Confirmed.
Watched 4 1/2 hours on movies (just shy of 5 hours).
A bit over 5 hours just doing normal light web stuff. Rumor is on a fresh battery you can get nearly 6 hours on it with very light work.
I've actually done nearly 3 hours gaming. Last one was Borderland 2 and after 2 1/2 hours I got the low battery notice.
The hours gaming would be significantly lessened if you upped the default frames per second on battery from the default 30fps to 50fps (or higher if there is an option). 30fps was fine for me though.
At 50fps I can see maybe 1 to 1 1/2 hours of game time, maybe 2 hours tops.
As for life hood of the system, it's the primary reason I got the Sager.
I wanted a laptop that if I took average care of, would last me just shy of 10 years. With replaceable MXM boards for the CPU and GPU, I likely will be able to put in the next version(s) of GPU as well with the proper bios mods, which would greatly increase the life of the laptop for high performance gaming.
Without that, with an 880M, I can see playing games on 'high' (not ultra, just high) for close to 10 years.
I base this on my old Asus G51 laptop that had the 360M card. It wasn't top of the line even when I got it, and even today it can play games on high without problem, and even ultra if you tweak the AA and shader settings. And that laptop is about 5 years old today. So based on the fact the 880M has insane video ram, and has a tremendous amount of power for a laptop GPU, I can see it going just shy of 10 years if you tweak settings. And again, with the caveat of being able to upgrade the GPU in the future with a standard MXM slot, the likelyhood of being able to use the 900 and even 1000 series GPU's in the distant future is all too possible.
The 8258-S does have weaknesses as well as strengths.
Strengths:
1. Cooling -- It's insane. Even without a laptop cooler the thermals say comfortable even under insane load. No hint of overheating at all. With a laptop cooler on top of that, it barely gets in the 80's for the GPU and consistent 60's for the CPU. Just make sure to do maintenance. That includes taking apart the cover of the fans (do NOT disassemble the fans) and while holding the fan fins, blow air through the fan and vents to clean it up, then use a static free lint free rag and wipe down the copper heatsinks. You should do this every 6 months depending on the environment. You likely will do it more often if you have pets or high amounts of dust).
2. Power and Performance -- Just ... damn. it chews through absolutely everything I've thrown at it. Everything. Absolutely chews it up.
3. Fan noise -- Why is this a strength? Well, unlike previous versions, the fans are actually quite quiet for the monster this thing is. In general, the fans won't even spin up. For web browsing, email, day to day activity? Yup, no fan. Absolutely quiet. For most standard games, the fans will spin up, but on moderate and the whirrr of the fan is not bad at all. mid 30 decebils likely. For high end games like Witcher 2 in uber mode, the fans will spin up to medium, which start to become heard, likely low 40 decibels. You can manually spin up the fans to max, which will be louder than normal, but at normal sitting from the laptop, I honestly don't hear it so loud that it can't be smothered by the normal laptop speakers or the TV itself.
4. Keyboard -- Typing on the keyboard is amazing. Very responsive and great tactile to it. ti does have, what some people consider 'ghosting'. This is entirely because of the diodes they use in the keyboard for placement and the interface the keyboard is sitting on. It's limited by hardware. It would be possible to make a 'better' keyboard, but it would be pricy as it would require far more diodes which are not cheap. Also, the ghosting is only for weird and obtuse keyboard combinations, which funny enough affect a small number of first person shooters like Battlefield 4. In which case they should (if they don't) have key bindings you can reset to get around the keyboard limitation. And if BF4 doesn't have a method to rebind keys, all I can say is get to the 21st century. We're not back to the Pool of Radience days.
5. Screen. -- I have the 95% gamut screen. I was lucky and was able to nab it prior to them becoming discontinued. However, the 72% Gamut matte screen is just as gorgeous. I know this first hand as my wife has the 8258 with the 870M and the 72% screen. While the colors 'pop out' more on the 95%, they seem to be slightly more
accurate on my wife's, which is good for her costuming profession as she needs a true sRGB color encoded screen, which the 72% gamut meets. The only bad point is with the TN screen viewing at angles shows the color washed out a bit, so you need to look at it more or less straight on for the full (excuse the pun) gamut of colors. Not really a hardship.
6. Ports -- The USB3 ports are great, the eSATA is awesome. The HDMI works great. The USB2 on the right side is great for my laptop cooler, the only thing I wish is that the headphone jacks were on the LEFT side and not the RIGHT side. Having them by the Bluray case and next to where I have the mouse is cumbersome, but I've worked around it, and it really is a small and not overly noteworthy issue all considered.
7. Touchpad -- Yes, yes, I know. Most would say I should put this in the bad. And frankly when I originally go the laptop, I
would have. But here's the thing. You bring up mouse settings, open up the touchpad settings (far right side tab). Turn on cursor speed to 10, scroll speed to 3, disable pinch to zoom gestures (for pinch to zoom and shrink), and enable the horizontal scrolling touch points. It turns the touchpad into something that's not only useable but very responsive. It was the scroll & cursor speeds being sluggish and the pinch/shrink zoom gestures that kept pissing me off about the touchpad and making it both under and over responsive. With that out of the way, the touchpad is great.
8. Keyboard lighting -- I can't help it. It hits the geek in me. Plus, you can turn off the light on the touchpad by specifying 'black' as the color which works fine.
Now, for the bad, and yes, each laptop has it.
1. Speakers -- I'll be the first to say the speakers are actually 'fine'. They're better than the Asus laptop speakers I had previously. Better than the Macbook pro speakers. Better than the toshiba and work dell speakers. Better than, frankly, a wide variety of laptop speakers. However, there are laptops with better speakers. Alienware and MSI being two brands that have superior speakers. Does this mean these speakers suck? No. Despite what other people will beat their chest over and spit over and over that these speakers suck, you have to take into account what they're actually
comparing them to.. For laptop 2.1 speakers, with a small bass, and decent midrange, the speakers are plenty loud, and clarity is
good enough for a laptop.. Can it be better? Absolutely. There's enough room in this chassis that putting small, high-end 7.1 speakers would not be out of the question, maybe something with BOSE or Alpine. Both have done great inroads of microsizing speakers. Or maybe go the way MSI has as they're currently the lead for laptop speakers. Best sound and loudness quality of any laptop speaker. However, again, since the sound is not tinny, the bass is there, albet weak. The trebble is there, albet weak, and the mids are very strong, for a
gaming laptop the sound is more than sufficient. It's even sufficient for average music listening. But if you want absolute sound reproduction, get headphones or external speakers. Frankly you'd want this in any laptop you get anyway if you want high levels of sound, as no laptop manufacturer that I'm aware of will put 7.1 digital masterpiece speakers in a a laptop. So while speakers are in the 'negative' it's only so much as you'd expect with laptops anyway, and frankly these speakers in the Sager are better than most in the laptop category. Why people have so much hate for it, I'll never know. If they hate these speakers, they should absolutely loathe the ones in Asus, Toshiba, Dell, Acer, etc.
I'd rate the speakers thusly:
Overall Sound -- 7/10
Overall Loudness -- 8/10
Bass quality -- 5/10
Treble Quality -- 6/10
Midrange Quality -- 8/10
Music used to test quality: Pink Floyd Comfortably Numb, Lindsey Stirling Shatter Me, Beatles Elenor Rigby, Midsummer's Night's Dream Number 1 Scherzo.
Nothing to write home over, but I'd not sneer at it either. Not for a
laptop. As long as you are not comparing them to stationary speakers, they work well.
2. Drivers -- You want to test all your components when you get them. I had issues with the drivers for the Intel AC wifi until I upgraded to the 17.x version. The bluetooth drivers were not even installed (I installed the 17.x version). The realtek and hotkey drivers both had to be upgraded to make the headphone and mic jack play nice with each other. It was muted until this upgrade. This also helped balance out the laptop speakers themselves and stopped some of the tones from sounding 'tinny'. I think a lot of people having issues with the laptop speakers are because they're running off broken realtek and/or hotkey drivers. You may run across other issues as well, just make sure to test drivers first, as that's usually the case with new laptops regardless.
3. The DVD drive -- It sucks. Don't get it. It rattles, it's cheap as hell, and you're scared to death you'll break it by just using it. Spend the $30-$50 to upgrade to the bluray burner. Trust me, quality is hand over fist better.
4. WiFi -- Don't get the built in one. But if you're getting the 8258-S, take the Intel AC adapter. Lots of people say the killer is good, and it is. But I prefer the AC adapter as it gives me more options, especially if I have an AC wifi device anywhere. Better bandwidth.
5. The PSU is only 180W. This is a problem if you intend to overclock. The reason why is while the 180W supply is more than sufficient for the 4810 i7 and the 880M at standard clock, overclocking them can likely pull more juice than it can provide causing a forced downclock of the devices as they just won't have the juice to provide. However, there's an out for this. You can get a Dell PSU (230W) and adapter to fit your laptop that works great. There's another thread with people talking about this, if you can't find it let me know and I'll see if I can find it. Someone else will probably do the favor and show the link after this post. People here are great.
6. Thickness and weight. This is a plus and minus. It is fairly thick for a laptop, but it also is for the immense cooling it has. So it's a tradeoff, and honestly it's not that noticeable. But it still deserves mention as it's thicker than a lot of laptops. The weight is honestly not bad at all, and I found it weighs the same as my old 15" Asus G51. So that's a non-issue, at least for me, but a thin ultra-portable laptop this isn't.
Then there's some things that are fence sittings depending on your concerns or desires.
1. The rubberized coating. I find it great, and I would put it as a definite plus. It adds that extra protection and keeps the laptop more sturdy, but it also shows fingerprints like a freaking magnet. Not a big deal, especially as the oil in your skin is only glossy on the surface in indirect light and only viewed at angles. And a simple wet wipe will take care of it without a problem. However, it still deserved notice.
2. The build quality. It's high quality ABS plastic as the case, and regardless of those who pound their chest saying 'metal chassis are better' I frankly have to ask them
why?!? I think metal chassis are a gimmic. It doesn't help speed the system up, you are not planning to drop the laptop onto concrete and I would assume that anyone spending 2 grand or more on a laptop would treat it with the respect it deserves. Kid gloves all the way. So, yes, it's made of plastic. It's still high quality plastic, it doesn't seem to crack or break, it is well put together, and it does a much better job of removing heat than say a heat-sink like a macbook pro does which I've always had overheat and nearly burn my fingers touching it when under load (and yes people, the fans are working, just can't keep up).
So, hope that answers any remaining concerns or questions. I think for a long-term investment, a Sager is a good purchase. It's not a perfect laptop, and such a thing frankly doesn't exist. But if it has all the nice checkmarks you expect and if you can overlook the negatives, I can tell you now from the 6 months I've had mine, you will not be disappointed.
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Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
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