A couple of years I bought a Defiance (Clevo P650SG) from PC Specialist. It was my second laptop from them and has served me well. However, it was only ever meant as a stopgap for me due to the screen - I really wanted a 4K 17" screen, but they simply didn't exist. I ordered a 4K 15" model instead, but at the last minute swapped to a 3K screen after realising the 4K option wasn't very good. (48Hz and Pentile? No thanks!)
Earlier this year 17" 4K panels entered production. Reports circulated that Clevo was going to launch some new laptops this autumn using those screens, with Pascal graphics; this was a perfect combination and I awaited their launch with anticipation.
At the end of August the NDA on Pascal was lifted and the new laptops were listed. I jumped in on an Octane III and waited... only to find out that the screens weren't actually in stock. It took a month before they arrived, but once they did my laptop whizzed through production.
The laptop arrived and, as expected, build quality is spot-on. As it's Clevo's "desktop replacement" range, the machine is bulky, heavy and solidly built. As with my original PCS purchase (a Vortex II), it comes with a large power brick which weighs around a kilogram on its own! It's necessary, though, as the Octane III comes with desktop components.
This is actually a first for me: the laptop, on paper at least, is faster with most games than my main desktop PC (which has a 6-core i7-5930K and a GeForce 980). This is borne out in testing with my game of choice, WoW; the desktop manages around 40-45fps at 4K at max settings, whereas the laptop maintains 55-60 in the same areas.
In use the fans whoosh as expected, but it's not especially loud. The Defiance also whooshed away during gaming and it wasn't that much quieter. I've not looked at temperatures, but there didn't seem to be any throttling of the CPU at least, which frequently reached 4.0GHz in WoW.
I could have had the Octane sooner if I'd given up on the 4K screen, but I was stubborn. Just as well, as the 4K screen is glorious. First the bad news: it's an IPS model and has slow response times as a result. Indeed, there's a little ghosting if you look for it when spinning around in WoW, for example. It's not that noticeable though and is easily outweighed by the colours. I was bowled over at how *vibrant* everything looks - it's as vibrant as a decent CRT monitor used to be and has easily the most impressive colour gamut I've seen on an LCD panel. My normal monitors at home and work look washed-out and faded now!
Side note: the laptop is advertised as having G-Sync, but it doesn't at present when sold with the 4K screen that PCS use. There's nothing on their website about this and I only found out via the forums.
As expected, the panel is pin-sharp in general use and it's easily distinguishable from a typical TN HD 17" panel. Don't listen to those who say 4K is wasted on small screen sizes, it's still very much worthwhile. You will immediately notice the difference compared with a full HD screen of the same size.
PCS installed an OEM copy of Windows 10 and as I'd ordered a 512GB M2 NVMe SSD as the primary drive it flies. That said, it doesn't seem subjectively faster than my desktop's M2 PCI-E SSD - both are blazingly fast at loading programs.
The Octane is bang up-to-date in terms of connectivity too, with USB type C ports, a thunderbolt connector, mini displayport and so on. The card reader is worthy of note too, it effortlessly copied files at 140MB/s from one of my SD cards. A nice (and unusual) feature is an inbuilt headphone amp, although as I'm not an audiophile I couldn't say whether it does that much! Certainly music sounds "punchy" when played through it, more so than on the old Defiance.
I'm looking forward to putting the machine through its paces over the coming weeks and I'm hoping that just like the Defiance and Vortex before it, the laptop will prove to be a useful travelling companion over the next few years.
(Incidentally Kaby Lake is around the corner, as are a new swathe of SSDs. However, I don't regret jumping when I did... after all, if you're after a new laptop you have to buy sooner or later!)
Specs:
i7-6700K at 4.0GHz
GeForce 1080
32GB DDR4-2133 RAM
Primary drive: 512GB Samsung SM951
Secondary drive: 1TB Samsung 850
Planned usage:
A mixture of gaming, 4K video editing and application development (involving VMs)
Good points:
Powerful system - a desktop CPU is a rarety these days in a laptop and the GTX 1080 is an amazing GPU.
Build quality is excellent.
Astounding colours on the 4K panel.
£600 cheaper than the same machine would have been from the next-cheapest rival supplier.
Bad points:
A long delay in obtaining the 4K panel meant I was waiting for over a month from ordering. As with the last time this happened, there were very few automatic updates - I had to chase by email for an updated ETA.
No G-Sync despite being advertised and having a G-Sync sticker on the laptop. This is because the 4K panel is a new model, not yet on NVidia's list. I daresay it'll appear in due course.
Earlier this year 17" 4K panels entered production. Reports circulated that Clevo was going to launch some new laptops this autumn using those screens, with Pascal graphics; this was a perfect combination and I awaited their launch with anticipation.
At the end of August the NDA on Pascal was lifted and the new laptops were listed. I jumped in on an Octane III and waited... only to find out that the screens weren't actually in stock. It took a month before they arrived, but once they did my laptop whizzed through production.
The laptop arrived and, as expected, build quality is spot-on. As it's Clevo's "desktop replacement" range, the machine is bulky, heavy and solidly built. As with my original PCS purchase (a Vortex II), it comes with a large power brick which weighs around a kilogram on its own! It's necessary, though, as the Octane III comes with desktop components.
This is actually a first for me: the laptop, on paper at least, is faster with most games than my main desktop PC (which has a 6-core i7-5930K and a GeForce 980). This is borne out in testing with my game of choice, WoW; the desktop manages around 40-45fps at 4K at max settings, whereas the laptop maintains 55-60 in the same areas.
In use the fans whoosh as expected, but it's not especially loud. The Defiance also whooshed away during gaming and it wasn't that much quieter. I've not looked at temperatures, but there didn't seem to be any throttling of the CPU at least, which frequently reached 4.0GHz in WoW.
I could have had the Octane sooner if I'd given up on the 4K screen, but I was stubborn. Just as well, as the 4K screen is glorious. First the bad news: it's an IPS model and has slow response times as a result. Indeed, there's a little ghosting if you look for it when spinning around in WoW, for example. It's not that noticeable though and is easily outweighed by the colours. I was bowled over at how *vibrant* everything looks - it's as vibrant as a decent CRT monitor used to be and has easily the most impressive colour gamut I've seen on an LCD panel. My normal monitors at home and work look washed-out and faded now!
Side note: the laptop is advertised as having G-Sync, but it doesn't at present when sold with the 4K screen that PCS use. There's nothing on their website about this and I only found out via the forums.
As expected, the panel is pin-sharp in general use and it's easily distinguishable from a typical TN HD 17" panel. Don't listen to those who say 4K is wasted on small screen sizes, it's still very much worthwhile. You will immediately notice the difference compared with a full HD screen of the same size.
PCS installed an OEM copy of Windows 10 and as I'd ordered a 512GB M2 NVMe SSD as the primary drive it flies. That said, it doesn't seem subjectively faster than my desktop's M2 PCI-E SSD - both are blazingly fast at loading programs.
The Octane is bang up-to-date in terms of connectivity too, with USB type C ports, a thunderbolt connector, mini displayport and so on. The card reader is worthy of note too, it effortlessly copied files at 140MB/s from one of my SD cards. A nice (and unusual) feature is an inbuilt headphone amp, although as I'm not an audiophile I couldn't say whether it does that much! Certainly music sounds "punchy" when played through it, more so than on the old Defiance.
I'm looking forward to putting the machine through its paces over the coming weeks and I'm hoping that just like the Defiance and Vortex before it, the laptop will prove to be a useful travelling companion over the next few years.
(Incidentally Kaby Lake is around the corner, as are a new swathe of SSDs. However, I don't regret jumping when I did... after all, if you're after a new laptop you have to buy sooner or later!)
Specs:
i7-6700K at 4.0GHz
GeForce 1080
32GB DDR4-2133 RAM
Primary drive: 512GB Samsung SM951
Secondary drive: 1TB Samsung 850
Planned usage:
A mixture of gaming, 4K video editing and application development (involving VMs)
Good points:
Powerful system - a desktop CPU is a rarety these days in a laptop and the GTX 1080 is an amazing GPU.
Build quality is excellent.
Astounding colours on the 4K panel.
£600 cheaper than the same machine would have been from the next-cheapest rival supplier.
Bad points:
A long delay in obtaining the 4K panel meant I was waiting for over a month from ordering. As with the last time this happened, there were very few automatic updates - I had to chase by email for an updated ETA.
No G-Sync despite being advertised and having a G-Sync sticker on the laptop. This is because the 4K panel is a new model, not yet on NVidia's list. I daresay it'll appear in due course.
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