Tongfang Models 2021

I read some bad experiences on PCS on reddit, but very good if you have a different experience!

Laptopparts4less is a one man show with an outdated website, but Frits offers a good service (and quickly replies) with up to three years pick up and return warranty. When I ordered my two previous laptops their warranty covered dead and bright pixels so you should ask.

Which laws do they break?

 

I believe that in the EU they are not allowed to force the user to pay for their banking fee (credit card fee).
I asked about the dead pixel and He said that they will test it and ship it out without any dead pixels however he said nothing about "what happens if I get a dead or stuck pixel a few minutes after turning it on?"

 

Good to know. I never paid by credit card. Regarding seeing a dead pixel after your purchase: you are fully in your right to send the laptop back in any case, regardless of warranty.

 

Upon closely looking at some disassembly videos of the intel and Amd variants of the Prometheus, I can see that the intel variant has a port for a 2.5 sata drive that is missing on the Amd model.
Also, the heatpipes, WiFi, and other chips are all laid out differently.

very interesting
See the pics posted

 

Afaik paypal is the way to go and reviews are pretty gold for them

 

Yeh I saw this as well. Fortunately for me, I'd take the bigger battery any day, as I don't want to stick a SATA drive in there (and I want to go AMD). But it is interesting. Like, if anything, I'd have figured the Intel variant would have the bigger battery.

 

I don't know where you are from, but currently (and in the past, when we were still part of the EU), panels came under the class system, and most manufacturers and OEM/ODM used Class 2 panels, which had a certain amount of different kinds of dead pixels before they were obliged to accept the device back.

No idea what the situation is where you are (or, honestly, the situation in the UK anymore), but I thought I'd just add what I knew to the discussion.

 

I'm doubtful there are too many that would prefer the smaller battery versus a third drive spot but whatever; choice is good. I'm personally fine with the two M.2 drives and I never run the big dog unplugged; got another lappie for that so no stick in the fire going either direction for me. To be honest if battery was a large concern I would have bought something else entirely; even the bigger battery is a long way from as much battery as you can get.

 

I meant that you can use the legal EU '14 days cooling off period' to return your device. The reseller could only argue that it's 'made to order' and hence refuse to take it back if you asked for upgrades that are not standard options.

 

Roger, that makes sense.

 

Clevo resellers such as SKIKK even state it explicitly: https://help.skikk.eu/en/articles/13696-can-i-return-the-product-if-i-do-not-like-it

 

No one received their Tongfang yet?

 

Not I.

 

New laptop=uhuh. Maybe next week...

 

Delivery tomorrow!

 

Same here, pc specialist max-17 equivalent with 3070 and amd 5900hx coming in tomorrow. Hopefully better than the previous model of which i had to return two. Kfc.

 

Congrats! Do give your impressions when you get a moment!

 

I got my last Friday, some pics here:

https://imgur.com/a/U4kA4ek

Happy so far, I might do a video if there is demand

 

Here we go,

• Screen: Gorgeous
• Chassis /build: Good
• Trackpad: a bit of unwelcome rattle but much better than the previous gen
• Sound: what can you expect..
• Performance: brutal as expected
• Fan noise: really good, low pitch, great with customization, no strange behavior
• Control center: Pure bliss

Now the but:

• GPU fan dead on arrival, works after reconnecting to the board. Do they have QA at all?
• Really strange noise instantly and clearly audible if dGPU is even under minimal load, gone immediately if tabbed out or application is closed. Coil whine or whatever, really obnoxious. I will try if its maybe the SSD or such vibrating and can be fixed, if not return to sender, absolutely unacceptable. Do they have no QA at all?

Bottom line, probably another - possibly last - tongfang / PC Specialist disappointment for me.

 

Don't they do a burn in? Whatever the case that's a bummer; sorry man.

 

There is demand :-D

 

My first impressions.

• Extremely thin and light compared to my p775tm of course, but also in its 'genre' it's quite svelte.
• Very sleek, classy, and professional look
• No coil whine
• Fans operate silently when doing just light activity (browsing, copying files, watching videos)
• Control center has LOTS of tuning options, mine comes with the option to disable Optimus
• Only negative thing so far are the buttons of the track pad which are more stiff compared to my previous two laptops, but maybe that's just something I have to get used to
• Gorgeous screen indeed, didn't notice dead/bright pixels or backlight bleeding (yet)
• Speakers lack bass and sound tinny, as expected, but they don't suffer from any distortion. Maybe with some APO tweaking they can be improved. Also I use external speakers...

Hopefully I'll find time today to download some games and 3dmark and do some benches.

 

You're using this mobile style where you'll actually use the trackpad or is that just an observation, a you've seen better type of thing? I don't really have a horse in the race as I almost never use the trackpad but it is interesting that several of the OEMs were touting it and you're not the first person I've read is unimpressed by it.

 

When I was trying the Maingear Vector 2, both units I purchased (returned one due to dead pixels) had uneven, rattling trackpads. I'd say this was one area where Tongfang cut corners to hit a price point. I can't really blame them as they probably assumed most people who buy these laptops are gamers who would be using an external mouse anyway.

 

When I game I use a mouse obvs, but I also move my laptop a lot around the house

 

I move mine around but the mouse always goes with it. My lappy is supposed to arrive on Friday but it'll likely be Monday before I can pick it up from my service.

 

I did a quick first non-optimized benchmark yesterday with Timespy. Settings:
- Optimus on
- CPU allcore @4.3ghz with Throttlestop
- a minor -50mV undervolt with Throttlestop, will up it to around -100mV later
- didn't undervolt the GPU, will do so with Afterburner later
- Used standard Overboost profile with maximum dynamic boost
- Used fan boost

Result was a bit disappointing, just below 10k, while you can get 11k with my configuration (10875H + RTX3070)
CPU temps were very good with 76°C max, thanks to LM and undervolt
GPU temps were disappointing, up to 82°C (no LM and no undervolt, yet)

I'll retry later with Optimus disabled, a larger CPU undervolt and a GPU undervolt. Also lowering the CPU TGP could actually give more headroom to the GPU so I'll try that out as well.

However, in the end, my concern is getting good fps in games rather than high bench scores. I'll test Cyberpunk, Deus Ex MD and Witcher 3 at 1440p to see whether I'll comfortably get 60fps with max eye candy. That's the ultimate test for me.

 

Gonna be a tough go getting 60 in Cyberpunk with all the bells and whistles enabled although the numbers others are posting imply a good experience. The other two should be cake. I've been mostly tracking Prometheus numbers and those guys are often hitting in the mid 10s with 5900s and 3080s out of the box. A few have made it to 13 but peaks for more average users are in the mid 12s, those that do just cursory fiddling seem to be hitting right around 12ish. Doesn't sound to me like you're too far out considering those guys can boost both the GPU and CPU simultaneously.

 

Well, lets take stock: My laptop will be there tomorrow. I'm on a business trip that serves no purpose whatsoever so I won't be there to get it. Yeah... It all makes sense.

 

Hah, I feel your pain. Didn't get a real chance to play with mine either. Work, family... take priority.

 

Thanks for the demand, here is my video. May take a while for the 4K option to finish processing, enjoy. Everyone.

PCSpecialist Ionico 15 (2021) Laptop / Elektronic MAX-15 (2021) / TongFang GM5ZG7Y / Ryzen 9 5900HX

 

Well done!

 

Mine is hot! Too hot.

The cpu in Overboost reaches up to 90°C, which is not that abnormal. With some Throttlestop and TGP tweaking I get it to 75°C while performance remains acceptable.

The gpu on the other hand reaches 85°C with full boost (and full fans). This is unacceptable. Even when undervolting in Afterburner and capping frames to 60fps it reaches 80°C in older games such as Deus Ex Mankind Divided. In Cyberpunk my clock drops from 1950mhz to 1550mhz, presumably due to thermal throttling. Bad paste job or normal for thin and light?

 

AMD verison is even hotter, and I don't think there is any way to undervolt it. sad face!

 

Yeah I expected the cpu to run hot, not the gpu. It's too hot compared to other users' experiences I think.

 

Does seem comparatively high; particularly when frame-capped on older content. Does it soak over time or do you shoot right up there?

 

It starts already quite high and then soaks some more.

 

Certainly sounds like the paste job may be suspect. I'd be thinking about a return; I believe you folks overseas can do that?

 

Yes, doubting whether I just will do it myself and use LM on the gpu tbh

 

This is the MAX-17 correct? I had one of the older models with the 2080S and 10875H inside. The machine honestly ran a bit warm overall. Hitting the low 80s in game was not uncommon with max fans and laptop cooler. And that was with a 1080 144hz screen. So seeing the QHD 165hz panels it would make sense for the GPU to run warmer since the higher in resolution you go the more GPU dependent it gets. It was very common for mine to hit 90°C on the CPU in certain games. The cooling on the MAX-17 is just a bit underwhelming sadly.

I repasted mine myself with MX-4 over their stock thermal compound. And it is easy to do. So give that a shot first and see if that helps. But, based on hands on experience with the previous model your machine isn't running much warmer than mine did. That's just the nature of thin and lights.

 

How many watts is the GPU pulling when throttled? If the thicker models can (just) pull 150w consistently, it's not a surprise that the thinner ones will begin throttling at those kind of loads.

I've got to say, I've been incredibly happy with mine (mech/neo/GM5ZG7W). Most non-game workloads (including 3d modelling) the fans can be off entirely, and anything less than 50% fans you barely notice. Touchpad is great, screen is great, battery realistically lasts 4-5h of use.
In game or rendering fans ramp up, but I've yet to see any thermal throttling of any kind in real use, and only CPU throttles in benchmarks.
If you care about noise you can cap framerate down/use whisper mode it's literally silent and yet still capable.

Personally I wouldn't try to save the few extra mm thickness with the thinner models, it's already "thin& light" enough as is.

 

Yes it's the Max 17. Maybe I'm blinded by users on reddit claiming gpu temps of max 75°C in overboost/turbo mode. Maybe I'm not easy satisfied. But I find up to 80°C acceptable and anything above too hot, especially with max fans. Maybe a simple re-screwing and tightening the heatsink will solve the issue. I'll see in the coming weeks.

 

The MAX-17 is a thin-and-light 17.3” model. Basically the MAG-17 that never came. It has worse cooling than the Mech and Prometheus series.

 

Yes. I know this. In my case the surprise is not that it runs hot, but that it runs hotter than other, identitical configurations.

 

Reddit is for sure anecdotal but there are a lot of "Ordinary Joe's" putting up numbers and I don't see anyone on the Eluk board that high. Almost all the early ones got the full on treatment though as they offered it free to make up for the delay; not sure if that wouldn't change without the extra love.

 

Personally I would take Reddit feedback with a grain of salt. I’m a moderator on a fairly large laptop Discord and subreddit, and we’ve seen a lot of TongFang units come through, mostly from Eluktronics. The temps you’re observing aren’t out of the ordinary from what we’ve seen for the thin-and-lights, even with Eluk’s LM application. One of the things that we see often is that Eluk’s power limits are sky high compared to the same unit from other resellers, clearly beyond the ability of the chassis to cool. They tend to push performance at the expense of thermals and noise, meaning their units tend to just sit at thermal throttle under sustained full load.

Some other things we’ve seen of the TongFangs are the chassis becoming scalding hot under load at the top near the power button, and heat from the metal chassis causing battery cells to bulge over time, but removing the battery and running the laptop just on AC power throttles performance.

 

@yrekabakery context:. https://www.reddit.com/r/eluktronic...emps/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

 

Tongfang must have had a hand in designing Razer laptops since the Blade suffers from identical problems relating to where temperatures are the highest and battery bulge. Only partially kidding. The thermal and battery stuff is absolutely true.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

On the CPU unless I was benchmarking I was always getting some toasty temps. I do remember running the laptop in Performance instead of Turbo ((I think that's names of the profiles)) that I got much tamer temps all around. But, I noticed pretty consistent boost clocks. So I felt I was atleast getting the full power of the machine. I'm honestly tempted to get one of the newer ones. Because atleast for me it was one of my favorite laptops. Mine just had some terrible keyboard light uniformity. And at the price I paid for it I wasn't ready to except that.

 

It's a beautiful machine, no doubt.