*** Official Clevo W230ST/Sager NP7330 Owner's Lounge ***

I returned the Sager version of this laptop after wrestling with several replacements. Fan rattling noise, screen issues, randomly unresponsive keys---pretty much all the problems mentioned in this thread happened to me with one or the other of the replacement laptops I tried.

I really like this laptop, so I've ordered again, this time with Mythlogic. They claim to have pretty stringent quality assurance, and the user testimonials seem to corroborate this, so we'll see if it's any more reliable for the extra $$$. It took Sager only a couple of days to build one of these, whereas Mythlogic took two weeks---so at the very least they seem to be paying more attention to the assembly process.

Anyhow, my word to those of you who had zero issues with your first order of this laptop: consider yourselves lucky! And I hope you got the extended warranty (I sure did!)

I will post some pictures and comparisons with my existing Sony VAIO Z once I get it...

 

glad to see you tryin again. just wondering also. when you ordered from pcs. what stage was you at. im at 5th day pre-production. just trying to gauge movement time.

thanks

 

They are slow.... im 10th (working) day pre-production.

sent them a message today asking them how long they thought that it would be.

 

Mine was in pre-production for 9 days and then I moaned and it magically went in to building the same day....

 

ok. cool.i was gonna get in touch bout the 9th but ill do so on thursday. but wanna see how long they got dodger going

 

Sisqo an Joners i don't wanna break your hearts fellas but mine was 21st working day at pre-production and they told me lie after lie before i decided to opt out of their torture of patients challenge

but i believe they have the unit in stock now so i don't know why they are still taking the mick with orders, personally i believe they are a bunch of lazy sods, i even sent them a furious email requesting they send me the barebones and the components an i will put it together in an hour but they ignored me lol

 

yea i did wonder. but it didnt have an eta date like when you had been keeping tabs which i did see and not when i ordered. but i got a plan. they like twitter. alot of people say good stuff about them on there and pcs pander to problems with replys back trying to look good. if i mention a few times bout been disappointed im sure they will speed it up as its like low blowing there ego then.

 

Impale, did you ever receive your machine? As I said, I ordered the same day and STILL haven't received it. Was really hoping to get my order before the holiday weekend.

 

yeah i was checking every day lol, they promised me like 3-4 times that your order will be dispatched in a few working days but they never delivered, i am not on twitter so i couldn't put pressure on them, anyway like i said before they posted on their forums that they don't do preorders then they listed it and i ordered it thinking they have it stock, what i came to realize later was that they did not have it stock so that dishonesty was like unforgivable in my eyes, if they had been honest an said we don't have the laptop in stock i would have understood but saying your order will be completed an dispatched up to 4 times and me getting disappointed every time, sorry about rant lol

anyway good luck with your order, hope you receive it soon probably at the same time as me

 

So, after using the laptop for a while, the erratic fan issue seems to have smoothed out interestingly. It's a lot less erratic now.

 

Probably just needed to get worn in,

 

Hey, I'm assuming you ordered from mythlogic. Was just wondering if your one is shipped already. I ordered on the 18th hoping they will ship in two weeks, I'm going away end of September, will be in serious trouble if i don't get it by then.

 

Just to let you guys know, I'm getting mine today from PCS, Production Time : 19 working days, which translates into almost a month
(but it wasn't in stock for 2 weeks when I ordered, so I guess you can lessen that delay to around 2 weeks)

 

I ordered mine from PCS on the 3rd, and it arrived yesterday. Other than them being not exactly clear with the stock issue resulting in a longer-than-expected wait, and a slight delay on their courier's side, I thought they did pretty well.
Unfortunately, the laptop they sent has a flawed screen, so I'm sending it in for a replacement soon. Hopefully it'll all be perfect once I get it back.
The flaws are 2 dead pixels near the top, but more worryingly, a strange grid of red pixels in the centre of the screen when the screen is completely black. Has anybody else seen this?
I have the rattling fan issue too, so I'll see if they can have a look at that.

 

laptops from pcs must be in stock now in they are just turning up now.
@wichu: problem could be down to a rushed job because i was aware they had a massive back order in general. and possibly could happened in transit causing the screen to do that. that to me is changeable regardless of pixel cover or not.

@lastnikita although im prepared to wait a month i am hoping inside there predicted window.

@dodger. i can understand the rant. im already doing so asking everyone wait times lol but yea been straight better. but i understand why they would lie to keep money in the business

 

Nice words of Wisdom from our resident Guru Sisqo

Nikita have you received yours if so what do you make of it dude...we need feedback player lol

 

Just signed up to say that i'm in love with my W230ST.

Despite the flaws i read here when i ordered it to be built, it had me worried, but i'm glad i pulled through. It's super fast, its compact and light (for a gaming laptop) it's got a gorgeous display.
I use it constantly since i got it, and since i work a field job it makes the work day go much faster.

If anyone is on the fence, go for it. You wont regret it.

 

Sure I did, I'll give more feedback later, but to put it short: it's a nice laptop, I have the Chi Mei screen, no dead pixel nor much backlight bleeding, although a little is visible.
There are many little things I'm not too happy with (noisy, screen graininess as some feared, build finish is so-so), but it really is a step up from w110er.
I installed win 8.1 on it so I'll report on that too, no driver problem so far, everything seems pretty flawless.... except windows itself.
Let me play a little more with it and I'll give you more =)

Since they take 2-3 days for quality control, I wouldn't call that "pretty well"....

 

HT - did/can you get the Clevo Control Centre working with Win 7? Whenever I load the hotkey drivers I get that same old error message in win 7...?

P.

 

how do you guys clean the laptop? specially the rubbery side

 

It's quick, got my games etc on the 480gb and the os on the 256gb msata then anything else I need to take with me on a 2tb usb3 disk.

I haven't checked the temps yet haven't seen the need, just got the back elevated to allow more airflow.





Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk 4

 

So I had this laptop since the end of July (the 24th) and I can safely say... no problems at all.

My only pet peeve is fan tables as it randomly boosts when idling too long and tends to blow too much air when running light applications. I have fine tuned my settings to the point its idling at 48-52C with turbo boost enabled and no undervoltage.

I also do not have any odd behavior with fans and/or drivers not functioning. My Intel 7260 AC adapter does not drop connection on latest drivers (16.1.3) at all. (Used steam downloads as a test)

Currently running Windows 8 Pro Edition.

 

Awesome! Nice desk setup too. But this is driving me nuts, what are the aircraft in the photo? I was trying to think of a straight low wing jet with a swooping canopy and low horizontal stabilizer, likely Vietnam era.

 

Reading the last few pages it looks like I got lucky with pcs as I ordered when they first put it up and got it within the week. Couldn't be happier with the laptop bar the Wireless occasionally crashing but I'm pretty sure that's my Router as my Brother Macbook's wireless does the same.

I did a quick search on the thread but didn't find the answer, has anyone managed to get Battery Time left to show in Windows 8? At the moment it just shows % but would be nice to have Time too

 

It's my 'workshop'/man room, lots of tools and RC planes/bits/etc.

They are Hawk T1 trainers doing low level training in the A5 pass, it's a print of a painting and not a photo - from a distance its hard to distinguish

 

Looks like this is the thread I should've posted some interesting benchmark results to, my post is in the review thread instead on this forum.

 

Just pulled the trigger on my W230ST, the long wait begins lol

 

Ady who did you order from in uk?

 

Cheapest I found was PCspecialist at £730 for the spec I wanted, friend is buying my W110-ER, got a few bits and bobs to sell to fund the difference so couldn't resist, do like new toys

 

Afaik that's a clevo bios thing, you can always use a third party app like battery bar.

 

There is a new (for me at least) bios since a few weeks:

W230ST Bios 04
ftp://usftp.clevo.com.tw/ALLBIOS/W230ST/B04.zip

Didn't test it yet.

 

Proceed with caution. That is the stock Clevo BIOS and not Sager BIOS if you own a Sager, or possibly customized BIOS from other builders like Mythlogic. You can lose some functionality (like Fn+1 max fans) if you flash this BIOS. I'm sure Sager and other builders will come up with their version soon enough.

 

Clevo is the manufacturer, I don't think others add much to their work... I'm only gonna lose that horrible startup picture PCS added
Thanks for the warning though, but I'm sure Prema will come up with something faster than other builders, as this is now his main system =)

 

Latest bios 05; from clevo
ftp://ftp.clevo.com.tw/ALLBIOS/W230ST/B05.zip

 

Just flashed it, still no changelog though :-/
Will comment tomorrow on fan burst & autonomy.

edit: it does not update KBD/EC, and I think fan tables are in that part.
I can't hear it often anyway, even before the flash, but I'll let you know if it still seems to burst without heating sometimes.

 

Any new EC yet?

 

Okay, time to join the club. I just got my W230ST today from the norwegian reseller multicom.no
And it has the chi-mei screen. Which is gorgeous. I've found one dead pixel, but i can only notice it during boot. Will try to un-stuck it with udpix.
The pixel is located just above the mouse cursor.

There is some light bleeding, but that is also not visible during normal usage.


Haven't gotten to do any bench marking yet, but i am not worried about that part at all. My old Asus U41JF runs horribly hot, so it would shut down if i tried to run anything remotely challenging.
Also the keyboard on the W230ST seems like a good upgrade.

 

Looks like mine was shipped, but UPS Ground had some issues. Hopefully will receive it soon.

---

Okay, some completely newbie questions: I configured my system with a 128GB mSATA SSD which I plan on using as a boot drive and a second standard SATA HDD for additional storage. If, say for Black Friday, I picked up another SSD, all I would have to do is install it in the other mSATA port and make sure it mounts/recognized by Windows, right? Meaning, I intend to have it as another storage drive and not configure RAID. All the tutorials I keep finding for installing an SSD is meant for people who want to replace their existing boot drive, but I will already have one installed. I just want additional storage that'll be faster than my mechanical HDD when my boot drive fills up. Will that work?

Also, the SSD has to be a mSATA form factor SSD, right?

Much thanks.

 

Interestingly i was just checking my order on the mysn uk site, and have just realized that they have actually got the dual core i5/i7 cpu's listed for the W230ST, is there any1 else who has the dual cores yet?

 

Yup you just have to plug it in,should be fine.

And yes, it has to be msata, since your 2.5 bay will already be occupied.

 

funny you should say that i been looking on notebookcheck at them thinking are they available as options yet.
they are not on pcs. xmg has lowered the price overally.

 

Yeah i don't think there is any other seller who has the dual cores as of yet especially in the uk, also your right sisqo the price is lower on the dual cores, now i am debating with myself whether i should down grade or keep the quad core for the extra kick

 

After hearing about the dual cores on xmg i checked them out, i also specced up a laptop identical to the one i ordered from them last week. Turns out it was £15 cheaper, no idea what they lowered but they seem to be cheaper in general on xmg now.

 

The backlight bleed is caused by the screen mount or bezel being a bit too tight on the bottom of the screen.

Should be fixable.

 

Hmm so its just matter of adjusting the bottom screws, has any1 tried this?

 

Well, the euro-version I ordered last month became 26€ more expensive ( 4702mq & 8GB RAM, other stuff on stock)

@Battery-Runtime: (Undervolted by 99mV, I'm not really into testing without the undervolt)
Im getting about ~5 hours at university-usage (lowest brightness - which is still at bright as 60% on my older netbook lol - wifi on, just navigating on chrome twice~trice each hour to search up stuff or open another document). I left it completly idle once and it got close to 6 hours, I doubt it is possible to get out more of it without some higher-capacity battery
(Keep in mind I got the 4702mq, Just one SSD and only one RAM-stick. In contrast to WingNuts 'worst-case'-configuration regarding battery-usage in his review, I pretty much got the opposite 'best-case')

@Backlight bleeding: Sounds interesting. Anyone dares to find out how to open up the lid ? I'd definedly want to fix the slight backlight-bleeding I got if it doesn't leave behind any traces of doing so.

 

Yeah your right i just configured the same spec as the one i ordered last week an what do you know it is £10 cheaper lol, also fellas if your ordering from mysn uk, email them and mention to them that you are a NBR member an they will give you free delivery instead of the £12 they charge :thumbsup:

 

Thats good to know, i wonder if they can do that for me despite having already ordered!

 

Hmm, I'm wondering if that works as well. Any tutorials on how to do this?

 

Hi guys,

Ive just bought a mouse for my W230ST, and started gaming. however, there is a large downside i've discovered to being left handed and an owner of this laptop.
The fan is on the left, and the heat is very hot and uncomfortable after a short time of gaming.
Has anyone got any solution to this? I can't think of a way around it besides getting some kind of eleveated mouse pad that connects directly to the laptop. At the moment im using a Logitech laptop tray with a slide out mouse pad.

Cheers.