My Sager NP8170 Review

Hello everyone! My Sager NP8170 came in yesterday and I figured that I should write a review about my experiences with it so far.

The good: The screen is clear, and despite it being a glare type it is pretty good even in semi-direct sunlight. I wouldn't game outside, but for simple clerical work it's passable. The computer boots quickly (31s from power on til chrome launch) despite running on a 750gb 7200 rpm sata drive. This is using a normal Windows 7 Enterprise boot using R2 Studios Startup Delayer to Delay all but the essential processes / hooks from running on startup.

The computer does very well on tests, pulling in a 14k on Vantage in 1280x800 performance mode with the 2.2ghz // 12 gb of ram / 6990m option.

The audio on the computer is quite a bit more clear / crisp than my Samsung RF-711-S02. The audio is crisp and the bass note is much more notable on this computer.

The laptop itself feels very stable. Weighing in at a whopping 8.4 lbs mine sits securely on my chest and doesn't give the slightest wobble while I type.

The Bad:
There have been some minor annoyances in migrating from another laptop to this one, and they're somewhat notable.

It's been quite some time since I've seen a laptop that doesn't sport media buttons or a "home row", this one unfortunately lacks both. The main purpose of this computer seems to be gaming, however as someone with very sensitive ears I find myself adjusting the volume while gaming a lot. I had to program myself a silent volume control program that is hotkey activated since alt-tabbing was really immersion breaking while gaming.

The home row is another really confusing one to me. The computer lacks a home row, but touts a full keypad... To activate the home row, you are required to hit (for example) Fn + <- arrow (For Home). For those of us that do a LOT of code editing, homework, or other microsoft office related tasks that require quick highlighting and changing, this is horrible. I feel that this is a terrible design decision.

The touchpad.... all I have to say about the touchpad is "thankfully I have a mouse". I have never used a less comfortable touchpad in my life. It has grooves in it that run from left to right. If you use it vertically it feels as though you are going "Against the grain". I read this in another review and thought to myself "Wow, that's a silly complaint." Upon using it, I totally agree.... it's very noteworthy.

The microphone and webcam are both TERRIBLE quality, honestly, they're really awful. After playing around with the webcam options for the better part of an hour, I gave up and used an external one that I had kicking around. If you find yourself on Skype with any regularity you should highly consider a proper external mic / webcam combo. Unless there are drivers for the "bisoncam nbpro" that I haven't found (since they weren't on the sager website) it is truly one of the worst Webcams I've ever seen:



**Note**: There is 85 watts of light roughly 6 feet from where this picture is taken and the wall is a light blue.

Is literally the "BEST" quality I could muster from this web cam, when viewed at higher resolutions (Anything above 800x600 it seems )it is VERY grainy. My girlfriend complains about the quality quite a bit when I use the built in camera while on skype.

Laptop also gets a little bit hot sometimes while gaming, not nearly as bad as older ones though.


The Final Verdict:
Being able to run essentially any game on "Ultra" for a price tag of $1500 is a bit of a dream, but minor engineering changes have ruined the experience in a few ways. With minor tweaks to the touchpad, keyboard, webcam, microphone, and other peripherals I would think that this computer was just about perfect, but as it stands now, I can only give it:

4 / 5 **** stars.


Thanks for reading! More Benchmarks to come over the next few days!

Benchmarks:
3D Mark 2011: P3712 -- http://3dmark.com/3dm11/2423427
3D mark Vantage: P15105 (oddly low physics scores)- http://3dmark.com/3dmv/3763496

Quality comparison to a normal webcam that I have (sitting in the same spot, same lighting):

 

I guess the volume control button thingy is because most gamers use their own headsets, which have their own volume buttons. I can't really imagine myself using tinny laptop speakers (no matter what laptop) to try listen to all the sounds going on in the game.

 

Have to agree with most of what you said here. The home button on my P150hm is certainly annoying. But the keyboard CERTAINLY makes up for it in the numpad. This is the first laptop I've owned with a numpad, and for me, this allows SO MANY MORE binds for tiling WMs and vim commands. I simply rebound most of what my home key options were before.

And there is a way to disable the notifications everytime you raise/lower the volume. Just stop the hotkey app from running on startup (run -> msconfig). The FN keys are controlled by the BIOS anyhow.

 

Good Job! I suggest that you request this be moved to the reviews and owner's lounges section so that more people will be able to see it.

 

What do you mean by it gets a bit hot? Are temps within safe ranges?

 

Absolutely. I meant hot to the touch on the underside since the vent sits right on where my thigh is. Doing a furmark burn-in it reached a max temp of 82 degrees celcius after 26 minutes and stayed between 80 and 82 from that point on (until 40 minutes, when I cancelled the test)

 

Updated with accurate benchmarks.

 

Updated with a comparison shot from another webcam.

 

Thanks for review info "sarevok9" because I just received my laptop last week and also have the same issues with the webcam lighting. Have tried being in a well lit environment, putting the laptop at different angles and still the improvements aren't that great. I have the stock screen from XoticPc and wonder if that might be the cause...also is the webcam intergrated with the screen or separate.

 

The webcam is separate from the screen and is mounted just above it inside the bezel.

 

It's fairly common for bezel mounted webcams to be rather poor in quality (usually 1024 x 768 or below (800x600 on my Samsung RF-711-S02)) but the lighting has never proved to be this much of an issue. The Bisoncam is truly a terrrrrrrrible webcam. I'm going to contact the reseller and see if they have any kind of replacement that I could pop in. The Microsoft Lifecam that I have (usb, external, non-mounted) is HD but eats up too much bandwidth when I'm talking to people that have bad internet. So it puts me in a weird position of having 1 bad camera and one good one, neither of which are suitable =/.