Sager NP8651 / Clevo P650SE with GTX 970m First Look

Yes the Sager is much better then Asus: Better cooling, more storage options, better GPU and you can also get a LG IPS screen for a bit more so definetly get that...

 

just pulled the trigger on this based on wingnuts review.

 

Congrats on the order! He does great reviews, good to hear it benefited you.

 

I actually bought it from you guys. Can't wait to get it

 

definitely a good choice, cant do anything wrong with xotic

 

Awesome, feel free to PM me if any questions come up about it.

Thank you sir

 

Hey Everyone,

I was just looking for a good review about http://www.amazon.com/NP8651-P650SE...8&qid=1425442813&sr=1-8&keywords=Sager+NP8651 , and I found this forum.

After buying Lenovo y50-70 Black edition which I send back because of the overheating just from using word and this horrible touchpad (Lenovo- Worst thing ever made) and Asus GL551JM-DH71. I was really excited about ASUS but after 2 days defection of the screen showed up, now I dont want get it exchanged just because Im afraid of another situation like this.

I found Sager from what I can read in here it seems like very good laptop, which I can use for gaming or school. I was also thinking about new Alienware http://www.amazon.com/Alienware-ANW...8&qid=1425443662&sr=8-1&keywords=alienware+15 but now Im not sure. Sager has much better specifications than Alienware. Please convince me why I should buy Sager, rather than Alienware. I know that price is way smaller, but as a European I never heard about this brand before.

Thanks a lot!

 

So I really wanted to get the 8652 with the 980m, but I'm find it really difficult to stretch my budget to get the 8652. Will I be sad with the 8651? I'm receiving a refund on a laptop from lenovo soon and have my mind set on one of the models. I don't necessarily have to play all the games on ultra settings, but I do want to play games like gta v and the like. Thanks for your inputs!

 

Nice

 

Question is how long are you keeping your laptop for? 2-3 years? 970M is fine for that... However definetly get LG IPS screen + 16GB RAM... 3-4 years? 980M then... Already comes with LG IPS screen so you need to add 8GB RAM on.. I'd personally get the 980M if you can stretch a bit..

 

I replaced my Dell XPS 15 with this and I wanted to share a comparison for those interested. Yes it's strange to compare a laptop with two different usage targets, but here it is.

Pluses for the P650SE are better GPU of course, nice screen (though not better than the XPS 15 to me), and real trackpad buttons. Two displayports are nice. Fingerprint reader is really handy. Easy to open and swap parts. I also like that it doesn't look like a Macbook which the XPS 15 does. And no Dell nagging software. Included X-Fi is good. Plus you get a real Windows DVD.

Pluses for XPS 15. First, the trackpad is better, especially with 2 finger scrolling but also in general. Backlit keyboard has auto-off. The fit and finish of the XPS 15 is also superior. And short battery life on the P650SE. Yes P650SE has higher wattage CPU and smaller battery but we're talking 2-3 hour difference and both use Optimus. The 650SE is much bigger and heavier. MSI Ghost Pro managed to fit a 970m in a thin and light laptop so it can be done. But that's also much more expensive so I won't quibble too much about weight.

Some other things: The P650SE CPU is better but you won't notice on a daily basis depending on what you do. Also I got it with a 1 TB Hard drive and swapped it with 1 TB SSD. I use the hard drive as an external backup drive. The AC adapter is huge on the P650SE but that's expected. Finally, I paid almost the same for P650SE and XPS 15 (got it on sale for $1600 for the highest end version).

 

I'm considering getting this laptop for college. Do you guys think the battery life is good enough to last through the day? If it's important, I'm majoring in computer science so I'll be using it quite a bit. It's kinda big because it's a 15.6" screen, but I can probably survive (it would fit in my backpack). The review that Wingnut posted is making me strongly consider this laptop (especially what he and others said about the cooling).

 

So long as you can charge it over lunch you should be fine.

 

You'll probably want to bring the AC Adapter if you want it to last all day. Hopefully for computer science majors, the class rooms will take into consideration that most people will be on notebooks and you'll have no problems with finding places to plug in.

 

when i was in school, esp in CS classes there were ports at the desks for charging. Even if not, if you can charge some throughout you'll be good to go, as long as you're not gaming on battery you should be able to get about 4 hours.

 

Thanks for the information guys. I don't plan on gaming on battery and I definitely plan on bringing an adapter with me so I can charge it at lunch

4 hours should be plenty (I hope)

 

So I am thinking about getting this config:

NP8651 (15.6" FHD/Matt, i7-4720HQ Processor, nVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M 3GB GDDR5 w/nVIDIA Optimus Technology, 2M Camera, Finger Print Reader.) Barebones

With:

15.6" FHD/IPS/Matt (LG) upgrade
Intel 7265 AC wireless card
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 16GB (2x8GB) 1600mhz CAS9 RAM
SAMSUNG 850 EVO M.2 250GB SATA III
HGST Travelstar 1TB 7200 RPM

Look like a good combo? I will throw some IC Diamond on there too.

 

I actually have one more question. What's up with the crazy different temps? I heard on this thread that temps were low while running high-end games, but the reviews I saw elsewhere said temps were higher (especially the CPU). Is this because the benchmarks used in formal reviews are so taxing that they cause the components to be hotter than they would be in real application?

 

Yes.

 

It does depend on the programs they are using. Burn in programs like Prime95 does really tax the CPU more then most real world use would and does result in the highest temps you will see the CPU hit.

 

One small thing I forgot to mention, I didn't notice if you were getting the 1080p or 4k version, but that battery time is 1080p 4k seems to be much less due to all the extra pixels being driven.

 

I'd get that or do it yourself.
Your hard drive configuration probably won't work. the computer can take 1 x 9.5mm drive or 2 x 7mm drive. The Samsung is 7mm, but the few I looked up on Amazon and Newegg that matched the HGST Travelstar were 9.5mm drives.
Additionally, you may be better off adding the SSD yourself. Most places I saw wanted ~$150 you can buy it yourself and install it for $106 currently from Amazon

 

Yeah I'm getting all that stuff myself, just getting the barebones for like $1000 and adding the screen upgrade to it. The Samsung SSD I'm getting is an M2 drive not the 7mm one. That shouldn't have issues.

 

I was planning on getting the LG IPS Screen. Is the extra battery life significant? A few hundred dollars extra for the 4k screen seems like a lot.

 

The 4k gets less battery life as explained so i would not in your case.

 

Yes 4k is worse battery life, and personally I wouldn't get 4k on a laptop yet. the 970m/980m are very powerful, but they can't render 4k with anything that is graphically intense at high quality yet.

 

overclocking and tweaking can help get you there but yes it is a bit of a stretch to game native at 4K.

 

4K for photography looks really good, but for gaming its quite the stretch.

 

Agreed... 4k isn't worth it unless your doing photo editing etc... For gaming, you'll have to play without AA and medium/high details..

 

Older games will look sweet, but the UI can be an issue and some don't support 4k.

 

Delete.

 

Hey htwingnut I saw your gta vid that game is looking sweet on this portable lil sager. I get the feeling that this NB model is your favorite right now huh pal. I dont know how much longer I can hold out with my poor 5yo dual core once great gaming notebook.

 

wrong, his absolute favorite is the batman just that the financial aspect is holding him back from getting one this one is just Robin, not Batman....

 

I loved the Batman, just bought the P650SE a few months prior so sticking with this for now. Holding out hoping Pascal/Skylake make a promising entrance to Gotham when it arrives. Otherwise this P650SE is a perfectly fine laptop.

 

The P650SE is a very nice system, it is that much thinner and lighter which makes taking it around more easy.

 

Exactly. Depends on your needs. P650SE has good battery life, P750ZM does not. If you are primarily stationary and are plugged in 99.9% of the time then the P750ZM is fine. If you need some portability and travel fairly often with your laptop the P650SE makes more sense.

 

Guys, can I get some feedback on the keyboard and touchpad? I'm planning on getting the 1080p IPS screen from XoticPC.

 

Did anyone find a way to resolve higher temperatures on the models with the 4k screens? Does running at a lower resolution prevent higher temperature issues? Also does anyone know of a way to more easily control fan speeds other than the Hotkey Control?

 

I can give you my feedback on it. To me the touchpad is great, I don't use it all that often because of the fact that I normally connect a mouse. But its plenty big really responsive and its not like those crappy ones you find on those 2 in 1 tablets that has the buttons built into the touchpad where clicking causes it to twitch so you can never click what you're trying to click. The fingerprint sensor is pretty wonky and takes about 50 tries to get it to ready your finger which isn't a problem for me because I could care less about that function... As for the keyboard I honestly love it, full keyboard with numpad and doesn't have much give when you push on it in most regions. Hope I helped a little!

 

Fan control might work with Hwinfo64... You might be able to set the fans to certain rpm depending on temperature... You know something like a custom fan profile...

 

It may be the gpu having to stay at a higher clock rate to keep the display ticking over. It still has to update that many pixels regardless if a lot are the same so the actual output side of the chip still works pretty hard. Would be interesting to test.

 

Guys, could you please make me a favor?

I'm about about to get this laptop from xotic and as far as i got reading this topic - $45 for IPS screen is well worth update.

I wonder how good/bad is this panel and if some1 who has this beast can post pics from - that would be just awesome.

For sure i've got few other questions, but first things first

 

Compare TN panel from my review here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...650se-with-gtx-970m-htwingnuts-review.765376/

to IPS panel here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...-htwingnuts-review.765376/page-22#post9845801

 

Whether it's a good update depends heavily on what you will be using the laptop for. IPS screens tend to have longer response times, leading to ghosting, which can be a problem in gaming - and the LG they're offering is on the slow end of those (35 ms). If, on the other hand, you won't be gaming but instead will be processing video or editing photos, and you care about color accuracy, then yes, the LG will be a great upgrade over the OEM TN screen.

Also, the video HTWingnut posted is of the Samsung PLS screen, not the LG that xoticpc is offering. It's a beautiful screen, but is $85 on Amazon and you'll have to take the risk of doing the installation yourself.

 

This LG IPS screen is fine even with the large response time... I haven't heard any complaints about it... As for the Samsung PLS screen, it is indeed good... Warranty won't cover you though when it comes to replacing the pannel...

 

True, warranty doesn't cover the panel, nor any damage that might be incurred while installing it. Also, you need to be aware before ordering a panel to replace on your own whether your system is set up for eDP or LVDS.

Provided you don't do any damage during installation, the warranty is still valid for the rest of the system.

 

That's exactly what I need. Thanks a lot, I'm not how the hell I missed those...

To be honest, the laptop is not for myself (I'm building desktops for myself and my buddies), but for my wife. What she gonna do with it? Like all wives - internet, FB, photoshop, adobe premier and such. For such use IPS screen is perfectly fine. I do realize that 4720 and especially 970m is big time overkill, but... A month ago we bought Lenovo Yoga 3 (touchscreen, very light, tablet mode and such), but in 2 weeks mobo died and I'm not willing to wait for 6 weeks (yes, you read it right) for replacement, so hopefully refund is on its way. Another thing I faced with Yoga is a lag once in a while - like CPU and/or iGPU is really busy with smth. I uninstalled all bloatware, but the lag is still there. I was about to reinstall windows from scratch later that day, but that morning mobo died. I guess that's windows 8.1 thing (khe-khe - I'm linux user for last 10 years ).

I wish NP8651 have touchscreen, but that's OK. I was looking at Asus N551JX, but reading here how many problems people got with it - thanks, but no. Zenbook Pro - looks kewl, but I'm not sure I want to take a chance to deal with yelloish screen, windows 8.1 scalling issues and crazy battery drain. So I guess 1920*1080 is fine for 15" screen.

Hopefully I didn't bug you too much, here're few other questions:
1. 1TB 7200rpm HDD. Unfortunately, there's no part# for this thing, so I cannot check it by myself. I wonder if this thing is 9.5mm or 7mm thick? Later I'd like to add another HDD (video editing takes a lot of space, you know), and I'd like to be able to do so. Or should I get slower 2TB 5400rpm HDD (same thing here - 9.5mm or 7mm thick?) and relax?

2. Which m.2 slot should I use? I want to add 256GB Samsung SM951 SSD and get full speed of it.

3. WiFi - Bigfoot I guess is the way to go?

4. Battery life. I read people saying 4 hours of normal use. Is that true?

Thanks a lot, guys.

 

No touchscreen as that is not really the target market. The 970M for a non gamer is more than a little overkill... Sager do have a 14" IPS Iris pro option.

1. 9.5mm unless specified, 2TB is only 9.5mm.

2. The only one you can use for that ssd is parallel to the wireless card.

3. Intel is better IMO.

 

1. Ouch, I was hoping to build RAID0. Oh well...

2. Thanks. Now it's clear

3. Oh.. I read in few places people saying Bigfoot is better, especially in terms of overall stability (like 7260 drops signal one in a while and such)... I guess I need to read a bit more about that.

 

I've heard issues with both, i've not had issues with either personally, but the bigfoot is targeted at gamers.