steMo's 5720 review (with pictures)

First off, this laptop is incredible. Just hearing about benchmarks and that stuff over the internet may not really amaze you, but once you are actually playing Doom 3 with 1600x1200, Ultra Quality, and everything but AA enabled at 60fps all the time, you can't truly appreciate this machine


MY LAPTOP

2ghz, 2gb RAM, 80gb 7200RPM, XP Pro, 1920x1200 resolution, and all the other standard features. Ordered from PCTorque.

SHIPPING TIMES

Ordered on November 30th, used credit card. I am guessing the credit card and billing info didn't match, so they called my house on December 1st. Built my laptop and had it shipped out on either Tuesday or Wednesday. Arrived at my house as scheduled by UPS Ground (I am on the East Coast), and was here on Tuesday (December 13th).

SCREEN

The screen is pretty nice looking. Not much bleedthrough at all, not really worth mentioning. I didn't see any dead pixels (I didnt spend my money on that warranty either). The one thing i noticed it can be a bit dim, but I wouldn't be suprised if you can adjust the brightness. 1920 x 1200 is small, but I can read the font from 2 feet away if i wanted to. My vision is about 45/25, and it is fine. Another thing I noticed is the sparkles or whatever. It's just something that is there, mainly only visible on bright backrounds or webpages. With me, I only really notice it if I am looking for it. Nothing to worry about.

GAMING (dec. 14th)

So far, I only ran 3dmark05 and Doom 3.

3Dmark05 ran beautifully compared to my old pc which got 1fps on all the demos. My final score was 6730, I updated to the latest driver and it increased to an astonishing 6731!!1

Doom 3 was great. 1600x1200, Ultra quality, no AA, everything else maxed. 60 fps constantly, but when AA was 16x, it went down to 10-20fps.

FAR CRY

Played far cry for a few hours today. 1920 x 1200, everything on maximum except shadows, i put them on medium because of some wierd glitch it had in high. I think the patch would fix this. Anyways, very smooth. Whether it was 60fps, I don't know, but it seemed like it was and was very playable

Half Life Lost Coast

Played everything at max, 1920x1200. Wasn't the best of FPS, I don't think it dropped below 10fps at all, and was generally in the 20-40fps realm. It was actually pretty playable, and it looked great too.

Counter Strike Source

Wow, Just WOW. EVERYTHING at maximum settings (1920x1200). Did the stress stress test and got 131 fps. I decided to join some servers. Dust 2 played with 20 other people nice and smooth. It was almost always above 60fps, I think it may have dropped below a little bit for a few seconds. It may be worth reducing AA and AF to make sure its 60fps+ even in bigger levels.


SOUND (Dec 14th)

Speakers are decent, they are laptop speakers so can't expect much. They lack bass like all laptops, but they don't sound like a tin can.

Just tested headphones, when all is silent I hear a small hissing static sound, but with the music playing I can't hear it. Sounds like it is exaggerated on these forums? I am not a sound freak so the built in sound is good for me.

Fans are quiet. Nothing to worry about unless small fan noise bothers you. Every now and then another fan kicks in, which is somewhat noisy. It's not bad at all.

The SRS WOW works pretty nicely. Booted up Half life 2 for a few minutes, and on the main menu screen, the combines started mumbling stuff. I forget they did this and I thought some noise was coming 10 feet away in my house. Does a good job considering it has 2 speakers.


TOUCHPAD (Dec 14th)

Updated the driver. Scrolling works in firefox, but whenever I open the synaptics touchpad program, and I try to close it, some error message pops up. Somewhat annoying, but I don't open it much.

Also, Fn + F1 turns the touchpad on and off. A nice feature when using a mouse.

DVD DRIVE

Not much to say, didn't get to use it much. Works as expected.

BATTERY

I am only using AC power now, I think the connection port is slightly loose, but nothing to lose sleep over. I moved it around a bit and it came out a bit. Doesn't bother me.

HEAT (Dec 14th)

The power adapter gets a little hot, but not too bad. My friends zv8000 or whatever it is gets hot enough to cook eggs. This one is inbetween hot and warm.

Even after running 3dmark05 and doom3, it stays warm to the touch, and I think you can't really even call it warm. Very cool laptop.

KEYBOARD

Very nice. No flex whatsoever, unlike the laptops at school that nearly snap in half when you press a key. I don't really find myself pressing other keys even after using a desktop for 3 years. A+

WIRELESS (Dec 14th)

It's a good adapter, had no problems connecting to my house and such. Updated to the latest drivers.

The range is a little bit disappointing though. For in your house, it will probably work great. If you want to connect to your neighbors (with their permission ), it might not work as good as other laptops. My friends have HP notebooks, they can connect to a network, but I go to the same spot and netstumbler can't even pick it up.

OTHER

Build quality is great, I noticed it the second I took it out of the box. It felt cold, seems to be made of metal. Doesn't feel cheap or flimsy at all, like the gateways I see at staples.

The laptop is not light, not heavy. Unless you are a skinny nerd or carry it around all day, it's not really heavy at all.

No "cracked hinges"


This laptop overall has no problems. I really love it, great build quality, it's not worth the money to go with Dell, this notebook offers everything for a much lower price.

I plan on following that notebook speedup guide soon, I will post my new 3dmark05 score after tweaking XP and whatever else it has me do.


I will be updating many of these sections over the next few days, so be sure to check back. But for now, enjoy some pictures...



That's it next to an xbox, same with below...

 

Very nice steMo!

Thanks for your efforts, much appreciated.

I have to admit that Doom 3 @ Ultra and UXGA would be incredible...

I'm going to put a link to this in my Sager Models guide

Cheers!

 

Welcome to the 5720 family! Nice review & pics. You're right... the 5720 is a amazing machine!!

I've had the opportunity to see two 5720s side-by-side, one with WSXGA+ (mine) and the other with WUXGA. My friend and I were in agreement that the WSXGA+ screen had no sparkle effect and was brighter with more vivid colors. He returned his and is now eagerly awaiting one with WSXGA+. If you find your screen less than satisfying, there is another option available to you.

I've gotta get Doom 3 on mine to see how it looks with all the eye candy cranked up!

 

I like the WUXGA. It's not worth sending back for, the sparkles arent really annoying like some people think they are. Anything is good to me after living with this bargain LCD from 3 years ago...

 

Nice little review, there, Batman!

 

Yeah, better keep it to avoid the risk of exchanging it for WSXGA and finding a blown pixel. Looking forward to your future updates.

 

thanks for the review, I like that you put an xbox in the pictures as a reference point makes it much easier to get a sense of the size of the laptop, I wish more people would do that.