Official Sager NP8130/Clevo P151HM1 Owners Lounge

We are based in Nevada as well! We can deliver orders to California in one day via UPS Ground shipping. Having to ship to the Midwest and then back to California via UPS Ground would take an additional 5+ days.

 

How did you manage to get the computer that quickly? I ordered mine on the 31st and am still in Phase 2. Hopefully it doesn't take that long to get it back to you!

 

I went into phase 2 on May 27th, and shipped on June 2. Shipping with UPS Ground only took 3 business days!

...which means that I received it today!!

 

How are you liking it? What do all of us who are waiting have to look forward to?

 

Are the fans on this quiet when just web browsing or doing stuff that is non extensive?

I know that the fans will rev up more when benchmarking or gaming, I just like to know if the fans sounds normal and not annoying compared to m14x where it sounded like a jet taking off or someone using a loud hairdryer near you.

 

I only had time to take it out of the box and unwrap it. I'll install windows and set it up tonight, and post my thoughts thereafter, but in terms of look and feel, i'm quite pleased!

 

The stock EC is stupid with the fan stopping below and starting up at 40° C. The start-stopping is really annoying.

I flashed a new EC and now the fan profile is more evenly balanced but now it does it's best to keep the GPU at 32° C in idle mode which is excessive and so the fan is always on to some degree.

Still hoping for a new EC that idles at 40° C with a constant fan speed and slow ramping up and down.

 

EC? What did you come up with, Electric Shock?

I would love to keep all of my temps at 32C at idle. Heck, even under 40C is good enough for me! I don't care about fans or the fan noise.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Nice, mine comes on Thursday, I just have to wait two days. The awesome thing is that thursday is my last day of school so I come home and get my new shiny laptop .

 

Mine creek a tiny bit. I was thinking of trying to use something to lubricate it. Any suggestions?

 

What is the stock screen on the 8130 when buying from xotic?

 

I would be raging, that's much longer than their "3-7" days.

 

Matte when I bought it, or do you want more specifics? If In that case I don't know, I bought the 95% NTSC

 

Well I woulda bought from you guys but it would have been 1600$ compared to the Xotic I got for 1380$ shipped.
Lower the price

 

Well, it was on back order when I first ordered. And I didn't get to phase 2 until 5/31 (I made some changes to my order so that might've slowed me down), so I'm still well within the estimate of 3-10 business days for production. My first laptop experience (Dell) taught me the art of patience (didn't move into production after a month). Yours just went extremely fast (hence my rage face at you complaining about waiting "forever", lol).

 

When I bought my vostro 1310, I got it within 2 weeks, custom built and everything.

 

AUO11ED

10char

 

What's the difference between the LG and the AUO? Same specs just a different manufacturer? How can you tell which one you have?

 

That shouldn't be right. Our prices should be the same or lower than Xotic. In fact, we have a low price guarantee. If you would, please PM the specs and I will go over it and see where the difference might be.

Maybe you were comparing our regular priced models to an S1 model on Xotic. The S1's are discounted configurations.

However, we also sell S1 configurations, which are priced the same or lower than Xotic.

 

how long would a base np8130 take to be shipped to saco maine?

 

We are shipping the P150HM / 8130 models in 3 days. So 3 days plus your shipping time.

 

UPS Ground shipping from the LA California area (where Sager and other Clevo's mostly ship from) to Maine is usually 4-5 business days. Some choose faster shipping options
_

 

I see. Okay Thanks. Looks like I am going to get it from malibal then.

 

If I can help look into anything for you feel free to send me a PM and I would be happy to help.

As others have said 8130's are shipping out quickly.

 

Ah, my bad, I musta clicked the P150 insteada the p151HM1, still higher, 1400$~ I'll pm specs.
EDIT: As clarified it was because of the ram promotion, same price otherwise.

 

Nope, they are very different. AUO is the default matte screen that every P151HM has. It's already brilliant.

Is the 95% gamut matte screen in the S1 configuration an LG screen?

 

Hey, Electric Shock! In case you missed it earlier:

Mr. Mysterious

 

EC is the embedded controller. Get the EC of your choice from either Clevo or Sager. Burn to bootable CD. Flash.

Follow the Clevo bios thread. Don't flash a bios by accident. If you flash a Clevo bios and then goto Sager in the future, you will brick your laptop.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/416916-clevo-bios-thread.html

 

Thank you. I know I'm being a bit annoying, but how do I install the EC and not flash the bios? Could you link me to the EC that I have to download?

Thanks.

Mr. Mysterious

 

If you want to stay with a Sager bios and EC, the only way to get the Sager Bios/EC updates is to request them from your reseller (Xotic said to contact them for Bios/EC files) or directly from the Sager tech support. EC is separate from the bios. You can flash the EC without doing anything to your bios. The Clevo EC's are listed in the Clevo bios thread from their FTP.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/416916-clevo-bios-thread-129.html#post7482847

 

Thanks! We sincerely appreciate your business.

 

Oh man,

I just ordered mine today and excited to see it in a week or so.

I got the NP8130-S1 with the
i7-2630QM
8GB Dual Channel RAM @ 1600MHz
NVidia GTX 560M
15.6" Matt finished screen 95% NTSC thinger (1080p)

 

Hey guys what is that red light on one of the spdif port on the right side? What is the purpose of it and can it be turn off?

 

Optical audio, uses light to transfer audio. I guess the light is also in the visible light spectrum. I don't think you can turn it off..., won't use much power if that's what you're worried about.
Though on most laptops it is off when not used.

 

Up late getting things set up on my computer, and I ran into a bit of a hitch. I can only get my computer to boot up when I change the SATA setting in the BIOS from AHCI to IDE. I read somewhere that this will hurt performance somewhat. Has anyone else ran into this issue? Otherwise I get a BSOD when Windows tries to load.

I have Windows installed to an Intel 320 series SSD. (I had to change the SATA settings just to get Windows successfully installed, but I still get a BSOD if I try to change it now, with all of the drivers updated - from the included drivers disk, I haven't checked the sager website for ultra new drivers yet, as I don't know if that could be a problem).

Sorry if there's a comma splice or two in there; I'm tired, but having fun!

EDIT: OK, so I think I can't change the SATA mode to AHCI because I installed the OS in IDE mode, but switching to IDE mode was the only way I could avoid a BSOD during the windows installation. Everything seems to be working great in IDE mode, so I mostly concerned about any potential performance differences between the two.

Would I have to re-install the OS to switch back (assuming I could figure out how to avoid the initial blue screen problem)?

 

Open the registry editor (regedit)
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE / SYSTEM / CurrentControlset / Services / msahci
Double click "Start" and change the value to 0

Reboot and change to AHCI in bios and voila upon booting it'll install the AHCI drivers, no Windows re-installation required.

Picture for reference:

 

Thanks! That did the trick. Nothing like an absurdly simple, obscure change to the registry to fix a problem. I love Windows.

 

I got my NP8130 yesterday, and I spent pretty much all night installing software and playing around with it, and I thought I’d post some of my thoughts for prospective owners.

My system specs:

Stock matte screen
i7-2630QM (stock option)
IC diamond thermal compound
GTX 560M
8 GB 1333MHz RAM
300 GB Intel 320 Series SDD
Stock DVD drive
Intel Advanced-N 6230 Wireless Card
black bag (I didn’t order this, but I got one anyway)
Clean hard drive – I installed Windows myself

For context, my last computer was a 14” Dell Latitude D630:

Core 2 Duo 2.6 GHz CPU
4 GB RAM
NVIDIA Quadro NVS 135M

Look and Feel – exceeds expectations

This is a really pretty laptop. I love the clean lines and the unassuming sager logo on the lid. My Latitude has a magnesium alloy case, so I have high standards, but I don’t think the sager looks cheap. The textured plastic has nice feel and the construction feels solid, including the lid hinge. Several people have commented on the computer’s “flex”, and I feel like the issue has been mostly overblown. The only place where I can detect a significant give in the plastic is around the optical drive. Basically, if you put your fingers above and below the optical drive with the lid open and squeeze, you can feel the plastic bend inward somewhat. It’s just because there’s a big hole in the side of the case there where the ODD slides in, and plastic bends. Everywhere else I felt like the computer was solid. The keyboard has virtually no flex. The computer’s front edge is a little sharp; I think I’m going to have to adjust how I rest my hand when using the trackpad. This is my first 15” laptop, so I can’t say much about the size. In a perfect world, it would be a bit thinner, but we don’t live in a perfect world. The power supply, on the other hand, is huge. I mean, really big! Oh well… Overall, no real suprises here. I am extremely happy with the aesthetics.

Keyboard – satisfactory

This is my first experience with a chiclet keyboard, and my impressions are generally favorable. The key spacing feels fine. The keys require maybe slightly more pressure than the keyboard on my Latitude, but no so much that I find it annoying. After a while, I probably won’t even notice the difference. I think thgdbatman was complaining about the space key, and I think I see what he meant. The way the keys are mounted, the bigger keys are a little noiser, and the spacebar is as big as they get. It’s not THAT loud though. I don’t even notice when I am typing normally. However, the bottom-left region of the spacebar (where my left thumb usually rests) doesn’t always fully depress the key, so the way I normally type I occasionally miss a space (See if you can find one in this review!). I think I can teach myself to avoid that part of the key, or use my right hand more. On the whole, the keyboard doesn’t blow me away, but it does its job.

Oh, and the lack of dedicated sound controls is pretty annoying (Sager, are you listening??). Especially since the fn+F6 is a little awkward for me to do one-handed. Hopefully I’ll get over that too…

Oh, and a backlit keyboard would be nice (Sager!?)

Touchpad – satisfactory

A lot of people have been giving the touchpad a lot of crap, and it was almost the first thing I checked out after removing the tremendous amount of protective plastic. Honestly, I think it’s perfectly functional. It’s actually a lot bigger than the touchpad on my old latitude, and the surface wasn’t too rough for me. After jacking the pointer speed all the way up, I found it to be sufficiently sensitive. I use a pretty light touch though. I also don’t use a lot of gesturing, aside from vertical scrolling. On a whim, I tried pinch zooming on and it was a little awkward, though I don’t know if that was the fault of the touchpad or my lack of practice. Because it’s bigger, and because of the fingerprint reader, I found the position of right trackpad button to be a bit awkward. This is compounded by the fact that the buttons seemed to be hinged from the side nearer the fingerprint reader, and are thus easier to depress toward the outside, but as with the keyboard, I think it will just take a little time to train my fingers to go where they need to.

Also, the fingerprint reader is cute. It works just fine. I probably won't use it.

Screen – phenomenal

That about says it. I got the stock matte option, and it’s beautiful. Super bright, no glare, great viewing angles. I can’t find any dead pixels. I wasn’t crazy about the idea of a glossy bezel but I reallydon’t notice it. My Latitude’s screen looks pathetically dim and murky by comparison. I don’t know why anyone would pay $100 for thee glossy alternative. Just awesome.

Sound - disappointing

Here I have to say I’m disappointed. I don’t expect much out of laptop speakers, and these sound about as good as the ones on my Latitude …but this thing has a subwoofer? really? I cued up some deadmau5 and I’m getting basically zero bass. I did a clean install of windows, updated the audio drivers and listened to some music, then I installed the THX software, which seemed to have zero effect. In fact, moving the bass slider in the THX software back and forth from 0 to 100% didn’t seem to affect the sound at all, so I can’t help but wonder if there are some software or driver issues somewhere.

The onboard speakers aren’t really an issue for me (though the inability of the THX software to modulate the bass still makes me think there’s a problem), but the sound is only a little bit better when I plug in my headphones, and that IS a big deal. I do not by any means consider myself an audiophile, but I can tell a big difference in the bass between listening to music plugged into my computer and listening to the same mp3 on my $50 mp3 player. There has to be something wrong here.

Performance/Graphics – phenomenal

Wow. Just wow. Part of this is because of where I’m coming from. If you want a quick chuckle, look up the benchmark scores on my Latitude's graphics card. I haven’t had a chance to play a lot of games, but I installed Mass Effect 2, and suddenly I understand how a first person shooter is supposed to look and feel. Imagine... shadows enabled, no mouse lag, frames above 25… Seriously though, this thing’s a beast, and if you’re seriously considering this laptop then you already know that.

Outside of gaming, it really performs better than I imagined. I thought my Latitude handled Windows 7 quite well. (I think I used the word “flawlessly” somewhere previously in this thread) but the Sager blows it away. The SSD was a splurge, I admit, but my boot time is at about 30 seconds (from pressing the power button to full capability in Windows) and programs load almost instantaneously. Also, and I don’t know if this has more to do with the write speed of the SSD or the USB 3 connection, but it only took me 3 minutes to copy over 15 GB of music from my USB3 external (it took about 30 minutes to transfer it from my Latitude to that same external). The processor is faster than I will ever need it to be. I haven't had a chance to test the battery yet, but with the screen dimmed all the way and WIFI off I'm hoping I can push 4h. We'll see.

Conclusion

Writing this review, I think I was sort looking for things that I didn’t like, so let me set the record straight:

I love this laptop.

The only thing that really bothers me is the sound, particularly through the headphones, and I’m convinced there must be some kind of driver/software solution for that. I’ll keep looking and I’ll keep my head in this forum in case something comes up. Also, a big thanks to xoticpc. They were great, answered all of my emails promptly, and were very nice on the phone as well! I definitely recommend them to any prospective buyers.

 

If you're really that worried about the sound I would just get a portable headphone amp.

I was fine with the sound through my DT-770 Pro's though...

The HardwareID from device manager on the one I just received said LGD0215 which I'm guessing is an LG screen.

 

You should be able to get it down to about 15 seconds or less from boot to full usability. Maybe some more SSD and OS tweaking would help. 30 seconds is a bit long

YouTube - ‪Crucial RealSSD C300 on Sager NP8130 Cold Boot to Internet in 15 Seconds‬‏

USB 3 will be pretty fast but a mechanical harddrive itself cannot keep up with USB 3. Of course, the transfer will still be faster than USB 2 and the reading/writing speed of the SSD will blow everything else away.

Regarding your issues about the bass, I wonder why the Realtek app has no equalization page or any bass boost. The THX software does make a difference however, press the on/off button in the top corner. The sound is much thinner without the THX software.

One thing you could try is changing the speaker configuration from stereo to 5.1. Then disable everything in 5.1 except for the subwoofer.

 

Thanks, but I hit phase 3 today so I should be good to go.

 

Thank you so much for the first impression! Really excited to get this laptop now. Mine just shipped to XoticPC today from Sager.

Now, hopefully that sound issue can be fixed. I have some 400 watt speakers in my room at home, and I'm really hoping to the able to use them!

 

This was exactly my impression regarding the sound (my most recent thing to compare to was even a D630). I have heard cheaper laptops than this with subwoofers that at least sounded good enough to make you amazed that it's a laptop -- not so here. Like you I'm not that bothered by it, but it definitely wasn't what I was expecting.

I'm happy to hear someone mention this who is a Windows user. I was concerned that Ubuntu just wasn't using the subwoofer, but apparently this is not so -- I hadn't gotten around to troubleshooting it.

I will say that the sound has grown on me some though -- it's very clear and precise compared to other laptops I've used, even at higher volumes, so this is a plus.

Like you I love my 8130, the speakers just make it fall a tiny bit short of what I'd been expecting.

 

Lol, you really shouldn't buy the 8130 if you want a laptop with good sound. Hell, you shouldn't buy a laptop if you want good sound anyways...

Mr. Mysterious

 

Mr. Mysterious (or, anyone else). I know that the sound coming out of the laptop shouldn't be expected to be great, but have you found a fix for the audio coming out of the headphone jack? This was the problem that concerned me in his first impressions review.

 

My DT-770 pro's sound just fine as well. But I almost wonder if it has more to do with that particular headset being bass heavy. I swapped to some AKG's and did notice a difference in bass impact. Though... I'm no basshead. lol

 

Maybe the speakers havent been burned in yet. When you order new headphones it takes a while for them to burn in and sound good. Just a thought.

 

I don't have the laptop yet, it was just my question based on a review. Thanks, though. Hopefully that is the problem.

 

Yea I compared it directly with my desktop which has an Asus D1 and a headphone amp and the laptop does sound pretty lame in comparison... I hooked the headphone amp up and it helped but I'm not dragging that along with.

It's not that it's bad, but if it's your main machine I could see where you would be annoyed. I also didn't install any extra drivers (Just using the Win7 default) because I hate having all that extra crap.

But it's tolerable as I don't listen to bass heavy music... and only use the headphones to drown out the background noise of where-ever I'm working. And I'll never use the speakers for anything serious... so again, non-issues for me. I would never buy a laptop with expectations that the sound would be amazing.

This is a programming/school laptop for me. I'm in game development and specifically graphics programming which is the main reason I went with a higher-end NVidia card, Quad-core, and a high-res Matte screen. Nvidia has better tools for debugging DirectX than ATI does... otherwise I might have gotten an 8150 with 6970m. But audio is not on my top list of priorities. Playing games isn't really either which is funny as this should be a gaming laptop.

 

Of course -- but you would think a laptop with THX certified sound and dedicated low frequency driver would sound better (and bassier) than any random laptop without a low frequency driver.

I hate to keep bringing up my brother in law's old Toshiba, but I can't believe that I'm the only one here who has heard this implemented in away that is impressive and noticeable - that thing wasn't high end or remarkable in any other way, but from the day he bought it the first thing I and my non-techie wife noticed was how amazing the sound was for a laptop.

I get it -- not the case here, and it's just that my expectations were too high -- but I assure you that in practice a laptop with a low frequency driver can produce noticeably nice and surprising sound.