Sager NP8265-S/P150sm from Reflex Notebooks mini review

Edit: Looking at this now it's done, it's not so mini, I guess.

So I got this laptop about 2 weeks ago now from Reflex Notebooks. First of all, I'm not much of a review writer so bare with me. I'm not at all interested in benchmarks either, so don't expect any cold hard numbers.


Ordering and that stuff:


Reflex Notebook was very helpful and friendly, and were patient with my several impatient emails. It took 4 weeks to get my PC. Now, there was for the first week a problem with Visa (I had a different shipping address from the billing address, which I didn't realize I had to register.) Not Reflex's fault I wanted it sent to my work. After that, they processed the order quickly. The rest was in Sager's hands, I believe. So, 3 weeks end to end isn't too bad all things considered, especially when there is no shipping charge and a piddly 5% GST. I live in BC on the island for reference. Overall, I would certainly say that Reflex was a good place to buy from. You can check them out here Reflex Notebook Canada - Your Source for Sager Notebooks and Laptops in Canada. Price was about $1650 CDN all in. This was cheaper than anywhere else from the States.


Spec of my NP8265

For reference, here is the main specs of what I got. Actually you can just look in my signature but I'll toss it here too:

Sager NP8265-S (debranded)
Intel i7-4700mq
ATI Radeon 8970m 4GB
16GB RAM 1600MHz
95% NTSC display
Intel AC 7260 WiFi adapter
750GB Western Digital 7200RPM HDD
Adata SX300 128GB mSata (ordered separately from work)
No OS with the system, but I have my own (legit) Windows 8 Pro


This laptop came with latest BIOS and everything from Sager (I just checked today), which I thought was a nice touch.


So I get to work at 8:30 as usual and this lovely box is sitting in my chair, and my boss tells me that if she sees it open on my desk it's "game over, man". Well, despite that I got it open and the OS and drivers installed and distracted all my co-workers at the same time. Also I still have my job, so, bonus.


First impression when pulling it out of the box instead of doing work... well, I haven't exactly been reeling in the honeys lately so this really was one of the sexiest things I've seen in awhile. I'm not sure if that's a testament to this beautiful laptop, or just the sad sad truth. Either way it's a nice piece of equipment. I also prefer, over the NP8250, none of that tribal graphics stuff. This thing is flat black, all over.. very stealthy. The rubberized finish is also a nice touch and doesn't attract fingerprints at all!


Also in the box were CDs for Windows 8 drivers, Windows 7 drivers, some software, and a manual which actually had some nice information in it about the Intel stuff.



Build quality


My previous laptop was an MSI GX-640 which I loved dearly. My only real beefs with it, actually, were that the screen hinges seemed kind of flimsy, and that the speakers vibrated at higher volumes (which I remedied by stuffing the speaker cavity with double-sided tape )


The NP8265 feels... solid as hell. I almost feel like I could smash someone with it, or drop it, and it would be ok, although I'm in no hurry to test either of those. Opening the screen, I barely feel any flex even if I open it from one corner. The keyboard feels excellent - no flex, solid response, and at least for my hands, very nice spacing of keys. The flashy backlights are pretty fun too (my daughter think that's the best part !).


The display looks wonderful and actually is much nicer than my monitor that I have this thing plugged into on my desk. No dead pixels, nice vibrant colours, and a really nice "crispness" to it. Viewing angles are good, but I have yet to test it outdoors. I'm not going camping with this anyways


First thing I did was crack open the bottom to put in my SX300. I didn't around too much in there, but the cooling system is very nice with a fan for each the GPU and CPU, and readily accessible RAM and mSata ports (there must be another one under the keyboard or something, because I could only find the one mSata.)


Also something I don't think many people think about, is that the battery is at the front of the laptop with the heat being carried away from it! This is nice for prolonging the life of the battery (they don't like heat). Overall, I was very impressed with the design.



Firing it up, noise, WiFi


So, my Windows 8 install DVD instantly recognized my mSata, and installed with no problemos. As an aside, I would recommend the Adata SX300, as it's not overly pricey and this machine boots to the desktop in about 20 seconds. I use the mSata solely for the OS and the HDD for storage.


The laptop came with a disk for Windows 8 drivers, so I popped it in and it had a nice menu that lists the order to install stuff. I skipped the Intel RST since I have no RAID, and the Intel SRT since I'm not using the mSata as a caching drive. I got the latest AMD drivers (13.10 beta) and also Intel had some newer chipset, graphics, and WiFi drivers on their site. Installed all that.


Windows Experience index gives me a 7.0, because it uses the Intel graphics in it's calculations. And really, who gives a crap about the Windows Experience index?


Tested the various functions, and the only weird thing is that when you bring up the, well, let's call it "Keyboard lights DJ menu" from the hotkey on the number pad, it seems too big for the screen. Not sure what that is about but since the laptop is closed on my desk connected to a monitor 99% of the time, I'm not too concerned. I'll mess around with that stuff one day. Sleep function works nicely.


Browsing the internet and such, I found this laptop to be nice and quiet, and very snappy and a pleasure to use. In fact, as I write this, the fans aren't even on and the room is dead silent (except for the crazy guy across the hall ranting again). I initially noticed that my CPU was at 3.4 GHz even at 1% load, which I discovered was due to the "minimum processor level" in power options being set to 100% on the "High Performance" setting. This made the fan always be on (though not necessarily at high RPM). Set it to 5% and it's now throttling down nicely.


I don't have an AC router, but with the 7260AC I have a solid wireless connection from across my apartment, and get my full speeds (even a little more, strangely enough) that my internet plan allows for. I also have no problems streaming HD movies to my PS3 (which is wired to my router).



Gameage


Later that day after work I got it home (eying everyone suspiciously on my walk from the office), and installed some of the games I like, which are Mechwarrior Online, Civ 5, and Chivalry. Mechwarrior being probably my favourite, I immediately set it to ultra settings and saddled up.


Now, on my old MSI, at 1680 by 1050 (I'm a 16:10 man), Mechwarrior got about 20-35 FPS on mostly medium settings with no AA. Being so used to this, imagine the size of mech-rection that was had when I was getting 80FPS on maxed out settings. Wonderful. And this is a game that still has some FPS issues and will only get better the more they tweak it. I love this game and the fact alone that I can play it fluidly makes this computer worth every cent. This is also the only game I know how to make the FPS counter show on, hah! :thumbsup:


Civ 5 had no issues on my old laptop on mostly high settings, until there was LOTS of stuff (ie, large world map fully revealed). At that point, it would take a sec to load textures and certainly chop up at times. Load times were also slower. The Sager, however, with Civ 5 on maxed out settings, loads up nice and quick and friggen stays that way even on huge maps. Which is really nice when you're trying to grow your police state dictatorship into a global superpower.


Chivalry (from Steam) actually looks very nice at maximum settings and runs very smoothly. I did notice that initally the FPS was disappointing. After about 5-10 seconds the Sager's balls dropped and boom, the FPS shot way up. My sword was singing its glorious song of dismemberment once more. Now why did this happen, you might hear yourself asking in a Zoidberg-esque voice...



Obligatory Switchable Graphics part


Now I have been reading all this negative stuff about the AMD switchable graphics. And frankly, reading it before I got this laptop had me seriously wondering if I made a big mistake with GPU choice. I will say I was initially puzzled by it (the ATI tray icon showed Intel HD 4600 not ATI 8970 which I expected). I also found there was no software indicator of which GPU was being utilized. End of the day though, my fears were all for nothing as you will see below.


The ATI does all the work for intensive applications, and the Intel presents the display regardless of who's doing the processing. This is "Muxless" design, and like it or hate it, it's present for both AMD's Enduro and nVidia's Optimus. In this case, the ATI Tray icon shows the Intel HD 4600 in its menu as Windows is using the Intel graphics, so this is accurately, if confusingly, portrayed as the "display GPU", so to speak. The 3d options in that menu DO affect the ATI GPU though. Confusing, yes, and in my opinion, something AMD should change just for clarity's sake.


Here is a PDF that you can go to if you want to learn a little more about the AMD technology and it's features/limitations.


I found that the 8970 always comes on either automatically, or for a couple of older games, I have to set the Catalyst software to "high performance". I have found that with a few games, the first time you run it, the software takes a few seconds to realize what's up before it switches to the ATI (this is what happened in Chivalry).


Since I'm by nature a lazy man and like things automatically done for me, switching programs manually to "high performance" would not stand. I remedied this by using the Global Switchable Graphics option set to "maximize performance" by default, which automatically runs newly detected programs on the ATI GPU. You can also set this in the power settings for your PC. I tested this with several games/programs and it works nicely. I also turned off "allow additional power savings," which apparently switches to the Intel graphics if the ATI is idle for a little bit, which ain't happening on my watch. I could see that possibly causing pain in some games.


Overall, I am quite happy with how the switchable graphics works and I think a lot of the hoorah about problems may be due to people having older drivers, or not setting it up properly (power settings especially). Also, I have been reading that the Haswell chips have fewer problems than previous generations. That said, I can really only speak for this model.


I also have found no issues running games on one screen and having my desktop on the built-in display.



Last words


Well that's my review. Maybe someone who is thinking about the NP8265-S will find it helpful. I can find no faults with this machine so far except for the weird "Keyboard Lighting DJ screen" being funky on my external monitor. If you are thinking of this one, I would say.. buy it. If you are in Canada... buy it from Reflex.

 

*opens thread saying mini review*

*gets hit in the face by a wall of text*

Well mini compared to some users on here I guess

The latest drivers do sort out a lot of options. I'm glad you are enjoying it.