**Official Sager NP5170 / Clevo W170HN Owners' Lounge**

Soon to be filled with specs and image of the laptop.


Supports nVidia Optimus!

 

Basic config starts at $899.00...

 

This is the Clevo W170HN FYI

 

So is the 540m the only GPU available for this or is there any chance of an upgrade now or hopefully later on...

 

Yes the 540M is the only GPU option available on this model at this time.

 

Justin, the battery life on this is listed at 2-3 hrs. I would have thought it would have been greater with the Optimus enabled GT 540M. Any ideas on this?

 

yeah that sounds odd? I expected it to be atleast 4 hours with Optimus and the GPU. Must probably be something else going on inside.

 

Please see the below...

 

This was the general time listed, Sager has confirmed 4-5 hours.

 

Now we're talking...

 

You will notice that no one is really offering Optimus with high end video cards. Even though it is theoretically possible to implement Optimus with high end video cards like the nVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M w/1.5GB GDDR5 and above there are compatibility issues with several games, STEAM, and even Linux. You will see it with the mid-range cards like say the GT 540M, but not with the high end cards. It seems that when you try to compromise you don't do either thing well.

So, you have to decide whether battery life or powerful graphics is most important to you, and make your choice accordingly.

 

Yeah that's a tough call...a really really tough call for people who need a high end solution and travel a lot.

I've got a beast of a PC myself but these last 6 months have been a pain with 4 hour travel times to uni and 2 hours travel time to work...lose motivation to get any work done by the time i get home...

and the 540M seems decent though something tells me its bound to choke when rendering more complex scenes in unity and udk....best option may be to get an extra battery pack...

I'm not really a laptop guy so excuse my lack of knowledge here...but will swapping the battery frequently(maybe once a day atleast) cause any problems?

 

The only thing that you will eventually wear out is the copper battery contacts on the laptop itself, but it should be ok for the lifetime of the laptop.

 

Sounds good...I'll be happy if its lasts me 1.5-2 years.

Thanks for that.

 

I'm saddened they are only including a 48WH battery on a 17" notebook. I really wanted to get this notebook over a Dell XPS. However, the new Dell will have Optimus, GT 555M and larger capacity batteries, albeit for a good bit more money.
Supposedly, the 17" Dell Sandy Bridge model will also now use MXM though it probably won't be easy to get newer video cards like it is with Clevo.

 

I still attribute this to the fact that previous laptops with high end GPUs were usually paired with quad core CPUs that didn't have an IGP.

 

The standard battery is a 6 cell smart Lithium-Ion battery pack 62.16Wh. It will give you 3+ hours or so on the 540M and 4.5 to 5 hours on your IGP.

 

Hi, does anyone know if the chassis is plastic or if it has any aluminum, i.e. the palm-rest? From the pictures it's hard to tell, though I'd like to believe it's aluminum. I'm completely new to Sager, so if the chassis is similar to some previous model then that info would help too, thanks!

 

Its a plastic chassis, the inside is an exact match to the NP7130 that was the previous generation. Its a good sturdy plastic that doesn't have any flex and holds up well.

 

I have done weeks of research but this seems the best bet for me due to its 1080p screen, so hard to find at this price. Here was the criteria I had for a model and ones I looked at - Higher-end laptop (notebook): 17.3 inch screen (preferably 1080p), Blu-Ray player, Intel i5 or i7 processor, nice speakers... under $1000... is it possible? - Slickdeals.net

This looked like a good site so I joined and I can have discussion about this thing when it comes in february. I am buying it here Sager NP5170 Custom Laptop (Built on the Clevo W170HN).

Starts at $871.49.
The only upgrades I am planning on making are:
~ 6X Blue-Ray Read/8X DVDRW Super Multi Combo Drive- ( + 70 ) ...writer is too much
~ 500GB 7200RPM (Serial-ATA II 300 - 16MB Cache) ( + 20 ) ... want 7200rpm and 750gb is too much
= $958.74
...blah, just looked up the 3% discount, I need to use a credit card so I can't get it. so its $989. Ebates doesnt have this website. Even so, best deal I've found for the features I want.

Have windows 7 Pro and office 2007 already.

Bought it for $1050ish with the above upgrades and decided to upgrade to 8GB RAM for 70 dollars, why not future proof. Plus $28 shipping but oh well.

Final edit before bed: Any release date? I saw "early february" (Which I cannot seem to find again) but I was looking for an actual date.
And if there's some kind of promo after release like free shipping, I will be severely annoyed. Just saying.

 

does this come in a 15" model?

 

Yeah, the NP 5160 is the 15" version.

 

im assuming it will be even cheaper than the 17"? man this is a great price for a non gaming laptop with i7 SB

 

With equal specs including a 15.6" 1920x1080 screen, the NP5160 costs $45 less than the 17" NP5170. The NP5160's default configuration has a 15.6" 1366x768 screen, which is an additional $65 less, for a total of $110 less than the NP5170.

You can find the NP5160 forum thread here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...sager-np5160-clevo-w150hnq-owners-lounge.html

 

2 q's:

1. Has the keyboard backlight?
2. Offer the company global warranty?

 

1. No, unfortunately, the keyboard backlight isn't on this model.
2. No, I don't believe Sager itself offers a global warranty (Asus computers come with the global warranty if you need one). You could also add a third party global warranty as well.

 

1. No
2. Not sure

 

Thanks for the answers but its very bad to make today a laptop without backlight. Now i'm not sure about buying it.

 

That's an opinion. Personally, it would annoy me. Even in pitch black, my old crappy dell screen provides plenty of light to see the keys... not that I need to look at them most of the time anyway (only for F1-12 keys, page up and down, things i don't use often). Still, why not offer it as an option for those who want to pay extra, it cant be too hard...

Well, Here's my order status from XOTICPC... can't wait.

01/28/2011 Phase 1 (Pending Parts or Item Arrival) We are expecting a shipment of this model around the middle of February, we cannot guarantee availability of this model. You will be updated accordingly.

 

I ordered mine.

__________________
CLEVO W170HN | 2720QM | 8 GB 1333| 60 GB SSD | W7 Pro 64

 

Status update to Sager NP5160 & NP5170, these two models now has a new ETA of mid-March...

 

Hooray! Thanks babyhemi for the update. Where did you hear that?

 

That is the official announcement from Sager.

 

So just to clarify, mid March is when we can expect Sager to be sending out the NP5160 and NP5170 shells to the resellers, and then some additional time for the resellers to get them out to the preorders, right? So maybe early April before I actually get the machine I am figuring? I preordered my NP5170 from XoticPC, but I assume all the Sager resellers are in pretty much the same boat.

 

Sager doesn't ship to resellers, they ship straight to you from the factory, don't they?

Unless you did like a custom screen swap or skin addition to your laptop..

 

^ this. the only time the resellers touch the computer is when they do additions (like you said, skins, etc). Otherwise its straight from the factory to your door.

 

oh cool! I didn't order any skins or screen swaps or anything. So mid March shipping is a realistic possibility for me! nice. I looked on the Sager site and they were saying mid March for shipping date for NP5170s.

 

Good news! From the earlier announcement I was thinking second week of april. Second week of march sounds much better!

 

correct me if im wrong and sorry if it was already mentioned in the past 4 pages but didnt see it, the nvidia gt 540m cannot removed and upgraded correct?

 

It is said to be soldered, and cannot be upgraded.

 

alright i thought so, thank you for the reply

 

I decided to place my order with XoticPC and take a spot in line. Hopefully I can be patient even if it won't be until April or later.

I know some are hopeful it will happen in March. Maybe there will be a few that trickle out. But I don't want to be overly optimistic about it. I've seen this happen with other hot electronic gadgets as everyone awaits the big release. Then normally it ends up being later after all is said and done - after it goes from the manufacturer to the supplier to the reseller to everyone's hot little hands. Sager will be waiting on Clevo who will be waiting on Intel in this case. So there will be some down time there including the initial testing of the first units.

Derek

 

Yeah i dont really do much computer gaming but most of the games i own are steam games. I just acquired an Asus g73jw-a1 which says it has about 2-3hrs battery life but I was really looking for a 17 inch laptop that could around 4 hours or more for watching movies when traveling. I mostly use my laptop for java programing, downloading and media. I was gunna buy this sager np5170 since it boasted 4-5hrs but with the delay and chipset problems i dont know whether to keep this Asus one or wait for SB with the better battery life.

Any thoughts?

 

Wait. It's not long now.

 

Yeah, the infamous last words. Just don't wait outside in the cold in front of a store (if there was one) LOL...

Seriously though do you have any additional information which would indicate this, beyond the official Sager/Clevo statements we already know? Or are you just sayin' and crossing your fingers?

 

What I don't understand is, why don't these notebook manufacturers use a manual switch between IGP and discrete so there are no "Optimus issues" with games. Then you could theoretically have a great discrete card but also just use the built-in one from Intel when you want battery life.

 

There is a button which lets you switch between IGP and Optimus, but no discrete only option unfortunatly.

I'm pretty sure 'mid march' has been the eta for a while and they've kept on schedule, so 3 weeks?

 

Cost and ease of use. If it was a true switchable then you would have to reboot when you want to change cards. Also the mux's etc to make it work add more to the cost of the laptop. At least how nvidia implements it. Now what AMD can do I haven't seen how their switchable technology works so I can't comment on that one.

 

Hi Mythlogic, any thoughts on an estimated ETA for the SB units? A lot of ppl here seem (overly) optimistic about March. I am pretty doubtful that many consumers will have them within that short a timeframe. I am just trying to set more realistic expectations vs. pipe dream thinking.

I can undertstand if you and the other resellers can't make an official anouncement until you know for sure or hear from Clevo. But I was wondering if you could speak to the SB release issue. Dell has come out saying mid March for their new SB XPS line. But then again that's Dell. Reality there is it could wind up being much longer as well.

Derek

 

We were told that Sager/Clevo is getting a shipment into the US the first week'ish of march, and then they will start producing / sending out stuff for the resellers and the builders during that time. So as far as we know march for getting all the pre-orders out should be realistic.