Clevo 17.3" GPU TGP?

[Bhuna50]

Give them a call or use the online chat as you will probably get a better idea of when it will be available and maybe able to preorder over the phone - I expect it might be that they have already sold the batch that is coming in on 10 April and thats why its 'turned off' from pre-ordering.

 

[RobertoDub]

I get what you are saying and it is certainly early days in regards to whether we will see systemic faults with the latest Tong Fang chassis. My personal opinion seeing the early signs that at are starting to crop up is that they are going to be just as bad.

Its very different to the unfortunate situation you had with your Clevo as you just clearly had a dud laptop (like my old Vortex which was also Clevo). Last year every Tong Fang chassis apart from possibly the 15 inch version of the Vyper, had serious QC issues which was why by the end of the year every serious member of this forum was warning users away from Tong Fang.

Don't get me wrong I am relieved yours seems to be working as well as you were hoping for and I hope it stays that way and I hope the few faults that are cropping up now are isolated.

What concerns me though is this is what happened last year with the Vyper. Everyone took delivery of them and every body was raving about them. Then within 3-6 weeks the forums were full of the same people detailing the faults which were cropping up and they were all the same.

Hi,
would you advise against buying a Ionico then?
Any particular "early signs" you're concerned about?
Thanks.

 

[barlew]

Hi,
would you advise against buying a Ionico then?
Any particular "early signs" you're concerned about?
Thanks.

I wouldn't advise against it because frankly it is too early to know and I am well aware that my thinking is heavily influenced by what I saw coming from TongFang last year. What I would counsel is to at least wait if you can until after the AMD versions are released. By then we will have a much better picture of the performance and durability of these machines.

What concerns me specifically?

I have seen 3 users on this forum complain of what I would classify as pretty extreme screen bleed. This is a problem that the old Vyper suffered from. It was a horrible machine to use in low light environments for gaming because the bleed was that bad.

The whole MUX being disabled in the BIOS debacle did concern me because this wouldn't have been done accidentally. Yes they have re-enabled the MUX but it appears that there are potential issues with the MUX/dGPU which causes screen flicker which again leads me to question why the MUX was disabled in the first place.

These could all be isolated cases of course like I said I am pretty biased against Tong Fang because of their poor history.
There are of course users on here who are delighted with their Ionicos and that's fantastic.

But like I said there were users delighted with the Vyper 17 when it released (I was one of them). That only lasted 6 months....

There are other problems being reported but I think they are more configuration issues than potential systemic issues with the Ionico.

 

[Macco26]

Hi,
would you advise against buying a Ionico then?
Any particular "early signs" you're concerned about?
Thanks.

If you want a comparison between our Ionico and the so-called Ionico with Zen3 CPU (5800H with same RTX3070) go and check my Warzone video.
Every now and then I post the footage of the twin brother with 5800H (yes, Tongfang made, so expect this being the Ionico Zen3 performance).

You can find the Warzone benchmark in this forum's review section, under my thread of my initial video review of the Ionico.
Go and see. Then we discuss if you'd be fine waiting for it . For productivity workloads you'd better wait for the Zen3 (not depicted in my video, of course).
But if you'd seek a better gaming experience, no. I'd better be recommending to wait for Tigerlake-H Intel Ionico then, a thing that will surely come in the following months. Or the Ionico 10th gen straight as it is.

 

[barlew]

If you want a comparison between our Ionico and the so-called Ionico with Zen3 CPU (5800H with same RTX3070) go and check my Warzone video.
Every now and then I post the footage of the twin brother with 5800H (yes, Tongfang made, so expect this being the Ionico Zen3 performance).

You can find the Warzone benchmark in this forum's review section, under my thread of my initial video review of the Ionico.
Go and see. Then we discuss if you'd be fine waiting for it . For productivity workloads you'd better wait for the Zen3 (not depicted in my video, of course).
But if you'd seek a better gaming experience, no. I'd better be recommending to wait for Tigerlake-H Intel Ionico then, a thing that will surely come in the following months. Or the Ionico 10th gen straight as it is.

Just to clarify I am not saying wait specifically to get an AMD system I am saying wait until the AMD line are out. This will give plenty of time for the systems that are out in the wild to be verified as good and will give a good reference point of what other configurations of the laptop run like.

 

[Macco26]

This is absolutely true.
If anybody can wait I'm pretty sure the QC of any ODM will improve later this year. The RTX 30 laptop offering was a bit rushed, especially with the shortages of IC components and some drastic decisions the ODMs had to make to counter that.
I'm pretty sure next iteration might be better thought. At least I expect a bigger sample should have high chance reliability (MUX debacle anyone?), more than the current offering, I guess.

 

[RobertoDub]

If you want a comparison between our Ionico and the so-called Ionico with Zen3 CPU (5800H with same RTX3070) go and check my Warzone video.
Every now and then I post the footage of the twin brother with 5800H (yes, Tongfang made, so expect this being the Ionico Zen3 performance).

You can find the Warzone benchmark in this forum's review section, under my thread of my initial video review of the Ionico.
Go and see. Then we discuss if you'd be fine waiting for it . For productivity workloads you'd better wait for the Zen3 (not depicted in my video, of course).
But if you'd seek a better gaming experience, no. I'd better be recommending to wait for Tigerlake-H Intel Ionico then, a thing that will surely come in the following months. Or the Ionico 10th gen straight as it is.

Thanks, I was on the verge of buying a Vyper last year, then waited for the new GPU gen and I'm happy I did.

Now I really want to buy a new laptop soon, again I was about to pull the trigger on the Ionico, but looking at its recent issues I reckon I'll look at a different vendor (no Clevo or TongFang) who's offering a 14% discount until tomorrow. It will be a more expensive machine, which I wanted to avoid, but it's supposed to be very reliable, although you can always get the occasional lemon.

I'm fine with Intel CPUs, especially the 8-core: I'm not too oriented towards productivity workflows and I need 5+ hours battery just to be on the safe side.
An AMD CPU would be great to have, but I cannot wait 6 more months and I'm afraid the global laptop shortage might cause further delays.