Opinions on Clevo P170EM

Hi all,

I am on the verge of buying a Clevo P170EM with an i3630QM and GTX 680M.

From owners of this particular chassis, what are your opinions as to its build quality, reliability, driver support and screen quality ?

Thanks for your help

 

The P170EM is one of the better units in terms of overall design quality and component quality. We get very few RMA cases for it. Driver support is on par with just about anything else out there, but that will also depend in part on which operating system you choose to put on it.

The screen is pretty good as well. Good brightness and it's also very seldom we ever encounter dead pixel issues with it.

 

Thank you for your expert opinion on teh P170EM

 

Its a beautiful unit, such solid build quaility. Better IMO than the P15xx Series, had one of those felt a little less than this. The screen depending on what you pick, the non gloss screen has the most amazing clarity to it as well.

The fact this machine as so many storage options also makes it perfect for those (like me ) who need massive stage and speed on the go.

Im sure if you get this machine you will not be disappointed.

of course the other option is the P370EM if you want an ever bigger power house and future proofing.

 

I made a thread a while back about the P170EM which I've owned since August, with a specific focus on your questions.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...er-np9170-review-7970m-warning-wall-text.html

In summary, as an owner I would not recommend it neither aesthetically nor functionally. It does the job, but you better not be telling your friends that you're getting this awesome beast of a machine because the reaction will be very tepid specially If you're the type of guy who cares about a "premium feel" and industrial design. I'd go AW if I could do it again.

As far as drivers go (which I didn't cover in the review), suffice to say that since the model's launch there hasn't been a single driver update to my 7970M GPU, not one, and we're one month shy of a year since those drivers. AMD on the other hand has released no less than 7-8 driver updates that I know of (including Betas). The 680M drivers haven't been updated since Sep 2012, and we're talking flagship top of the line GPUs. I'm aware that no company updates its proprietary drivers as often as the original manufacturer, but at least concerning the Enduro issue (for those with AMD cards) we never got any traction and they tried to put a lid on the whole thing, expect similar behavior if you run into trouble. They basically throw in components they get wholesale into cheap shells with poor quality control, and toss a coin for whether you get a lemon keyboard, speakers, power brick ..etc. That has been my experience and observation on the forums. Hope it helps.

 

Having owned several Dells and an Alienware I can safely say that their quality is no better than that of the 150EM i currently own. There might be an ever so slight edge in structural strength on the Alienware, but they are also significantly heavier and unless you plan on using it as a weapon there is no difference. As for the quality of parts? Every single Dell/Alienware I have owned saw a technician or went into the depot at least once the first year, usually for a mobo (Dell is notorious for mobo failure), whereas this Sager has been working flawlessly outside of Enduro which isnt their fault.

Lets be realistic with our expectations here please, you aren't building a tank.

 

What are you talking about, NeoCzar? The drivers come from ATI/Nvidia, not from Sager, AW or MSI. I already updated my 680M drivers 5 or 6 times since I bought it, and unlike you, I went for the 680M straight away and everything worked without a hitch since day one.

I know you've had a lousy experience, but you're exaggerating and spreading false information to people, please stop that. True, AW tried harder to fix AMD/ATI's fault with the 7970M, but that isn't relevant to Nvidia cards.

Anyway, after owning my Clevo P170EM since August, I'm quite happy with the laptop. It does what I wanted it to do - play games spectacularly while sitting on my desk, with an ability to easily move it around. I can attest to that, as I already moved 3 times since I first bought mine, and it sure is much easier to carry around than a full PC. Sure, it has it shares of qualms and minor flaws, but just like Vahlen mentioned, contact an MSI owner and they'll have their share of issues, and try long time AW users and they will have something to say about theirs. No laptop is perfect.

I'm not sure your issues are due to poor quality control. Maybe the trip from the US to your country messed something in it? Maybe your customs handled it poorly or someone in security invasively opened it up over there? I've had almost none of the issues you refer to.

Super-Spy, honestly, this beast isn't a looker, it won't have neat features like HDMI-in or LED lights all over the place (it does have colorful LED keyboard backlight, which I turned off immediately), and you better not rely solely on the headphones jack or the speakers and get a USB soundcard like the ASUS Xonar U3 or the FiiO E10 (don't touch the Creative stuff, it crackles and hiss like mad), but this isn't a Mac. This is a hardy machine to play games on and it worked and still works flawlessly and tirelessly since the day I got it. It's exactly what I wanted to be - an alternative to a full desktop PC.

The build quality is good and sturdy. Lots of metal and tough plastic all around. There is a cheesy reflective bezel around the screen, I'll give Neo that much, but a minute after I bought it, I no longer notice it at all. In fact, I forgot all about it until I read Neo's whine of a thread right now.

Regarding reliability, I never had an issues with it on this regard. It works, and works well. Fans pick up when gaming, stop dead silent when not and not interfere with your work, everything works the same since I first bought it back in August, and I've been using it constantly everyday for hours on end.

Driver support is good. It had a specific issue with Windows 8 when the driver that handles the keyboard lights and stuff like that crashed when ran for me , but I fixed it by installing a more updated driver that was supposedly reserved for a newer model (P722). Other than that - everything works without blue screens or issues. And like I said, GPU drivers are no longer related to notebook's manufacturers, since both Nvidia and ATI have unified drivers now.

Screen quality is top notch. Non-reflective, easy on the eyes, vibrant and colorful. And since even Neo agrees to that, I'll leave it at that.

Overall, I'm quite happy with my purchase and will keep using Clevos in the future.

 

totall agree with amirfoox

you didnt look very far NeoCzar >>> http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/699962-updated-clevo-driver-thread.html

 

Thank you for all your opinions, both positive and negative.

I have read a bunch of reviews and looked at a number of photos and aware of the P170EMs handicap in the looks department but as some people say, the under-stated, bland look appeals to some people. Personally, I am not that bothered by looks, if I was, I would be looking at a Macbook or Dell XPS 15.

I am more interested in long-term reliability and support. As regards drivers, I always just update them direct from the manufacturere eg GPU drivers from Nvidia, Mptherboard chipset drivers from intel after checking for any compatability issues on the net.

I have to admit, I have always lusted after an Alienware and now that I am in a position to buy one, they just don't make sense when you compare spec to price of a P170EM Vs m17x. My heart is trying to justify the Alienware but my head just can't make the figures work !

I have owned many business laptops over the years ranging from Dell Latitudes, to IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads, HP and Toshiba. Some are OK and some are great. For build quality, the Thinkpads stand head and shoulders above the rest. I am not expecting that level of quality from the Clevo but I would hope it is on a par with consumer laptops from Toshiba and Samsung.

 

i like the plain/bland/flat look of clevo but the material and build quality is not that good. i dont mind clevo sells at higher price with thinkpad quality.

 

All I can say is - never rely on a specific person that suffered an issue with a product, otherwise you wouldn't buy anything. Just try checking something on Amazon - on everyone that praises a product, there are naysayers complaining their product broke a second after they bought it, didn't work as intended or even nearly burned down their house (really!).

Both MrDJ and I have the laptop since around August. After 8 months, the novelty wears out, you no longer try to justify your purchase, and issues are appearing sooner rather than later so you can no longer ignore them. Honestly, and without any personal bias, this Clevo is worth the cash if you're looking more into functionality and less on fine looks and outer shell. Doubly so if we take into account that even the pricey Alienwares suffer from crippling hardware issues just as well.

Really, I wanted something sturdy and didn't mind the cost when I bought mine. If Alienwares were perfect and had no issues (especially not as horrible as fried motherboards, among others), I would buy one without even blinking. Since I've read that isn't the case, I went for something more cost effective, and like I said, after quite a while of using it, I'm not sorry.

 

I'm gonna have to put my foot down this time because the short-sightedness and fanboyism of some members is really starting to grate on me, specially when new people (which I once was when I bought this laptop and came to the forum) come here for information and not to necessarily increase long-standing members' green light sabers.

To the OP: There are a few arguments/points/notions that always rear their head around these parts and if you're new it could mislead you, this is one of them:

*There's always one guy who's had a lemon, you can't base your judgment on that. It's true that there's always a lemon, but during the gold rush to P170EMs from June 2012 to around Sep/Oct when they first came out, there was an average of 3-4 unique keyboard/Sound complaint threads here every week, the same complaints I have. Do the leg work, google is your best friend. That's not some unique lemon, we'll have to be prepared to accept some threshold of lemon:good ratio beyond which we can only admit X company did a bad job with a certain product. In fact, even xoticpc's (only one of many Sager resellers) own forum has dozens of threads complaining about the keyboard (not to mention the on-board sound). This argument falls on its face and repeating it renders ANY complaint just something to brush under the rug as insignificant, which defeats the purpose.Yes you get the occasional AW keyboard complaint, if ever, but not 3-4 a week on one forum during a launch. Most people wouldn't even bother posting about it, so you're always seeing the tip of the iceberg, and Clevo/Sager don't exactly sell millions of units for anyone to say that the number of complaints registered is a statistical oddity. Just know that "you get what you pay for" is painfully applicable to any Sager purchase. You're customers and they're a company, not your home team, without rigorous feedback you're worthless in bettering the products. During the height the of the 7970M enduro issue (GCN core AMD cards used to/throttle on any switchable gfx enabled system) before any decent drivers came out, these were the same people who kept on repeating: "It's only some games on some cards on some system configurations on some brands.". Ignore them, I wouldn't be raising the issue if I thought I was the only one.

I find it amazing that some people still respond to my posts (in this thread and others) with: "MY Sager runs perfectly, therefore you are a lemon". How do you know you're not the lemon? Your awesome experience does not negate my negative experience, or else there's no point behind the forum or any review because all companies still in business produce at least a simple majority of functioning products.

A base NP9170 configuration with the 7970M is 170 dollars cheaper than the base AW mx-17 with the same card. AW systems are only very expensive if you get the extras from AW, which you can get on newegg for less prices than most Sager resellers. For 170 dollars more you get an appealing premium design and finish, high quality components, soldering, tid bits on the Mobo, better cooling system, more comprehensive warranty, better sound, and the brand name. AW systems consistently overclock and benchmark better than their Sager counterparts with the same settings and you can see that from going to any benchmark thread and checking people's sigs. I fully accept that to some people the above does not justify 170 dollars, but in a machine that costs 10 times that much that's a meagre amount I would've paid myself for a better machine.

The kind of advice some members on this forum will give you after you run into an issue is: "well get an external soundcard", or "well it's a DTR anyway, get an external keyboard", or even worse "stop whining" ..etc, my advice is go for AW. I'm not going to defend a company knowing it has the inferior product just so the brand I invested in "has better rep", I believe in the free market.

Last but not least, do NOT buy a laptop before seeing it live. I watched all the 3D/HD vids of the NP9170 and the AW MX-17, but until I saw both in reality I couldn't fully appreciate how: 1- The AW is actually much more understated than in pictures, specially if you pick dark tones, and 2- How plain the NP9170 looks. I don't mean plain as in "not Spaceship-like", I'm 31 I don't want that. I mean plain as in to any passerby it just looks like a generic laptop, no art in design whatsoever of any type, no signature. Just connecting dots on an Autocad slide to make a product.

 

I would wholeheartedly and unabashedly recommend the NP9170. I am familiar with Neoczars scathing review, and plan to write my own after i have the machine for a few more months (currently had it for 3).

Nvidia has released new drivers, less than a week ago. Easy to update/install, and i noticed a good 5fps boost on one of my most demanding titles (metro 2033).

The look of the sager is understated, not plain. It is a very nice attractive black box, with nicely placed metal brushed accents on the lid and palm rest area.

They keyboard works great for me. No ghosting, missed keys, nothing. Also, the laptop goes from looking like an understated sleek box to a gaming computer depending on how you set the backlighting. Everyone that has seen my new rig, from kids to co workers, says the same thing, "That is a nice looking laptop"

Many of the complaints you see against this model are owners who went with the 7970m without researching enduro. You can avoid that by selecting Nvidia cards or doing a minimal amount of searching on this forum for the fixes (not that complicated)

In short, if you are not predisposed to the looks of alienware or msi but want a powerful, upgradeable, and a good value machine, i would choose the sager.

 

Agreed. Any idea where I can buy a replacement keyboard by the way? Sager's site doesn't have it.

 

should be covered by warranty.

 

I live in the Middle East, shipping the old keyboard back to the U.S and paying for shipping a new one (even if it's free under warranty) makes it cheaper to order a new one on my expense. Thus far no other keyboard perfectly works for NP9170 apart from stock right? The SteelSeries one has some FN issues.

 

no idea. ive not had any problems so havnt looked into the steelseries boards.

 

Uhhh...Neo, fanboyism is: Clevo rocks! It's the best thing ever, it's much better than AW's childish look, and I can't find anything wrong with it!

Clevo has its shortcomings, they were listed and they should definitely be taken into account when shelling so much money on something:

Is the sound system good in Clevo? No, it's awful. But that's not a deal breaker, nor is it enough of a reason to pay so much extra for AW, especially in my country where the price difference between the two brands would be around the 1000 USD mark. Is the keyboard in Clevo good? I don't like it either, but I don't have your reported issues with it. Again, not a deal breaker. All the other issues you mentioned are just not apparent, or are completely over exaggerated. You have to understand that being biased is not just praising something beyond its own merits ('fanboyism'), but also giving too much weight to shortcomings and nitpicking wrong stuff in it to make it look worse than it really is.

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.

Now, I can understand what you say completely and I would think and post the same as you if I had suffered the issues you report. It sucks, I would really prefer you would enjoy your Clevo and have good experience with it just as us, but you have to understand the fact that this makes you a completely nonobjective source on everything Clevo. You're in the same boat as the guys that had AW lemons and now scream their keyboards out on anyone that is willing to read their rants and swear to never touch AW. I bet you could find a similar guy on any brand. The fact that you couldn't send your unit back for RMA due to shipping costs from your country and back is definitely not Clevo's fault, and if you would get an AW lemon, your tune would have changed.

P.S: you can address me directly, man, you don't have to use 'some members' approach

Edit: for the life of me, I can't understand why you like Ajfountains' post and agree with him, since he basically said the same things I did, but somehow I'm the fanboy? I can't get some people.

 

I wasn't addressing you directly, you just echoed the same arguments that keep on cropping up, so I picked this instance to respond to them.

Out of curiosity, from your sig I can see you have some sort of RAMdisk solution going on, I had considered it but even if I get 32GBs and make a 16GB RAMdisk I wouldn't be able to place the big games on them, like WoW, or even SC2. What do you use 8 GB for?

 

Thanks for the honest views.

I am aware of some of the issues you list eg, looks, terrible sound and 7970M problems. I am not that concerned with the sound as I already have a Fiio E11 for my iPod and can use that for headphones. I am going for the Nvidia 680M so hopefully that removes the 7970M issue. Had a good look at photos and Youtube and I can live with the looks.

The issue I don't know about is teh keyboard one. Can someone outline what the problem is with some of the keyboards ?

Thx

 

Oh, OK, sorry then

What I used is not exactly a RAMDisk, it's a caching software which basically cached data in your RAM and kept it there for a few seconds (10 by default) so instead of reading from the hard-drive over and over, it would read directly from the RAM. The difference is dramatic, since loading times were shortened by 5-10 seconds. But I stopped using it, since the company that made it stayed in the same beta build for almost a year now, causing all sort of issues with Win 8 and is quite outdated already. They are still hard at work on this product, and I would purchase it as soon as they would release the final product, but for now I can't use it. Which is a shame, since the loading times I now have are nothing spectacular in comparison, even when gaming on my SSD.

Anyway, read them up, they have a very interesting idea:

FancyCache Overview

If you have Win 7, consider installing it and giving it 8 GB of you RAM to work its magic. It takes time to finally come into fruition, but you should see quite an improvement the more you play a certain game or work on a certain application.

 

after a heavy gaming session ive noticed on occasions that the odd key type gets missed but thats the only problem ive had with keyboard.

 

Some keyboards have reported missing key strokes, uneven keyboard plate and the like. I have a somewhat uneven keyboard plate, but I can type quite well on it, without any missing keys. What I don't like is that overall 'feel' of this keyboard - it's composed of hard plastic keys which feel lousy the more you type on it, especially compared to the chiclet keyboard on my Sony Vaio. If you plan on doing your thesis on this laptop - don't. Or at the very least, buy an external keyboard. And yeah, the trackpad? far from ideal as well.

Since I usually game on this machine and either use my XBOX 360 Controller or a mouse (Logitech M705 Marathon mouse - highly recommended) and deactivated the trackpad right from the start, I'm fine with it all.

 

I believe the keyboard issues were from the first batch produced, the newer windows 8 keybaords (with the win 8 swooshy type logo) don't seem to have the reported problems.

As for the trackpad, I dont like it as it is flush with the metal wrist rest. My former rig had a recessed keypad, so my fat thumb flesh didnt activate it. I found that a good solution is to go into synaptics and adjust the sensitivity and area size of the trackpad to fit your preferences.

Each of the 3 main gaming systems (AW, Clevo/Sager, MSI) has it's own positives and negatives. Thankfully this forum provides a medium through which individual members can give feedback to help influence future purchases and as Martha Stewart would say, that's a good thing.

 

if only all happy customers (except for us die hard few) would stay on the forum after purchase we would all get a much more accurate percentage.
thousands are sold each month worldwide but we only mainly see the customers that are having problems.
its just way the cookie crumbles

 

Actually, it was the latter part of your statement that pushed me to purchase a Sager. Seeing that there are issues didn't bother me; it was the fact that the community of sager owners seems to be much more helpful in trying to aid others in solving their problems. Knowing that the majority of sager owners have a much higher level of technical expertise than I gave me reassurance that should I experience any glitches, I would have a community to rely on instead of just the manufacturer/reseller.

 

its just way the cookie crumbles.

actually i cant see the connection

and thats why im still here giving back to the new breed of community.
i learn almost everything from this forum (but a lot is still guess work) but it seems to do the trick.

 

Thank you. That's precisely the thing. It's not like I got what would otherwise be a stellar keyboard everyone is raving about. It's mediocre and cheap at best. It's not asking a lot for a nice keyboard, what's that? A 20 dollar premium? The other day I was at a computer shop and an MX-17 was there, and I got a nerdgasm typing on the keyboard, made me really bitter at Sager but that probably shows by now

Cheers, will give it a try.

 

I don't know. The m17x has a comfortable keyboard, but...

 

By the way, proving my point about the keyboard MSI has applied pressure to stop all sales of SteelSeries keyboards for laptops, because of the mass demand by Clevo customers. MSI wanted to keep that edge I guess. There's only one on sale that I could find, on eBay for 150 US dollars, that alone bridges the gap between my Clevo and AW's prices

 

I only wish the price difference was that close in the UK. The exact same spec in a P170EM is £880 cheaper than the equivalent Alienware m17xR4 :confused2:

The price difference can be reduced to £660 by applyimng a 10% discount but that is still a wide gap !

 

I bought my m17x for $100 less than a P170EM with the same specifications, but I live in the US. The price difference is usually more than $600. Dell's pricing in the UK is exorbitant, but call Alienware and see what you can get. Also, check the Dell outlet.

 

Don't compare "exact specs". Just get the base model and buy everything from newegg. The price difference can't be that huge for base set-ups. When all else fails get it shipped from the U.S.

 

I included the price of a two-years warranty in the configurations of the Clevo and the Alienware, and the Alienware warranty includes accidental damage coverage.

 

Honestly I have no idea where you guys get these pricing comparisons between Clevo and AW.......they aren't ~$100 they are more like 300-400+ for the EXACT SAME configuration. Sure discounts can close the gaps, but the same can be said for clevo, when I bought this computer at release nothing, not even a cumulative 20% discount from AW could touch the price I paid for my 150EM as spec'd.

Also, Neo your blatant "fanboiysm" as you would call it is obnoxious.........nobody around here is denying the keyboard or sound-card issues, but they are just minor issues. As for Enduro, guess what? I know news flash but that is AMD's fault not Clevo's, sure AW used a different and arguably better design with muxless but again at the end of the day it doesn't matter if you have an Nvidia gpu. Finally as far as the build quality goes stop blowing fairy dust up peoples backside with AW's supposed better build quality, sorry to burst your bubble but they do not get "special" batches of hardware that are of higher quality than what Sager or MSI use. In fact if you do some research you'll find that motherboard failure is one of the most common issues in Dell/AW products.

Bottom line is that Clevo builds a very solid computer system worthy of being chosen by boutiques that have many other options like Falcon Northwest etc.........

We are all sorry you had a poor experience with Clevo, but going around and trashing the product because it didnt live up to your unrealistic expectations is not only unfair but also childish.

 

Come to think of it, this whole scenario reminds me of my wife's mom: when she wanted to buy a new car we did some research for her about KM/liter ratio, engine capacity for her needs, pricing comparisons, read reviews about pros and cons, only to find out she went and bought a more pricey model that wasn't that much highly praised in any regard. We were confused about it, and when we asked she said: well, the one you recommended me came only in red and I thought the white one looked much better...

Clevo's hardware capabilities are the same, Clevo's cooling is excellent (75-76 C GPU at full power is nothing to scoff at), the housing is solid and sturdy and the monitor is great. What more do you need? We are really giving too much spotlight on a bunch of cosmetic issues, here.

 

The problem with the base model is that half the components won't be covered under warranty if you add them after market. About the only think in the base spec I wouldn't change is the 3630QM processor. For everything else, I would want to upgrade i.e. GPU, memory, drives etc. The GPU is the hardest to upgrade as there are not many on the market and is one of the key components you would want Alienware to cover.

Getting it shipped from teh US is too much hassle and would also incur import tax. Not worth it for a laptop I can get here from a different manufacturer, in the spec I want for £600 less.

As I originally posted, I am considering an excellent condition used m17xR4 or Refurb. There don't seem to be any around. the Dell Outlet store hasn't had any this week, just some older spec machines and scratch and dent.

 

I have had my P170EM since July 2012, and I like the computer. I bought it as a desktop replacement, and it does its job very well. I like the neutral design. People can't tell if it is just a cool and expensive ordinary laptop or a gaming laptop, and I think that's an advantage. The 7970M has had (and still has in some games) problems, but new drivers have solved a lot of the problems. I have just finished BioShock Infinite, and I was amazed by the performance of the laptop, - it is nice to see that a laptop can compete with some desktop-setups when it comes to gaming!

I have noticed the problems with the keyboard, - sometimes the keyboard will not register when I type on it, but it is not a big problem. I do a lot of writing, - assignments and school tests, and it has never been a problem. It happens rarely, and I don't think it affects my typing at all. At Typing Test English - 10FastFingers.com I was able to get 141 words per minute. You can easily live with it. However, I have heard that the keyboard-thing has been fixed in the newer versions of this model.

Another bad thing is the power brick, - it is really huge and heavy, but I guess that is what you can expect from a gaming laptop at this level. And by the way, - the speakers in the laptop are not good, but they are fine if you just want to show a YouTube video to someone. I use a USB-headset, but I have heard that the sound card is not good as well. When I have hooked my computer up to a speaker system people have not complained, but I noticed that the bass may be a bit weak.

I hope that you could use my opinion.

Kind regards
Peter

 

ive never had a problem with my eight year old 5.1 creative speakers plugged into headphone//mic in - speaker out// spdif in speaker out.
most of the time i only use the front two speakers as its plenty enough for my room. gaming sound is brill just running them two speakers. ive compared it to my 5.1 xfi pro sound blaster and to be honest theres not much difference.
but as i said before the on board speakers by onkyo are pants but still do the job on the move.

 

Yes, I have heard that there are no problems with 5.1 speakers on the laptop whatsoever, - but the problems are there when you use 2.1 speakers.

 

as long as you have a decent pair of speakers to start off with then i cant see much difference.
as i said im only using the green lead plugged into the headphone socket and the sound is brill. plugging the black and yellow leads into mic and spdif socket makes great surround but tbh i dont really need it.