My thoughts on Sager laptops and NP8130

Since I've received numerous PM's requesting my thoughts on the Sager NP8130 I thought I'd briefly outline my thoughts here. I had originally planned to do a full write-up comparing the NP8130 and HP DV6z that I also was evaluating to keep as my laptop. I did a full write-up but never posted it because I felt it was too much talk and not enough constructive feedback and didn't have the gumption to edit it all. Part of the reason was the amount of time I spent with the HP troubleshooting overheating issues, which I should have just returned the laptop the first few days other than mess around with it.

In any case the DV6z is actually a very good budget laptop, and have every confidence the overheating issue was an isolated incident due to feedback in the HP forums here. It won't win any benchmark awards, but actually with some tuning and overclock it can get close to GTX 460m stock performance, and with coupons about $500 less than a comparably equipped NP8130 (blu-ray, 1080p screen, 8GB DDR3 1333). Plus I like that I'm supporting AMD with a new technology that hopefully will give Intel a kick in the pants in the budget gaming laptop category.

Overall the build construction of both machines are actually very good, including the HP. I was impressed with its solid feel and metal finish. No flash lights or crazy things going on except the LED around the trackpad which I think is useless, but whatever, it can be turned off.

Personally, I love the NP8130. But right now, battery life and cost is king for me. I don't use my laptop much these days, but when I do, it's usually unplugged, and only game on it maybe 2 hours a week on average. At best, with web browsing, I was only able to eek out about 2.5 hours of battery life from the NP8130, which is commendable for the equipment it is housing, just not enough to suit my needs. Blu-ray viewing and Netflix barely eeked out 2 hours, actually I got to 7% life left while watching Serenity on blu-ray, and about same watching Full Metal Jacket on Netflix. Running HD content requires at least "balanced" mode, because "power saver" would cause skipping and pauses during playback. On the contrary, the HP offers a superb 7+ hours of battery life with the 9-cell battery. Even after a two-hour Blu-Ray movie, I still had close to 5 hours of battery life left.

The screen, the screen, the infamous 95% color gamut v4 screen! From first boot up it was clearly apparent the screen was brighter with a high contrast and crisp display. But blacks were more like a dark maroon, and even after three calibration attempts I couldn't get everything quite right. I think the high gamut almost makes it too difficult to satisfy the palette, where lower gamut seems to diffuse the colors enough that it's not as noticeable. Viewing angles of the screen are excellent. That being said the 1920x1080 screen on the HP was surprisingly very bright, crisp, and had excellent viewing angles as well.

Other items to note. NP8130 offers a DVI and USB/eSATA combo port that the HP does not. The HP, as of now, can only accommodate the Intel 1000 BGN wifi card. But everything else is pretty common between the two.

I also did a brief overview and put it on YouTube. I hate hearing myself talk, and am not good at doing stuff like this so forgive the amateur video. My camera sucks too. My kids got ahold of it and broke the protective lens cover, so despite my best cleaning efforts, the smudge effect doesn't help matters much!

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So where do I stand with all this? I love Sager/Clevo laptops and almost feel guilty for not having one now. My hope is that Sager and/or Clevo (whoever has the pull in this matter) implement some form of switchable graphics and/or some other way to extend battery life further. I don't expect miracles, but when the Alienware M18x offers manual switchable graphics and can get 4+ hours on battery, there's no reason these machines can't either. Just because you want power doesn't mean you occasionally don't need portable computing away from the wall. I'm sure I'll be back if/when they do and if/when my needs change (as they always do). Out of all the laptops I've used and trialed over my geriatric life, from Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Sony, and several odd brands (like my current Hannspree netbook), Sager has the best quality, reseller customer support, and usually a model or two that are the best bang for the buck like this NP8130.

While my NP8130 hasn't officially been returned yet, I want to give kudos to XoticPC for making processing of the laptop sale as transparent as possible to the customer. It should be effortless for the customer to buy, return, or exchange a product. With HP, it took me nearly three hours on the phone to get the exchange for my DV6z right (and it still isn't 100% right, but I conceded ). This is one thing that makes me super skeptical about keeping an HP, but usually if you "burn-in" your laptop when you get it, you will expose any nasty flaws that will rear their ugly heads during the first year of a laptop anyhow. Perhaps I'll be back in less than a year when my HP laptop breaks. But I can guarantee you this, if and when a Sager laptop is made that equals or exceeds the performance and battery life of this HP, and within reasonable cost, the HP goes on eBay and I buy the Sager.

Thanks for reading. You'll still see me around these parts.

 

This is awesome! Wow, the Sager bezel is super glossy.

 

Thinking about returning my new NP5165 for a souped up dv6z.

 

I'm surprised that you said the 95% gamut screen has good viewing angles. If I move my head less than 2", colors shift noticeably. Moving my viewpoint up a little = more red; viewpoint down = more green, and either left or right of center = murky/darker. Ive never used any monitor that is so critical of the viewpoint. However, if I look at the monitor from exactly dead-center, I can evaluate the colors of photos in LightRoom such that I can get them to print pretty much exactly how they appear on screen, making allowances for that fact that a print is reflected color and the screen is obviously transmitting light. Nevertheless, when the ambient light matches that during screen calibration with my Spyder 3, the resemblance is excellent. I just wish that the blacks were actually neutral, instead of being tinged with red. With lots of ambient light, that problem isn't nearly as noticeable as when I am using the laptop at night in a dimly lit room. Then I wonder why the heck I haven't called XopticPC for an RMA. $1,800 for a laptop and the colors really are a mixed bag, and that's being charitable.

I finally noticed the infamous trailing red ghosts when moving the cursor on a "black" background. sigh.

when text scrolls up the screen, it turns green until I stop the scrolling. never seen anything like that on my other laptops or the many monitors I've owned.


UPDATE: I just got done playing around repeatedly with three different methods of controlling the screen calibration.

1. Normally, I use the Spyder calibration, which is far more green than the defaults, but that calibration is a godsend for color critical work in Lightroom.

2. The Nvidia Control Panel has color controls that override all other ICC or ICM profiles. WHen I choose to let Nvidia control the color, I just discovered that the red cast when viewing from above, is totally gone, as is the green cast from viewing from a low viewpoint. Also, there is no color shift in text that is scrolling!

3. Choosing from the various ICC/ICM files that Sager provided gives a reddish cast to the screen when viewing straight on, but then scrolling text doesnt take on a green cast--same as with item #2.

So....I think when I'm not using Lightroom, overall, it makes more sense for me to let Nvidia control the color (all the settings are on 50%, gamma=1.0, Hue = 0 degrees.

Basically, I'm trying to reach a compromise with this beast so that I don't have to send back a third laptop (sent back two DV6's). I am worn out with tech problems! I just bought a tablet yesterday at BB--an Asus eee Transformer. While it has some good points (it has an EXCELLENT screen and battery life is insane), there are just too many rough edges (and SHARP edges on the case) in Android 3.2. No Netflix, HBOGo, and a bunch of other apps that I thought would be available, aren't installable on the unit. That and some other technical issues, makes the $610 I spent on it and a dock seem kinda dumb. It started out at $399, but with tax and dock it adds up quickly. I'll be in the returns line tomorrow... sigh.

 

Hey dave1812 - Doesn't it suck! It seems there's lots of people looking for similar specs, almost as if no manufacturer expected this market and I don't know why not. The DV6t / DV6z come as close to it as possible. Actually now that the DV6t has the issues worked out temporarily with OpenGL (basically using fixed switchable graphics instead of dynamic), it might be the better buy over the DV6z since the CPU is more powerful and no waiting for crossfire improvements and stable crossfire profiles.

I'm not a photo editor or do much work with color sensitive stuff, but I just want my colors to look reasonable. But I had a hard time getting it to look right. Just frustrating when you spend extra money on a supposedly better screen. I didn't have any viewing angle issues like you stated though. Then again, I was so irritated by the stock NP8170 screen, that anything better than that was a godsend.

Like I said, if battery life were improved by a decent amount I'd buy the NP8130 in a second. Heck I'd buy an NP5165 if they threw an 8-cell in there instead of the 6-cell (stupid decision imho).

 

Hi!

Yes, it is very frustrating that even with the extra roughly $600 I spent on the Sager (compared to the DV6), that the screen is such a mixed bag. The two good attributes of it are the matte finish (hardly something unique to that screen), and the bright colors (also something not unique to that screen--all high gamut screens share that feature). I wish Sager would source a better high gamut screen!

I just put three layers of tape along the front edge of my Sager because the sharp edges dig into my wrists. So here I have a new smart-looking laptop, with TAPE plastered to it, to make it a bit more comfortable to use.

 

Thanks for the review, just purchased my dv6z

 

There is no reason you need to buy the high gamut screen. The default v1 matte screen avoids the color issues but my problem with that is that I believe it is much dimmer in bright light/daylight than the high gamut screen. I wish I could use the 8130 outdoors but I cannot.

 

With respect to brightness, the v1 screen (300 nits max) is technically brighter than the v4 screen (270 nits max).

 

LOL! You have NO IDEA why I need a high gamut screen, so please refrain from making silly assumptions. I can see my screen in full, direct sunlight. (I need the high gamut for Lightroom 3, so that I don't waste my frickin' TIME, INK, and photo paper. Thanks to that high gamut, I am able to finally print exactly what I see on the screen. that's the saving grace for this screen.

 

save for the current issues, the screen is a great investment

you're already getting a 1080p screen, why not get it matte?

it's not ips, but whatever

 

You can get it matte but not 95% gamut.

 

I cant say my requirements are quite the same as you guys. I dont do photo work at all but it seems my screen is sharp and viewing angles are fantastic - almost as good as my Dell IPS screen I have on my desktops. It's an LG screen so I guess probably different from all of yours.

I have both the DV6T and NP8150 and I have to say (bar the horrible screen and WiFi card on the DV6) that these are some of the best laptops out there at the moment (very grateful for the DV6 OpenGL fix of course). I use the DV6 more off the mains and around the house, and the NP8150 more as a mobile gaming station.

 

The problem you have on the DV6 is the 1366x768 screen which is about the worse there is out there. The 1080p however is quite nice.

I agree though that the wi-fi card is horrible though.

 

Yeah agreed. Just wish HP extended CTO DV6s to the rest of the world. Where I live we can only buy what you guys call quick ship models - and that horrible screen is what they ship with

 

How does the Sager's GTX560 compare to the HP's HD6770?

Edit: Forget it, the GTX560 significantly outperforms the HD6770, I'm getting this laptop primarily for school and Battlefield 3 (competing for each others time, of course) so I need a rig that is at least portable and very powerful. I think the 8130 will do the trick, but now I'm wondering if I should do the 8150 instead?

 

See here comparison GTX 560 vs DV6z 6750m in crossfire

http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-pavilion-notebooks/602175-dv6z-dv6t.html#post7803010

 

It's hard to say how much that game will push the 560m, and what settings you'll need to run it at. The P150HM is a great option though if you went with the 6990m, which can be 2x faster than the 560m (or more, depending on the game). You'll have a bit more headroom with that option. Portability and features wise, the P150 and P151HM1 are identical other than the power brick and exterior finish.

 

My opinion, if you plan on doing a lot of gaming with the laptop, and battery life isn't as critical, buy the NP8130 or NP8150 (or Clevo equivalent of course). The HP is a "poor man's gaming machine". It has its caveats for sure, especially the DV6z, with driver development still needing a lot of work. But if you need a solid machine for daily desktop tasks, with gaming on occasion (like a few hours a week tops), then the HP DV6z or DV6t (the Intel version with 6770m) are good options. Even then if battery life isn't a concern, my option would be for the Sager/Clevo.

 

The only real reason to go with the 8150 is if you want to upgrade the GPU (Or if you really like the rubberized finish).

They're essentially the same, but the 8150 has the 180W power supply which supports the bigger GPUs.

 

well done wingnut.

for those that don't know, the z is on sale at hp direct preconfig model for $699.