W230SD owners - feedback?

[Guest Console Peasant]

I beleive its the Sager NP7339 in america so yeah.

 

But mostly it's targeted towards australians, i've seen a couple of reviews but it's kind of an unknown brand so I want to make sure it's smart to buy it.

 

The only brand that's gets close is Asus but it's still like $400 more for the same specs, but I like Asus a bit more.

 

I'll be getting a config with 256gb ssd, 500gb 7200, 8gb ram, no os

 

Thanks

 

(Main conerns) Not loud enough audio, loud fans

[Equilibrium_FOOL]

Do you need a laptop?  You can always buy a cheaper one for school/work and have a better desktop at home.

[Guest Console Peasant]

Do you need a laptop?  You can always buy a cheaper one for school/work and have a better desktop at home.

I have a desktop but they're cancelling laptop programs next year

[Equilibrium_FOOL]

I have a desktop but they're cancelling laptop programs next year

What is a laptop "program"?

[Guest Console Peasant]

What is a laptop "program"?

they rent you piece of shit laptops

[Equilibrium_FOOL]

they rent you piece of shit laptops

I didn't mean renting, just buy a cheaper one than the W230SD and upgrade your desktop.

[Guest Console Peasant]

I didn't mean renting, just buy a cheaper one than the W230SD and upgrade your desktop.

This answer makes no sence, I was answering your question.. "What is the laptop program"

 

The school rents you laptops...

 

They're cancelling it next year.

 

Anyways I'd prefer to have a GPU in it

[Equilibrium_FOOL]

This answer makes no sence, I was answering your question.. "What is the laptop program"

 

The school rents you laptops...

 

They're cancelling it next year.

 

Anyways I'd prefer to have a GPU in it

I understand how the school rents you laptops, and how you want to get your own as they are cancelling the program.  

 

Didn't Linus do a review of a Sager laptop?  Check that out, and see if you can find any other good reviews. 

[Guest Console Peasant]

I understand how the school rents you laptops, and how you want to get your own as they are cancelling the program.  

 

Didn't Linus do a review of a Sager laptop?  Check that out, and see if you can find any other good reviews. 

I've seen good reviews on it, but I want someone with a lot of experience

[Equilibrium_FOOL]

I've seen good reviews on it, but I want someone with a lot of experience

You may not find someone, it is a smaller release laptop (versus HP/Toshiba/Asus/MSI ect.).

[Aethelbert]

I've seen good reviews on it, but I want someone with a lot of experience

 

Okay.

 

I used to have a Clevo W230SS (NP7338) with the i7-4810MQ and a GTX 860M. Thing was a great little beast. The W230SD from what I have seen is just the Maxwell refresh model since the 960M offers little if any tangible benefit over the 860M except that the 960M doesn't allow for overclocking.

 

Anyway, The W230SS was a lovely 13.3" laptop which was reasonably light to carry around and had decent gaming chops to go with it. I don't recommend speccing it with the 1800p screen since I found that particular model to be subjectively bad (didn't like the pentile matrix and the gloss was unbearable for office use). The battery was pretty good, it could last between 3:30-5:00 hours of use depending on workload and magic and under Ubuntu 14.04 it could pull between 2:30 to 4:00 hours. On this, I could easily run TF2 and other Valve games on max at 1080p; performance was about what you'd expect from an 860M (it ran games about as well as my OC'd Radeon HD 6950).

 

Being compact it was very easy to carry around and though heavier than a classic Macbook Pro, it did way, way more and came into handy a few times in the earlier parts of my degree for computations and other boring stuff.

 

But ultimately I sold it and got the P650SG instead (the GTX 980M version of Linus reviewed). Why?

 

It was loud. In quiet environments where I had to share a room with other people, the computations would run pretty cool at first, but the single heatpipe for the CPU and the single heatpipe for the GPU were not adequate to provide a quiet cooling system. It was however perfectly sufficient for gaming without throttling (in fact, the 860M could very easily overclock to within 5-10% of that of the 870M or 965M). But what I needed was quiet and the W230SS couldn​'​t provide that.

 

Also it seemed a bit thick given its compact size and socketed CPU (which is effectively useless now since Intel only make soldered CPUs for notebooks). 31mm might not seem thick but I regularly found that the palm rest would stick into my wrists and cause discomfort after a while, but it wasn't sharp. It was cleverly rounded about those edges. If you could get around this, the keyboard was a joy to use providing minimal flex (if any at all) and comfortable typing response. I have to add that the keys could feel a bit mushy, but it still lies among the best of the laptop keyboards I've used (it's less stiff that the P650SG and a little softer than a classic Macbook Pro).

 

So if this was tl,dr:

- Fast with a quad core

- Approximately 3 and a half to 5 hours of battery life

- Pretty light for its hardware.

- Smallest screen size with a full-featured quad-core CPU in it

- Decently powered graphics processer that didn't have any issues with cooling

 

- Loud when under heavy/medium load

- Can be quite thick to type on.

- Screen can be customised, but get the 1080p screen since the 1800p is not that great

 

If the Asus you're talking about is the ULV one with the 940M, I'd probably go for that one unless your workload specifically calls for a quad-core, lots of computations or anything that basically needs rendering.

 

Get the Clevo if it's going to be a portable workstation for home and away.

[Guest Console Peasant]

Okay.

 

I used to have a Clevo W230SS (NP7338) with the i7-4810MQ and a GTX 860M. Thing was a great little beast. The W230SD from what I have seen is just the Maxwell refresh model since the 960M offers little if any tangible benefit over the 860M except that the 960M doesn't allow for overclocking.

 

Anyway, The W230SS was a lovely 13.3" laptop which was reasonably light to carry around and had decent gaming chops to go with it. I don't recommend speccing it with the 1800p screen since I found that particular model to be subjectively bad (didn't like the pentile matrix and the gloss was unbearable for office use). The battery was pretty good, it could last between 3:30-5:00 hours of use depending on workload and magic and under Ubuntu 14.04 it could pull between 2:30 to 4:00 hours. On this, I could easily run TF2 and other Valve games on max at 1080p; performance was about what you'd expect from an 860M (it ran games about as well as my OC'd Radeon HD 6950).

 

Being compact it was very easy to carry around and though heavier than a classic Macbook Pro, it did way, way more and came into handy a few times in the earlier parts of my degree for computations and other boring stuff.

 

But ultimately I sold it and got the P650SG instead (the GTX 980M version of Linus reviewed). Why?

 

It was loud. In quiet environments where I had to share a room with other people, the computations would run pretty cool at first, but the single heatpipe for the CPU and the single heatpipe for the GPU were not adequate to provide a quiet cooling system. It was however perfectly sufficient for gaming without throttling (in fact, the 860M could very easily overclock to within 5-10% of that of the 870M or 965M). But what I needed was quiet and the W230SS couldn​'​t provide that.

 

Also it seemed a bit thick given its compact size and socketed CPU (which is effectively useless now since Intel only make soldered CPUs for notebooks). 31mm might not seem thick but I regularly found that the palm rest would stick into my wrists and cause discomfort after a while, but it wasn't sharp. It was cleverly rounded about those edges. If you could get around this, the keyboard was a joy to use providing minimal flex (if any at all) and comfortable typing response. I have to add that the keys could feel a bit mushy, but it still lies among the best of the laptop keyboards I've used (it's less stiff that the P650SG and a little softer than a classic Macbook Pro).

 

So if this was tl,dr:

- Fast with a quad core

- Approximately 3 and a half to 5 hours of battery life

- Pretty light for its hardware.

- Smallest screen size with a full-featured quad-core CPU in it

- Decently powered graphics processer that didn't have any issues with cooling

 

- Loud when under heavy/medium load

- Can be quite thick to type on.

- Screen can be customised, but get the 1080p screen since the 1800p is not that great

 

If the Asus you're talking about is the ULV one with the 940M, I'd probably go for that one unless your workload specifically calls for a quad-core, lots of computations or anything that basically needs rendering.

 

Get the Clevo if it's going to be a portable workstation for home and away.

the only thing im really caring about is audio, besides that its a sell, i cant find anything better for cheaper

 

The fans could be an issue, I like to watch youtube a fair bit, will I be able to hear it over that? How loud idle in a quiet room?

Also is the audio loud enough to hear clearly?

 

That's basically all my concerns.. Good to see an owner here though

[Aethelbert]

On Linux, YouTube had the fans spun up a bit but not terribly loudly.

The audio is average. Not the worst on a notebook but not the best either. HTWingNut has good videos on this.

[Guest Console Peasant]

On Linux, YouTube had the fans spun up a bit but not terribly loudly.

The audio is average. Not the worst on a notebook but not the best either. HTWingNut has good videos on this.

thanks mate