After owning the Sager Batman P750ZM for a year, here is my experience.

Wonderful - with a few issues.

So my screen started flickering and it appears that the display wire may be loose or worn. Lucky I still had 15 days of warranty left, so after explaining the issue they told me it should be covered under the warranty, and they will take it in for repair.
This was caused by what I could only assume to be normal wear and tear, since I lug this guy around religiously every day, 9-5PM for work and back home again, its possible Ive opened and closed my screen above average the past 11 months.

SO I'm taking the time to write about my current issue, document my experience with how Xotic PC handles it, and to talk about the batman itself.
My experience ordering both the P750ZM and the P650SE through xotic PC went well, and although there was a rocky situation the resulted in me having to choose the P650SE as an alternative, they did their best making up for any short comings, so I trust that this repair experience will be fine.

ON TO THE SECOND ISSUE.

the hdmi port sucks.

Is this a known issue with sager? I only ask because I notice the same problem on my wife's computer, both our HDMI ports are asses. Its as if the computer itself and display absolutely ignore the port, it fails to register any indication that its been plugged in 80% of the time, and we have to reattempt about 4 times to get it to register, and even after that, sometimes it flakes out after displaying, but usually once its set and we leave it alone it will stay on.

I realize that the Display port is superior in this case, so Im assuming we would have no issues if we where to use a hybrid male to male DISPLAY/HDMI cord. My issue with the screen has shaked off the dust, and I will probably purchase one of the chords very soon.

Overall, I have had NO other issues from this computer, other than windows 10 restarting on me. I think there may be a safety feature with the CPU temp, or the fact that I was playing Ark Survival Evolved, or both, that caused it to restart, otherwise I blame it on windows 10.


I loved being able to play devils advocate in discussions, and then whip out the batman and nonchalantly showing the specs, watching peoples faces as they slowly realized my "Laptop" is better than their start up build!

But in the end, I feel like I may try to get my return on this investment after its repaired, and build my own PC.
Last year I spent 5 months debating what to do because I only had $2000 to buy a tool to make my living, and was traveling all over the country and over seas without a home of my own, so the batman was the PERFECT solution.
Im finally settled down in a place of my own and I have job security, its not major but its definitely not what I would have expected have a year ago.

Knowing everything I know now, and because I live in a stable home environment, I would have probably spent my $2000 on a decent $1500 PC build, and saved for a MacBook Pro exclusively for daily work, and use the PC for big money projects.

I love love love this PC, and its because of its price and how great it is that Im considering cashing in on it now before later to build my first PC, because I think people would still be very interested in the laptop and would pay a reasonable price for it.

 

i can only assume that theres something wonky with ur particular two hdmi ports the few times ive used mine it worked without issues.

Sent from my Huawei Mate 8 NXT-AL10 using Tapatalk

 

Yeah, I let it go because there are so many dam ports all over this computer, I brush it off, but compared to my time being a MAC junkie, I would NEVER stand for faulty ANYTHING so I definitely wanted to highlight it as an issue, because its obviously a problem and there is no excuse for it.

 

And you're sure it's the port(s)? Seems odd it would surface on two separate systems. Glad you're basically happy otherwise, though.

 

Its beginning to sound like a conspiracy. I know for a FACT its not the cords.

Although there are only 4 displays I have ever plugged into it, 2 of them are Visio smart tvs.

I dont recall my crappy office monitor having as much trouble but its definetly taken one or two tries with it, but I dont use it often.
Every time I try to plug into my Visio smart tv its a chore with both our computers, and the different ports on the TV, and its consistant.

So maybe its the smart TV? Still, although I can get it to display eventually, I dont have enough confidence to trust it that I avoid having to use the HDMI port. Ill have to test the display port when I get a cord.

 

Pretty odd. Hard to say what the common denominator is. Circling back to the question in your OP, though: No, it's not a thing with Clevo/Sager systems. We test every port here on an Asus monitor, and so far, we haven't run into any idiosyncrasies with HDMI (or any of the other video out options). Sounds isolated, just not sure what the heck is the causality. If you happen across any clues, let us know.

 

I'm sorry to see that you have been having issues with the system. If you do need assistance at any time, feel free to reach out to me (as well as whoever you have worked with in setting up the RMA). I'll be glad to help out.

Did you mention both the screen and HDMI issue when setting up the repair?

Hopefully, we can get it back to you soon, so you can continue to enjoy it again.

 

They are currently waiting for the RMA, I expect to get it this coming week, and yes, I did highlight the small HDMI issue in the email.

I Assure you that my HDMI port consistently fails to register the display on the first try, but I always get it to work eventually.
It does not show any signs of intermittent signals, so it doesnt appear to be a soldering issue... its just 100% ON or OFF.
If I bump the cord, Its immediately stops displaying and usually I have to re plug the HDMI cord to get it to display again, but there are never any signal/static issues.

Furthermore, (and this is the conspiracy part) the computer and TV or Dispaly need to be in the PERFECT state before attempting connection, even then it will take about 3 plug ins on average to get it to display,
Otherwise, If either the computer or TV are just turning on OR if I have the HDMI plugged in BEFORE they turn on, it NEVER displays. Thus I have to react the same rain dance ritual to guarantee it displays.

There have been times where I tried to plug it in 5 times and it absolutley refuses to display, and the only way I get to to work is to restart the computer.
I have also tried disabling the Nvidia card and re-enabling it and that worked ONCE. I tried that again the other day instead of restarting the computer, and it wouldst display, so I had to enact my primitive ritual once again.

 

For what it's worth, I haven't had any issues with HDMI (or DP, for that matter) with either of my two Clevos and even one of them has an iGPU the other doesn't have an iGPU.

 

A bad joint will do the same thing; it's all or nothing. Plus, if the connection is loose during boot then it will stay 'off' during the remainder of the session as well. I'd dab a little flux on the soldering points and give a quick reflow with an iron.

 

It depends on the pin and what the connection is like.

 

Yes it is. I at first thought it was named a batman to sound cool rofl. I learned later on that its because the edge of the cover of the laptop resembles batmans horns. Sounds cool eh? After learning this i immediately changes by wallpaper to a batman pic to complement it

 

boy uve missed out on the batman theme here check out the ZM and DM owner's lounges

Sent from my Huawei Mate 8 NXT-AL10

 

Do you have anytips to make it look more like a batman? I mean what else can we customize aside from login screen and wallpaper?

 

u could modify the bios splash screen actually, while i was testing beta versions of prema's bios mods for the ZM, he was kind enough to integrate this as my personal bios splash screen:



Sent from my Huawei Mate 8 NXT-AL10

 

Nice! Pretty unique customized set up with that.

 

Holy crap i didnt think of that! I was too busy so i settled for whatever. The prema logo looks cool too but this one takes the cake!

 

I dread to think what the licensing cost of that would be to make it official lol.

But it certainly adds to the batman flavor of it

 

you know, it must have been so worth it, even with Licensing costs, to put Alienware in the 2nd place position back then for "neat/Cool" today, it's different story, performance makes up for how "neat" alienware is, but back then, DELL had not either acquired Alienware or had not complete control over it yet.

 

Im really confused about how the trail or responses ended up here, but I wanted to update the thread.

EDIT: Ah it looks like someone removed or edited their comment, I wish I would have seen it originally so I could have jumped on the bandwagon and talk about my cool batman laptop. They say its the batman because the sagers underhood and 7 heatsink pipes are black, and it looks like something batman would own

Last week I sent out the RMA, and within exactly 3 business days, (today on TUESDAY) I received a update saying it is already shipped out and that it would arrive on thursday.

Im pleased with the return time, although I did not get any response or notes about the problem and (or) how it was fixed. I was slightly curious to know what exactly the cause was and how it was fixed, was it just the cable? the whole screen??

Either way, the update return response was quick (enough to almost make me skeptical, considering there was absolutely no communication regarding my laptop)
and assuming Xotic PC fixed the problem, Id say it was handled very well, Id even go as far to say that this was quicker and less pain free than dealing with apple's genius bar in the past.

Ill make a final update once I have it in my hands on thursday. I trust Xotic PC knows what its doing but I would have preferred to have some 1 on 1 feedback/updates on my computer, such as "it arrived" 'Your problem is covered by warrantee" We fixed it" e.c.t.

 

Generally, when we get updates on RMA's from any manufacturer (not just Sager), they are usually pretty quick ones. It arrived. It is done and shipping. Or more information is needed. Something along those lines. Normally we try to send those updates out as we get them, so I apologize if they weren't sent out.

It might be possible that we could check in to what was fixed specifically with yours. But if it was just a screen or a cable, usually those issues should be pretty quick to diagnose and replace, probably quicker compared to something like a motherboard with failing parts.

But I'm glad to see it was taken care of, and if you need help with anything once it arrives back in your hands, just let us know what we can help with.

 

Thanks for the response.
Im very pleased with my laptop, but after missing it for a week Ive began to falter. I keep drooling over PC partpicker and the builds on Xotic PC realising I can get a desktop that can outperform the laptop for its fair selling price because its still worth a good sum of money.

I would have never thought I would be in a place to house a PC build when I originally got the batman, but here I am now. I cant afford to build a PC and keep the Sager, although in a perfect world I would love to have both and never get rid of the batman. Im considering using the advantage of the screen replacement to replace it with a PC build, but its bittersweet. I feel like smigol arguing with himself.

 

Yeah, I understand that. A lot of people, myself included, go back and forth about desktop and laptop, to go for desktop performance or laptop portability.