My 5-month Sager NP9170 review (7970M) *Warning: Wall of Text*

Agree with the crappy keyboard complaint. I can't believe they went from the great chiclet keyboard on the NP8170 to this abomination.

 

Instead of complaining, read the thread. If you are having issues, then your keyboard is faulty, get it replaced.

 

I'm not having issues... it's just not a good keyboard :|

 

Like always, this kind of reviews depend a lot on what issues each laptop gets over the time.

While some are still working full-throttle with no issues at all, others get all kinds os trouble, either misused or treated with care.

And I fit in the latter, unfortunately my 4 month old P150EM, almost treated like a child, already had 2 keyboard and 1 fan issues. Luckily I'm an advanced user (used to professionally, and still fix laptops in my free time), and I could fix the first 2 (broken keyboard lighting, loud gpu fan rattling), but what if I wasn't? Both of them would be warranty trip worthy. Well and the third problem, even I can do nothing about it. The "F" key retainer clip broke on its own, and the key pops off all the time now. And to top it off, my reseller does nothing about it. They DID promise to send me a new key, but 1 month after, it's still nowhere to be seen. And no, I can't demand a new keyboard, they can easily claim I broke the key myself.

Yes, I know what you're thinking: "But you can fix it right? So why are you complaining?". Well we have a saying here: "Casa de ferreiro, espeto de pau.". I already have enough trouble fixing other people's laptop issues, I just want mine to work without bothering me with even more problems.

This was my first Clevo, and I wanted to love it, I really did. But while I'm not exactly unhappy, I'm not pleased with it either. In 4 months it already had more issues than both my previous laptops in the 4 years I had them. To all the Clevo owners out there, I really, really wish the best to your laptops, but you know how it is, "You don't have a second chance to make a first impression." And my personal first impression with Clevo was far from what I heard about. One thing is certain, though: I'll keep this one as long as I can, but i'm changing ship in my next laptop purchase.

 

Ok, I think it's great here. Overall it's fairly quiet, it has backlighting issues, I have no lag, no ghosting issues in games. No complaints. But then I don't like chiclet keyboards much.

The newer keyboards are much improved, so I really hope any potential and new customers disregard your opinion and others who have not used the updated keyboard.

 

Every professional review I've read complained about typing on the EM keyboard. The consensus is that it's mediocre at best.

It's a good thing if Clevo has replaced it with a better keyboard, but it's too late to get the word out and change general public opinion. The damage has been done.

 

My opinion of the keyboard itself, is above average. nothing with it annoys or enrages me. For me, its every pleasant to type on all day...

 

Try Acer 5742g's keyboard before using words like "mediocre" or "bad".
That would give you the example of horror in keyboards.

 

Had the same keyboard in my previous Acer 5551G. Liked it better than my EM's.

 

I agree... I just ordered my NP9170, and this review scared the ish out of me. I thought, Oh no I done effed up and ordered the wrong laptop...

 

Well, having had the honor of having my laptop for around a week, I hope i can make you feel better about your purchase (i know after actually using this laptop, I feel ALOT better).

Design - Totally a personal thing there, cant say much either way. After retiring my Asus( to which i really liked the design of), i have to say i really like the looks of this laptop. For a hick laptop, i can still say i feel the design is rather slick. Its a nice layout, and the brushed pieces are really nice. Frankly, i don't care at all about the "glossy parts".. certainly doesn't cheapen it for me.

Build - I am sorry, but this thing is solid. As long as you don't try to carry it like a moron, you are fine. As it is, it feels far better built than my old Asus. They keyboard has no flex at all, nor does the touchpad /wrist area. In fact, pressing around, i don't feel any weak areas. I guess i will have to wait on the hinges, but they feel great now of course..

Ergo - I just replaced a laptop with a side power cable (Asus), and i HATED it. the cord is always being pulled back, and yes, it did cause it to fail (one wrong jiggle and the laptop would shut off). I will grant that a right side CD can be annoying, but only if you are a right hand mouse user constantly switching disks. I cannot comment on the audio ports, as i use an XFI Go Pro. And the battery? A proper system will not destroy a battery anyway, so removing it should be a non issue.

Keyboard - I received the "new" model keyboard (the one with the win 8 logo). Now, obviously, he had a defective keyboard to begin with, so really, all his rant is irrelevant anyway. But i will say again this keyboard, so far, is perfect. No lag, no keys studdering, no missed keys, and no sag when pressing a key. Everything is uniform, and it types great (this whole post is from this keyboard). I cannot comment on the trackpad, as i use a Logitech G700 mouse.

Speakers - They are laptop speakers. No, they are not the best, but again, he obviously had defective speakers (buzzing). Take from that what you will...

Screen - i got the 90% NTSC, and I am just blown away. It really is beautiful.

So, while i am sure things can always get worse, i am so relieved now that i have it in hand. It is a great machine (far better than he gives it credit for), and you will be happy..

 

If you have issues with headphone output, just use the Asus Xonar U3, or just output to an external DAC. I think it's great at least it comes with a mini-toslink output, works fantastic. Much prefer toslink over USB.

 

I've had my np9170 for a little over a month, and plan on posting my own personal review and experiences after a few more weeks. However, as of right now, I can echo Divine's experience for the most part.

@skumdog, i wouldn't worry too much.

 

I just hope Clevo opts to give us the option to turn on and off the switchable graphics on the future.

 

Unlikely man... Clevo is generally pretty conservative when it comes to design changes. The best we can hope for is Enduro gets the kinks ironed out so it functions on the same level as Optimus. I think most people would be happy with that.

I kept the igpu disabled on my M17x, but it didn't really have any effect. Optimus worked really well, to the point where you don't really notice it. Never had to change or adjust settings in the Nvidia control panel or force games to run on the 680m. It just worked. If AMD gets Enduro to that level, then there won't be much need for a mux anyway.

 

Not with this laptop. The monitor is directly plugged into the Intel HD4000 so it needs to be active for the monitor to display anything.

 

I haven't noticed any issue with the swtichable graphics in my rig, although i have the 675mx. The only hiccup I have ever encountered is sometimes during Blizzard games (SC2, D3) if i am playing the game on my main monitor and watching a blu-ray rip on my tv through hdmi and extended desktop mode, occasionally i get artifacting on the video, but not the game. Restarting the video and/or game on the 2 times it has happened has solved it.

 

really? we had no idea

 

I really don't want to burst your bubble, but 1 week is virtually nothing. Like OP, the problems with my P150EM only showed after a while.

But still congrats on your purchase, and I hope you don't have the same problems I did with mine

 

Sorry to burst your bubble, but the OP had a defective machine and should have contacted his reseller. Also he managed to chip his laptop and cause the plastic to rot...

 

Now you lost me, where is that stated?

 

I think Hula was referring to this
Build quality and sturdiness
The bottom side is made of black grainy hard plastic which feels nice and premium to the touch and makes the laptop feel sturdy when carried from one side or placed on a surface. The up-side where the keyboard is covered with a metallic surface that is smooth and fingerprint resistant (in comparison to sleek metal/plastic). Where the laptop falls short is the screen compartment, the two hinges feel flimsy and you certainly wouldn't risk carrying the laptop by a corner of the screen one time too many. When the lid is closed, I soon found that if I wish to carry it with one hand, I must clasp it at the trackpad side and not the screen hinges side, because the plastic between them cracks ominously as if something came out of place when you squeeze lightly, and snaps back into position when you relax your grip. I have a CoolerMaster U3 pad and the punched-out metal surface has caused some of the balance plastic feet to chip slightly.

The shiny bezel below the screen started showing weird plastic rot spots after a few months. They can't be wiped away but they're not that easy to notice. The grainy black plastic parts get dirty easy and are hard to wipe on the dry, which is a niggle.

 

And for all the praise my Asus G73 recieved, mine literally went to pieces, with the battery failing, the power connection failing, and the GPU going. It can happen to anyone.. as it is though, comparing my asus, the build quality feels incredible on the Sager. It feels solid, far more so than my previous.

More so, problems can happen, and that is why they have warranties. If he was having issues within months, it should have gone in for service; there is no excuse for complaining so much and not trying to get something done.

 

Awesome guys, thanks. I feel much better. My laptop should be here this Wednesday, and I can't wait! I have about 13 games all lined up ready to play. Oooh I can't wait!!!

 

It will be a blast.

 

Yep.. don't make the mistake i did.. read reviews, but judge the laptop for yourself when you get it. Frankly, i think you will be impressed (i know i am, and i say this as a guy who can compare to his wifes M17 r3..)

 

Well after several weeks of use, I can officially say that I love my NP9170, it runs good and cool, it feels really sturdy, not to heavy not to lite. I have had it for just about 2 months now and wow... I can play all the latest games, and it plays them smoothly. High frame rates and beautiful colors on my standard gamut 1080p screen. If you have the chance, get a Sager, its the best computer I have ever owned.

 

Well I hope it can continue to improve. Sager/Clevo are good machines, but I hope they fix some of the issues we've seen with muxless design, and maybe someday push for IPS HD+ screens. Guess some 3610QM owners also see some throttling too.

But awesome you like your machine. Hope you stick around to help make Clevo/Sager the best forum on NBR

 

I've had an np9150 since release and the only serious issues I had were with that old keyboard, which I replaced with the steel series board. I also sold that np9150 and got the special edition, which the keyboard on that is pretty close to the steel series. I also have a razer Mamba mouse, a vengeance 2000 headset and a 680m so maybe I stacked the deck against having issues with it.

If you are looking for super portable and gaming, I'm pretty sure they are still selling the razer blade

I also strongly recommend making sure whatever laptop you buy has a warranty where you live, even if that means going alienware or HP. Never know when any brand will have troubles and its good to get prompt service

Sent from my SPH-L900 using Tapatalk 2

 

I most definitely will stick around and help make this the best forum on NBR :thumbsup:

What did you mean by?

A lot of new tech is coming out in the near future. Hopefully Clevo/Sager decides to incorporate some of it in it's next versions. If so I might sell this one next tax time and upgrade to the newest Clevo/Sager, laptop.

 

I remember reading this post when it was first put up and promising myself I would do a similar review after having my rig for 5 or 6 months. So far I have had it for 3 months or so, and not one single problem (it did ship with a stuck pixel).

Ill be upgrading my storage from the 750gb platter to 2 x 1tb platters with a 64gb msata as a caching drive. I will post my review after doing it.

My favourite thing so far about my sager is nobody knows what it is. With Alienware, a lot of non-geeks are still familiar with it. While not as many people know MSI, it still looks like a gaming laptop. With my sager, the only people who recognize what it is are people "in the know" It's like belonging to a super secret geek club

 

I hope Clevo/Sager ditches switchable graphics all together soon, at least on the models larger than 15". No point in having it on desktop replacements. Really, Enduro has been the only problem I've had with my 9170 and I got it last year around July-August. Otherwise, this machine has been fantastic.

Same here. A pesky blue one in the bottom left quarter of the screen. It comes back once every few days and I have to push on it to make it go back into hiding. Doesn't want to permanently vacate. -_- I had a red one as well that came up towards the top-center of the screen, but when I got rid of it, it hasn't came back. Odd thing, considering I didn't have it when I first got the computer.

 

@srikar, same here. Got one blue pixel that pops up, but as soon as i push on it, it goes away. Two weeks in, however, i got a true stuck pixel on the other side of the screen. Only reason i noticed it was because I use an all black background. I can't see it unless i hunt for it, but i KNOW it's there. Still love the machine and the matte screen. The matte screen seems to have more limited viewing angles, but the joy of no more glare is amazing.

 

I only wish the chef at the local steak joint was as liberal with sauce as the Sager/Clevo guys seem to be with TIM I scraped off at least 5-6 grains of rice worth of TIM from each chip (CPU/GPU) when I re-applied MX-4.





After cleaning (A nifty trick is to use strips of scotch tape and stick them to the surface of the chip, and slowly pull them off to clear minute dust particles. Just make sure the tape is not the type that leaves adhesive behind, just regular scotch tape, and that you use Ethyl Alcohol or similar to fully clean off the old TIM beforehand)





And after the foil mod:



By the way I'm not sure if the GPU just had a thermal pad cut with a rectangle in the middle to allow for liquid TIM, or just a thermal pad that looks cut that way because of the heat. I highly doubt it since thermal pads are no where as effective in conducting heat as paste. Still looked strange and gave me paus before I dared remove the pad. It just didn't seem necessary and post repaste + foil I went down from 94-96 celsius to 82-84 in Furmark.

 

I personally love my NP9170. I did experience keyboard issues, issues with the plastic at the bottom of the monitor getting scraped up, and the optical drive failing. However, I tend to have bad luck with electronics and customer support was great so overall very good. I now have the windows 8 keyboard, and I would personally say it is the best keyboard I have typed on (IMHO) because I like the soft feel and low travel. The colors are also nice.

I also have not had trouble with the cooling system. It is a bit noisy, but I expected that and usually use headphones. I had no problems with overheating and I was managing a 15-20% overclock on my GTX 675M without modding the cooling system. I ended up taping the cooling system to increase the efficiency anyways, and it did reduce the temperature by around 6 degrees, but I couldn't overclock anymore anyways as the drivers would crash.

Also, I have had no end of compliments on the screen, which is the Chei Mei matte screen.

 

WOW I was really looking at buying one of these, now after reading this post, forget it...

To be honest when I look at all the Clevo/Sager sites selling out there, I'm not so sure I'm really impressed by what I see and when you look at the Gallery images for all these models they don't look very up to date, modern, look more like laptops that Lenovo makes for the Thinkpad line...

I've certainly known of Clevo/Sager for many years, but have never owned anything by them and was considering it...

Besides this model do you still like what they make, or you recommend different manufacturers?

By the way that TIM job is pathetic, there's no excuse for that, did you show that to them?

THANKS

 

Damn NeoCzar, they did go crazy on the TIM. Mine wasn't no where near that bad. I had a nice little gob but geez, and it does look like they added a thermal pad to yours. Hmm, mine didn't look like that at all.

 

If you base your purchase on reviews like this, you will not buy anything. The reviewer is right--it's his review--but people have different opinions. What's wrong with Thinkpads?

 

Not every high end laptop has to be super flashy like Alienware. And if you don't want to buy Sager based off of one review, then the only other high end brand I can recommend is Alienware.

 

Sager/Clevos have high end components, but they're not a high-end brand. Everything that isn't Intel/AMD/Nvidia/<insert HDD and RAM manufacturers> and is actually produced by Clevo ranges from bad (like on-board sound) to mediocre at best (keyboard). They certainly don't have premium ... well anything. The ones who have been lucky no to have any issues at all, simply state that, that they don't have issues. How many do you see raving about stellar OCing capability of the mobo, or the fantastic keyboard, or the high-end finishing? None. That's not just based on my review, but all reviews.

I'm just very happy the screen is really nice, it's the only thing about the input-output routes in this machine that is a delight to have. It does the job but I think you'd be at pains to see someone raving about how it's the best money they ever spent. In my case (which doesn't apply to American and European customers) AW would've been the same price buying 3rd party SSDs/RAM ..etc, and their warranty would've been fine internationally.

 

People are correct in saying that the clevo computers are not amazing. However, that doesn't really seem to be their purpose to me. I personally find them to simply be lower cost alternatives for those who need computing power but don't have the money for a fancier computer like an Alienware.

I know for me it would have been at least a $400 dollar difference (25% of the price of the NP9170) between my NP9170 and a comparable MX17. Plus, the Alienware would have a glossy screen (which I hate). As a result, it was an easy choice for me.

 

Hey, Neo, a present just for you :

Alienware is crap - YouTube

Alienware Fail - YouTube

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m18x/673366-my-dell-alienware-repair-horror-story.html

Alienware PC Systems Reviews. Buying guides & consumer product reviews at Epinions.com

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/709239-why-ill-never-buy-dell-alienware-again.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ory-why-i-will-never-purchase-them-again.html

My Ongoing Dell Horror Story - CNET Dell Forums

Re: Alienware M17X R4 Problem - nightmare! - Alienware Forum - Alienware Club - Dell Community

And the cherry on top:

Alienware SUCKS!!! Laptop computer destruction! Alienware tech support made me KILL MY PC!!! - YouTube

And that's just the tip of the iceberg, done after 5 minutes of quick searches online.

Now, I have nothing against Alienware whatsoever and I will consider purchasing one a few years down the line, but you really need to wake up that it is the be all and end all of gaming laptops. Anyway, better luck with your new Alienware, once you decide to purchase one.

 

You do realize that Alienware is the largest gaming notebook manufacturer in the world, right? Out of the hundreds of thousands of people who've bought an AW, there are bound to be those who are unsatisfied with the product or service for one reason or another. Posting random links to youtube destruction videos and petty NBR complaints doesn't prove anything negative about the brand. The vast majority of AW owners are happy with their machines.

Owners of different brands enjoy criticizing Alienware for several (generally false/misinformed) reasons:

Styling: Subjective. Not everyone digs the way AW laptops look, just like not everyone likes the plain and understated plastic chassis of Clevos.

Price: Calling Alienware laptops overpriced is probably the most common argument I hear. I had a similar debate with a Sager owner in the Alienware section last night. This argument is flawed, as any consumer savvy enough to read a little about the brand will find out it's ridiculously easy to get huge discounts off the website's listed price, bringing AW notebooks within the same price range as comparable Clevos. My last two laptops (M17x and M18x) were within a hundred or two dollars of a similarly speced Sager from Xoticpc.com. I paid $2,998 after taxes for my i7 3740qm/680m sli M18x with 4 year warranty/accidental coverage. An NP9370 with the same specs and a three year warranty from Xotic comes out to almost $3100. Not only is the warranty from Dell longer with better support, but there are also the obvious advantages of an aluminum chassis, better cooling, much better BIOS support, etc. Even at full list price, I believe AWs are worth every penny with the advantages they have over other brands. The great thing is pretty much everyone can take advantage of the heavy discounts offered by calling in and speaking with a rep.

Dell: "Oh, it's a Dellienware, Dell sucks!" If I had a dollar for every time I heard that one. Dell's ownership has been a blessing for AW buyers, with their vast supply chain lowering prices, and their deep pockets that allow for perks such as next day in home repairs, and cheap accidental coverage that will replace damaged laptops, even with newer models in some cases. Their customer/tech support has always been friendly and easy to deal with (though I'm sure that there are a bunch of people who have had bad experiences, just like any other company.) In the end, having in-home repairs justifies going with AW over any other brand imo. Even big jobs like motherboard swaps are handled the next business day. It's incredibly convenient given the alternative of shipping it out to some warehouse for weeks.

I rarely, if ever, hear about complaints against the actual product. Aside from the lack of screen options compared to Clevo, AW has numerous advantages, like build quality, cooling, BIOS support, warranty, able to disable Optimus/Enduro, etc. All the grief and driver issues suffered by Clevo 7970m owners (myself included) were almost nonexistent for Alienware 7970m owners. Their single and dual GPU machines consistently stay cooler and overclock better than their Clevo counterparts, leading to better benchmarks and gaming performance. They're the best performance gaming notebooks in the industry.

Anyway, sorry for the wall of text lol. Good luck on your next purchase neo! Let me know if I can help with any questions or if you are looking for a decent rep to order from.

 

Onkyo speakers and Realtek chipset are Clevo-made? Who knew? I also didn't know other laptop manufacturers outsourced all of their keyboards. Which by the way, you can get an outsourced Steelseries chiclet keyboard for the 9150 and 9170. Also, you do not need an extremely flashy chassis to be high end.

You refuted nothing, and any smart person would say that Alienware, Clevo/Sager, and MSI are the three high end brands when it comes to mobile gaming. Just because you hate your laptop does not change this.

 

Thumbs up failwheeldrive. I would have written something similar, but I didn't want enough flames to light my house for a year.

I don't have a problem with Clevos--I have never owned one--but some of the comments about Alienware were uncalled for. No one thinks that Alienware is perfect.

 

For anyone thinking about buying/not buying a clevo/sager machine I can only suggest you read every review and comments carefully, AND that you also check out each forum member previous posts. I say this because after reading this quite old post (i havent been around much lately, because my P150EM works great!), and its many replies, my conclusion is that this is very old news written by some 3 to 5 well known 7970M antagonists. It should not have surprised me that they also hate clevo/sager builds.
So go ahead and do your research, check out member's posts and make up ypur own minds.

As for the review i can only retain some paragraphs, and think they are the most valuable. I quote:

To share my own experience, since i got my laptop,maybe 4 or 5 months ago i havent experience any serious underutilization issue, have tried every single driver upgrade, suffered the whole BSOD era (without much grief btw). I must agree that since 13.1 drivers are no longer a concern, this explains why i dont check NBR so often anymore.

The rest of this so called review is IMHO, and here i quote again:

My own subjective opinion is that P150EM (i7/7970M combo) is a great machine, does the job its intended to and delivers the performance one expects from it.
Subjective overall grade: 9/10 (DO NOT use my grading or anyone else's as buying decission element...pls)
Price/quality related is definetely the BEST choice in the market.
To be more specific i like the keyboard and sound system as well (once you tweak them and get used to them).
Could clevo/sager be better? Definetely! there is lots of room for improvement, even easy fixes, but that does not at all imply that what they sell today is defective or overpriced at all.

As for paste jobs and such complaints (wich if you search my posts would find i suffer greatly) this is 100% reseller's responsability, xotic, malibal and the whole bunch are the ones who arm these beasts and they are responsible for doing it right. Wich reseller is best? Well thats for another topic, i cannot rec malibal at least, they truly suck and messed up my machine.

Exactly my feelings, the thing is not everyone is suited for the club, some members should really join AWs or other flashy "see how cool i am" clubs.

 

Pretty sure most people don't buy their computers to be part of any club. People who buy high end Alienwares do it for the performance, not to look flashy or "cool."

 

I kinda do :
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/713588-opinions-clevo-p170em-2.html
(3rd post from the bottom of page):

"You mentioned researching about issues in Clevo? I certainly did my research. AW lives in a glass house, and suffers the worst in that area. Maybe because they are a known brand, maybe because they cost more, but any reseller review section is a horrible experience of trudging through complaints and horror stories of burnt motherboards, technical issues that range from non-working ports up to CPU/GPU/Hard-Drive that are dead on arrival and the nightmare that follows to replace them. Is that an indication for purchase? Not for me. I would have ignored these guys and would go with my gut feeling, but a unit which costs so much more and also has probable reported issues just as well, or even more? That's not right in my book."

I've been planning on buying an Alienware since the brand had first emerged (before Dell) and stalked every piece of information regarding it, and no doubt understand it has its advantages over the Clevos and MSIs of the industry, but I've seen enough negatives about it to understand it really is not a perfect machine.

It's just that I simply grew a bit tired of the attitude that a Clevo is a piece of junk while AW is this perfect little dream machine that rise up from Neo's posts just because he got a lemon (which, as I was trying to point out, can happen to an AW just as well).

No flames from me, dude, just open discussion
That's the problem, though - some people do think it really is..

 

This is getting amusing if it weren't somewhat sad, considering how the new customers might get the wrong impression. Everyone is so eager to defend their "honor" since they perceive the brand they invested money in to be under attack. It's not. Read on.

The vast majority of this forum's (Sager/Clevo) members are either current/past Clevo/Sager owners or new buyers/potential buyers, with a smattering of other brands' owners. When someone is thinking of buying Clevo and has never heard of it before, they're aware that the only competition is AW, and that AW prices anywhere between ~200 to ~500 USD extra for the same specs, so it follows that what they're really asking whether they know it or not is: "What am I not getting from Sager when I pay less?" or paraphrased: "What is AW offering me for that extra money?". I don't think that anyone here would realistically argue that AW offers nothing over Sager, and therefore there is an answer to that question and this review was my take on it. Apparently that's too much to handle for the Clevo-thumping squad.

I fully accept that not ALL P170EMs (I can't speak for HM people who seem to be perfectly happy with their systems) users have a lemon keyboard, power brick, ..etc, but that doesn't take away from the fact that even if we take two fully functional AW and Clevo units with the same specs, the AW is objectively the better performer, no one can dispute that, even SSD throughput scores are higher on AW than Clevo for the same drive (as an average) not to mention GPU/CPU benchmarks, which indicates higher quality components and better system stability and scaling, do the leg work. When you get to the secondary things (I'm aware that Clevo doesn't manufacture RealTek chips and Onkyo speakers, but that was their choice for their rig, Sony doesn't manufacture their screens nor does Apple, but they're liable for what they stick into their machines and sell, no?) then your experience can get severely affected by the corners Clevo cut to save cost, in relation to AW. They've been highlighted in this thread, from a mediocre keyboard (and I'm not talking about mine, mine is a lemon), to bad sound, to a VERY short power cord that disconnects easily, to overall build quality (in relation to AW), to cooling (which is good, but not as good as AW if you're into high OCing, that has been objectively demonstrated) ..etc.

Now the golden question is: Does the above justify the price difference between AW and Sager? My opinion is that yes it does, specially if you're an international customer aiming to get SSD/RAM from 3rd party. My opinion is NOT that Clevo is a worthless brand that's just garbage and only works half the time. Other people might disagree and think that for 50 bucks it's worth the diff but not 300 dollars..etc. I think we should leave it to the potential customers to make up their mind according to their tastes and depth of their pockets, but to try and bury any "bad review" (more like an honest review) and assume I have some "agenda" or blood feud with Clevo just because my keyboard was a lemon, is frankly stupid and beneath me.

Finally, I never mentioned the 7970M in my review as a negative point. I'm still convinced it was the right choice for the price although AMD could've been more forthcoming in the beginning, but I'm satisfied at the moment. However, months ago when the card was severely throttling and underutilizing, everybody was incensed about it, and I was one of the people who made threads on various forums to raise awareness, others had their contacts in the industry who tried to get some news from AMD, and apply pressure, which culminated in an Anandtech article with a rather alarmist tone, that got the people in AMD concerned. We'll never know if what we did hastened driver release, but even if not, I think everyone here agrees that it was a good thing to raise the ruckus we did to get better service for our machines. For anyone to come now and label one of those people who took the time and effort to troll the net (and create a facebook page among many things) as "The Clevo 7970M antagonists" is the height of hypocrisy coming from someone who thinks the 7970M in a Clevo is just dandy now after a dozen driver/beta releases.

 

If you end up following anecdotal evidence and horror stories for every brand then you'd never buy another laptop again. Like I said before, with such a massive sample size there are bound to be unhappy customers. The same thing occurs with much smaller brands as well (just look at this thread lol.) The thing that bothers me is when I see people use anecdotal evidence to try and say something negative about an entire brand. It's just not an accurate representation of the brand's overall customer satisfaction. It's human nature to be more vocal about something if you've had a bad experience with it.

Like I said earlier, I'm not arguing that Alienware is perfect. They've got their weaknesses, just like any other brand. Their screen options are painfully limited compared to Clevo, and I believe there are parts that could have been designed better. In particular, the hard drive assembly ribbon cable clip on the M18x is extremely fragile, and if it breaks you need an entire motherboard swap. I ran into that issue within 15 minutes of owning my system. Fortunately, Dell had a tech out to my house the next day to swap my motherboard and get it up and running. If I were to damage a part like that on my old NP9150, I'd be paying for a new motherboard and have several weeks of downtime while I sent it in for repair.

In the end though, I buy my notebooks for their gaming performance, and that's one area where AW undoubtedly excels over the competition. Everything else, from the excellent build quality to the amazing warranty support, is just a bonus.