New XMG P304 (W230SS) issues

Hey guys,

I've been lurking for a long time, registered to consult the community on whether a couple of issues with my new laptop are expected or I should push for it to be repaired/replaced (already emailed mysn / xmg about this, still waiting on them to reply to me).

There's a couple of issues:

a) Running Windows 8.1, the screen on the lower left part is displaying a few flickering, bright lines, noticeable only if you are looking for them but annoying once you do. They seem to go away when changing the refresh rate to 40 Hz instead of the 60 Hz via the Intel HD options, but that refresh rate is unbearable if you have been using 60 Hz monitors for years. Only modes available through intel drivers are 40 and 60 Hz, due to those being allowed by the monitor.
The issue persists across Safe and regular mode in Windows 8.1 as well as when running Ubuntu, so it's not a software issue.

b) The right part (especially lower right) of the touchpad is progressively less responsive (needs more pressure) and has essentially a dead spot even at the lower sensitivity allowed by the Synaptics drivers. On Windows, I can find the registry value for the sensitivity and turn it all the way down and the touchpad gets jumpy, the lower part of the touchpad works a bit but it's still less sensitive than the rest.
The same issue occurs in Ubuntu, where due to me being unable to edit a registry setting, displays the initial behavior (right edge and right bottom corner essentially dead).


The rest of the laptop is otherwise impeccable, but I'm mostly convinced I should look for these issues to be fixed, and not just ignore them (and I'm also somewhat afraid they will get worse if not attended to).

What would you do?

 

hi
sorry to hear youve got a couple of hiccups.

just to help others advise could you post your full spec.

you could also contact them on live chat. click green symbol on left hand side of screen mySN.co.uk | XMG | Schenker Technologies - Gaming Laptops

 

Hey there, unfortunately the live chat is only available for anyone ordering through mysn.co.uk and I ordered through the european site so I've been unable to contact them that away.

Copying and pasting my specs:

XMG P304 PRO Gaming Notebook 33,78cm (13.3")
. 33,78 cm (13.3") Full-HD (1920*1080) Non-Glare IPS-Panel
. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M 2048MB GDDR5 + NVIDIA F2P Bundle + Watch Dogs (USK 18)
. Intel Core i7-4710MQ - 2,50 - 3,50GHz 6MB 47W
. 16GB (2x8192) SO-DIMM DDR3 RAM 1600MHz Crucial
. 512GB SATA-III SSD Crucial MX100 (CT512MX100SSD1)
. Intel Wireless-N 7260 (inkl. Bluetooth)
. Basis-Garantie: 24M. Pickup&Return | 6M. Sofort-Reparatur -DE
. Backlit Keyboard U.S. International


Haven't seen anyone mention anything similar with these, so either I'm extremely unlucky or most people are okay with these things?

 

A photo would help diagnose the issue but there are 3 things which explain your issue with the screen:
1. Most likely you have a cluster of dead/defective/dying pixels on the LCD screen, this explains the fix being reducing the refresh rate (less stress on the cells)
2. Second most likely is a dead/dying LCD backlight strobe, the reason it is the second most likely cause (and not the first) is that it theoretically should persist despite the refresh rate change
3. Highly unlikely but it could be a defective CPU HD4600 unit (basically never happens anymore due to Intel's insane QA procedures)

As for the touchpad, Clevo's units were never great to begin with but that looks like a genuine issue with the feedback loop.

I would get on the horn with XMG and get an RMA ticket for the LCD and the Touchpad. The issues should be fairly reproducible.

 

Here's an image from another forum with an asus laptop facing a pretty similar issue: http://i.imgur.com/K227v77.jpg

I'll try to take a picture myself but it's gonna be hard to get my camera to focus properly to see it. I will probably have to provide one to mysn anyway though.

My screen looks like the dark part of the picture linked, from the bottom left corner up to the middle of the screen's height, gradually getting less visible along the height and length of the screen. Not too visible but still noticeable especially against the grey background I got set for Windows.

This happens on 60Hz on Windows, is unoticable when running the screen at 40Hz on Windows, and I can't seem to get the right refresh rate to make it go away on Linux either.


The touchpad should be fairly impossible for mysn to say that it's not problematic, the practically dead spots are easily noticeable.

 

That is an issue with the LCD then, definitely related to the refresh rate of the liquid crystal cells. For some reason, that batch of cells in the corner is refreshing abnormally (i'm guessing slower than the refresh signal) in response to a certain color spectrum.

 

Maybe not really what you want now but you can change the sensitivity under Linux with fingerhigh/low in X.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Touchpad_Synaptics

 

I figured that out later, but I don't want to make the entire touchpad jumpy just to make a side work.


Second working day right now after I sent them my initial email, hopefully they'll get around to replying to me today and I won't have to get out of the office to call them on the phone.

 

Hi

Sorry to hear that you have a couple of issues with your P304. Could you pm me your email address and I will forward this to our EU office for you, just to make sure that they have received your email ok and so they can reply to you ASAP.

 

Hey, thanks for this, however I doubt it's going to be long before someone gets back to me, correspondence has been prompt up to now.

I did try to find a way to PM you (by adding you as a friend?) but can't figure that one out. My email is amatsagkas at gmail dot com in case you really do think it's necessary to hassle someone.

 

think you need 10 posts before PM is activated. your half way there

 

It was only because you said "Second working day right now after I sent them my initial email", emails are usually replied to in under 24 hours (including non-office hours) but maybe if you only emailed yesterday I'm sure they will get back to you before the weekend

I think you need a minimum number of posts before you can pm on this forum, didn't notice you were only on 4 before I asked you to pm me! I have a record of your email address so if you wish you can edit your post to remove it.

 

Got someone from the european offices to respond to me and we've been discussing the issues over email, apparently the touchpad is considered to be okay.

I was asked to provide some pictures with the issue, but videos capture it better I believe, so I did a couple of videos.

Has anyone encountered an issue like this and figured what might be causing it? Watch in fullscreen and notice the horizontal lines:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0n6IgTS1Ac

Comparison video running at 40Hz (motion is much much more choppy but no horizontal lines):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKVx9BixLao

About the touchpad issue, haven't had a touchpad in the past that works like this, I'll be posting a video for feedback later on.

 

And here's the video showing the part of the touchpad that's not working:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpiJZ2DFfkY

And a picture of an orange background on the lower part of the screen:

or http://i.imgur.com/CnRJW5A.jpg

the most annoying thing about this is that the horizontal lines fade out about mid-screen and you're left with a perfect image to remind you of the issue.

 

i did have a issue with the right hand side of the touchpad but it turned out to be a driver problem as the right is for scrolling up and down on web pages only.
open the forum and try the right hand side again scrolling up/down.

video is a bit crap as taken on my blackberry but gives an idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TkxywxQAIQ&feature=youtu.be

 

Not a driver issue, this video is taken with no drivers installed. Same issue across all OSes with or without drivers. When drivers are installed, under the one finger scroll menu you can see where the touchpad is detecting your finger even on the scroll area and it's detecting nothing on the "dead" parts.

 

I'll let the EU office continue to discuss the other things that you mentioned, but the touchpad video is completely normal. The right hand side will not control the mouse, it is an area specifically for scrolling in windows/web pages and so on

 

Under the Synaptics drivers, you can see where the touchpad senses your finger and you can fine tune the area where the one finger scroll takes place.

Here's an image of the touchpad settings for the one finger scroll:
https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/image/...E21490899714/image-size/medium?v=mpbl-1&px=-1

Under that menu, scrolling is disabled and you can the software pointing exactly where your finger is detected.
That menus is used to calibrate where exactly you want the one finger scroll zone to begin, and it provides a visual indication of whether your finger is in the zone or not for ease of configuration.
That's the way the software works, and you can check in case you have a Synaptics touchpad on another device (I do).
While my finger is detected within the scroll zone on the right side, as you get closer to the edge it stops being detected. And, ofcourse, as the touchpad doesn't sense the finger, there's no scrolling going on either if you try to do it on the edge of the touchpad. Essentially, you have to scroll a few mms inside the touchpad which is annoying.

Same thing with the corner. No finger is detected under the settings, and obviously, one finger scrolling stops working as soon as your finger reaches the dead zone.

So, essentially, I can only use one finger scroll on a very specific area, about half the keyboard height and a few mms away from the edge.

The same area is dead even without the drivers installed (where the entire touchpad is in pointing mode and no scroll functionality or edge-tapping buttons are in effect).

As I said, this isn't a software but a hardware issue of sensitivity.

I can modify the hexadecimal value of the sensitivity to be under the lowest allowed by the drivers, and my finger starts being picked up on the corner if I use my entire finger on the touchpad on it. That would have been okay, if that didn't make the rest of the touchpad extremely sensitive compared to the corner. Every slight touch gets registered on the rest of the touchpad then, to the point where the cursor randomly jumps if you so much as come close to touching another point of the touchpad.

 

And just because I got used to shooting these videos, here's one with the software showing that the finger isn't even detected for scrolling (notice that the green area doesn't light up).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZpPOm-iq7c

And here's a video showing how scrolling is failing due to the touchpad's issue on this very thread:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oC6V5xCl834

So if it were reserved for scrolling on some level (hardware or driver), it should be at least scrolling dammit.

 

What sensitivity is the pad set to?

 

As sensitive as the driver settings allow, on the video.

I described earlier that I scanned the registry for the sensitivity setting and figured out what the Synaptic drivers were accessing as the value for sensitivity, and I managed to set it even lower than the drivers allow you to set it, and some movement begins getting picked up around the edge and the corner (although the further part of the corner remains entirely dead), but this makes the rest of the touchpad almost unusable due to being too sensitive (cursor jumping around to the slightest of touch, starts detecting a single finger as multiple inputs etc).

 

I'd be surprised if the dead area was supposed to be so large, have you spoken to your reseller?

 

Slowly getting some communication going with the guys over at mysn.de, I can't really call them during their (and my!) office hours and they have been pretty slow to reply to emails.

Initially they responded that they considered the touchpad thing normal, then after I provided the videos of both the screen and the touchpad, on their second email they told me they'd get back to me within the week after they crosscheck with other departments.

I'm used to using the 2 finger scroll on both my laptops (work and home) with my fingers moving to the region that's dead on this laptop, so I hope I don't have to change the way I've been using my touchpads.

 

There can be small dead areas but usually it's on the very edge, that seems abnormal to me but I have not personally used that machine.

 

As a W230ST owner I can report that the touchpad on mine (which should be the same thing) has completely consistent response across the whole pad.

 

Apmats has been in touch with our EU office so they are helping him with the touchpad issue and a couple of other questions that he had ;-)

 

That's good, it's not that I thought you would not have responded but people can wait a little too long before picking up the phone and asking for advice some times. No way we can telepathically tell a user is in trouble after all

 

Hey again, yeah, the guys from the european part of mysn have been looking at my issue, although progress is slow due to them not replying to mails too much and my inability to call them during their office hours that coincide with mine!

Pretty sure that they will be able to work this out, the only annoying part is that I rushed to order this and set everything up before going abroad for a week in August and now it seems I'll be forced to carry a tablet instead because I don't see the screen issue being resolved before then if I have to send it in, and the screen in it's current state is way too tiresome on the eyes for me to use with the oscillating lines.

 

Shipped the notebook back to mysn. After a few emails detailing the problems I was offered to either return the notebook and get refunded or send it in and let them sort them out and then get it back. Waiting for them to get it, test it and ship it back.
As I said earlier, the little guy is perfect in every way I care for (size, temps, price for the components it's carrying etc.), so I'll wait a bit to get it back as nothing else I've seen on the market comes close.

 

It is in it's own little space, hopefully you get it back quick

 

Just updating this after having received the laptop back and tried it out for over a week.

The entire system was swapped (save for the disk I suppose) and both issues are fixed!

Apart from DHL and the local post office taking their sweet time (over 20 days from here to Germany and back) I'm pretty happy about how this turned out, Schenker shipped it back out within a couple of days of receiving it.

Pretty crazy machine for the form factor as well, let's hope the 860m isn't obsolete in the coming months with the new Maxwells.

 

But it is maxwell, it will be the equivalent of the 750m most likely.