Clevo P151HM1/Sager NP8130 review (Malibal Lotus)

I'll try to keep this short and sweet.


Here's what you get in the box. The power brick is about as big as the Xbox 360 Slim's. There's a driver disc, some software disc I won't be using, and a CD-R with the ICC profile. Below is the free carrying case. Nothing fancy but it's free so I can't complain.




Not sure why it looks pink in this picture but that's the 95% gamut glossy. It's as good if not better than my previous laptop's (L502X). Speaking of which, that thing was loud. Every time I opened a new tab in Firefox the fan would go from 0-3000rpm. The P151 does no such thing. There's a constant, steady hum - I think on the GPU side - and the CPU fan is barely audible during regular use. Browsing temp on the 2760QM is a little over 40C (about 20C cooler than that of the 2630QM in the L502X!)

UPDATE: I still can't get over how quiet this thing is! And the cooling's amazing. Even during my most intensive tasks I don't think I've seen the i7 break 70C whereas it wasn't uncommon for it to reach over 90C in the XPS.

UPDATE 2: Nearly 3 weeks later, temps are the same: 40C for light work, 70C for balls to the wall maxed out gaming. Intensive work and general gaming fall inbetween those two figures. For reference, my room temp is generally around 68-70F. To keep temps and fan noise to a mininum when doing light work, I've locked the CPU at 2.4ghz (no turbo) and the GPU at 385/625mhz (the lowest it can go in MSI Afterburner). This helps conserve battery power as well, although I'm usually plugged in personally.



Like many laptops the onboard audio is garbage - it can barely power some cheap Walmart headphones. You need some sort of USB sound card. I was looking at $50-100 options when someone recommended the $25 Micro II. Not only does it look good but it actually works. At just 20% volume the bass is great and the thing is pretty damn loud. In contrast, the onboard audio is pretty quiet at 100% and has no bass.

UPDATE: Man I just can't emphasize enough how bad the speakers are... I tried watching South Park on this thing today and even that sounded terrible! Always have a pair of headphones nearby.

UPDATE 2: Speaker quality seems to have improved after a couple weeks of burn-in. Still not good enough for movies or music, but TV shows are now watchable (er... listenable) without headphones.


I just like the red. But this seems like as good a place as any to comment about the keyboard. For some reason the 6 keys in the lower right corner click really loudly. I'm not sure if this is normal but it is annoying because I use the right arrow and End keys pretty often. And even though I don't type hard it's worth noting the keyboard flexes if you do. Moving on, the 10-key is useless and I'm not sure whose bright idea was it to put the Sleep fn key between mute and volume down but he needs to be fired.

UPDATE: I think I know why the keys in the bottom right corner click so hard - it has something to do with the disc drive being underneath them. Maybe I can put some padding between the keyboard and ODD...


The trackpad is there only for emergencies. Using it in 1080p is torture and the buttons suck, they require too much pressure. My mouse (M510) won't be getting here for a few more days so I can't comment if it's any good... But the fingerprint reader works well. Something I didn't know until the laptop arrived was that the plastic shell was kind of sparkly. You can see it in this picture.

UPDATE: The mouse arrived and it's fine considering the price ($20). A bit loud and I'm not a fan of the back/forward button placement but I think that's customizable via Logitech's software. It works on my bed and jeans.

UPDATE 2: After a couple weeks of using the mouse, I've grown accustomed to its side button layout and overall clickyness. I'm impressed with its responsiveness, even when used on uneven surfaces. No regrets buying this puppy.


My first laptop arrived from Malibal with a couple wrong parts, so they built and overnighted me a new one with the correct specs (took just under a week). Lucky me, the new laptop arrived with a crack on the screen bezel. Not sure if they'll ship a new part or maybe I can just replace it with the one from the laptop I've yet to ship back, will comment on that later...

UPDATE: Malibal will send a new bezel


Hey the V7 glossy doubles as a great mirror! At the end of this post you'll see I've attached a screenshot of its impressive color gamut. I used this tutorial to check it. There are alternatives if you don't have Photoshop but for me this was the quickest way. If you just want to check what model screen you have, you can use hwinfo64.

UPDATE: After being able to spend some quality time with CS5 I can say it's definitely an improvement over my previous setup (i7 2630QM + GT 525M). There's virtually no lag even at large resolutions with advanced OpenGL mode. Also, unlike the 525M, the 560M plays all 1080p videos without lag. The 525M struggled with certain videos

Finally, I want to say that the stock wi-fi card is just fine. I can connect to my router on the other floor with a full strength signal, no drops.

All in all this is a great laptop for what I do - illustration, emulation, and compression. For gaming I'm not too sure. The only PC game I played so far was Arkham City and the FPS on that was about 40-50 at 1080p with no AA.

UPDATE: Regarding emulation, the 560M does 3x resolution in most PS2 games - the exceptions being SOTC, MGS2-3, and a couple others, which are all limited to 2x. The 2760QM gets 60fps in every game except the most demanding one (Anubis), which requires over 4ghz to run properly. A few may dip under 60fps for a moment but it's rare.

If you have any questions shoot.

 

Nice review thanks for the information. That crack on the bezel is...kinda weird cus Im sure they use foam to cover that part on both sides... Wonder how it happen that way.

 

Nice review! I've ordered one of these with the 95% gamut glossy screen, so I'm happy it looks so good! That sucks about the onboard sound though, I'll have to look into that usb amp. A 10 key.... WHAT? I don't see a 10 key on your keyboard, could you point it out?

 

Nice review and pics!

I was hoping to see some nice pics of the casing finish though. It may people who are deciding between 150 and 151. Also, could go expound on your experience of the casing?

Good pick on your specs! The glossy gamut screen looks amazing!

 

Nice review.

 

The 10-key refers to the number pad. Yeah, there are more than 10 keys there...it's an old term. Keyboards without the numpad are sometimes referred to as 10-keyless.