My Malibal Experience - P150HM

Hello everyone!
I’m here to give a full on review of my customer experience, as well as the product. I will also tell the story as to why I went the way I did. So sit tight and relax, because it’s story time!

[My Story]
Xotic, PowerPC, Malibal… there are a lot of choices for a Clevo computer. Well, I didn’t even know what a Clevo was until now. I decided to get one after doing a comparison against the ASUS models and saw the price vs quality aspect, which Clevo was best $ for the quality. Also I could care less for the look of the ASUS models; I just thought it kind of seemed to be at an awkward angle. Besides when you go with a Clevo, it doesn’t have to scream “EPIC PC COME STEAL ME” as its power is more discrete, and being a college student surrounded by plenty of untrustworthy people I value this a lot!

Then I came at the crossroads of which company to choose. Xotic was the first one I looked at, and I received a fair amount of support from their customer service. They were very friendly; Brett was one of the people I notably spoke with. Though I began looking around, and then I stumped upon these forums using Google while looking for more information on the Clevo laptops. I eventually saw Malibal, and clicked on their link. As a personal preference, I liked their website a lot more, but I found there to be a lot less to choose from. Of course that didn’t matter to me, I was only interested in the P151HM1, and it was cheaper on Malibal’s website. Even if Xotic would price match, I was still interested in the competition to see who else was out there. I called up Malibal and spoke with Matthew, who for all I know is the only service rep? I’ve called a few times and got him, but I don’t mind because he was extremely fast to answer any questions, and even explain things in depth. It was a very relaxed phone call, and by that I mean no awkward silence. So I was satisfied for a while, but not so much about my laptop choice.

I eventually decided that since the P151HM1’s graphics card couldn’t be upgraded, I thought it would be a smarter idea to upgrade to the P150HM. Might as well spend a little extra, I’m already in the $1k-ish range right? So I end up ordering my laptop a little ways before Black Friday. This is what my order looked like:
P150HM (total: $1,409.00) – [CPU] i7 2670qm [RAM] 8gb DDR3 1333mhz [GPU] Raddeon 6990m [NIC] stock [cooling] IC diamond [HDD] 500gb 7500rpm [Display] Matte [optical] 8x multi [DISCOUNTS!] free shipping - $100 off orders of 1500.

During the payment process I had a personal issue, which Malibal and I had resolved. Since I had this issue, I ended up replacing my order. With a few upgrades I thought to add in.

P150HM (total: $1,489.00) – [CPU] i7 2670qm [RAM] 8gb DDR3 1333mhz [GPU] Raddeon 6990m [NIC] *Bigfoot Network Killer 1102 [cooling] IC diamond [HDD] *750gb 7500rpm [Display] Matte [optical] 8x multi [DISCOUNTS!] free shipping - $100 off orders of 1500.

I placed my order before Black Friday, as I’ve said above. That was a mistake on my part for not waiting to see what deals they might have, and sure enough there was one for a free ram upgrade. If you had the 8gb 1333mhz they would give you a free upgrade to 8gb 1600mhz. So yeah . BUT I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask Malibal since I was still in the building process, why not? I could always have waited an extra day, but I bought it now, so why shouldn’t Malibal give it to me right? Well truth is they could have said no, since I really didn’t buy it on the black Friday weekend. However they told me “Yes, we can do that… no problem.” So it was added to my order right away. They finished it up and it shipped.

Though, my story does not end there. I got it, and tested it out. Was ready to make this review then, but I had complications. The first being I had this annoying little stuck pixel, tried remedies online, like jscreenfix (I was too cheap to buy it so I googled something like it and looped it for like a minute. Really it was just a bunch of changing colors, and it did nothing for me. However it apparently needs to happen for hours. Though I “lucked out” if you can call it lucky that when I played skyrim, it black screened on me. After a few restarts the display stopped turning on. I hooked up a HDMI cable to test it out, and it worked fine… then black screened. But oh well, these things happen. I opened up a support ticket, and sure enough they promised me a brand new order with over-night shipping. Their service didn’t just stop there, they gave me a paid return label, and even free upgrades on my replacement! Again, they didn’t have to do this for me, and they went that extra little mile. On this whole situation I wasn’t even upset either. I realize if a part fails on you, these resellers and builders build the laptop, they don’t build these components, so I was shocked that they compensated me for it! But none the less hyped again!!

[Final Build Specs]
P150HM (total: $1,489.00) – [CPU] i7 2670qm [RAM] *8gb DDR3 1600mhz [GPU] Raddeon 6990m [NIC] *Bigfoot Network Killer 1103 [cooling] IC diamond [HDD] 750gb 7500rpm [Display] *Matte 95% [optical] 8x multi [DISCOUNTS!] free shipping - $100 off orders of 1500.

[My review on Malibal]
Pros: [1] Customer Service. They have very dedicated customer service, if they didn’t pick up, they called me back. It was quality you certainly can’t find with Dell. Also the fact that they were willing to give me a free upgrade for Black Friday was awesome. Even better was the service I received when the product was not working properly. I didn’t need to be compensated at all, but they did anyways. I certainly would recommend this company to my friends. [2] Price. These laptops were cheaper stock than all the other competition I saw. Sure, Xotic was cheaper, but the reason they were was because they started you off with lower quality components. In a price match between Xotic and Malibal, I saved $50-$100 (though Xotic would have probably matched the price). The deals were also better than competitors (I’m referencing the Black Friday sales). [3] Web Site. Not only did I find their website easy to navigate through, it had an elegant feel. While it doesn’t mean a world of difference, I appreciate the effort put in to show off pure professionalism.
Cons: Well, there really are no cons. Again, I had an issue with my laptop, but Malibal didn’t build my ATI Radeon 6990m graphics card. Can’t put any blame on them for that, so I can definitely say I haven’t had a single problem with this company throughout my entire experience.

[P150HM Review]
Well this computer has the power of an Alienware computer at less than half the cost. These may not be everybody’s idea of eye candy but I like the professionalism appearance that it gives. The product really has no cheap quality parts, as everything I see looks sturdy and it seems as though it will last a while under good care. You can read the product’s page if you’d like more specific detail, but if I had to give you a quick glance of pros and cons it would look like this:
(Pros)
+Quality
+Classy design
+Powerful
+User upgradeable
+Easy access to main computer components (4 screws on the bottom gets you access to your gpu, cpu, and ram)

(Cons)
-As some have reported, there is a hollow feeling/sound coming from under the keyboard, but I believe it’s because the keyboard is over top of the optical drive.
-My disk drive was a little noisy, but eh, I hardly use it much. Don’t know if it is a common thing.

So far it's working, and I'd like to see it stay that way for a good long time

 

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I will let others explain.

 

tl;dr MALIBAL is awesome. Free upgrades as compensation FTW!

 

Eh I guessed what you were gunna say, and no, I don't know how to move it.

 

Congrats I'm looking forward to get a IB P150 from them as well (minimally sleek nameplate !)

 

Hi, you need to break it up into paragraphs so it's easier to read.

 

Yes, please. I still read it all since I'm anxious to receive my P150HM. I agree that Malibal has a great website and has been very responsive. It's interesting to note that you can now order a P150HM without a hard drive or ram as that's what I inquired about when I contacted them last week.

 

Dark5, your order is shipping out today - so check your email - the tracking should be there soon.

 

Thanks for the update! Just checked my inbox and sure enough I've now got a tracking number to obsess over.

 

Well, don't forget to keep your warranty *I believe* you need to get approval from Malibal (or probably any other company) before playing with the insides of your laptop for obvious reasons.

 

It sure doesn't sound like it. It sounds like they will fix or replace any parts which are defective which they shipped to you within whatever time period of the warranty you chose. Whatever other parts you decide to put into your laptop will be up to you to fix/replace and will probably have their own manufacturer's warranty.

 

That's not the case for Clevo based laptops. With the exception of the motherboard, nearly every other part is user replaceable without voiding the warranty on the whole machine. As was pointed out though, any new parts added will not be covered under the machine warranty- you'd have to go through whomever you bought them from. In addition, any damage caused by installing said new parts would also not be covered. (For example, you are installing new RAM and crack the screen or fry your CPU with static).

 

Yeah, I just dealt with Matthew and he is great!

 

I've been looking at the Malibal PC's for a little bit, from this I'm pretty sure I'm going to go with them now! Sounds like you had a great experience!

 

My pricing worked out to be opposite. Malibal is about 100 more than xotic would have been. However xotic was backordered till the end or the month I placed an order then got the backorder notification. So I decided to cancel and order from malibal. Malibal as I said is more expensive and doesn't offer equal promotions of xotic such as it coming with a case from xotic and the free copy of battlefield 3 when upgrading to a ssd. I should be getting tracking info today I think

 

That's just because they don't take out the $100 discount over $1,500 until you get to shopping cart. They both give NBR discount as well. Reading comprehension imo.

 

Irrelevant. Final price from malibal for my config was 1500+ after all discounts. Malibal was just over 1400. Part of the difference is malibal adds 100 for the 300 watt adapter xotic includes it. I would have liked the free bag and bf3 too