I bought the P506 at the beginning of this year with this spec:

XMG P506 PRO Gaming Notebook
. 39,6 cm (15.6") Full-HD (1920*1080) Non-Glare IPS
. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M 6144MB GDDR5 - mit G-SYNC
. Intel Core i7-6700HQ | 4 Kerne | 8 Threads | 2,60 - 3,50GHz | 6MB 45W
. 8GB (1x8192) SO-DIMM DDR4 RAM 2400MHz HyperX Impact
. 1000GB SATA-III SSD Samsung 850 Pro Series (MZ-7KE1T0BW)
. Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 8260 (inkl. Bluetooth)
. Microsoft Windows 10 Home 64 Bit english

Service from the German company was flawless - and I had a query a few weeks ago with a problem with windows and this was also dealt with efficiently and resolved my problem quickly and easily.  Excellent!

First thing that strikes after owning a MSI for 6 years is the build quality of the case - so nice, slim for its power and seems pretty strong too.

Speed is so quick - Its quicker than my 2 year old desktop PC from ChillBlast and works flawlessly with all day to day tasks a laptop is used for including work, music and videos (editing also - MP3 conversion 5 mins song in under 4 seconds for e.g.) - both from the laptop and connected via HDMI.  Another indicator is compressed zip/rar files - a 2gig files gets extracted in a matter of just a few seconds - very impressive.

Under normal use - meaning browsing, work, music and even films - noise is zero - runs extremely quietly and cool.

Gaming - I am not a massive gamer but I like my quality in games - most games are played via HDMI to my TV - games i play regularly are the new Tomb Raider, GTA5, Dirt Rally and other car sim games - all work flawlessly with no stutter.  Games setting are set pretty much to the highest specs too.

Noise during gaming, this is the only time you will hear the fan, the noise is bearable - but the air flow coming out of the laptop is heard, but not intrusive.  What do you expect anyway from a laptop so thin anyway.

Heat during gaming is not a problem - I have played for hours on end in a row - and none of the keys, pad are warm and under the laptop is also not too warm either.  The air running out of the machine is pretty cool also.

The screen is lovely - I am a big fan a matt finishes though - so may be a little biased on the that - excellent screen, great viewing angles especially when watching a movie and you sit back without the need to adjust the screen.

The screen also works great outdoors, I use my laptop for work and living in a hot country, sitting on a coffee terrace doing a presentation or showing anything on the screen with full sun blazing does help a lot.

Battery life - says up to 5 hours - however every time I used my mine under normal use - with battery setting on save and brightness a little higher than normal - says around 3 hours 30 minutes.  On full battery saver - managed to see 4 hours.  I am yet to try gaming on battery power or use it fully to watch films when on a flight somewhere - but I would assume you could get about max 3 hours watching movies and maybe just 1 hour 30 minutes gaming - but I am only assuming.

Comparing to my friends XPS 15s and the Mac Pro - it may not look as slim and sophisticated - but it out performs them in performance very easily.

In all - I highly recommend XMG P506, my spec is basic as wanted room to expand in the future - the 8GIG RAM 2400 is plenty by the way - I dont think you really need anymore than this as hardly ever get to its limit even after 5 hours of gaming.

Also to note - in my research and one of my shortlist many wanted a review of the W506 - well its exactly the same machine with different upgrades, that's all and why they have not sent this for review, to those who asked about it - and for the same money you may as well get the P506 with the better GC and G-Sync.

I hope this helps anyone to choose between their choices.

BenP

Quote from: Gerry on December 17, 2015, 09:39:36
Great review..I owned a Xenom Phoenix PX15S in Indonesia using the same barebone but locally. So far, the system is cool, and great view on LCD.
I wish I could buy the GTX980m one.

http://www.xenompc.com/xenomnotebook/phoenixnotebook/phoenix-px15s.html

hi gerry how was your experience with it? is there any G-Sync option in xenom phoenix? i would like to buy this too since another gsync laptop out of stock

Great review..I owned a Xenom Phoenix PX15S in Indonesia using the same barebone but locally. So far, the system is cool, and great view on LCD.
I wish I could buy the GTX980m one.

http://www.xenompc.com/xenomnotebook/phoenixnotebook/phoenix-px15s.html

Great job on this review. I am a big admirer of notebookcheck's work, you helped me pick my Samsung Note 2014 tablet and now your detailed, informative and reliable reviews are guiding me towards a gaming laptop purchase.

Will you be doing a review of the P506 with the GTX 980M and the actual production monitor (LP156WF6)?

I have a 1st world problem in that I cannot decide between a P506 and a P706. I would go for the P506 in a heartbeat if their production screen was the Samsung included in the review (pre-production) model, but the LG Philips seems terrible in comparison (looking at the U506 screen test review). I noticed big differences between the P505 and U505 screen tests despite the fact that they were both AU Optronics IPS and I would like to see if this will be the case with the P506 and U506 LG Philips screens.

Thanks again for your high quality work.

Will you also be reviewing the A506?