To buy or not: Clevo Barebones Series laptop

tgjasper · #1 10-21-2012, 06:23 PM

I’m in the market for a new laptop and ran into a line called Clevo. There are several companies that are using this line: Sager, xoticpc, avadirect. They sell pre-built laptop or they will customize builds to your specifications.

One company RJTech has a barebones series allowing the buyer to purchase as much or little of the laptop they want. The box itself is quite versatile allowing two hard drives and outputs galore. Reviews, especially gamers, seem to like these machines. You get a lot of bang for your buck with this line of laptops.

Has anyone had experience using Clevo laptop?

Steve(MS) · #2 10-21-2012, 09:07 PM

Don't know but Xotic prices don't look any better to me than buying popular name brands.
For some reason, laptop prices are high for the "high performance" components, I want to upgrade to a better laptop myself but so far I am unwilling to pay the price for what I want in it.

kpmedia · #3 10-22-2012, 05:55 AM

I had to buy a new laptop this year, because my trusty HP just aged too much (5+ years) for the web development speed I needed.

So let me ask this:
- What do you need it for?
- What are you planning to do on it?

I opted for the Sony SE2 series, because it has a color-accurate IPS display. Granted, I paid about double for that feature ($1600), but I wouldn't have it any other way. It's a non-reflective (non-shiny) screen, and the colors are accurate. That's incredibly important, because now I can color correct while sitting in a Panera Bread or the local cafe, instead of having to simply prep something, and waiting until I can get to the office computers. I've even sat in my home kitchen several times, or in front of the living room TV, and been able to do work.

These have Blu-ray drives, tons of RAM, Windows 7, etc. The one I have (VPCSE27FX/B) uses the Core i7, 6GB RAM, 750GB HDD. The line is already discontinued, but nothing has yet taken its place. Most stores have less than 5 in stock, when in stock.

There's several models, starting at $800 from Amazon:

At Newegg:

It's the Lexus of laptops.

My old HP now runs Linux Xubuntu, and will be given away to a notebook-less family member at Christmas.

tgjasper · #4 10-22-2012, 10:35 AM

Heading back to school to study web server administration and web development and as such, qualify to pick up Adobe Master Suite CS6 for a pretty good price. Thus, I would like a laptop whose specs hold up to the requirement running the suite. Presently I have the Adobe Productions Suite CS3, and would like the new laptop to run Photoshop, Premiere, or After Effects CS6 efficiently.

My budget is between $1000-$1200 and I’m presently eyeing the Clevo W350ETQ Barebone Series.

For the monitor I’ll upgrade to matte. However, I been ready about the 95% NTSC color gamut LCD option and wondering if it would be good to have, even though it would be a budget buster.

Also opting for the Spyder 4 Elite monitor color calibration. This unit runs $250 off the shelf vs $50 with the laptop.

Video card: Nvidia GeForce GTX 66M w/3GB GDDR5 (standard)

CPU: Core i7-3610QM 2.3 GHz (optional choices)

Memory: 2 – 8GB DDR#/1600Mhz Kingston HyperX (optional choices) (leave the 3rd slot open to fill later)

Hard drive: 500GB SATA300 7200rpm w/4GB Solid State Hybrid Drive (optional choices) (I’ll the 2nd HD slot empty for now)

With a few other toys and a year parts and labor warranty my total expenditure at this point is $1188.00. This does not include the operating system, but window 8 pro will be available at student pricing.

Features I really like about this model are: the 2nd HD slot (future expansion), the 15.6 monitor, and the eSata port. I have hot swappable internal hard drives on my desktop box, so an eSata port is important.

lordsmurf · #5 10-23-2012, 10:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tgjasper

would like the new laptop to run Photoshop, Premiere, or After Effects CS6 efficiently. -------- For the monitor I’ll upgrade to matte. However, I been ready about the 95% NTSC color gamut LCD option and wondering if it would be good to have, even though it would be a budget buster. Also opting for the Spyder 4 Elite monitor color calibration. This unit runs $250 off the shelf vs $50 with the laptop.

If you won't be next to an IPS LCD at all times, then a laptop with an IPS monitor would be suggested. That last Sony S Series is one option. There are a few higher-priced options as well. Laptop monitors are generally so crappy that they're impossible to calibrate in any way. For comparison, even the crappy consumer non-IPS LCD monitors can somewhat half-assed calibrate.

Quote:

CPU: Core i7-3610QM 2.3 GHz (optional choices)
Memory: 2 – 8GB DDR#/1600Mhz Kingston HyperX (optional choices) (leave the 3rd slot open to fill later)
Hard drive: 500GB SATA300 7200rpm w/4GB Solid State Hybrid Drive (optional choices) (I’ll the 2nd HD slot empty for now)

These specs all look fine, but it's honestly not anything out of the ordinary for a higher-end laptop from any maker.

Quote:

window 8 pro will be available at student pricing.

I wouldn't go anywhere near that. Adobe has rarely gotten along with OS updates. You're generally locked into the currently stable OS when the Adobe version was released. And new releases tend to be at least a year back from the new OS release. I've read moaning from early OS adopters since the mid 1990s, as related to Photoshop, PageMaker and other Adobe programs.

Quote:

Features I really like about this model are: the 2nd HD slot (future expansion),

I used to think that, too. But I ended up removing the 2nd drive because of heating issues. Those little drives generate a ton of heat. One is bad enough, but two in the same unit usually just melts something. I've seen a lot of two-disk laptops where the keyboard or mouse pad was warped and discolored from the heat generated underneath it -- and that's with using cooling pads.

Quote:

the 15.6 monitor, and the eSata port.

Again, nothing really unusual here.

Quote:

I have hot swappable internal hard drives on my desktop box, so an eSata port is important.

Firewire 800 is also pretty decent, as is USB3, for second choices to eSATA (which I agree is best). Desktops can always have external cards added.

_________

The stickler with media work on a laptop is the screen. Not just matte vs shiny, but accuracy. Until recently, that just wasn't possible. Now that such tech exists, I'd say pick that in a heartbeat if you can afford it. It's not even a contest. I think more weight should be put here, as opposed to extra bays, the exact speed of the CPU (the newer shinier model that's all of 3% faster than the slightly older one), etc.

What type of monitor does this Clevo have?

tgjasper · #6 10-24-2012, 01:29 PM

Thank you for responding to this thread. Kpmedia for taking the time looking for alternatives laptops, and lordsmurf for assessing my thread.

From what I can see IPS LCD is an important factor. This leaves me with the option of a slower CPU (i7 vs i5) and HD (7200 rpm vs 5400 rpm) to make affordable the IPS LCD display.

Is this a good trade off?

To throw another thought into the equations. The main purpose for the laptop is to build a web developer box. Secondary, is the ability to run Photoshop, Premiere, or After Effects; that is until I’m able to upgrade the home desktop. While using these programs, I will dock the laptop and use the desktop monitor.

Thanks for the tip on windows 8, hopefully they will still have windows 7 available in student pricing.

The monitor that Clevo W350ETQ uses is AUO B156HW01 v4. The spec sheet general description describes the display.

B156HW01 V4 is a Color Active Matrix Liquid Crystal Display composed of a TFT LCD panel, a driver circuit, and LED backlight system. The screen format is intended to support the 16:9 FHD (1920(H) x 1080(V)) screen and 262k colors (RGB 6-bits data driver) with LED backlight driving circuit. All input signals are LVDS interface compatible.

Plus the display is 95% NTSC color gamut.

Thanks again for your time, it’s greatly appreciated.

JMP · #7 01-31-2013, 11:45 PM

The Intel Core i5 line is a very robust CPU for its cost compared to an i7 and you wont notice much, if any speed difference between the two.
The only real difference between 7200 rpm and 5400 rpm drives will be the boot speed of the OS and the load time of programs. Generally the difference isn't too noticeable, but keep in mind, a 7200 rpm drive will run hotter than a 5400 rpm drive. Now if you add in the drives cache size and its rpm speed, you may be able to notice a speed improvement though. A 7200 rpm drive with a 32mb or 64mb cache will be noticeably faster than a 5400rpm drive with a 8mb or 16mb cache.

As far as the OS is concerned, like lordsmurf said, I would stay away from Windows 8. Windows 7 has proven itself in my eyes as one of the greatest Windows OS for versatility and stability, and I will be hard pressed to move away from it for some time.

As far as the monitor the Clevo is using, I am not familiar with it, but it sounds like the general LCD you would find in most current laptops. And as lordsmurf said, there is not a lot of adjustments you can really do with those for color correction.

-JMP

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