NotebookCHECK - Notebook Forum

Everywhere I look, the battery life is between 7 and 8 hours. Xiaomi says up to 9 hours, so I assumed 7-8 hours is what to expect. But now I see ~10 hours. I dunno who to believe? I want a laptop of this calibre but cheaper price with >=10 hours, hopefully Ryzen can bring that but man AMD is teasing us with Ryzen mobile. I also can't wait till Feb. too far... :-\

Where's the gaming test?!!

Quote from: WMei on November 06, 2017, 06:39:08
Where's the gaming test?!!

Oh it just preview, sorry  ;D

I just think this is too heavy and expensive for a 15 inch laptop with little power. 15.6", ~2.2 kg, i7-8xxxU, GTX 1050 / 1050 TI, 95+ Wh and I'll buy it.

Quote from: uniffy on November 05, 2017, 23:50:48
Everywhere I look, the battery life is between 7 and 8 hours. Xiaomi says up to 9 hours, so I assumed 7-8 hours is what to expect. But now I see ~10 hours. I dunno who to believe? I want a laptop of this calibre but cheaper price with >=10 hours, hopefully Ryzen can bring that but man AMD is teasing us with Ryzen mobile. I also can't wait till Feb. too far... :-\

I have this laptop and with mixed normal use (YouTube videos, web browsing, Spotify streaming, word processing etc.) at approximately mid brightness I get around 7 hours or so. It really depends on what you're doing on it but the battery life has been more than satisfactory so far; enough to get me through most of the day without bringing the charger around.

Quote from: interacter on November 06, 2017, 14:44:05

Quote from: uniffy on November 05, 2017, 23:50:48
Everywhere I look, the battery life is between 7 and 8 hours. Xiaomi says up to 9 hours, so I assumed 7-8 hours is what to expect. But now I see ~10 hours. I dunno who to believe? I want a laptop of this calibre but cheaper price with >=10 hours, hopefully Ryzen can bring that but man AMD is teasing us with Ryzen mobile. I also can't wait till Feb. too far... :-\

I have this laptop and with mixed normal use (YouTube videos, web browsing, Spotify streaming, word processing etc.) at approximately mid brightness I get around 7 hours or so. It really depends on what you're doing on it but the battery life has been more than satisfactory so far; enough to get me through most of the day without bringing the charger around.

Thanks. I'm really tempted with this laptop cause I need a new machine really soon. Waiting for some linux reviews. Hopefully the fingerprint works and battery is comparable if not better than windows.

Another fake aluminum chassis like the Asus Zenbooks.  You can clearly see the plastic structure in the internal shots and brass screw inserts into the plastic.  Why can't any one else do a proper aluminum chassis like Apple that is thoroughly aluminum, not just aluminum veneer+plastic underneath ?  I just hate it when you carry around your laptop or service it and the brass screw inserts eventually rips out of its plastic holes.

Limited speed on PCIe-NVMe SSD may be caused by the implementation of OPI GT2 which tries to save power consumption by cutting performance.
Much like the well known PCIe 3.0 x 2 interface adoption on M.2-2280 slots and TB3 ports, using GT2 is an ongoing issue on a lots of intel ULV-CPU laptops such as the popular Dell XPS 13.

Source: goo.gl/ixrBpj (http://goo.gl/ixrBpj)

Nitro 5 AN515-31 (new model with 8250U + MX 150 + 8Gb + 256Gb SSD variants for 800 euros) is overall better and cheaper than Xiaomi model.

Most noticeable differences with screen are with flickering and display response times.

Overall temperatures are lower even on max load, even case is plastic compared to magnesium / aluminum case on Xiaomi, maybe because ventilation is much better?

Connections (qualcomm) seem to be slightly better than on Xiaomi Intel band.

You're complaining about weight while simultaneously asking for more than 50% increase in battery capacity? How does that make sense? You can't have both. Almost every 95+ Wh laptop weighs 4.7 lbs or more, which is more than this thing.

As for price, it will fall with due time. Especially from competition when more similarly specced laptops are released and with holiday season discounts / sales. It is a windows laptop after all and not apple which seem to be immune from such events.

Also, you're asking for GTX-class gpu's but keep in mind they all generate significantly more heat and require much beefier cooling solutions (which adds to weight). Not to mention every GTX 1050 / 1050 ti laptop so far has been paired with a high voltage quadcore cpu.

As a result, I don't think there is any notebooks with gpu's equivalent to gtx-class in 2.2 kg range which don't throttle. They pretty much all throttle due to insufficient cooling. And the ones which have proper cooling solutions that don't weigh almost 3kg or more.

Not entirely sure why you're that interested in i7 U-series 8th gen cpu's. Yeah, it is faster but most vendors are charging $200 more for it. Not sure it's really worth that much especially when the i5 is already quite capable.

IMO, i5 8th gen U-series + mx150 laptops are pretty much hit the sweet spot for price / performance in the < 4.4 lb form factor range while keeping decent thermals and not throttling (since those low power components generate so little heat to begin with). If you really need more power, just egpu or use a desktop. You simply cannot cool a 45w cpu + 50w gpu without breaking your back or running into serious throttling/thermal issues.

I would still not buy this laptop but I am excited to see what similarly specced systems other vendors come up with. Yes, there are other 8th gen U-series + mx150 laptops which are far lighter and cheaper but this is one of the few that has been shown to keep constant maximum gpu turbo boost (1600+ mhz) while playing heavy/intensive games, which shows it has a decent cooling system.

So I think your words are abit harsh, especially considering gtx 1050 laptops such as xps 15 and zenbook pro ux550ve have trouble keeping gpu clocks under mixed cpu load....

@is dthrp serious?:

Okay.

You can unlock the TDP of this device with the Intel tuning utility and the Nvidia something or other, i.e you can make these behave more like 45W chips. Since there's a lot of cooling overhead in this system for the modest chips, could you test this for the final review?

See here for methodology

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IAsVlxppu8

this is review done right :)

We have this laptop, and so far it has left an excellent impression. It packs excellent performance in a very stylish and solid feeling package. Could you buy an Acer (Nitro) for a similar price? Perhaps, if you are into the "gaming look". No thanks.

As mentioned below, there is a party-trick to this model, which has quite good dual-fan cooling: Undervolt the CPU slightly, bump the TDP from 15W to 30W (35W) and you can run max turbo on 4 cores without throttling (stable around 72C without laptop cooler). Result? Cinebench 15 coming in around 730.

Anyway, we bought the i5 model on Gearbest for around 720 euro after subtracting a small cashback. Well worth it.

I bought two xiaomi USB-C / Mini DisplayPort adapters, and with this review i discover one USB-C can't be used to connect a display, it can just transfer data.
I already have two 28" 4k and didn't want to connect one display with HDMI (4K 30 Hz) and one with DisplayPort (4K 60 Hz)...

What about this ? https://www.amazon.com/VivoBook-i7-8550U-Processor-Keyboard-N705UD-EH76/dp/B07661CYPD/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1510856521&sr=1-2&keywords=8550u

But if you can wait a bit, and Asus decides to update the CPU of this, it will be a killer : https://www.asus.com/us/Laptops/ASUS-ZenBook-Pro-UX550VE/

15.6",  Quad Core CPU ( not 8th gen though yet), GTX 1050Ti, 1.8 kg, NVMe SSD, 2 x Thunderblolt 3 -  a dream machine and very expensive.

I am not sure is Asus will update it soon though; the previous version UX550VD had such a bad display, every reviewer asked people to refrain from it.

Quote from: dthrp on November 06, 2017, 10:48:04
I just think this is too heavy and expensive for a 15 inch laptop with little power. 15.6", ~2.2 kg, i7-8xxxU, GTX 1050 / 1050 TI, 95+ Wh and I'll buy it.

Acer A615-51G is coming early 2018, unlike other Aspire series this one has metal chassis, cheaper variant (830 dollars?) come with 8250U, 8Gb RAM (could be soldered dual channel RAM to make thinner chassis), MX150, 256Gb SSD, 15.6inch IPS screen.

I'm surprised about how much does it heat during load, maybe there could be more ventilation holes.

I'm glad you tested a monitor on the USB type-C port with displayport capability! I'd like to see much more testing like this on these ports in the future. How is the input latency? Your test monitor has a displayport out connector for daisy-chaining, that's great! I'd like to know if daisy-chaining monitors works with on a new laptop I might buy (what resolutions and refresh rates work).

Do you have a USB type-C/thunderbolt 3 dock you could use to verify functionality? That would be fantastic. Thanks!

If you are interested, Xiaomi Notebook Pro (CORE I5 8GB + 256GB SSD) is now available at a flash sale, check out here: https://www.gearbest.com/laptops/pp_786412.html?wid=21&lkid=11989599

Kind of mind blowing that the MX150 in this @ 900 and even in 700 dollar laptops, is pretty much up there with the Radeon Pro 555 in the 15" rMBP.

Come on with the GPU options, Apple.

Hi, what is the maximum RAM allowed total? (Or what is the maximum RAM allowed per slot?)
I saw they have the 16GB variant (i7-8550U) but no mention whether it is 16GBx1 or 8GBx2 (I searched all internet and did not find the answer).
And is it soldered?
Thanks!

Thanks for great review
I'm thinking of ordering this notebook and I';m thinking which model to order  :
1. The i5 with 8Gb Ram
2. The i7 with 8GB Ram
3  The i7 with 16Gb Ram

what do you think guys ? I need this machine most of the time for regular work and maybe once a month for video editing .
Also I'm thinking to install the Mac OSX on this machine.

thanks

You cant upgrade the RAM as it is soldered to the mainboard.
Regarding OS X, I dont think the Nvidia GPU is supported on Hackintosh yet properly as there is no current Mac with an Nvidia GPU.

Quote from: Ahmet Mehmet on November 16, 2017, 19:36:40
15.6",  Quad Core CPU ( not 8th gen though yet), GTX 1050Ti, 1.8 kg, NVMe SSD, 2 x Thunderblolt 3 -  a dream machine and very expensive.

I am not sure is Asus will update it soon though; the previous version UX550VD had such a bad display, every reviewer asked people to refrain from it.

Hi, what do you mean about the UX550VD having a bad display? Are you talking about the UX501 with the PenTile 4K display? Because as far as I know, UX550VD has a very good display.

An update for the review - I received this laptop last week and they have now fixed the slow SSD speeds. Mine runs at almost double the speed in the review.

Apparently it was a BIOS problem. I'm very happy with it now.

Anybody knows if is there any laptop like this but with matte screen?

Ok, another thing: only there are 3 configurations at least that I saw: i7 16GiB but all the i5 come with 8GB...

I am thinking change my Asus RoG GL752vw for this pretty laptop (the asus battery sucks) what do you think about?

Thanks a lot!!!
Ahhh, happy New Year!!!

I'm very interested in buying this laptop, but I am concerned about some battery issues. When googling "Xiaomi Notebook Pro problems" there are many reddit posts about the battery not charging and no solutions presented. I have read some comment on these issues that 90% of Notebook Pro users are happy with their fantastic machine while 10% are unlucky with a dead or faulty machine. Someone replied to this comment to say that there are always problems like this in all technologies, but I would hate to spend so much on this laptop for it to break and take months to return to China for repair.

Does anybody know anything about these issues, potential solutions or anything?

Very good tip for any somewhat gaming type laptop:

Go to Device Manager and choose disable on "Microsoft Composite Battery", laptop will be forced to use AC in any situation for now, and as you can see from power settings, battery settings will disappear.

Performance increased by this.

I purchased the computer about a year ago, and not long after i spilled some water on it and the mainboard probably died...

any chance you maybe know where i can purchase replacement for it?

Hi! Is it possible to change the RAM? I need 32gb.
Is it easy to do for a tech-dummy?
Thanks!