*** Official Clevo P157SM-P150SM / Sager NP8250 Owner's Lounge ***

What?!? If it doesn't work, then don't use it? Are you assuming the static is minor?

 

It's a hit or miss thing happening on a few boards here and there, another user recently reported the same finding. You always have the option of RMA and getting the motherboard replaced, which if i you want to use the headphone jack and not an external device would be your best route. The other user was going to be purchasing new headphones and so was advised to get USB headphones and as far as I know it worked no problem and completely bypasses the static problem.

 

It kind of defeats the purpose of laptop portability when you have to get a bunch of external devices (soundcard/USB headphones, microphone) to have proper functionality.

 

I wish we could get an idea if this is normal, or even if the static is minor or major. I would think some static when turned to max amp, max volume, would be normal. But it is kind of subjective. I was hoping someone would record it and we could tell by that. Is this a big issue, little issue, or a non-issue?

 

I have zero static. I normally use Bluetooth but just to check I tried 2 headset and 3 different pairs of headphones. Zero static at all volumes under I'd say 90%

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

 

Thanks cavell219, that gives us a baseline, and that seems normal. There is always some noise/static, that is why there is a signal to noise ratio. Hi end equipment just has a better ratio.

 

That's with the sound at max level right on both the laptop and headsets right?

 

lol played music through the speakers on this thing for the first time today. And this is by far the worst sound I have ever seen on a laptop. my girlfriends phone sounds better than this lol. But I didn't buy it for the sound and had really been spoiled by my xps (best laptop sound I had ever seen), so it is no big deal but it is kinda funny that it is this bad, you would almost have to search to find speakers this bad.

 

You'll get used to it.

 

Get a USB headset or digital wireless. That's the only way.

 

I tried my headphones out and there is a very faint hiss.VERY faint. Well within my tolerance of the hiss becoming annoying. If I wanted any better I would need an USB DAC

 

I just bought a Sager NP8265-s and have installed windows 8.1 on it. For some reason the trackpad seems to be iffy. The multi finger gestures are not smooth and end up triggering while doing something else.
eg1: I use two finger scrolling: when I reach the end of trackpad I lift my hand to start the gesture again - for some reason the trackpad decides I want to scroll in the opposite direction and I end up using the side scroll bar in frustration. Not to mention that the fingers need to be perfectly aligned in parallel position!
eg2: I search for something on the start page and when I go to move the cursor to select an item, the charms menu shows up - even when I am scrolling from the middle of the trackpad and not the edge.

I would be fine if I could change the sensitivity or some other setting - but all the settings that I have access to regarding the trackpad are turning gestures on/off.

Have other people experienced similar issues? Are there work arounds?

 

Running 8.1 rtm also, no problems with touchpad. Synaptics Driver 16.3.4.0

You may want to start fresh...this is where I got mine.

CLEVO Driver Download

 

I am using a newer one 16.3.15.1
Should I downgrade?

 

If you are having issues it's worth a shot.

 

Can someone help me with taking decision? I want to buy Clevo p150sm but I have few worries:
- sound is really that terrible? and sound through jack also?
- mic doesn't work at all? Sometimes I need it for skype
- its really super loud? That you cant stand the noise?

 

The sound is usually good enough.

The MIC does work but like all internal mics its not the best, will do in a pinch.

No louder than most other gaming machines.

 

So MIC is fine to use with Skype? And other person will recognize what I am saying?
If I will connect external speakers to 150sm there will be quality increase or it will be same "crap" as internal sound?


Y510p is much quieter!


and just a silly question, but important, how long is a power adaptor? How long is from laptop to power supply and from power supply to socket?

 

The internal mic might as well not exist. It records muffled sound that is not clear enough for voice recognition apps and would be (IMO) embarrassing to try to communicate live with other people.

The built in speakers... When I first bought the machine I was very disappointed, but... I have come to realize the speakers actually sound pretty good when playing games, or watching movies. Gunshots, voice dialogue, all very crisp and clear.
The internal speakers sound bad when playing any music that requires full low range (bass).

When plugged into my external speakers with a small subwoofer the system sounds amazing!

The power adapter (very large brick) uses an industry standard pc power cord, that can be purchased in nearly any length, the actual cord from the brick to the laptop jack is approx. 6' long.

 

Hmm I would like to hear it first before buy... but I have no chance to do it. Or maybe someone is from Germany/BW near Tuebingen/Reutlingen? haha

Hmm power adapter is that super big? I am very often carrying my laptop in backpack to different places, brick will be hard to fit anywhere? Now I have quite small old asus power supply.

I do not expect much from built in speakers, but I listen sometimes some music and watching a lot of movies in bed (so no external speakers possible), will I hear something from the movie?
Now I have asus x57vn and I have quite good sound with which I am happy, i don't know how a could compare them both..

About mic there is no way to exchange it so something better? MICs are quite cheap, but its possible? someone did this?

Have you plugged your sound system throught normal jack out? Or usb or spdif? I am thinking about external speakers with build in sound card with USB connection, or to some ministereo with SPDIF IN, or even external sound card (like creative xi-fi hd) and then connect external PC speakers (creative t20)

 

The brick is the standard size for 180W units.

 

Yeah, there seems to be a considerable number of users with broken microphones, at least from what I can glean from the few comments either way on it (stretching back to previous generations of the notebooks, too). It's clear some people are able to use the internal microphone normally for basic uses from Skype to voice recognition, but when we say muffled, we mean muffled. You may be one of the lucky ones and get a microphone that functions but you might get one that is nearly useless. But I still have yet to reinstall Windows or install another OS to see if it makes a miraculous difference there.

For the speakers, I agree completely with cmiles68. If you own an old laptop or workstation, the sound is very tinny. The subwoofer seems to just be a weak speaker of sorts, if anything, and doesn't do much if anything to bring out lower ranges. However, yes, the speakers are functional, unlike my internal mic. They will do fine just to hear output clearly and loudly enough, but if you are at all interested in the subtleties, quality, range, or whatever else, you'll need to plug in speakers or headphones. Nothing wrong with that in my opinion, but I've never owned a laptop with fantastic speakers, anyways. I was a little disappointed the subwoofer didn't do anything of note since it was an aside feature I was curious about when purchasing.

Depending on how much you are a connoisseur of laptop speakers, people's reports of terrible speakers may just be blown extremely out of proportion, as they hold their own for typical users. Same goes for the sound quality in general. The sound jack is also adequate as I expected--good quality speakers and headphones sound good, but an external USB sound card can improve it a bit. If you work with audio a lot, you may use the SPDIF jack.

But seriously, I don't understand what's making the microphone so terrible. The fact that others can use theirs (presuming they are not speaking with their lips touching the screen bezel as I would) indicates this isn't intended, expected perhaps, but not alright. I don't use the internal mic all that often, but when I do use it, it's pretty annoying to just drop it or worry about carrying a headset when I expect to need one. I imagine this isn't as much of an issue if it's used as a desktop replacement, but this is portable for a reason...

 

thanks for reply!
So the sound is not that bad, so for just watching movies in bed should be fine? How about listening music? I just expect normal quality without a lot of distortion. Just like phone (htc?) or something for me is enough. How about loudness? Can I set music and go to another room/kitchen and I can hear it?
Can sound beat noise from laptop? Its very noisy right?

 

No significant distortion that I can distinguish; as cmiles68 described above, it's crisp and clear which I suppose can be taken well or poorly either way. Of course, take that with a grain of salt, since I'm a pretty standard casual enjoyer of various audio media who can be satisfied just using a $20 set of earbuds. Not to sound like a broken record, but if your phone's anything like mine (Galaxy S3), you will find that you will lose out on some of the bass and midtones in comparison to the treble. However, what you can do is use dramatic equalizer settings only when using the internal speakers to boost up bass/mid significantly and progressively lower gain into the negatives for high tones (max +24dB on the left and negative on the right) and it sounds comparable or better to me. Just something to keep in mind if you end up dissatisfied with the speaker quality--artificially boosting its range balance at least helps with my enjoyment. Of course you'll lose out on some of the higher tone clarity that the speakers tend to emphasize.

As for loudness, I only tested it a few times a weeks ago, but it's quite loud. You should definitely be able to hear it a few rooms over or even through some drywall, if you're using that as a loudness comparison. I'm actually more afraid of blowing out the speakers with how loud it can get, but that's because I don't use small speakers often. Fun note is that the laptop vibrates a bit when using the speakers with medium or loud volume. Never had that before in previous notebooks and I think it's rather amusing, but others may feel differently.

I have very few complaints on the speakers and none that are big, if that's what you're wondering. It's bright, loud, and can be touched up a bit with the included Sound Blaster X-Fi MB 3 software which has bass/clarity enhancers and an equalizer (personally I like it; only problem is that it seems to destructively modify output rather than creating a new output source so if you ever record from your computer, the sound will take on the enhancements/equalization). I think the brunt of complaints is that it could also be a lot better for an ostensibly cohesive package that is this notebook line.

 

yah but the y510p is not even in the same league as the 150sm. the high end clevo's make the y510p seem like a cell phone hooked to a monitor

 

Well at least the y510p that my friend has (there are many different models.

 

y510p is not that bad but its a little oven .. temp are +/- 90 but the performance is really good (double SLI is like gtx770)

Can you tell me how loud are your fans in your clevo? They have few steps of working or just 1/0? When just browsing internet or watching movies they are loud?

 

I liked the description I read somewhere on these forums: there seems to be 3 automatic settings for the fans and they're often on medium. At best, the fans seem to alternate between low and medium in a cycle every 5-15 minutes. Playing games will push it up to medium or high settings as expected, although I'm often pleasantly surprised when the fans stay on medium while running intensive programs or games. It never seems to hit maximum speed (which you can test with the Fn+1 hotkey), so there's also that. Low fans are as quiet as you can expect a workstation to be, quiet but audible whirring with your hard drive buzzing a bit if your main disk isn't an SSD. Medium speed will make it a little embarrassing to use in a dead silent setting, which is unfortunate because you may find it occupies 50-80% of the time you are using the computer for even internet, word processing, music, or movies. It can be decently loud, perhaps three times as loud as the low speed mode. I don't want to make it discouraging, but the general volume was unexpectedly loud though I've never had issues ignoring it as white noise or being drowned out by speakers/headphones. All in all, what I'd expect is the average or slightly mediocre fan loudness of laptops of this type.

SpeedFan does function properly it seems and doesn't have issues with Optimus being enabled intermittently, but after I used it for a day, I started to realize that my temperatures (idle and light usage) brought the temperatures above what I was used to seeing. So at that point I was sacrificing constant low-setting fans (which I believe are hard coded into the BIOS as a few have mentioned elsewhere) for higher temperatures, so I quickly gave that up. To me, it seems like the medium fans are actually doing some important work. At least where I live where it's typically cooler (65F indoors), it idles and runs all your basic tasks/entertainment at about 35-40C or lower. When gaming, it seems to go to the high 50s and low-mid 60s. But I've never seen it hit and stay at 70C if my memory serves correctly. I'm very impressed with the cooling, so I'm just sucking up the fan noise. Not distracting to me when I use it for entertainment since I usually use headphones, but haven't had problems when playing from internal/external speakers either.

Sorry, no dB readings, though. I don't like how consistently noisy it can be in a quiet location, but honestly, I absolutely love the temperatures and performance.

 

I was supprised how quiet my 157sm is after reading all the things about them being loud. even when it spins up to full speed (think there might be a manual mode that is faster than the automatic ones) it is still not too loud.

 

I have a P150EM (and a W230ST), not the SM. If the new model is similar to the old one then even the lowest fan level is not really quiet. It's not 0/1, but whenever it kicks in it's kinda annoying.

The highest fan level is, of course, loud, but no worse than other gaming DTRs, so you don't have a better choice.


What makes the fan issue even more annoying is when the two Clevos are running Windows, they keep the fans up and down at random times even if I'm just looking at the desktop with no apps running.

 

Yeah, Koala is about right on the fans. I personally feel the low fan speed mode is acceptably quiet--obviously you won't be aiming for ultrabook-like discretion, but I would be very happy if that was the predominant fan speed. But, again, the medium speed seems to be equally or more common mode and it is much louder, spinning up and down constantly while you're idle or at work. Something I've dealt with...

On a side note, if you're still interested, terragady: I spent a couple hours listening to music through the internal speakers while working on the laptop and I gotta say it's growing on me and sounding very clear while bringing out the rest of the range noticeably. This was after the aforementioned change using the included Sound Blaster X-Fi MB3 software (or any other audio enhancer/equalizer) with extreme boosts with the gain of bass tones. Haphazardly set the gains from left-to-right frequencies as +24, +20, +13, +7, +2, +0, -4, -7, -9, -5. Loving it much, much more!

 

I hope Prema comes out with a BIOS that modulates the fans better for reduced noise, or at least a better constant noise.

 

Hmm so I assume I shouldn't use a Clevo on a conference (during presentations)? I do them like once on a month and I am using there laptop, just M$ Office or web browsing but if the fans will be annoying to others I would rather not use Clevo...
I would really love to see Clevo before I buy... but there is no option for that.. I saw Lenovo y510p and its very quiet but temp are around 50 on idle and 80-90 on load... thats much..

 

If you use SpeedFan, you should be able to keep the laptop on low speed constantly, but it will probably heat up to those temperatures you listed. I use this laptop in conferences and have little issue with light-medium work during especially considering the members are busy and there is often other noise, it's just more white noise and more so to those close to you. If you're doing a presentation, I imagine the notebook will be a decent distance from others, so it shouldn't be noticeable if it spins up to medium speed.

I didn't look much into Prema's modded BIOS. But last I saw, which wasn't too long ago, the prospects of changing fan speeds was dire considering how it was programmed in. Were there changes?

 

I do not care how loud is my laptop when I am giving presentation

It's of course depends on conference, once I was writing an article during presentation, and women sitting two chairs from me, yelled at me that I can do my stuff outside (it was super quiet laptop, hitting on keyboard was more distracting I guess).

How about this mic, can it be exchanged somehow? For example exchanging mic on phone is not a problem so maybe here is the same?

 

Sorry, misinterpreted that earlier. Yeah, it could be a little too noisy if keyboard tapping was too distracting. But then, again, the fan whirring is more of a white noise than is typing.

I don't know what the problem is with the microphone since Sager (whom was contacted about this, but I imagine Clevo has been too) doesn't appear to have a good idea of what it is or how to fix it. I've never really heard of replacing laptop microphones probably because they're not used all too often to begin with, though they are convenient and useful should you need it. Hopefully someone with more laptop disassembly and repair experience can get back to you, but I imagine it would be difficult to replace the entire microphone and its wiring.

If it's compatible, you could possibly splice the wires of the old and new microphone, but I'm just speaking out of my backend there. Otherwise, you'll have to be comfortable taking apart a lot of the laptop to get at all of the microphone. And if it's not the microphone itself but where it's wired, like some have suggested as being electrical noise or interference, you'll have to change that if possible or replacing the mic might not help.

But, again, who knows? If your mic works or you get it working from a muffled state, it would be good to know about that.

Edit: I forgot that it's worth noting there's another microphone hole near the touchpad, which I don't fully understand. It doesn't seem to pick up much sound and is still as muddy as the one above the display. That one might be easier to replace and you could just get rid of the one near the webcam if it's too much of a hassle.

 

How is the headphone jack? I use decent headphones, and plan to plug them directly into the laptop. Hearing static or a high pitched whine will not be nice at all.

Last I checked the Prema bios said coming soon. ?

 

So there are 2 microphones? Didn't know.
I talked with guy from mysn.de, he said that they were working on fan noise they have now good result especially during idle. So I think I would give a try to Clevo
I mean the price is high, 400 euro higher then y510p in my case, performance will be quite the same, difference will be in temperatures (which is the biggest difference i guess?) and noise, lenovo seems to be much quieter and with better sound and working microphone

 

Oh and one more question came now when I am configuring my laptop.
I wanted to take it with gtx770 but now I see that for 11 euro more I can have ATI 8970m. I was always using geforce but the benchmarks for Ati are better, much better then gtx770, but where is the catch? Drivers are faulty? Temperatures are much higher? Optimus is not working properly? or what?

 

There have been some enduro issues especially with older titles though there are modified drivers on the main page and a lot of the issues have been ironed out now.

 

but what kind of troubles? That it wasnt switching properly between graphics? But it could be done manually right?
AMD is much faster then gtx770 and price is almost the same. I wouldnt mind change enduro settings manually for games. I do not play that much. Or the problem was somewhere else then just switching automatically?

 

It's down to utilisation even with enduro configured properly, but with the current state of the drivers it will still be faster than the 770M even if it's not quite running at 100%.

 

ohh ok, and which main page do you mean? AMD or nbr?

 

and one more, as I am using sometimes laptop with battery for writing or web browsing, then it will use only CPU graphics for the best battery performance or there it also has problems?
And playing not common games can cause a problem since the drivers must be configured for each game? or I understood something wrong...

I still do not know which to choose, 770m or AMD...

NVIDIA has no problems at all, but AMD has much more power...

and by the way, which graphic is longer lasting in case of life?

 

I mean the sager/clevo main section. The dGPU totally powers down when not in use.

 

The 8970M has better performance than the 770M, and the price per performance is much better. The previous version, the 7970M had many issues, but those seem to have been ironed out. So from that, the 8970M is the better deal. One concern I have is AMD only updates or supports the drivers for three years.

I plan to get the 780M, simply because I want the laptops gaming lifetime to be as long as possible. Also I am a bit concerned with AMDs previous problems. I have never had a problem with my multiple Nvidia cards. But maybe I just got lucky.

Both cards will power down when not needed, so battery life when not gaming should be simular. Keep in mind that some non games use the gpu, like photoshop.

 

What? They support card only for 3 years? After that I will not be able to install newest drivers or what? (so I have only 2 more years? strange). There is no something like this for nVidia? They support all of the old GPUs?
I can not afford for 780m.. maybe later. So there is another question, If i will order laptop with AMD it will be possible later to change for nVidia?

 

3 years later it switches to the legacy driver.

 

I tried to find more info on this, but couldn't find much. As Mr. Koala said, they switch to legacy, which AMD says " The shift in this structure is due to these products having been optimized to their maximum potential from a performance and feature perspective." I don't want this to sound bigger than it is. It doesn't mean the card is totally unsupported. Also there aren't any clear issues with this. Unless someone has something more concrete, I wouldn't worry about it. Many say the drivers from both companies are about equal.

 

Well, I guess it's just AMD's way of telling you "Hey, you have an old GPU! You need no UPDATE! Get an UPGRADE instead!"