanks!

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk 2

 

All I can say is I'm not sorry I went with the 3K option.

The 48Hz thing has been fixed, which is good, but it's still a pentile display. We don't have any proof yet that the mustardy yellow issue has been fixed either - a photo of a white screen just shows how good the backlight is on a pentile display, as you're seeing the gaps between the subpixels!

FWIW, the Panasonic 3K screen reports as having "8 Bits per Primary Color" in HWInfo - which suggests it has better colour support than the Samsung's 6-bit colour.

 

Great review! I look forward to ordering the 8652 next week. Just the basic model [CPU/GPU, 1TB HDD, 8GB, 1080p, Dual-Band wireless] plus 3yr part warranty because it's all soldered and too expensive to fix ...it has to last me 3 years minimum. 4-5 years like my G73 would be nice, but at least 3 so I can replenish the budget for the laptop after this.

CPU temps look good except for the synthetics. I noticed the TIM in the review is stock. Planning to add the IC Diamond TP option, hoping it aids in keeping CPU temps down.

 

Well you can't really come to that conclusion without trying both screens, yes?

Sent from my Nexus 9 using Tapatalk

 

I know with the 970m, the 6 GB version is the one to get. How does this go with the 980m? Is 4GB sufficient for good gaming, especially at higher quality and resolutions, or do we need to go to the 8 GB version here too?

It's definitely an interesting contender. I was pretty much sold on the GS60, but this looks interesting, especially with the upgrades XoticPC offers.

 

difficult to say, at this point its all still theoretical speculation. at least i havent seen any hard facts / data to support the notion that 8gb vram offers more performance in any single game vs. 4 gb vram...

 

Sure I can
The Samsung 4K screen is very good according to HT's review and personally I'm sure the Sharp 4k screen is better in many ways, $275 is a lot of money just for a screen upgrade.
And yes I have a Sharp Igzo display on my RB14-R2 and it is beautiful.

 

Sharp is like cream of the crop, really, but it also has the premium price. The Samsung is very nice. As nice as the other IPS displays I've used. Just be happy that Sager offers alternate LCD's. Any other OEM like HP or Dell would just throw in whatever they wanted and you'd just have to live with it.

 

That'd be because the desktop flagships (Titan aside) only have 4GB RAM - it'd be a suicidal developer who made more than 4GB mandatory for better performance.

Incidentally the PC Specialist version of the P650SG with a 4K Samsung screen is locked to 48Hz. It seems there are two versions of the screen out there, so buyer beware!

 

980m is a great 1080p card and so-so 4k. At 1080p, I would think 4GB would suffice for the duration of the laptop. My guess is that the CPU would be the bottleneck before the GPU.

 

HT not sure if I missed it in your review but did you try a re-paste with ic diamond to bring down temps? Do you think that will make a big difference?


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but then you get premiere color or dream color

 

Thanks, another excellent review. And from the information you are giving it seems like a slightly different Samsung 4k screen model that doesn't have that 48 hz issue. Still happy I am going with the Sharp 4k, but that 48hz was probably 2/3rds of the problem with the Samsung 4k on the Y50 and MSI GS60. Since this one appears to be 60hz that problem is gone. I also have to wonder it says its RGB interface, not RGBW now the RGBW might be applied after that point I don't know enough about where in the process it is converted, but I am really not certain if that is still a pentile screen at all. If your camera can zoom in enough to discern individual subpixels we could be certain, but you need a pretty awesome camera to do that with a 4k screen. You could maybe try with a magnifying glass but hard to get the focus right through one.

 

A drop of water can help magnify the sub pixels to the naked eye too.

 

haha nice, thats some serious (and genius) low-tech meaker

 

Yes, it is noted in the benchmarks section before the test results:

" The performance and temperature results are based on CPU and GPU with a self applied IC diamond repaste. The CPU temperatures were running to high as pasted from the factory that it required a repaste."

And if you have to go that far then you might as well just call the OCD help line. I think people are getting too bent out of shape about it. I can understand not wanting a horrible LCD, but the stock 1080p TN screen was enough to make anyone cringe that has used any decent TN or IPS type LCD. But the 4k is 60Hz, and none of the concerns that were brought up about pentile LCD's were present even with some closer inspection. I just wish we could find the spec sheet on this.

 

Thanks for this thread....
I'm really considering getting one of these laptops, but I'm afraid that 3 years from now I'll be sorry the GTX 980m has 'only' 4GB of VRAM.
Funny thing is, I have the sneaking suspicion that the only reason "4GB VRAM is not enough" is because "there's an 8GB version out there, just staring you in the face all the time".

Has anyone here seen / used these laptops (Sager NP8652) alongside a GIGABYTE P35Xv3-CF2 ? just curious if anyone can draw a comparison based on hands-on or anyone seen both in-person could give some impressions (I've already researched them both, but no place locally I can see either one).

Based on discussion above, are you saying the stock TN 1080p screen was sub-par? I see that nowadays if I look at buying a Sager NP8652 it says "IPS" screen but is not available until Dec 30, is there a design change being done to the line or is this a specific change being done only by that one reseller?
(ref: XoticPC's website
"15.6" FHD (16:9) Anti-Glare Matte-Type Sager IPS Screen (1920x1080) (LG Brand) (SKU - SSC878) - [ETA: Dec.30] " )

 

Gotcha, thanks HT