M570TU after a month of ownership- a full review

I have owned a M570TU for a little more than a month now. While I have little or no need to come here and check up on things, on occasion I noticed some people asking questions or writing small reviews about the Clevo M570TU. I thought that after over a month of ownership I should do a little write up about what clevo has to offer. With this, please enjoy my review. I am as unbiased in my review as I can be, but am a very anal person and like things to be particular. Even though I might find plenty of things that bother me, it may be different for other people out there. Its just my job to let them know exactly what to expect from a Clevo M570TU.

I hope you enjoy.

NOTE: If you have an M570TU please read the drivers section of this review. I found a serious memory leak in the fingerprint reader software.


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Why a M570TU?
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Because of my work and where I live having a desktop replacement is very convenient. By programming, writing, doing audio, modeling, rendering, and gaming I need a fast machine. Besides this I have the safety of a battery when the power goes out and I have a power brick in case I get a nasty surge. While at home or work my desktop replacements are always plugged into docks and tons of external hardware. I usually only use the built in display, GPU, and CPU of the unit. This makes them functional just like a desktop except I only need one and can move it back and forth from work to home to the coffee shop. My old desktop replacement used a desktop P4 instead of a mobile counterpart, so you can say that heat, battery life, soud, and weight have never really bothered me much. In a nutshell the M570TU is a great desktop replacement, sporting all the power and features that I needed without going overboard with internal features (like dual hard drives) that add real bulk and weight to something that is supposed to be reasonably portable. On top of this was the great price and good reviews.


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Order Process
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I ordered my clevo from rjtech for a cost of 2500 including shipping. Normally this notebook would cost 2630 without shipping, but after comparing prices with eurocom, agreeing to pay in cash, and a little haggling, the price was knocked down to an even number. Before I ordered I heard rumor that the new 9800M GTX cards where back ordered, but since rjtech's website listed them as available I went ahead and placed the order. I sent in my cash and was promptly contacted three days later, letting me know that the cards where infact out of stock and I would have to wait for them to come in. I already knew about the backorder and wasn't surprised. I waited half a week for the card to become available before my M570TU was assembled and shipped out to my address. Besides this I had no issues with rjtech and would do business with them again if I needed to, the contacted me promptly and let me haggle down their price.

The package came about a week after shipment and upon actually holding the package I instantly saw a red flag (no pun intended) in large black letters on the side- MADE IN CHINA. I have plenty of experiences with things from China. Most of them involve things breaking, or being constructed out of second rate lead laced products. I'm sad to say I was disappointed that a Taiwanese company has its computers built entirely in China. I know of other companies that source to China that at least assemble their products in their home turf and can avoid putting the made in China sticker on the side.

Did it affect overall quality? I personally think so, but this is a matter of my opinion and anal retentiveness. Did it affect clevo's quality control? Not a bit, as the notebook came in great shape and I have had absolutely no problems with it at all.


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Specifications
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Clevo M570TU
17" WUXGA Display
Silver Trim
nVidia 9800M GTX 1GB
P9500
4GB_DDR3/1066
186 gibi SATA300 7200rpm HD (remember kids, your hard drive isn't measured in GB)
8x DVD+/-RW DL
Integrated GBLAN + Bluetooth
Intel 5300N Wifi


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Overall Build
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As a whole unit the clevo M570TU seems to be built fairly well, but there are some things that do drive me nuts.

The notebooks display is plated with a single piece of brushed metal (aluminum or stainless) that gives it a simple yet classy look and feels unbreakable. The rest of the laptop is constructed out of some black high density plastic that feels durable but is neither aesthetically or tactually special. The keyboard and mouse pad are surrounded by a textured version of this plastic in a sort of checkered pattern. While it serves to let you know when you are near a boundary it also looks out of place and generally feels cheep- brushed metal would have been a better choice on Clevo's part. The speakers on the outside are situated in good spots and are quite heavily reinforced, meaning that unless you find a way to ram the side of your notebook into a sharp object your built in speakers are going to be safe.

The locations of the USB ports (two on the right side, two in the back) work very well and allow you to hook up plenty of accessories in just the way you want. Note that one of the ways that the M570TU is different from the RU edition was the inclusion of a eSATA port on the back. Some websites claim that the TU only has 3 usb ports- this is incorrect as the newly added eSATA port can also be used as a USB 2.0 slot. One thing to note however, and it really drives me crazy, is that none of these usb ports actaully let your male USB plug go all the way into them. In effect every time you plug into the USB port your plug is halfway in and much easier to bump out. This is especially true of the rear two USB and USB/eSATA ports where simply wiggling the notebook the wrong way can disconnect something like an external hard drive or sound card (both really bad in the heat of the data transferring moment). The same is true of the SD card which instead of holding a blank uses a rubber plug. This plug is annoying to work with and the halfway inserted setup just feels non secure when you can wiggle it easily out. Besides this, by preventing you from storing SD cards inside of your computer, you are required to remove SD cards for any form of notebook transportation. Ethernet ports are located on the right side of the clevo and can pose problems to right handed individuals using mice (as the Ethernet cable might effectively run across your hand) I use a desk and have no issue, but for some this can be an aesthetic consideration.

The placement of the CD drive on the left side of the notebook is great since it is neither next to or underneath any IEEE or usb ports and is far away from any other wires. The button for opening the drive is very responsive and because of habit I often hold onto the notebook by the lower left hand corner leading to my frequent and inadvertent opening of my drive. The tray itself is adequately reinforced and does not flex much under the pressures required to move CDs to and from the tray. Power (blue in color) and quick launch buttons are neatly placed offcentre and work without issue but are subject to the low button sensitivity found on most notebook buttons.

Overall I like the layout of the clevo's ports and what it looks like. There is some class to its simple style and its spartan utilitarian approach to design means that there are no unnecessary bells and whistles cluttering your notebook. Audio ports are located in the front and work without problem, but really leave me wishing that there where play/pause/next/previous buttons somewhere for quick access (other than pause/play there are none even as function keys on the keyboard).

Compared to my older desktop replacements that weighed about 10lbs the M570TU weighs less and is a larger 17” notebook! Be warned, 8.7lbs is not your Macbook air, but you certainly get your difference in performance. I have lugged 10lbs around before and didn't complain, so 8.7 feels like a feather compared to the old ones. Its size and weight make it less portable, but its not unbearable and for most average sized men any extra weight that is ~10lbs on your body is practically nothing.


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WUXGA Screen
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It seems to me that my favorite part of the M570TU is the 17” WUXGA screen. Besides rocking a 1920 x 1200 resolution the viewing angles are great and the material that the screen is made out of is absolutely amazing. This is by far the best screen that I have used on a notebook computer and I am still impressed at how sharp the images are and how the screen is a perfect ground between flat and glossy. I admit that I have never used WUXGA before, so perhaps there are better ones out there, but this is without a doubt better than any WXGA+ 15.4” display I have used. 1920 x 1200 is a bit small, but on 17” is very respectable and easy to adapt from 1600 x 1200 on 15.4”

I didn't get the dead pixel insurance (took a gamble) and it paid off. Saved $200 and have a screen that I love. If it did come with dead pixels I would probably have been quite pissed, so I'm happy my gamble worked out.


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Audio
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For a notebook, the Clevo M570TU has some awesome speakers. I never use them, but on the few times that I have the sound is impressively clear and defined. SRS WoW and true stereo sound is nice to have on a notebook (it even has a built in sub according to the manual!). The position of the speakers, while not very intuitive, ends up positively effecting the sound quality by helping project the sound around you rather than at you.


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Input Devices
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I do lots of writing so naturally a full sized keyboard seemed like a great way to take advantage of the extra space on a 17” notebook. I was initially worried that while there was a brand new keypad, the end, home, and page up/down keys had been removed completely. These are keys that I tend to use a lot during writing sessions. I was very happily surprised to find that these keys have been turned into function keys on the arrow keys. After playing around I discovered that this is infact a great layout as anytime I need any of those function key commands I am almost always already using the arrow keys. Besides this there are few functions on keyboard and the keys are free of any unneeded clutter.

Sadly, the part that I was let down the most on my clevo was the keyboard's quality. I read reviews talking about little or no flex on the RU models and expected that the same would hold true for the TU. Well, there is little or not flex on the left side of the keyboard... but a whole lot on the right. There is a fix to this, but after paying 2500 dollars for a notebook I really expected that something as easy as keyboard flex could have been solved through preproduction engineering rather than post production keyboard modding. The keys themselves tap down softly, which is nice during board meetings, but also says something about the build quality- I found the material used on the keys feeling like a soft cheap plastic.

The built in mouse is a step up from the keyboard, but still seems a bit sub par for a $2500 rig. Unlike most pads that I have used before, the M570TU uses a very coarse surface. At first I was apprehensive, but grew used to it and really don't mind the difference. However, I have found that the pad itself is not very sensitive even if configured- especially the side scrolling section which requires significant pressure in order to activate and use. I am also disappointed in the buttons which are clearly just plastic with inadequate reinforcement on the leftmost and rightmost sides. This means that the buttons go down in a slope when depressed favoring the left if its the left button and right if its the right button. I am sure that in the future significant pressure can cause a hanging button (where the button is sloped not only when depressed but when sitting idle) if I am not careful.

The built in webcam is very discrete looking and works very well in low light conditions along with standard use. Nothing bad, infact I love how small and unnoticeable it is compared to some notebooks that seem to flaunt their .8mega pixel cameras.


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Heat and Sound
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Overall the M570TU is a very quiet and very cool machine compared to other desktop replacements I have used. Running applications that are not CPU intensive will almost always keep your fan quieter than the tapping of your keyboard and background noise of your room. CPU intensive operations well get the fan up to speed and create some audible noise, but its nothing that you will hear above background music playing at 25%. You won't really notice it unless you are doing some hardcore gaming or rendering- in which case you will either have game sounds or music to distract you anyway. Heat is minimal, but this is probably partially because of the 25w chip and partially because of all the great ventilation built into this clevo.


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Drivers & Vista 64
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I am using Vista 64bit business edition without and driver conflicts or problems. Can't get an old game called wasteland to work, but hey, its not like I didn't expect this

Clevo provides you with a disk containing a surprisingly user friendly driver installation utility. You can chose to install drivers or optional software onto your machine to run everything from your function keys to your audio devices. I will note the drivers provided for the nVidia GPU
are not actually the correct ones. These drivers have not actually been released by nVidia so it is hardly clevo's fault. Use the ones included for now but don't forget to check back in a few months and get the correct ones for the 9800M series.

On another note the fingerprint software used by the fingerprint reader has a serious memory leak. The leak will freeze your machine if you do not kill the process from the task manager when it starts to steal system resources and is otherwise annoying when you hear your fans working really hard during some hardcore word processing... I am unsure what triggers the leak as it is not always present but you can often open the task manager and simply watch it gobble up memory. It takes about 2 hrs for my machine to get deadlocked, but for fingerprint software this is unacceptable. The company that put it out, has released a fixed version. Note that the new version cannot be installed over the version included on the clevo drivers disk. You must elevate yourself to administrator levels in order to remove the old software and then install the new version. Mine errored out even after elevation to admin and I was forced to manually remove it using the command prompt.

Do yourself a favor and don't install the fingerprint reader software from the drivers cd. Go directly here and get the latest version that is (so far) free of any memory leaks.


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Performance
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While I have and don't plan on getting any benchmarking software to show numbers, I can say that there is no task that the M570TU cannot accomplish or game it cannot play. I do lots of photoshop work, rendering, modeling, animation, writing, programming, and gaming. It takes lots of obscenely large operations in photoshop or visual studio to slow down my machine and my modeling polygon counts can be very high before I start noticing any slowdown. As for games, I can run crysis on a mix of high/very high settings and still have an acceptable frame rate. Otherwise the 9800m GTX just laughs at any other games you can throw at it.

Battery life is roughly 1.5hrs with power saver settings on a new battery. Expect about 30min-1hr on a broken in battery doing stuff like word processing and listening to music.



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Bonus Stuffs
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Besides the notebook and the drivers CD, clevo throws in a number of other items with its M570TU. You get the standard phone cables etc. that you expect from any notebook manufacturer along with some handy manuals, carrying bag, and a little surprise.

The one point of interest I am actually surprised to say is the carrying case. I am used to getting a free carrying case with most of my expensive notebook purchases, but its usually really low quality stuff that is neither comfortable to carry or adequate enough to protect my notebook. Clevo provides you with a nice black carrying case with either leather or pseudo leather. While the amount of leather is negligible the actual build of the case is very good and it is padded well enough to protect both your shoulder and your M570TU. I plan to use it instead of buying myself a replacement, which beats what I can say about other manufacturers and their 'free cases'.

The other surprise to me was a HDMI to VGA converter included for free. I expected to spend $20 on a converter so that I could use older VGA LCD screens but found one included for free! $20 relative to $2500 is hardly anything, but its the thought that counts.


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Closing Remarks
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Overall I am satisfied with my Clevo M570TU. Its stylish and simple, which works for me, and is more functional than my old replacement with a larger screen and lighter weight. I like the bonus adapter I got for free, the case is great, and the performance is awesome. Did I mention the awesome WUXGA screen? Because I love my screen and like the full sized keyboard layout.

However, I do hate how the keyboard, mouse, and parts of the body of the M570TU are built out of what amounts to chincy budget materials. My Asus eeepc has no keyboard flex, uses a nice plastic for the keyboard, has a sensitive tracking pad with brushed metal buttons, and allows me to plug my USB ports all the way inside of it. It is also 3 times the size and costs $500. For $2500 I really expected for these little things to be worked around.

Will I get another Clevo? Probably not. Next time I think I will spend another $200-$400 for a name like Asus that I will almost certainly trust to not have cut corners on a high end machine. Is a $400 difference worth keyboard flex and track pad quality when I don't even use them? Probably not, infact Clevo rocks considering how low price its features are compared to everyone else.

I'm not disappointed with my purchase and I like my M570TU, but I won't lie when I say I expected a little more for my money.


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About the Author
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I am a game designer originally from Russia, now living in the USA. My notebooks see lots of software and applications, including photo editing, rendering movies, animation, modeling, audio sampling, programming, and gaming. Anything requiring mobility is done on my eeepc. In the past I have used brands like Toshiba, Sony, Asus, and Dell. Of these I recommend Asus for about everything, Toshiba/Sony for a very small budget, Dell for the computer impaired, and Clevo for low cost high end rigs.

 

Thanks for your review!

 

That is one heck of a review!

I really enjoyed reading your review, it was very insightful. It’s still not too late to get that keyboard flex worked out, as that would bother me. You can easily take off your keyboard and look under it, as it seems a wire is not properly seated (under the 4, 5, E, R, T, F, G keys) that causes the keyboard to not sit flush against the metal base. The keyboard should have no flex, so it’s something that can be fixed.

Thank you for your thoughts, it’s nice to see what happens after you’ve actually had the unit for a while. Seeing I’ve had mine a little over a month, might be time to do one as well.

 

An excellent review, it is well thought out and constructed.
An easy read on the eyes and mind. I didn't have to do any of
the usual "slang│jibberish or juvenile abbreviations to English" translations.

If I hadn't already purchased the M570TU, your review would have cemented the decision.

 

Good find on the fingerprint reader memory leak. That sounds like something that everyone with any hiccups, burps, or stuttering should be looking out for.

 

I almost never shut any of my computers off and so far, no issues with the Finger Print Reader software, aside from a few games uninstalling it to finish their installations. Something about "Microsoft Redistributables" but I quickly reinstalled the biometric software. It was even intuitive enough to have saved my profile on the HDD.

 

where are the pichers ?

 

Thanks guys, I hope it was worth the type up

The specific application that has the leak is called 'psqltray'. I had no idea there was an update until my last crash when Vista searched for a solution and... to my surprise, found one and forwarded me to the website.

I found this in regards to the leak, so obviously I wasn't the only one. I fixed the link in the review so you can head over and get the right software.

No pictures because... well... there are plenty already out there and mine wouldn't be any different.

K.

 

The RS link, a nice touch.

I downloaded it---just in case.

 

great review!

 

I was freaking out cause I got my laptop yesterday and it locked up 2 times both after about 2 hours of use while i was setting it up..Read his review, downloaded the newest driver and no problems after that..

I do not have any keyboard flex, so you should hopefully be able to fix it..

I haven't gamed on my laptop yet, though I installed everything but man am I liking it..It is bigger then i thoguht it would be, but I am getting used to it, and having the numeric keypad is awesome, that feature alone is what made me choice this laptop over the 8660. I just wish the page up/down home/end buttons where not (fn) keys..But i am already learning to live with that.

Anyways, point of this post was to thank you for pointing out the finger print software issue!