Metabox (Clevo) M860TU user initial review

Hi All,

Below is my initial review of the Metabox (Clevo) M860TU.

I received the following specification on 29the August from Affordablelaptops.com.au for $2914 AUS dollars delivered to Sydney:

Display: 15.4" WSXGA+ (1680x1050) "Glare Type" Super
Intel Core 2 Duo P9500 processor (2.53GHz)
4GB DDR3-1066MHz RAM
Nvidia GeForce 9800M GT 512MB DDR3 memory graphics card
Western Digital Black Scorpion 320GB 7200RPM hard drive
Sony 8X DVD-RW not the blueray option
7-in-1 card reader
Built-in 2.0 MP megapixel camera
HDMI, Esata & 4 usb ports
Intel Wireless WiFi, built-in Bluetooth
Dimensions are 364(W) x 269.5(D) x 29~41(H)mm
Weight is 3.2kg with 8 cells battery
No installed operating system.
For more info on clevo M860TU machine go to http://www.clevo.com.tw/en/products/prodinfo_2.asp?productid=122

I also received in the box an asus laptop carry bag, M860TU owners manual, M860TU XP/Vista drivers cd, Nero 7 essentials cd and Cbyerlink Power cd.

I went for no operating system and then proceeded to install 32 bit Windows XP Service Pack 3 and 64 bit Vista Service Pack 1. Won't bother you with all the details but I did have to download an intel driver in order to get Windows XP install to recognize the AHCI driver for the harddrive. In the Bios you can set the operating system to be XP and then the default IDE driver would work but since I wanted to run vista as well, I had to get XP working under the AHCI driver thus the download.

Looks/design and feel -
Overall a nice looking laptop. It is conservative styled and uses dark black aluminium for the cover and inside surrounding the keyboard. Below are some pictures to give you an idea. I especially like the thin wedge styling that starts at the front of the latptop and widens as the laptop goes back.










Keyboard is ok and pressing the keys gives reasonable feedback with the space bar making a small clicking sound. The windows key is a little too close to the control key for my liking. I do like the top shortcut keys which cover the power on/off, launch browser, launch email and switch between silent and normal mode. When laptop is in silent mode it reduces the fan noise at the back and goes into a power savings mode which reduces the overall performance of the machine. This is great for extending the battery life when all you want to do is office work or browsing but for serious gaming you keep away from silent mode and would plug yourself into the main power and not rely on the battery.
There is no latch to close the screen but a solid hinge which holds the screen to whatever position you leave it. Around the screen there are 6 small rubber black pads which keep the screen away from the keyboard when you close the laptop. Also under the laptop their are 4 solid large black rubber feet which raise the laptop to allow air to come out of the bottom fan.
The keyboard half of the laptop is fairly rigid and has no flex while the screen half of the laptop does flex and not nearly as rigid as say a lenovo T series laptop.
The mouse pad at the bottom is very good and I get solid clicks from the left and right buttons. It also has a scroll function to the right of the mouse pad which works well once you get the hang of the scroll speed using your finger. There is a finger print reader separating the left and right buttons. I have used this and find it useful in logging into vista or xp by sliding my finger across it.

Screen
I chose the WSXGA+ (1680x1050) option which does take some time to get used to the extra screen realestate. Very handy when using excel and having two windows opened side by side. Most 15.4 inch laptops at our local electronic retailers like Harvey Norman, Bing Lee etc have resolutions that are around 1400 x 900 or 1200 x 800. No dead pixels that I can see after runing dead pixel buddy. Playing games and movies so far the screen quality is very good. I am not so sure of the super glare type which does put a reflective coating on the screen and can be distracting with the background reflections. This is a problem with most new laptops which have this option nowadays.

Performance
I installed 3dmark06 and ran the defualt resolution and got the following scores:
- Scored 9482 on Windows XP 32 bit Service Pack 3

- Score 9268 on Vista 64 bit Sevice Pack 1


I have played team fortress 2 with no problems and found the laptop was very smooth.

Thats all for now, I will post some more benchmarks in crysis and give you further thoughts on the laptop including battery life as I use it more.

 

Nice

BTW, put image tags around your images so they show up.

 

Great pictures avidgamer!

Man, I’m really liking what I see there, nice review!

 

Cheers for the review.
Give us some temperatures while playing and etc...
Amazing.
Thanks,
M

 

Wow that's a great initial review! 3dmarks for both XP and Vista! We just need the temps now

 

great review avidgamer, thanks.

only problem i see is why the 3Dmark06 score is lower using vista 64bit when you should get the full use of the 4gb ram.
xp 9482
vista 9268

and if you was using vista 32bit the score would be even lower.

 

Nice review, hope to see temps from your WD HDD (and other temps )

Also XP > Vista

 

The screen looks insanely dim. Is that as bright as it goes? Does it look brighter in person than it does in your photos?

 

**** box use WD hdds i think... my metabox hdd runs at 45-50 all the time..
was running at 57-60 before i installed the 8.5 sata driver update from clevo

 

afitzwater,

The pictures were taken in a sunny lighted room with the flash on my camera. Next time I will make sure the flash is off.
The screen seems fine to me.

 

heathkidd,

Did you download the drivers from the clevo.com.tw download area ?

Can you confirm the exact web link. Thanks

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=3848866&postcount=1

 

congrats on the new system.

take care of it if you want it to take care of you.

 

Congrats man!enjoy!


BTW!

Get a cooler and use it only on hard surface!

 

nice job, good summary

 

Cool review, totally broke my 1440x900 tables though

 

I am looking to buy this laptop, but have concerns about the screen quality of the units being sold in Australia.

Has anybody had similar problems with the screen as this person?

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=793910#r6