By Henry Butt
Overview and Introduction
The Novatech X80R is one of the most stylish gaming notebooks available on the market today and offers a fine balance between performance, value and quality. This notebook offers almost unmatched graphical performance by nVidia and an Intel Core 2 Duo processor to create the perfect gaming experience.
Specification:
Screen: 17” Glossy WUXGA widescreen (1920x1200)
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo T5550 (1.8gHz / 800mHz FSB)
GPU: nVidia GeForce 8800M GTX 512mb
RAM: 2GB DDR2 (667mHz)
HDD: Toshiba 160GB 5400rpm
ODD: 8X DVD Burner
Wireless: Intel Wireless 4965AGN with Internal Bluetooth
Battery: 8 Cell Lithium Ion
Warranty: 2 Years C&R Warranty
Price: £580 inc. VAT
Build and Design
There are no other words for the build quality of this laptop than truly formidable. Even though there is no obvious presence of a magnesium / aluminium alloy chassis, the laptop feels very solidly built. This does however have a slight drawback of quite a heavy chassis although that is usually what can be expected from a notebook of this type.
The chassis is finished almost completely in matte black, with the all too common glossy plastic only appearing in the form of a very small border around the screen and on the top of the lid. There is also an copper / metallic orange coloured strip which surrounds the base of the laptop which gives this laptop a little wow factor without looking tacky like many other gaming notebooks of the moment. The area around the keyboard and touchpad is finished in a carbon fibre pattern which looks very professional and doesn’t detract from the aesthetic appeal of the laptop at all like so many other faux carbon fibre patterns.
Applying pressure to the back of the screen doesn’t produce any rippling on the screen, mainly due to the rigid, black anodized aluminium lid which also stops the screen from twisting at all and protects the screen from damage. This is the only area except the screen itself which attracts fingerprints on the laptop. The hinges are very solid and don’t “rock” like many of the dell notebooks I have owned in the past.
Altogether, the build quality is formidable and no-one could be disappointed with the overall quality and design of the laptop.
Screen
The WUXGA screen on the X80R is nothing short of stunning which is standard on the X80R. It uses the now mainstream glossy coating which significantly improves the contrast of the screen and improves the depth of the blacks. The horizontal viewing angles are very good and the vertical ones are good, but could be slightly better. There are no dead pixels or graininess whatsoever either and paired with the 8800M GTX, this screen leads to a superb gaming experience.
Speakers
The speakers on this notebook are far from perfect, however they are some of the best that I have experienced on a laptop. The setup includes two stereo speakers placed on the left and right sides of the notebook with a “Subwoofer” placed on the bottom. Volume is good and there is very little distortion at all. Even with the built in “Subwoofer”, the bass is lacking considerably. I would recommend buying external speakers for music, even though they suffice for gaming.
Processor and Performance
Due to the very low price of this laptop, the processor is slightly underpowered at only 1.83gHz – it would have been nicer to have an Intel T8100 or T8300 processor to reach the best “bang for buck” possible with this machine, however during normal usage, the processor has ample power.
This notebook also features the nVidia 8800M GTX graphics processor which is still one of the most powerful GPUs that money can buy, and can only be bettered on the mobile front by the much more expensive and not yet avaialbe 9800M GTX or by using multiple GPUs in an SLI configuration.
The 2GB of DDR2 RAM is ample for most tasks and is plenty for Vista although this can be upgraded to 4GB for around £50 including VAT. On this front, the 160GB hard drive is also slightly underpowered at 5400rpm, however doesn’t feel any slower than the 100GB 7200rpm hard drive that I had on my previous laptop. It is also noticeable that the hard drive is almost silent, with no noise coming from it altogether.
Benchmarks
CPU-Z
GPU-Z
Windows Experience Index
HD Tune
PCMark 05
3DMark 06
Cinebench R10
WPrime Benchmark:
Super Pi
Crysis Benchmark
Results:
Overall Average FPS: 26.69
Heat and Noise
The X80R uses the “Extreme Edition” of the Clevo M570RU chassis therefore has a modified cooling system to support 45W processors. The bottom of the laptop is far from short of air vents, two of which house powerful fans, one which cools the CPU and one which cools the GPU. As far as noise goes, the CPU fan is very intrusive as every time it cuts in, it throttles up to full and then drops down the level that is needed. The GPU fan is hardly noticeable at all during normal usage and during gaming, it is not noticeable over the level of the game noise. I have contacted Novatech in pursuit of a fix for the CPU fan issue, however it doesn’t seem that they will be able to provide a BIOS fix like Sager do as it is not officially supported by Clevo. The chipset is cooled passively unlike most notebooks, however it seems to work efficiently like the rest of the cooling system in this notebook.
As with most Clevo based notebooks, the cooling system is superior to most other notebooks in its class and I have no doubts that this laptop is cooled more than sufficiently for the high performance components that lay within even though it is loud.
Keyboard and Touchpad
The keyboard on this notebook is one of the best offered by any laptop in production. There is no flex whatsoever and travel and responsiveness are more than good. Thankfully Novatech hasn’t followed other manufacturers in using glossy plastic for the keys which can be quite annoying and have opted for the traditional textured plastic finish which is a joy to type on. Initially there was a problem with the keyboard missing around 1 in every 10 keystrokes, however a simple email to Novatech technical support sorted this out with only a BIOS update needed. Also worth noting is that Novatech uses the extra space provided by the 17” form factor to house a full size keyboard which includes a numpad and is a great addition to the machine.
The touchpad on this notebooks also breaks the trend of glossy touchpads which are appearing on notebooks left right and centre. The finish is a textured one which is one of the best I have ever used. It is also a decent size – not too big and not to small and incorporates a dedicated scrolling area along the right hand side. The left and right click buttons are also very good with a decent travel and not too much noise. Inbetween the two buttons there is space for a fingerprint reader although this isn’t an option which is offered by Novatech so this is filled with a small piece of black plastic instead.
Input and Output Ports
Descriptions from Left to Right
Front
1. Line-out Jack
2. Headphone Jack
3. Microphone Jack
4. SPDIF Port
5. Status lights
6. IR Receiver
Left Side
1. Speaker
2. Kensington Lock Slot
3. Optical Disk Drive
Right Side
1. Expresscard Slot
2. Card Reader
3. USB 2.0
4. USB 2.0
5. Mini Firewire (1394)
6. Modem Port
7. Network RJ-45 Port
8. CATV Jack
9. Speaker
Rear
1. CPU Vent
2. GPU Vent
3. S-Video Out Jack
4. DVI Port
5. USB 2.0 x2
6. AC Adapter
7. Serial Port
Wireless
The X80R makes use of the Intel Wireless 4965AGN card. This supports the A, B, G and N wireless bands and displays a significant improvement in picking up a connection and improving range over the previous-gen 3945 chipset which has some issues in these areas. The X80R also has inbuilt Bluetooth which seems to work fine and makes use of the IVT Bluesoleil software which is much better than the stock Windows Bluetooth.
Battery
While browsing and doing general tasks, the battery lasted in excess of 2 hours (albeit with brightness on 50%). For a gaming notebook such as this, this is quite a reasonable battery life, although it would have been nice to see a binary graphics option to improve battery life further. Under load / gaming on full brightness, the battery life is decreased closer to the 1 hour mark which is not surprising considering the high performance components.
Operating System and Software
I bought the X80R with no operating system installed, however, Novatech do offer it with every version of Vista and XP. I have another Novatech laptop at the moment which came with Vista pre-installed and they provide a recovery partition to restore the system to factory settings if need be. They do not however supply the original disk although these can be obtained from Novatech upon request. The only software that shipped as standard was a basic version of Ahead Nero 7 which comes on a separate disk and is not pre-installed. It is nice to get a laptop with no bloatware or pointless free software as standard which can be a pain to remove.
Customer Support
I have only had a brief experience of Novatech support, but from what I can see, it is nothing short of excellent. They replied to emails within 30 minutes and contacted Clevo for me regarding a fix for the fan problem even though they didn’t manage to fix the problem.
Conclusion
The Novatech X80R is perfect for someone who wants great performance on a budget as this level of bang for buck simply isn’t offered by any other manufacturers in the UK. Everything about this notebooks is exceptional except including the screen, build quality and also aesthetically. The only slight drawbacks are the size and noise of this machine, but you have to draw the line somewhere between performance and portability.
Pros
• Amazing graphical performance
• Superb Screen
• Amazing build quality
• Attractive Design
• Great Value
• Available with every version of Windows
Cons
• Bigger and Heavier than other similar notebooks
• Noisy fans under minimal load
• No option for additional HDD
