Clevo W540EU / W545EU / W550EU

Hi,

I try to gather thoughts here about a product line from clevo which has several benefits but is not really spread among resellers.

link to specs :

CLEVO - Products

Benefits :

- Appears as an ultrabook on Intel ODM list (but is not IMO)

- has a maximum height of 2,5 cms which is quite thin for a Clevo.

- Had mSATA support with

- Full HD screen option

Cons :

- Quite heavy : 2,2 Kg with Battery & optical drive


Anybdy owns it ? found a new reseller ?


The pics on the Clevo Website are not that great here are some others :

 

Here a quick interresting test on W540EU , with detailed pics

Test Clevo W540EU - Chip.pl

 

That's a very interesting model. I was researching it online but was unable to find a release date for it or how long it's been up on the clevo site. It might just be something on the way not quite released yet. Looks pretty similar to the Sager 2240 though (Clevo W240EUQ)

 

We'll have them pretty soon. It'll be great to have a thin and light notebook to take around that doesn't require a huge power brick!

 

Hi it's a pretty different model although you're right that on the leyboard side it seems to be similar. the W240EUQ is alike the W240AEU which is used for system76 lemu4 :

https://www.system76.com/laptops/model/lemu4

that gives a laptop really thick (and heavy but it's still a problem with other models)

Here's another picture of the W540EU that show that it would be a really different case and IMO the very first Clevo that could compete with ultraportable.


the Main problem is that it's still heavu (2,2 kg even more with the big battery)

 

+1

Very nice, seems quite interesting actually

 

Good news .

I receive my First W540EU Tomorrow and then will do a review next Week.

 

Awesome to hear! I'll personally be looking forward to the review thanks in advance

 

Some Pics right After the unboxing :

https://plus.google.com/photos/114771523807553459157/albums/5805204836471032913

I will do real Pics in few days.

So far it's just the best CLEVO I've ever had . it reminds me the excelent S301 few years ago that was light and Nice.


So far everything worked out of the box with Ubuntu 12.04. Even with a Celeron B830 and a classic hard drive , it's super fast.

It's not noisy as a lot of Clevo.

It's quite thin, not an ultrabook but just as thin as any should be !

The screen is non glare, but I don't feel too bad about it for now ( all my clevo are glare )

the optical drive is a 9,5 it seems , So i won't put my 12,5 mm BluRay drive for now

 

Wow very good to hear. Didn't expect it to be THAT thin, thanks for the pictures so far, I'll be waiting

 

Looks pretty solid! Congrats on the new system

 

Any updates to your W550EU laptop??

Any new photos to show??

Also how heavy is it.. the screen quality?? And does it get hot??

I am interested in purchasing this but there are no reviews on it.

Thanks.

 

Hi John,

I've been using it a Bit this week end.

One new pic :



It's not getting really hot and the fan is working great even under 15 minutes full load for video encoding, really better than any clevo i've seen for now.

the screen is non Glare but is OK, i'm gonna check with Clevo if a Glare screen 14 inches is possible on this model.

 

Thanks for the reply.

The laptop looks quite thin compared to my HP laptop. Is it heavy or is it easily moveable??

Seems like a great laptop for me and has everything i need in a laptop.

Also, how would you rate the battery life?? Do you get around 4 hours or more??

Thanks.

 

Well 2,15 Kg with the 48wh battery , is really nice IMO.

i'm using only Ubuntu 12.04 with no tweaking and can get more than 4 hours with low brightness. ( With a 35W celeron B830 and 2G of ram )

With a bit of tweaking I'm sure I can get to 5 hours.

 

Wow that is quite light and by putting in an SSD can become even lighter. My current HP laptop is almost 3KG!!

4 hours is brilliant too. Apparently there is also a larger 62WH battery available which could also achieve even higher battery life.

 

I 've been updating the pictures ( sorry they are a bit horrible with my nexus one )

https://plus.google.com/photos/114771523807553459157/albums/5805204836471032913

I've compared with my old 2007 white Macbook which feels really heavy now !







I've put a mSATA 64 Go SSD and it's working fine, I will also try a 3G PCIe modem soon. Too bad I have to choose two of the Wifi/mSata/3G but it's still better than most of te laptops I think

 

Thanks for the updated pictures. I like how it has access to fan when u open it up.

In my HP laptop you can't access the fan to clean it.

I will also add an mSATA to use as the boot drive and then add a normal hdd (500gb or 750gb) for storage.

How fast is the laptop with the mSATA?? Does it load quickly from a cold start??

Also how does the keyboard feel?? Large enough to type in easily?? My current HP laptop doesn't have a numeric keypad so this Clevo one would be a bonus

 

@John if you need a Keypad you need the W550EU CLEVO - Products

Which is the same with a 15 inches screen and thus a big bigger and 200 grams heavier

I'm a bit sad with my mSata SSD (crucial m4 64G) , ubuntu still needs itselfs 15 seconds to load and the full Bios is almost 10 seconds.
( will post a video )

I have to see if I can force an EFI installation because it seems to be supported

 

Thanks for your thoughts. Im going to need a few more from you, if thats ok

I am thinking about buying a laptop with the same case as the Clevo W540EU. But i like quality feel i my laptop. So therefore a few q's.

How does the keyboard feel? Is there any flex when you press in the middle?
Is it metal lid? And also is it metal on the wrist rest and behhind the keys?
How does the trackpad feel?
And lastly. Is it flexing when you press the lid and the bottom plate?

That is all

 

Hi,

All is plastic simili Metal . it has nothing to do with metal laptop like Asus does.

I find the keyboard not rough enough so somtimes I miss some letters because the leys was not pressed ( not easy to explain )

the trackpad is OK.

It's not flexing at all , I think it's well built but you cannot really compare with slim ultrabook like Asus Zenbooks


I would definitly try to add a slotIn dvd

 

Sorry , I did not have the time for a complete review. Maybe the end of the Week ( Pretty busy selling ubuntu Notebooks actually )

 

Hi everyone, did someone try to install OS X on these laptops ?

 

What do you use the W540eu for?
I need a laptop for Adobe purposes but I thinking the standard resolution might not be high. Still I´d be also using the laptop for office purposes so I´m guessing the W550eu´s resolution is to high.

Also, is the mSATA port SATA2 or SATA3?

 

I see the PCH chip (the HM77 is it?) has no cooler despite having space for one and holes drilled in the appropriate places, just wondered what sort of temperature it gets upto?

- also interesting, the fan is smaller than the space left for it in the chassis design? - all this points to a bigger more powerful model (45w chip) in the line-up with maybe a PCH cooler that makes use of the threaded holes and bigger cpu cooler :thumbsup: ---- Unless this chassis is used in a older model to ??

- I could make you a cooler free of charge if you can get me the measurements?

 

How is the IPS screen on the W550??

Is it accurate, how much of the sRGB spectrum does it cover?

 

I'll tell you when mine gets here which could be a while. I can't test accuracy as I don't have professional tools but I can test gamut against my 40% of Adobe TN panel and 72% of Adobe IPS.

 

Very interested in this as well ... Any news?

 

My supplier is glacial, so no 6 working days and they haven't started production yet

 

Mostly everyone gets the units at the same time, some places just take orders as soon as they get details rather than when they get units.

 

Ah fair point, though they are being similarly slow with my P370EM so it could at least partly be a case of you get what you pay for, and these guys were the cheapest

 

Well we are not allowed to comment on the quality of other resellers or make recommendations but in this case it is likely due to different reasons.

 

Yeah that's fine, don't worry about it. I've just spotted someone's unboxing of the W550EU from my supplier so they have at least had one in the past, good sign. I guess I'll throw more money at them for a faster build and hope it works out.

Edit: emailed support, it was a temporary stock shortage delaying orders, perfectly normal thing. I guess I should stop complaining and just wait

 

My W550EU is due to arrive tomorrow however I'm busy for most of the day, so I'll be writing up a review here over the next few days. If you poke me with specific questions I'll answer those more quickly and add them to the review.

 

Make sure to include plenty of pictures, walls of text tend to scare people away.

 

I would be most curious about the screen quality and overall size impression!

 

I'm fighting delivery delays atm, my laptop is apparently all packed up and ready to ship next day but no-one's got around to slapping a sticker on it and giving it to a courier yet. It's a case of 'any day now'. Sorry to put you guys on hold.

 

That's strange, usually it's good to get stock out the door when it's ready to go as it takes up space and keeps the customer waiting.

 

Yeah idk what's going on, something odd like maybe someone didn't notify the packing staff when I changed my order from Saturday delivery to Next Day (on Monday). Ah well.

*edit* shipped for Monday arrival now

 

W550EU has arrived, preliminary thoughts:

LCD looks to be 72% aRGB gamut, but it's certainly high quality, makes the 72% TN in my P370EM look to be very brown. There's some flex here and there with the lid being of particular note, that bows in with a little pressure up to about 5mm. Not sure if that's good or bad as it doesn't look good but it means the lid should survive a dent quite nicely, though it does mean a few millimetres could have been shaved off the machine making it a true ultrabook (it's just a tiny bit too thick to be classed as such). Keyboard is a bit odd as it activates reliably but the travel is so shallow that it feels odd, perfectly usable of course. I tried running wPrime to test temperatures, hit 75 degrees (I have the 3632QM in this machine) and the fan span up to a noticeable level, most of the time it's silent though. Wondering how I can remove the optical drive, it's just added weight that I don't want but there aren't any obvious screws in the drive bay or main bay.

I'm borrowing a mate's DSLR today to take some nice shots, got some dell 24" IPS displays on hand to compare against.

 

Here, have a quick video review of the Clevo W550EU, apologies for the cuss word that appears on screen while I'm trying to find an image to demonstrate the LCD panel's quality, random wallpapers from 4chan will surprise you :/ Clevo W550EU video review

 

Thanks for the info. It doesn't look as if it suffers from the orangy reds problem (orangegate) as i.e. the Vaio S15, am I correct? Could you post your LCD model number please, maybe I can find some more information about it that way. Also, can you confirm that the hard drive and mSata operate as SATA 3?

I really like this laptop's specs, it looks allright and I can live with the plastic housing but the lack of a backlit keyboard still kind of holds me back. If only there was a comparable machine with a backlit keyboard ...

 

Apologies for the late reply, totally slipped my mind. The LCD doesn't appear to suffer from any unnatural colouration (i.e. not too cold or warm) nor does it appear to display colours incorrectly, the panel is in my opinion top notch. Not sure how I'd go about finding the model number unfortunately, couldn't grab it through Speccy so I'm guessing there's a more specialised tool.

The 2.5" bay definitely operates at SATA 3 speeds, I don't have the kit to test mSATA port I'm afraid but I'll test the optical drive bay once I buy a caddy (who needs optical these days). Oh and the comparable machine you're talking about, it's unfortunately a 15" MBP (Retina if you want a good resolution) and that costs twice as much even for me with student discounts :/

 

IIRC I think the mSATA takes the 2nd Gen3, but I could be wrong.

 

planning to buy one too mainly for the ips screen and the fact that I can get it with basic hardware.
I need a notebook with a good display to bring with me to clients and show graphic work but nothing powerful since I work on a good desktop.

Thanks CampGareth for the video review (I left a comment on youtube too).

If anyone can get more info on the ips panel used or can perform more professional tests on it I'ld like to know.
Unfortunatly not all ips panels out there are good.

 

Aha, so HW Info 32 reports the LCD is an LG Philips LGD037E, looks like this panel has been used in a few other laptops like the HP Envy 15 where it reportedly had colour accuracy issues.

 

that's bad and good news. Good news since we finally identified the panel (and by we I mean you. Thank you very much). Bad news about the known issues it has on hp.

If I'm not of too much trouble could you post a screenshot of your monitor displaying a solid red and a solid orange image to see how it actually performs on the Clevo?

 

Does anyone know if these laptops can cope with 3630qm's heat output? My brother is looking for something that will run a full fat i7 cpu, whilst being portable. Ideally he needs it to be able to run at a solid 3ghz on all 4 cores whilst doing cpu intensive work.

 

The right model-name for the LCD-panel is: LG LP156WF4-SLB5

 

That screen is correct, and we will also have these on sale here within the week our first shipment should be arriving today... hopefully (As long as the US Govt does their job with decent speed)