Savrow Katana WX Review

With having to go to uni i wasn't wanting to take my desktop pc with me. So i needed a laptop with desktop power and yet easy enough to carry about every once in a while but with the emphasis on power rather than portability. I looked at various laptops from various makes including, Sony, IBM, Apple and Alienware.All of which did not offer the performance i wanted except Alienware. I had however heard of very bad things from Alienware in regards to customer service. I was sceptical of ordering from a small company such as Savrow, but all reviews/customer comments i had read were good. So i went for it



Ordering Waiting and Delivery:



After placing my order i was told 14 - 18 days for delivery which I thought was pretty good for a custom system. However this due to some delays with the paint shop (I ordered a custom paint job) it wasnt dispatched from Savrow until about 24 days. This wasn't too much longer but i had hoped i would have been told about the delay. I instead had to ring up and find out for myself. When ringing up though my questions and queries were dealt with very quickly and i got the information i wanted within seconds. Another very useful tool Savrow prodvide is an online chat facility to talk to technicians and ask genral queries etc which i used and found fairly handy.



The Laptop:



Spec:



Processor : P4 3.4GHz with Hyperthreading, 800MHz FSB with 512KB Cache


Memory : 1024MB DDR (2 x 512MB) DDR Memory


Operating System : Microsoft® Windows® XP Home


Hard Drive : Hitachi 60 GB 7200RPM Hard Disk Drive


Optical Storage : DVD-ReWriter Combo


Sound Card : 4 Speaker Sound


Screen : 17" Wide Screen TFT WXGA - 1680 x 1050 16:9 aspect ratio with x glass


Graphics Processing Unit : ATI Radeon 9700 Pro with 256MB of RAM


Internal Wireless LAN Internal Wi-Fi 802.11G


Internal Camera Built-in CCD web camera


Subwoofer Module


7-in-1 Smart Card Reader


Custom Paint : Ferrari Grigio Alloy When it finally arrived it was in a nice looking black savrow box in good condition. Inside was very well padded and included with the laptop was a Savrow restore disk and all drivers needed and an AC adapter.


What first struck me was the amazing paint job. I chose ferrari grigio alloy as it looks great on a ferrari 360 which i love. It's absolutely stunning, the photos below really dont give you the full affect of seeing it for real, amazing! The case is plastic but is very sturdy and it feels well built and it helps reduce the weight. The black savrow badge and brushed alluminuim effect parts on the front finish it off very nicely. Inside the keyboard is standard layout with the mouse pad/buttons slightly offset from the middle so it is inline with the main keyboard. The keyboard itself feels a lot more effcient after having use a regular desktop keyboard for ages. The keys are nicely sprung - not too hard and definately not spongy. There are 4 buttons above the keyboard which illimunate in a tasty neon blue when its on. One of these is the power button, the other 3 are customisable but are set up for hotlinks to e-mail, internet explorer and windows media player. 4 more neon green status lights along the left from the others display handy information - HD activity, and num lock/caps lock/scroll lock status'. Above these on the lid are 3 more status lights which indicate power/standby, battery levels and e-mail. These can be also viewed when the lid is shut which is a nice feature.



Ports around the edge are: Mini IEEE 1394, S/PDIF Out, Mic in, Headphone/speakers out, Infrared transceiver, 7 in 1 card slot, 3 2.0 USB slots (2 at the back, one at the side), parralel port, DC jack, DVI out, serial/com, s video out, PS/2, ethernet and modem jacks. This is pretty much perfect and covers everything although a firewire port would be nice for my ipod although isnt essential as USB will do.



Integrated into the top of the lid above the screen is a camera which is so tiny i spent quite a while looking for it but only realised where it was when i used it. This is a very good quality camera, at least higher quality and frame rate then any other web cam i,ve ever used. A nice extra



The speakers are to be honest, pretty poor, they distort very easily and the subwoofer cant handle any bass. They would be better off putting in just 2 decent speakers instead of the many **** ones. They work better if u just set the sound output to two speakers and are ok for jst hearing the general windows beeps etc. This isnt a problem for me though as i never use the speakers unless listening to music or playing games and use my bose computer speakers for that.



The screen is very impressive indeed. I was running rome: total war demo and the load up screens were so crystal clear they could've been photos or a poster on the wall. General operation is just as easy as a smaller screened laptop but because of its 17" and the fact its a widescreen, you can display alot more than i'm used too - even from a 17" desktop monitor.



I've yet to run any full games or DVD's but i played demo's of rome total war and full spectrum warriror on desktop resolution (1440 x 900) and all extra graphic options ticked and there was do delays or stuttering at all. Very smooth, i will try later with higher resolution but i reckon it could go quite a bit higher before fps drop unplayably low. I dont think i'd want to play in any higher resolution than 1440 x 900 anyway. Some people think widescreen means games/movies and other applications etc will look stretched. This is not the case at all and it just gives you a sense of spaciousness and more room. Everything looks exactly the same on a regualar monitor though.



These are the benchmarks that come with the laptop from Savrow's extensive testing they do before shipping your system.



3DMark 2001SE - 12305 3DMarks (Mains)
11118 3DMarks (Battery)


3DMark 2003 - 3418 3DMarks (Mains)
3357 3DMarks (Battery)

3DMark 2005 - 1289 (Mains with norton anti virus and security running in the background)



Very impressive for a laptop i think. I ran the tests myself (Savrow install both on the laptop) after i had installed norton anti virus and security and had them running in the background and they only dropped 3 or 4 marks (from mains) so i would safely assume that savrows figures are true.



Overall i'm exceedingly pleased with the laptop and Savrow's service and would recommend them to anyone whos looking for a highend laptop with more personality and exclusivity than any other manufacturer.



Here's a few pictures, the first 3 my own, and the last 3 i got from savrow before my system came. It looks alot better in the flesh, although the photos IMO still look stunning








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Hope this was helpful to some people and i'll be glad to answer any questions

 

£2500

Its £2300 without the paint but i think savrow do a pre configured, non custom painted model of the same spec for £2000.

You could say its a bit pricey but there wasnt tht much competition for what i wanted to do, the uniqueness and savrow's outstanding customer service as well as the amazing spec won me over though

Katana WX 3.40:

http://www.savrow.com/site/katanaWX.html

 

hey mindgam3, thanks so much for this review, and great job! Do you mind me asking how much you paid for this notebook?