I thought about replying to this thread yesterday but it occurred to me that I might come across as a bit militant, however I hope that I have put my point across in a relatively neutral manner. It’s only my intention to reply to the OP’s question and price comparisons:
I think that the "bang for buck" consensus was more prominent in the past, when for example the P1xx models were available and being (in our experience) mainly compared to Alienware laptops and pricing. Recently the gaming market has become much more competitive, with major brand companies really driving their prices down to compete with each other.
I had a look at some comparisons that you listed and though in GBP the price differences should be pretty similar throughout Europe. Swedish prices may be higher due to the 25% VAT but the comparison differences should be similar.
MSI GT72 is £1,535.99 with 4710HQ, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, 128GB SSD, 980M, Win 8.1 (1 Year Return To Base Warranty)
XMG equivalent is £1,521.11 (24 month collect and return warranty)
ASUS G751 £1,584.20 with 4710HQ, 24GB RAM, 1TB HDD, 256GB SSD, 980M, Win 8.1 (1 Year Return To Base Warranty)
XMG equivalent is £1,671.11 (24 month collect and return warranty)
So the prices really aren’t that different and it will depend on which reseller you look at for the ASUS and MSI models. There are several key points which should be taken into account when looking at pricing in this manner:
Differences in hardware:
The P505/P705 has an all-aluminium chasiss (depending on GPU option), the MSI only has an ally lid and similar for the ASUS (I believe).
P705 is just under 30mm high, the ASUS is 43mm and the GT72 48mm. This has a cost bearing not only in the value of a slimmer chassis but also in terms of design and manufacturing.
Number of DP ports, M.2 ports and so on looks like it is more than in the other two chassis, so you may be physically getting more hardware and functionality in some areas with Clevo! There are generally more panel options as well, which can mean that a production run is shorter (which means more cost) or more expensive tooling costs to enable multiple component support.
You may also find that models with the 4710HQ are sometimes order versions of a laptop or older stock. For example, when the 4720 replaced the 4710 in the P651/P670 you would find that the older 4710 price was reduced in order to sell the older stock off.
Differences in Service and Warranty:
If you purchase from us or most other reputable “Clevo resellers” you will get a full parts, labour and support warranty with your laptop that is maintained directly through the seller. In our case, we offer a standard 24 month collect and return warranty so this is something else that adds value to a Clevo product.
If you buy a GT72 or a G751 the chances are (at least in Europe) that you will buy it with a set configuration and from a component reseller rather than a system builder. There are lots of good resellers around but generally if they don’t build a laptop then they tend not to repair them – so you would then be directed to an authorised service centre. This is again something else that can add to the cost of a Clevo laptop, but which can also add value because we can keep all shipping, communication and RMA services in house.
Manufacturing and Selling:
Companies like XMG who build their laptops bespokely for each customer will do so in their own production facility. In our case this is in Germany, so we can look at the cost of building a laptop up for one of our customers to take into account higher living costs, higher operating costs, much higher labour/workforce costs and so on than a prebuilt configuration laptop which would usually originate from a production facility in China. You might argue that all we do is install a couple of hard drives and Windows but there’s a lot more to it than that – for example internal R&D, product validation, the build itself, testing, shipping, RMA and so on.
Buying a laptop from a system builder rather than a reseller as described above will therefore have inherently higher costs. So if you can get comparable hardware from a bespoke builder with their own sales, support, RMA services as you can from a mass produced product then it’s actually a much better deal than it sounds!
Yup but once you add the local sales tax (Germany 19%, UK 20%, Sweden 25%) and then include the full 24 month collect and return warranty the price comes out pretty much the same!
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