Summary
This is an excellent & well built laptop with only one or two minor niggles. I use it as a day to day work machine, both on the move and at a desk to perform fairly standard office related tasks.
Specification
Chassis & Display UltraNote: 14" Matte Full HD IPS LED Backlit Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™ i5 Dual Core Processor i5-7200U (2.50GHz, 3.1GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM) 8GB Kingston SODIMM DDR4 2133MHz (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card INTEL® HD GRAPHICS 620 - 1.7GB Max DDR4 Video RAM - DirectX® 12
1st Hard Disk NOT REQUIRED
M.2 SSD Drive 128GB SAMSUNG PM961 M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 2800MB/R, 600MB/W)
Memory Card Reader Integrated 6 in 1 Card Reader (SD /Mini SD/ SDHC / SDXC / MMC / RSMMC)
AC Adaptor 1 x 40W AC Adaptor
Power Cable 1 x 1 Metre Cloverleaf UK Power Cable
Sound Card Realtek 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-8265 M.2 (867Mbps, 802.11AC)+BT 4.0
USB Options 1 x USB 3.1 PORT (Type C) + 1 x USB 3.0 PORT + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Battery UltraNote IV Series 44WH Lithium Ion Battery
Delivery
PC Specialist were excellent with communication throughout the build process and delivery. The laptop was very well packaged and was delivered by DPD almost to the minute. It was exactly as described on the website and arrived in perfect condition.
Installation
I purchased the laptop with no operating system as I wanted to install linux, which is not an officially supported option. I installed Ubuntu-Mate 16.04.2 on the NVMe disk from a USB stick with no issues. Everything worked out of the box with the exception of the bluetooth adapter which needed the latest firmware (linux-firmware_1.161.1_all.deb from kernel.org). Some of the blue function keys are not recognised by Ubuntu (sleep, airplane mode, touchpad disable, camera power) but the main brightness, backlight toggle and volume/media keys work fine. Suspend and resume (by closing/opening the laptop lid) also works perfectly. All other hardware that I've tested works as expected (eg SD card, camera, microphone, wifi, ethernet etc) - I have not tested the USB type C port yet.
Functionality
The base laptop is a Clevo N240BU assembled by PC Specialist with a good quality display, very useable keyboard and trackpad. With the NVMe primary disk it is very fast to boot and means hibernation just isn't required. With normal office use the laptop is silent (browsing, watching videos, office tasks etc), with no noticable hot spots and is very very responsive (so much so that an i7 cpu would be a waste of money). It has a nice hinge to the screen which when opened raises the back of the laptop slightly off the desk to aid airflow. The battery is a 4 cell 18650 type which takes about 2 hours to fully charge and lasts for about 5 hours in the above scenario. It clicks into place and a spare battery would be an easy option if longer time on the road is required.
Minor niggles
- Options in the bios are limited - probably to simplify support but I would have liked more control.
- The fan is reasonably noisy if the laptop is placed under sustained load. I ran some performance benchmarks and ended up tweaking the thermald settings to ensure cpu throttling was prioritised above fan usage and to raise the target temperature. If you are transcoding videos regularly for example, this may be more of an issue than it is for me. (The key combo Fn+1 works and toggles the fan full on/auto).
- I needed to install a 2.5in SSD from my old laptop in the spare slot. Removing the back panel required a lot of care - the screws burr easily and there are 12 of them to be removed before the back panel can be carefully eased off. Not for the faint-hearted.
- The 8Gb memory is a single stick - I would have preferred to have had the option to have 2x4Gb (or 2x8Gb) instead to maximise performance and reliability
- I found the trackpad to be a bit too responsive with two-finger scrolling until I disabled two-finger click emulation - it now works perfectly.
This is an excellent & well built laptop with only one or two minor niggles. I use it as a day to day work machine, both on the move and at a desk to perform fairly standard office related tasks.
Specification
Chassis & Display UltraNote: 14" Matte Full HD IPS LED Backlit Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™ i5 Dual Core Processor i5-7200U (2.50GHz, 3.1GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM) 8GB Kingston SODIMM DDR4 2133MHz (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card INTEL® HD GRAPHICS 620 - 1.7GB Max DDR4 Video RAM - DirectX® 12
1st Hard Disk NOT REQUIRED
M.2 SSD Drive 128GB SAMSUNG PM961 M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 2800MB/R, 600MB/W)
Memory Card Reader Integrated 6 in 1 Card Reader (SD /Mini SD/ SDHC / SDXC / MMC / RSMMC)
AC Adaptor 1 x 40W AC Adaptor
Power Cable 1 x 1 Metre Cloverleaf UK Power Cable
Sound Card Realtek 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-8265 M.2 (867Mbps, 802.11AC)+BT 4.0
USB Options 1 x USB 3.1 PORT (Type C) + 1 x USB 3.0 PORT + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Battery UltraNote IV Series 44WH Lithium Ion Battery
Delivery
PC Specialist were excellent with communication throughout the build process and delivery. The laptop was very well packaged and was delivered by DPD almost to the minute. It was exactly as described on the website and arrived in perfect condition.
Installation
I purchased the laptop with no operating system as I wanted to install linux, which is not an officially supported option. I installed Ubuntu-Mate 16.04.2 on the NVMe disk from a USB stick with no issues. Everything worked out of the box with the exception of the bluetooth adapter which needed the latest firmware (linux-firmware_1.161.1_all.deb from kernel.org). Some of the blue function keys are not recognised by Ubuntu (sleep, airplane mode, touchpad disable, camera power) but the main brightness, backlight toggle and volume/media keys work fine. Suspend and resume (by closing/opening the laptop lid) also works perfectly. All other hardware that I've tested works as expected (eg SD card, camera, microphone, wifi, ethernet etc) - I have not tested the USB type C port yet.
Functionality
The base laptop is a Clevo N240BU assembled by PC Specialist with a good quality display, very useable keyboard and trackpad. With the NVMe primary disk it is very fast to boot and means hibernation just isn't required. With normal office use the laptop is silent (browsing, watching videos, office tasks etc), with no noticable hot spots and is very very responsive (so much so that an i7 cpu would be a waste of money). It has a nice hinge to the screen which when opened raises the back of the laptop slightly off the desk to aid airflow. The battery is a 4 cell 18650 type which takes about 2 hours to fully charge and lasts for about 5 hours in the above scenario. It clicks into place and a spare battery would be an easy option if longer time on the road is required.
Minor niggles
- Options in the bios are limited - probably to simplify support but I would have liked more control.
- The fan is reasonably noisy if the laptop is placed under sustained load. I ran some performance benchmarks and ended up tweaking the thermald settings to ensure cpu throttling was prioritised above fan usage and to raise the target temperature. If you are transcoding videos regularly for example, this may be more of an issue than it is for me. (The key combo Fn+1 works and toggles the fan full on/auto).
- I needed to install a 2.5in SSD from my old laptop in the spare slot. Removing the back panel required a lot of care - the screws burr easily and there are 12 of them to be removed before the back panel can be carefully eased off. Not for the faint-hearted.
- The 8Gb memory is a single stick - I would have preferred to have had the option to have 2x4Gb (or 2x8Gb) instead to maximise performance and reliability
- I found the trackpad to be a bit too responsive with two-finger scrolling until I disabled two-finger click emulation - it now works perfectly.
