*** Official Clevo P640RE/Sager NP8640 Owner's Lounge ***

Thanks for the efforts, let's us know how it turns out!

Sidenote: I found more Clevo/Sager AMAs in that subreddit too!

 

Is anyone else weighing this machine vs the msi gs40? The msi might have better battery life?

 

I was, but now I think they're in a slightly different weight class tbh. The MSI GS40 is comparable to the p34w, where this laptop is more comparable to the GS60.

Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk

 

Whoops, I didn't mean literally in weight, well literal weight, but also components and build quality wise. Specifically cooling ability and battery life.

Did you decide on one or the other?

 

Considering how similar the machines seemed to be when they were first announced and actually how they have been designed have really created quite a gap, the P640RE offers a much more bang for the buck style where for the same money you can throw in quite large PCI-E SSD storage.

 

Hi OP! haha

Anyhow, I have an updated review on the battery life when running on power saver mode on that Reddit thread. For the lazy: it was 2 hours and 43 minutes from 100% to 10%.

I'm curious but has anyone found any plastic hard cases that go on the laptop? Like what the Macs have?

Or a smaller power brick? (I bet this gets asked a lot)

 

Whoa, that's a little lower than expected

But then again, the weight and size (and slightly lower cost) make up for it!

 

That's terrible. That's barely more than half of what I get in my W230SS (5 hours from 100% to 7%) with my custom power settings (optimised to maximise power savings on battery power, and maximise performance when plugged in). And my battery is at about 10% wear. You have a new laptop. I shudder to think how bad the battery life would be after a year and a half of use.

I suppose I'll wait for the hypothetical 14" P740DM with MXM (but BGA CPUs, LGA is too big for 14" notebooks) and a bigger battery. I know it's possible, I'll just wait for Clevo's announcements this year.

 

Welp, I guess I'll try to tweak some settings and see if I can get a better time out of it. I didn't realize that there's this "battery saver mode" that kicks in when the battery hits 20%. Perhaps I can get more life out of it if I have that on right off the bat?

Like I said, I'm not a huge techy person so I bet there are a few things on the user end that could be done, or I have a dud battery or yeah, the battery life just sucks. :3

 

Comparing stock to tweaked is always going to skew things a bit but the P640RE does focus a little less on battery life.

 

Battery life aside how are temps and cooling on this laptop?
Fans loud under load/gaming?
Screen quality good? bright?
I have a buddy looking for a new compact laptop and this seems almost like the best fit.
Like most he hates loud fans when gaming and aggressive fan profiles that just blast the fans when not doing anything too intensive.
Most importantly are the fans during gaming.
Thanks

 

I really hope a pascal refresh of this doesn't come out anytime soon(please give me reassurance).. Got tired of speculating a release date and pulled the trigger... Battery life looks somewhat abysmal but I'll manage I suppose...other than that this should be okay...

 

Pascal refresh from Nvidia isn't expected until Mid 2016, so if anything, I wouldn't expect them in laptops until the end of 2016 at the earliest.

 

This is highly misleading.

I don't think Nvidia would risk waiting so long to get Pascal into consumers' hands. End 2016 really is a massive delay, and Pascal has already been delayed. Counting from March 2014, when the 860M and the 750 Ti were released - it's going to be two years already come this March.

Kepler was released in March 2012, too, and both microarchitecture GPUs were in stores by May of their respective years. I'd expect the same pattern to occur this year, and the P640RE would be refreshed with Pascal by August.

 

Hmm. Assuming that this is true, I take it that getting these 970M/980M laptops is a now-or-never kind of thing?

 

pretty much

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

I just want it known I do not have a magic ball to say when Pascal is coming, just guessing based on past history with GPU releases and timeframes and rumors I've heard.

 

The P640RE isn't MXM, right?

Also, no chance on panel upgrade from anyone? If so, what's a good panel replacement?

 

Not MXM. As for panel upgrades - depends on market demand. Most people prefer 1080p displays for laptops, not hard to see why.

 

Worth waiting for Pascal or just get it as is now (now being a few months) instead of playing the "wait for the best possible moment" game?

 

depends on how urgently u need this machines and what kinda performance requirements u want

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Ask again when you are looking to buy as things can change over that sort of period.

 

For me, it's a matter of how fast I can secure the fundings :X

Quite close already, but I suspect something bigger may trip my planning yet again

 

Push came to shove I could purchase the laptop within 3 months. Right now I'm floating on a Y410P with a 775M and i7-6400MQ. So it's not a dire need at all.

 

MQ? They still have socket mobile CPU for Skylake?

Sent from my potato running on Android 5.0.1

 

Nope... Massive error in specs.. This is a Ivy Bridge CPU... 755M GPU too..

 

Yes that's a little behind the times power wise.

 

Some sources said it's Ivy Bridge and Haswell, I guess there can be more than one configurations for that specific model.

But yeah, 6400MQ doesn't even exist...

The specs isn't too terrible, as the CPU is still relatively strong. If he's okay with the current graphics performance from his GT755M, he can probably wait until Pascal.

 

Y410p is probably haswell, my bad...

 

Hahahaha. 4700QM not 6400. Sorry.

 

If you are happy on waiting just now then don't sweat it

 

Are there any laptop skins for the 640RE aside from the wrapping service provided by XOTIC? I can't seem to find any. Plenty for the 650 it seems.

 

That will need some time to be done as it's only just out. It will have to be custom services for now.

 

Just a heads up UPS has my P640RE (16GB RAM, 2x 500GB SSD) arriving tomorrow. If people want to post some questions or tests to run I'll compile a list and answer as many as I can.

 

I just started looking at generic laptop vinyl wraps for 14 inches. Haven't ordered or tried one yet.

 

Could you check the fan noise if possible? Hopefully it's not like a portable jet engine.

 

Laptop just arrived. Installing some games (AC Syndicate/JC3) to test out the capabilities. So far the fan noise is non existent, but ill let you know how that changes when I start running some games.

 

Run some benchmarks, maybe pics too?

 

Ok so I've been playing around with the system for a few hours now and I have to say I am impressed. Overall build quality is superb. The laptop is much slimmer and lighter than I expected, and the keyboard/trackpad are amazing to use (once you disable some of the annoying 'convenience' options for the mouse). Backlighting on the keyboard is very tasteful, and there are several brightness settings for those lights as well.

I've played about 3 hours of AC Syndicate and an hour or two of JC3. Both games had high settings enabled across the board, which both the game and Nvidia's GeForce Experience recommends. With these, and discounting some obviously bugged explosions in JC3, I was getting 50+ FPS 95% of the time. There was noticeable heat through the keyboard during these sessions, however it was not overwhelming. Likewise, fan noise was present however was not a distraction. This is to be expected with a laptop as thin as this. I also ran the Heaven Unigine for a bit and was getting a solid 50+ FPS on their high settings.

As with most laptops running a dedicated GPU, gaming performance is very noticeably weakened when the system is not plugged in (you will be able to tell when gaming if you have forgotten to plug in the laptop). I haven't spent a ton of time unplugged yet, however from what I can tell the estimate is 3 hours unplugged from 100% to 0%.

I'll post some pictures tomorrow when I get up, as well as a full list of my pros/cons with the laptop. Keep the questions/requests coming and ill try to get to as much as possible.

Edit: Within 5min the projected battery lifetime has dropped to 1 hour and 34 minutes, so not too optimistic for battery lifetime. However I havent been using any of the battery saving profiles.

 

Thank you @Will Kavanagh for writing about your first impressions!

I am very interested in more details about the quality of the keyboard. How solid is it? What about the key hub? Is there an indicator somewhere if Caps Lock is on? I love the keyboard of my Elitebook 8440p and I cannot find a new power laptop with something similar..

How is the overall build quality? And to which degree can you open the lid?

 

From my use of the keyboard it is very nice to use. It feels very solid to the touch, much better tan any laptop keyboard I've used thus far. The only problem I can tell is that it shows oil/grease marks easily (as does the rest of the laptop). As far as caps/num/scroll lock is concerned, the only indicator I have found is a popup that appears on-screen, so no light pops up on the keyboard.

Here is an album I put together quickly of the laptop: http://imgur.com/a/IH71V

 

Very nice. Looks thin and svelte. I also like your carpet on the floor

 

Should be getting mine today. Nobody else has ordered the 1440p display option on here that I've seen, so if anybody wants to know anything specific to that or anything else, feel free.

 

Where did you get 1440p? I didn't know that was an option, I don't think power notebooks stocks it

 

I live in Australia, so I ordered from our local reseller, Metabox.

 

Since yesterday there is a German review on notebookcheck.com. I ordered the XMG version Lets see how it works with Linux.

 

Sweet!! There are no 1440p options as far as I know here in the US.

I just got mine yesterday from XoticPC and I am very happy so far.


I am also pleased with the keyboard with almost no flex. I've been pampered for years with my thinkpad keyboard. So aside from not having a nipple mouse, the P640RE keyboard is a very closed second to the thinkpad keyboard.

 

There are no 1440p options for any reseller, despite it being listed on the Clevo website.

 

so i guess they wold be updating this then too: http://www.metabox.com.au/store/b179/Metabox-Prime-P640RE-Laptop

 

Well Metabox has somehow worked out how to get them, because I'm looking at one right now.