Sager NP7250. I am very impressed!

A friend's daughter in college recently had her laptop die. They asked me for a recommendation and knowing she carries the laptop around with her all day but plugs it in in classes felt that the small/light 12.1" form factor was the way to go. The best value I found in that range was the Sager/Clevo NP7250. It helps that it's VERY well finished and attractive. I thought she'd want pink but, nope, she wanted black! We ordered from Agearnotebooks and while delivery was quite a bit slower than I'd expected (14 business days) communication was good and the notebook arrived as ordered (which is a win compared to other vendors I've dealt with).

I'd seen mention on here that the keyboard feels flimsy. I'd ask that user if they'd ever tried typing on a Sony SZ! I was thrilled with the build quality. The notebook seems very well designed and put together and the plastics all feel of high quality and durability. This is more than I can say for recent notebooks I've seen from Toshiba, HP, Sony and the like. The most amazing thing to me was that the keyboard felt VERY solid and has great typing feel. No springiness, no wobble, no feeling of imprecision or slapdash assembly at all. The glossy finish is very very well done.

The one letdown is that this Clevo shares the oversized bottom access panel that the M570U has. No discrete doors for memory, CPU, etc. You must unfasten multiple screws, lift a large panel off, etc. It's NOT something one needs to do often but is a minor irritant.

Also, this notebook is SiS based. It didn't FEEL slow, but I prefer Intel mobile chipsets and graphics. The Mirage based graphics do feel slow er than Intel GMA950 and that's pretty hard to do! Video and standard tasks are fine but an avid notebook user can perceive miniscule performance differences and there's a slight weakness here. The display is also not up with the best of the best from Acer and LG in that size. Colors are not quite as deep, saturated and the display isn't as contrasty as I'd like.

Performance wise, I haven't done much beyond setting up Windows, Symantec AV, and Office 2k7, however even for a 1.66 it felt very responsive. It has a 160gb 5400RPM SATA HDD and 2gb 667Mhz DDR2 RAM. No lag issues, no slowness I've witnessed in other notebooks (the Sony C series comes to mind). In general, this is an excellent medium duty notebook and I'd feel comfortable recommending it to all but an enthusiast. For a connisseur it's not the right choice but when do we ever go for a value option anyway??? For just about anyone else though, it's the best value hands down you can get in a 12" form factor and I am deeply impressed by it.

Here're some bad photos I took with my iPhone. VERY grainy as the light was not good at all.

 

wow, thats a pretty nice portable notebook.

thanks for the pics.

 

that is pretty nice. i may have to ask xotic about those and consider them for my reg office machines..

 

it looks like a portable D901C with the case color and materials... as well as the audio ports on the front.