Buy an NP8651-S now or wait?

Hi!

So I'm in the market for a new laptop, my MacBook Pro of six years decided to die on me and I'm not gonna plug anymore money into it. I've been researching various brands of gaming laptops for a couple weeks, and it's tough!

That being said, I narrowed it down to some MSI models, the new Gigabyte P55W-BS1, or the Sager NP8651-S. I'm looking for decent performance, but I want a good cooling system as well, which steered me towards Sager over the Gigabyte especially. Here's my main question. I need this for sure by the end of August, as I resume grad school and I'll need it at that point. Should I grab a NP8651-S now, or wait and see if Sager takes on the new Intel processor? (And will that improve performance at all?)

I'm also looking at buying it at xoticpc, and I'm not sure on some extras. I'm pretty sure I want to upgrade the screen to the IPS because I heard the stock screen is a bit poor. Is an IPS good for gaming over a TN screen?

http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np8651s-clevo-p650se-p-8223.html

Thanks!!

 

Hardly.

The reverse; TN has much better response time.

These are the stock options. Clevo's usually pretty selective about the screens they put in, unfortunately their choice for the TNs are indeed rather poor for this model. That being said, Xotic's IPS option is only slightly better and the Samsung 4K they offer is the worst of the three 4k panels (cheapest, though).

If you want a good panel (~100% sRGB or better);

• 4K IPS (eDP cable); Sharp LQ156D1JX01 (glossy) or LQ156D1JW04 (matte)
• FHD TN (LVDS cable); AUO B156HW01 V4 (matte)

Eurocom does carry these standard (although some are incorrectly listed as 17.3" ...), though you might ask Xotic specifically for these, who knows ... The Sharp 4k options do carry a hefty premium. The FHD AUO is a TN, so viewing angles aren't as good as the IPS options (*). Then again; it's much cheaper, has much better gamut (colours) and response time is 3-4x faster. It also trumps the MBPs by a wide margin, Retinas included. Clevo has used that panel before, but it's been discontinued, so supply was probably too limited to warrant listing (first production 2009 ...). Could buy panel (only guaranteed V4 on ebay), install yourself or ship to Xotic and ask them to do so.

Spoiler: (*) viewing angles

(*) The IPS are listed as 88°, and the V4's is 70°. Mind that it's the abysmal 45° varieties that people notice and complain about; you won't even know it's 70° or 88° unless you specifically look for that difference. Btw, the stock TNs for the P650SE are 45°, so ... whatever you do, do try to avoid those.

 

While its nice to have the latest greatest CPU, there hasnt been much of a performance difference between the 4th and 5th gen. And even then you'd probably only notice it in very CPU intensive applications.

IPS screens are better if you want the best color accuracy and viewing angles but TN are better for gaming for reasons t456 mentioned.
However IPS are not horrible for gaming. I game on IPS screens and don't have any complaints.

 

Realistically, I'm not really too picky about how a screen looks. Would that LG IPS that xoticpc offers be a good upgrade regardless? I'm not sure that they'd have other options available...

 

If you're going to be gaming and not super picky about picture quality the TN will be a good choice.

 

' Not super picky' is not the right description if the TN is the AUO B156HTN03.6; there's the semblance of an image, but that's the best you can say about it. Looks like an old LVDS production line (or even NOS), changed to eDP ... The Chi Mei TN isn't that bad, just a mediocre panel. Also, if you do get tired of it, it's pretty simple and cheap to change to the V4. Both are considerably worse than the 2009 17" MBP (if that was indeed your old laptop). The IPS is similar to the Chi Mei, so: 1. Chi Mei TN, 2. LG IPS, 3. AUO TN.