[Sager NP8255-S] Just got this in! Mini review

Hey everyone! I just got this laptop with the following specs:

i7 4700QM
Nvidia 780M
Plextor M5M 256gb SSD
1TB 5400RPM Drive
Killer 1303
1080p 95% Color gamut
Bluray Burner
16 GB Ram
Windows 8 Pro

This is my first Sager notebook, I'm coming from a previous generation Dell XPS laptop. A few comparative notes:

• The build quality on the Sager feels solid, better than my XPS
• The screen is beautiful for an FHD screen, however the hinges do feel flimsy (like my XPS)
• The touch pad for the mouse seems less accurate than the XPS, but it may be because I'm not used to it yet.
• It's quite heavy, but not much more bulky than my XPS, so still easy to move around.
• Like most laptops, don't expect much from the built in speakers
• The keyboard seems to curve up slightly near the "TY6" buttons, this may be isolated to only my system, but doesn't bother me much
• The 780M so far has handled any game I have thrown at it, the system absolutely flies
• Windows 8 was a breeze to install, but I had never used it before, so it took some getting used to, and I'm still getting used to it. Actually, I hate it.
• Without gaming, this laptop will last about 4 hours on battery (rough estimate, I was able to watch 2 movies and still had ~30% left)
• The wireless so far has dropped on me twice in a 7 hour period, but has not dropped since (been 3 days). I'm hoping they were isolated cases.

Overall, I'm very happy with my purchase, and am glad I went with the system I did. I purchased through Josh at XoticPC, and he was a great help throughout the whole process.

I'm hoping to get some newer games to throw at this system soon, everything in my steam list was handled effortlessly on max settings. Anyway, thanks for reading, let me know if you have any questions!

 

Have you tried tweaking the touchpad settings? I have heard it is not the best, not sure how much of an issue it is or if it is fixable.

Why did you pick Windows 8 Pro over just Windows 8? The start button can be fixed, is that what you hate about 8? Soon you can upgrade to 8.1, which gives you the start button and the option to go straight to the desktop.

Do you find the 1TB 5400 drive to be dog slow and wish you had gotten the 750GB 7200?

 

I have not tried tweaking any of the settings yet, except for turning off the one finger swipes, which were annoying as hell. I'm hoping once there's a layer of skin oil on the touchpad, it's less jumpy and more accurate to my slight movements. I will try tweaking in a week or 2 if I'm not satisfied.

I picked Pro over the regular because the price difference for the upgrade between the two was low enough where I thought "might as well get the pro"

I picked the 1TB drive because I needed the extra 250gb for my files. The speed is fine for playing 1080p media. I will try loading up some of my 1440p Gopro videos on it to see how it handles those, but it should be fine. All of my games so far have been installed on my SSD. I will only have a few games installed at a time (Dota 2, Civ 5 are the permanent games, and anything else I will install and delete as needed)

The case has room for 2 2.5" hard drives, and 2 mSATA, so I actually have a spare 750gb 7200rpm that I will be putting in soon for game installations, once the SSD starts to get low on space. If I find a deal on another Plextor M5M, I'll probably get that as well, and run a raid 0 for added space.

This was one thing I love about this Sager, plenty of room for expansion.

 

Congrats on the purchase ! Can you let us know what kind of temps you are getting on the 780m? Specifically when the gpu is under full load , ie 99% load and what games you were playing along with what your room temps are. Thanks!

 

Don't have any game info, but running Furmark, I got 2020 points at 74 C, 33FPS on the 1080 preset. My room temp is about 72F. I played Crysis 2, everything maxed for about 2 hours in 72C temp room, and didn't notice any major overheating, I'll take a look at the temps next time I play a game for a longer period.

 

Thanks, actually can you try running 3dmark 11, the full benchmark including the demo and report back with temps? Also did you request XoticPc to apply the ic diamond 7 or you stuck with stock paste?

 

Glad to hear you're liking it, i'll let Josh know you had nice things to say about him :thumbsup:

For Windows 8, if you're hating it you can install Classic Shell - Start menu and other Windows enhancements which gives you boot to desktop and the start button back.

 

I'll download it and report back tomorrow with the results (on a very slow connection right now)

This came with the IC Diamond 7 I believe.

 

The special edition should come with IC Diamond thermal paste.

Thanks for the feedback. I asked because this model is the exact one I am thinking of ordering. So obviously I think you made a great choice.

I wonder if you can take the rubber coating off the trackpad to smooth it out?

 

Yup all S models have IC Diamond by default.

 

The track pad after a few days of use has been feeling better, so I will continue to use it to see how it improves, or how quickly I adapt to using it.

I ran a 3dmark 11 Performance preset, using default fan settings in a 72F room, and here are my results:

3DMark Score P7713
Graphics Score 7873
Physics Score 7856
Combined Score 6545
3DMark Score 7713.0
Graphics Score 7873.0
Physics Score 7856.0
Combined Score 6545.0
Graphics Test 137.4
Graphics Test 236.3
Graphics Test 348.4
Graphics Test 423.9
Physics Test 24.9
Combined Test 30.4

Some things I noted:
Under my graphics card, 3dmark 11 correctly identified it as a 780M, but the clock it listed is 324 Mhz, and its ram as 3GB, when in reality it has 4GB. Not sure if this affected results in any way.

Also, my graphics temp about 15 sec after the test were 49C.

 

It ran at 849 Mhz? A test I saw in stock made 8040 or so. But thats one off the highest i see hehe. I just want to have the satisfaction of breaking 8k in stock, which can probably done with a good driver version and if it doesnt throtle.
Anyway, let us know if u get higher temps, 74C is really impressive. When mine arrive I will be happy if stays at low 80's

 

I just ordered the 8250-s but called a p152sm-s from pro-star where I ordered and I can't wait to get it. Your review made me want it more
Thank for the review! Mine has the 8970 and I can't wait to see how it stacks up to your 780m.

 

Not really well I must say, its a 7970m with a 50MHz OC

 

The 8970M is better than a 770M, but no match for a 780M. It is a good deal though in price per performance.

 

It looks like on the Xotic-PC page for the NP8255-S, you can get 3 HDD if you exchange the ODD for a caddy. Is this true. Or just an error?

 

There is only one regular hard drive bay, so you can do that, one in the Optical bay, but then can do 2 mSATA drives. There is also a second hard drive bay which will fit up to a 7mm drive which is typically a SSD size.

 

I know seagate released their new 7mm mechanical drives so you can get them but they wont be huge capacity.

 

So that makes a total of five hard drives if you include SSD. That is once reason I really like this model. I should not run out of space...

BTW, Toshiba also has 7mm drives http://www.tomshardware.com/news/toshiba-mq01acf-2.5-inch-7278-rpm-500gb,23933.html

 

It does make it a very versatile storage platform for the size yes.

 

Wow. That's a pretty amazing unit.

I think this baby would look nice in that slot: http://www.storagereview.com/wd_blue_slim_1tb_hdd_review

Do the 2 slots allow Raid 0, or is it just the mSATA's?

 

Yeah I know it isn't as good but I didn't say it was, I just said I can't wait to see how of compares in a similar machine. I bought the 8970 as most my games I play are not the most intensive. But for 100 more than a 770 well worth the upgrade.

 

Yes you can do RAID 0 on the hard drive bays but you would get faster speeds with even just a single mSATA drive then you will with 2x HDD.

 

A couple of updates:

- I have gotten used to using the touch pad, but still prefer my previous gen XPS more. It's not a big issue for me however, since I also use a wired mouse.
- The headphone jack has a very slight hiss to it, more than what my XPS had. However, this also isn't a big issue since I use an external DAC.
- There's some issue with the drivers, the computer isn't able to go into Sleep mode when I close the lid. I'll probably do a reformat when Windows 8.1 is officially released.

Overall, I'm happy with my purchase. A similarly configured Alienware or MSI would add atleast $350 to the price, which I wasn't willing to do. Thanks again to Josh for helping me out, I started off looking at a $900 Lenovo, and slowly talked myself into this bad boy, which I'm hoping will last me at least 4 years.

Quick question, if anyone reading this may know, what's the function shortcut to have the fans fixed on full speed?

 

Oh and one suggestion to Clevo... if they move the touchpad to the left by a little bit, I wouldn't be hitting it so much with my right palm, and having my cursor jump around while typing.

So far I've put the type detection to .8 sec lag time before enabling the touchpad again, I may need to increase it more.

 

The lenovo is a nice machine but one focused primarily on gaming will always give a nicer experience.