W230ST - The 13" We've been waiting for!?

Anything 16ms and under, you wont notice any ghosting. So we're good.

 

Why are we even talking about Razer or comparing them to a company that makes laptops for real power users? Once upon a time, I was a newb and bought Razer crap because they have it in stores and it's shiny looking. Then I broke several of their crappy products in normal use or had pieces just fall off for no reason. Who cares what the screen looks like, because after 6 months the glue will start breaking that holds it together and the bezel and buttons will start falling off.

 

I just saw this new video of the W230ST under the XNOTE brand.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otgXZjfTICA&feature=youtube_gdata_player

If someone can kindly translate any of the important/useful information, I'd greatly appreciate it.

I think I found my laptop. I spent a lot of time researching 13-14" gaming laptops in the past month now and I'm 90% sure I'll be getting the W230ST once it's available in the US.

**Sent from my GALAXY NOTE II**

 

You fantastic person! I didn't understand a flipping word, apart from maybe "ssd", but that didn't stop me watching it 3 times. If only it had a longer battery... I guess life is about sacrifices...

It's good to know I am not the only one trawling the internet every possible moment.

 

looking forward for this beast!

 

I am polish... I don't understand 100% everything as I'm Canadian first but he was basically just going over some of the features, including the "rubberized" top and the line across the top of the laptop screen. More random stuff about the specs but he kept repeating that this would be his next laptop. Aside from the rubberized material comments, nothing else out of the ordinary. He said it felt very light but didn't specify weight.

 

Thanks, likebutta. I was hoping he would make a comment about the battery life, temps, fan noise, keyboard, trackpad, speakers, or the display (although I can see the viewing angles look great in the video).

I did try using the Google Translator app on my Android phone and it was able to make out some of the things he was saying. I know at the end he said the laptop is light, very fast, and very elegant.

 

Czech here, not Polish, but I also managed to get snippets.

He spends a little time talking about the lid being rubberized plastic, about the well chromed bezel on the top of the lid with a webcam, the twin msata bays which CAN be raided (he had a screen up of the read and write speeds when raided), demonstrates the screwless bottom removal, talks about a few of the available configuration options (could have sworn 3g was mentioned but it could have been in the sense that the laptop doesn't include it) and praises the screen colour and resolution, going on to say that it's unbelievable they packed it into something so small and light.

(I think he might also have said the webcam was full HD? I'm doing this from my phone...)

 

On second viewing, I think he mentions that they can supply a wmts or lte modem for internet, not that the laptop does it. And the webcam is HD, not full HD.

The raid shot shows max reads at over a terabyte per second, btw.

Also 4300ish graphics card benchmark right at the start, and a video of the backlit keyboard.

 

Several of the European and Asian sites offering pre-orders have an option of a 3g card. So unless they are just guessing, it looks like non-US models at least will have the option.

Another interesting tidbit: I've been in contact with Ed at Stealth Machines and he told me that there is apparently another part number besides the ST, so there will be a W230__. He also hinted that it will be cheaper than the ST chassis, as in closer to the range of the past 11.6" models. So that is likely where the confusion is coming from as to some models apparently having only one mSATA and offering as low as a 1366x768 screen. I would guess that the W230ST model we've already seen only comes in 1080p with 2 mSATAs, which is why all the retailers list that config. The other model must be the "budget edition" for lack of a better term and offer either 1366x768 or 1600x900 and only one mSATA.

 

Well if that's the case, then everyone can own it! Great info BTW.

 

So, the reseller I plan to buy from says that I could have a 4702MQ instead of a 4700MQ upon request. However, according to this thread, http://forum.notebookreview.com/hardware-components-aftermarket-upgrades/721000-i7-4700mq-47-watt-vs-i7-4702mq-37-watt.html, the power consumption difference would be very small. So, which one do you guys think would be better?

 

I'm probably going to end up buying one of these, I love everything about it except the white back light on the keyboard. Wish it were red, not only is red cooler and will most likely appeal to more gamers but it also uses significantly less energy I believe. Its been a little while since physics class but I believe red leds use the least amount of energy of all the leds and to create "white" light requires significantly more energy. Speaking of energy what is the expected battery life of the little monster?

 

Hi LightningPL,

If you have some time, could you please share some close-up pics of the bottom cover, the lid, the hinges, the sides, etc.? Can't seem to locate any pictures, and I know some folks are also curious about the ports on the sides. Thanks!!!

 

CLEVO - News

Hopefully this means they will be ready to go soon!

 

Well, LPC has it as 'It's almost here' so I hope we're getting somewhere.

I'm still undecided whether to go with it or P150SM... or perhaps both!

 

Incorrect. Leaving aside "warm" and "cool" whites for a moment, white is neutral. Blue is cool, and red is, indeed, warm.

/troll

On a more serious note, no. The human eye is actually more acute at seeing green than red or blue if you want to argue energy consumption, but either way, white is least likely to taint the image on the screen in a dark room (like the yellow light on my old thinkpad x40 did), and Clevo has a long tradition of blowing Alienware away on price, performance and size. Not on advertising the hell out of its laptops to the point you can't bring them into an office environment.

I for one am glad that at least one manufacturer is content with owning their niche rather than compromising it to chase another one and ultimately sucking at both. If you want an Asus or Alienware, you know where to go.

Please, Clevo, don't change a thing. It's working.

 

The tradition is not long. When Alienware was not part of Dell and also shipping Clevo, there is no such tradition

 

Even though I'll most probably turn the KB backlighting off right away and then never have second thoughts about it, I'm with xanthian on that one.

One of the many things that made me consider Clevo is that it's quite... I don't know: bland, streamlined, boring ?
No, actually: "non-eccentric".
You can use it to work at the office (which I'll end up doing), or on your commute, without attracting unnecessary attention.
Everything I like

 

I like to call it conservative styling.

 

so which IPS panel are you guys going for ? Full HD or standard ? I would go for full HD but i'm afraid that icons and text is going to be too small on 13.3 screen. How does the FULL HD screen affect gaming on lower resolutions? Best regards

 

There is no confirmation if the lower res (1600x900) screen will be IPS or what make it is, or even if there will be an option (although very likely). You should be able to scale games to 1280x720 fine on the 1080p, with the small screen size and tightly packed pixels it should look pretty good.

 

The 765 should be good for 1080p with no aa for many games though which with the high density will look good.

 

I don't have a notebook yet, and never had the need to do it on my desktop, so I don't know if the end result is any good (and it will depend on people anyway), but what about changing the DPI for text ?
Or even "enlarging items", as my W7 puts it ( Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Display)...

 

That should work for the majority of icons, though it's not perfect.

 

True that, going from 900p on my old Thinkpad's 14" to 1080p on 15" has been a major change for me. I suppose even 900p will look relatively small on a 13" panel. But I like having 1080p on my laptop.. :[

 

The configurator on clevo.fr has three screen options:
Ecran (Dalle) Clevo 13.3 HD 1366x768 Glossy Glare inclus +0,00 € (details)
Ecran (Dalle) Clevo 13.3 HD+ 1600x900 LED-MAT (option) +50,00 € (details)
Ecran (Dalle) Clevo 13.3 Full-HD 1920x1080 LED-MAT +159,00 € (details)

 

I think he was talking about the US release.

 

That's awful that the French version is more expensive than most of the models we've seen so far AND starts with the 1366x768 screen. I bet a lot of Frenchfolk will be going to Germany for the weekend and smuggling back a Clevo

 

That is a Clevo builder too and not a Sager reseller. Clevo builders can choose the screens they want unless they come from the factory with different flavor screens that they decide to use. Sager offers a set of screens that resellers use across the board shipped directly from Sager.

 

No need to smuggle, so long as you have paid one lot of vat in the EU you are good to take it anywhere.

 

Sigh, reply fail...

 

And even better if like me you are self employed then you can get it vat exempt. Like an upfront 20 percent discount!

 

so, people are going to think im crazy, but do we know if clevo or any of the resellers will offer this laptop with a core i5 model? I know the w110er could be configured with the core i5 3210m (and still can from eurocom). Id think that a machine this small would benefit greatly from running a dual core cpu, mainly for battery life and heat. or might it be an option for a barebones build, like one from rjtech?

 

not a chance, laptop was designed for haswell

 

@TheinsanegamerN

There's no battery life boost because idle power draw stays (almost) the same. There's no heat management improvement practically either because, well, it's a Clevo.

But there are i5 Haswells you know...

 

Here's Ivy Bridge i5 dual vs i7 quad comparison in W110ER with GT 650m: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...dual-core-vs-quad-core-gaming-benchmarks.html

 

I've already went through a 17" screen with WXUGA resolution. It sucked for everything except Photoshop and MS Word/Excel. Yes, you can run your game at lowered resolutions and it might look OK if you ignore the overall blurriness of a scaled picture. I like it native, sorry.

How do people post that they want to do actual work on a 13" - 1080p screen? Sure, reset your DPI and everything that is vector based is fine, but there goes your real estate.

Anyway, people with sharp vision can justify small screens all they want. I can only hope that 720P to 1080P screens are in the mix of 13" choices.

Me, I plug in the 1080P/24" external until reincarnation time?

 

There should have been a battery life boost as that what Haswell was all about.

Intel now specify what components should be used on the MB to improve power savings.

That along with the polling scheduling should have provide a nice increase.

 

where can I get the latest BIOS updates for clevo laptops?

 

My low quality 1600x900 display sucks at 1366x768 resolution.

 

Well, the desktop OC crowd are not the happiest bunch. Ignoring the OC aspect, power saving and new features such as AVX2, FMA3 could get interesting.

For now the across the board 10% seems the biggest reported difference in speed?

 

Id love that. with only a 1600x900 screen, only one msata, and perhaps, a core i5 4330m, they might be able to sell it for $700 or so. id buy that in a heartbeat, given that $1200 is a little too expensive for me.

 

thanks for that. so there is no real reason to go with the i5, it seems. even power consumption at stock was almost identical at load...

 

When reviews of this laptop come in, I'd be interested in hearing how it handles 1080p scaled down to 900p or even 768p and if it really looks as bad as some hint at.

 

While it sounds hopeful, I don't think Clevo would carry two SKU's of the same laptop, they rarely ever do that. With only on mSATA slot wouldn't save *them* much money, and a lesser screen might save *them* $100 at best, likely closer to $50.

That being said if stock system with 1080p and i7-4700MQ is ~ $1200 then dropping down to a 1600x900 or 1366x768 and opting for a dual core may result in about $200 price drop. Only way I'd see them offering a cheaper machine is if they also switched GPU from 765m to 750m. That way there'd be an entry level with 1366x768, i5 dual core, GT 750m, one mSATA. That might drop the cost for the machine to about $900.

 

i was wondering if there is any difference in performance between standard ddr3 8gb 1600mhz stick and Kingston HyperX stick ? Is it worth the extra $ ?

 

NO. Not unless you plan on using the IGP for gaming.

 

Huh? The W650 is already out with multiple configs in the same way; W650SZ, W650SH, W650SR. They vary very little in price as you say, which makes one wonder why, but they do in fact exist. Wouldn't exactly be a huge shocker to me if the W230 does the same, especially in different regional markets.

 

Do you mean that 13" displays are too small to work on in general, or that a 13" 1080p is too small and that a lower res is better? What about the Mac book pro retina display? (I've never seen one but I thought it was THE benchmark) - am I missing something or is that not a great display? Surely the 2560x1600 resolution (13 inch mac book pro) is far too small by this logic - and all their owners are suffering from chronic eye strain!?

Also what happens if you plug in a w230st with say a low res 720p or 900 screen into a 1080p or incredibly high res ext monitor? Can you still scale up the resolution to fit your ext monitor or will the w230st be bound by it's own screen res?

Someone please help me with these questions, I am inexperienced here and need some guidance to help me choose the right screen! O plan to replace my desktop with the w230st as my sole machine.