[Review] XMG A507

First, hello to everyone. I am new member of forum.

Recently I bought XMG A507 laptop (Clevo N850HJ). I was looking for a long time as I was and still am desktop user. As I like to play few not so demanding games I opted for non Ti version of laptop.

Configuration is:

CPU: I5 7300HQ
RAM: 8gb
SSD: 275 gb Crucial MX300
HDD: Seagate momentus 1tb
GPU: GTX 1050 4gb
Screen: LG IPS Panel.

Build of laptop is good, considering its all plastic, there are no squeaks. Keyboard is okay, very easy to get used (this is coming from someone who never typed on laptop keyboard more than 5 min). There is minimal flex of screen and hinge is pretty sturdy.

Screen is okay, not the greatest but not the worst out there.

Now downsides:

Upon first booting screen is light up with bright blue backlight, which if you are using in dark room can stress your eyes pretty hard. There is FN combo on keyboard to dim or turn the light of but ofc its not working without their control center (which is btw pathetic piece of software). Every other FN combo is working out of the box.

Another major drawback is overheating of laptop. Laptop is idling at 56 degrees on CPU and 55 degrees on SSD. These temperatures are not that high, but thing is laptop fans do not start up until temps are at 70 degrees. If I manually crank up fans then temps drop down to 40 for both ssd and cpu and chassis is relatively cool then. GPU is not an issue as it doesnt go above 40 in idle. And because fans are not starting automatically up until temperature is very high keyboard and especially part of palm rest where ssd is located gets very hot, so hot its not comfortable to keep your hand on it for longer period of time.

And as I said CC is pathetic piece of software you can set custom fan profile but its not working at all. If you set for example to turn on 50 degrees and to cool it down to 45 with fan spining on 60%, fan never start up.

Also performance of SSD is not that great. Comparing it to older gen Samsung 840 evo that I have in my desktop, Crucial is visible slower. Don't know if its throtling because of that constant 55 degrees.

BIOS is very poor. So poor if it was up to me I would be embarrassed to call that BIOS. You can change two or three settings.

I hope XMG will fix this heating issue, allow to set custom fan profile that is actually working. This laptop is looking great on paper but in reality not that great.

I contacted XMG/Schenker support on Saturday but no word from them still.

I can post few pictures if needed, but since its Clevo N850HJ with xmg sticker I dont think its necessary.

 

Hi

Thanks for the feedback and positive comments on some of the aspects of the XMG A507!

I'll give a brief run down of the other points you made to help clarify and explain:

- Display. It could just be that you have Windows adaptive display turned on, this can overrule the brightness settings and especially can disable the Fn brightness control. You can see how to enable and disable this feature here:

http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-disable-auto-or-adaptive-screen-brightness-in-windows-10/

- Overheating. Idle of 56C is a little higher than I would expect to see, but the idle temperature in this chassis is in general a bit higher than others wsuch as the P65** series. You can adjust the fan control in CCC but even if you don't want to do this I would leave it installed. I would add that we do not have an XMG custom fan profile on this chassis (like we do on other XMG models), it's just the stock Clevo profile at the moment.

SSD - I doubt that the Crucial is throttling, however that drive benches slower than an 850 by around 10% - I don't knowhow badly it's performing in your laptop but tech support will definitely be able to advise you further on this.

BIOS - standard Clevo BIOS that you'll find on every N850HJ. There's no overclocking headroom on this chassis so having performance settings unlocked wouldn't have any benefit, I'm not sure what other settings you would like to see enabled in the BIOS as default - but if you want to pm me with your thoughts I would be happy to discuss further with you.

The issues you mention regarding the BIOS, thermal design and CCC are all under Clevo's control - you'll find the same with every N850HJ sold worldwide.We are always pushing Clevo to inprove these and many other parts of their products, but nothing is ever perfect and instead a constant strive for improvement. To varying degrees you will find similar issues with other laptop ODMs.

I spoke to support, but as I don't have your order number of rmail address it's difficult for me to track your message down - however if they haven't replied to your mail since the weekend something is wrong, maybe they didn't receive it. Can you try sending it again to info @ mysn.de or when you have 5 posts on this forum you can pm me directly!

 

I talked with the support in the meantime. They explained to me situation with Clevo and I understand it. Only issue I am having is inability to set custom fan profile in Clevo CC. I can set values in CC but nothing happens when set temperatures is reached. Is there any fix for this?