Hi all,
A couple of weeks ago the display on my Kobalt G860 started to play up. With no warranty to fall back on for obvious reasons, and the need for a PC for work, I decided I couldn't take the risk of stripping the machine down and ending up breaking something else. Rather than send it off for repair, with no guarantee of how long that would take, I decided instead that a new PC was in order.
The Kobalt (a Clevo W860CU) was less than 2 years old, so still fairly current technology, and I certainly hadn't planned to change it any time soon. I'd been very pleased with it, in fact, so another similar Clevo seemed like the obvious choice. Despite its premature failure (which was a bit of a downer) the machine is at least quite modular, so whatever part has failed should be replaceable. I guessed at the LCD cable, and ordered a spare while I pondered the spec of the PC that should replace it.
I'm picky about screen quality, so getting the matte LED HD screen was a no-brainer, and with SSDs having become more affordable I decided to treat myself to one. I'd need a USB optical drive, but only on rare occasions, and the potential performance boost the other 99% of the time was too much to miss out on. The rest of the spec was similar to my outgoing PC, albeit 2 years' worth of faster:
Chassis & Display
Vortex II: 15.6" Matte 95% Gamut LED Widescreen (1920x1080) (£79)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-2670QM (2.20GHz) 6MB
Memory (RAM)
8GB SAMSUNG 1333MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (2 x 4GB)
Graphics Card
1.5GB nVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 560M - DirectX® 11 (15.6" Vortex II)
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
160GB INTEL® 320 SERIES SSD, SATA 3 Gb/s (upto 270MB/sR | 165MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk
750GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD7500BPKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
2nd HDD HARD DRIVE OPTICAL BAY CADDY
Memory Card Reader
Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)
Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Network Facilities
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® ULTIMATE-N 6300 (450Mbps)
USB Options
2 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS AS STANDARD
Battery
Vortex Series 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (5,200 mAh/76.96WH)
Power Lead & Adaptor
2 x UK Power Lead & 180W AC Adaptor (£49)
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£109)
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Carry Case
TARGUS CITY GEAR 15" - 15.6" CARRY CASE TCG400 (£35)
Keyboard & Mouse
INTEGRATED UK KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD
Mouse
LOGITECH® OPTICAL USB MOUSE (£5)
Webcam
INTEGRATED 2.0 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Gold Warranty (2 Year Collect & Return, 2 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£69)
Dead Pixel Guarantee
1 Year Dead Pixel Guarantee Inc. Labour & Carriage Costs (£19)
Delivery
PCS EXTRA-CARE DIAMOND DELIVERY - MON-FRI, PRE-NOON (£9)
Build Time
FAST TRACK 3 WORKING DAY DISPATCH (£59)
Quantity
1
I ordered the PC on Monday morning last week, and by Tuesday afternoon it was ready for dispatch - very impressive.
Unfortunately when the machine did arrive it was DOA; it wouldn't power up, and within an hour of arrival it was back in its box ready for collection. Fair play to PCS for getting it collected and fixed (complete new chassis, apparently) without delay.
So, today my PC finally arrived, and I've had chance to have a play.
First impression was how similar it is to my G860. Although it's obviously an all new chassis, the overall weight and dimensions are about the same, and the keyboard is identical apart from the red WASD arrows. (For a machine I'll be using for business, these are actually a bit of an embarrassment... any chance of a 'stealth' keyboard option please? It looks absolutely identical to the W860CU keyboard otherwise.)
I've gained USB 3.0, and lost an Express Card slot which I never used (Did anyone?)
For some odd reason there's a CD and DVD logo on the optical drive bay, even though I have a second hard drive in this space instead. There's even a fake eject button, which is downright odd.
I still get Firewire, the extra USB port is nice to have, and the battery looks like it might last a bit longer too. The "THX" and "HDMI" stickers look at odds with the otherwise classy and understated look of the rest of the machine and will, I think, have to go. (Seriously, is having an HDMI port really such a big deal these days?)
The most immediately obvious difference from the G860 is the time it takes to boot up. I've never used an SSD before, but I won't be going back; the speed at which Windows 7 boots and shuts down is astonishing compared to my previous hard drive (a WD Scorpio Black, no slouch itself by magnetic drive standards). I expected the SSD to be rapid, but I was blown away by how quickly I found myself staring at the Windows desktop. It's a new PC with no crapware on it, of course - but even so, the performance was remarkable. (Just as well really, given that I ended up having to reboot at least a dozen times while installing all the drivers that came with the machine. Would having them pre-installed really have been so much to ask?)
The sound is a bit better than the G860, though that's not saying much, and I do wonder whether the world's smallest "subwoofer" on the underside of the machine is really helping. The THX software improves the audio a bit, but it can't work miracles. My old Dell Inspiron 8200 - a big, heavy machine which I'm sure had something to do with it - had the best sound I've heard from a laptop; since then it's all been a bit downhill. Good thing I'm a Sennheiser junkie.
But despite all that, the most attention grabbing feature of the PC has to be the screen. My G860 has a glossy full HD screen with LED backlighting, and I love it - it's bright, clear, sharp, totally uniform and with accurate colours. With display technology moving so fast, I had high hopes for the wide gamut display on the Vortex II. Better quality and with less glare and fingerprints? Bring it on...
I was disappointed
First impression is that the saturation is very high, and that's to be expected. It should also be fairly straightforward to tame using nVidia's control panel; knocking the "digital vibrance" control down from 50% to 40% took the edge off and made it a bit easier on the eye. Going through the calibration process in Windows (Color Management in Control Panel) improves the display too.
But - and it's quite a big but - I can't achieve a display which is anything like as natural and pleasing to the eye as the display on my G860. The matte screen looks much softer than the glossy G860 display, and side by side the difference in sharpness is quite striking.
Worse, the viewing angle and uniformity aren't comparable either. A white screen takes on a green tint when viewed from above and a magenta tint from below, which really surprised me, and makes trying to achieve a neutral white through calibration all but impossible. It takes only a few degrees shift in viewing angle to give a very noticeable colour cast. Looking head on at my screen right now, the bottom half is definitely greenish and the top half is pinkish, and the colours shift if I tilt the LCD even a few degrees.
For playing games it's probably fine. Accurate colour isn't really an issue, and you don't spend long staring at a white screen which really shows up the colour shift. But I don't actually play games that often, and I can't help but feel I'd have been better off keeping my £79 and taking the glossy standard screen instead.
I'm not really into benchmarking, but I did quickly run Furmark on both PCs for a quick comparison. The G860 with a GTX 285M card managed 11 fps at 1920x1080 and topped out at 81 deg C, while the Vortex II's 560M managed 13 fps and ran a few degrees cooler too - as expected, really. If I'd wanted state-of-the-art performance I'd have had the 580M instead, but it's a costly option and I'd rather my battery lasted a bit longer. The G860's pitiful lifetime was a nuisance.
Having set up the Vortex, I did then brave the innards of my G860 and replaced the faulty display cable - so now I have the two machines both working and can choose which becomes my everyday PC and which gets relegated to occasional use.
The speed of the Vortex and its SSD is hard to argue with. The G860 was no slouch, but the newer PC is quicker in every respect. For this reason alone, I think it's likely to end up labelled as the games machine.
For work stuff it's trickier to call. The sharpness and uniformity of the G860's screen make the Windows desktop much nicer to look at than on the Vortex, and for browsing, email and lightweight CAD the difference in performance is unimportant. Whichever PC I use I do at least now have a redundant spare.
Pictures to follow, but I think it's only fair to take any suggestions as to how the Vortex's LCD might be encouraged to give its best before showing the two screens side by side. Suggestions welcome, as it's the only real weakness (IMHO) in an otherwise top notch PC.
A couple of weeks ago the display on my Kobalt G860 started to play up. With no warranty to fall back on for obvious reasons, and the need for a PC for work, I decided I couldn't take the risk of stripping the machine down and ending up breaking something else. Rather than send it off for repair, with no guarantee of how long that would take, I decided instead that a new PC was in order.
The Kobalt (a Clevo W860CU) was less than 2 years old, so still fairly current technology, and I certainly hadn't planned to change it any time soon. I'd been very pleased with it, in fact, so another similar Clevo seemed like the obvious choice. Despite its premature failure (which was a bit of a downer) the machine is at least quite modular, so whatever part has failed should be replaceable. I guessed at the LCD cable, and ordered a spare while I pondered the spec of the PC that should replace it.
I'm picky about screen quality, so getting the matte LED HD screen was a no-brainer, and with SSDs having become more affordable I decided to treat myself to one. I'd need a USB optical drive, but only on rare occasions, and the potential performance boost the other 99% of the time was too much to miss out on. The rest of the spec was similar to my outgoing PC, albeit 2 years' worth of faster:
Chassis & Display
Vortex II: 15.6" Matte 95% Gamut LED Widescreen (1920x1080) (£79)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-2670QM (2.20GHz) 6MB
Memory (RAM)
8GB SAMSUNG 1333MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (2 x 4GB)
Graphics Card
1.5GB nVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 560M - DirectX® 11 (15.6" Vortex II)
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
160GB INTEL® 320 SERIES SSD, SATA 3 Gb/s (upto 270MB/sR | 165MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk
750GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD7500BPKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
2nd HDD HARD DRIVE OPTICAL BAY CADDY
Memory Card Reader
Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)
Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Network Facilities
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® ULTIMATE-N 6300 (450Mbps)
USB Options
2 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS AS STANDARD
Battery
Vortex Series 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (5,200 mAh/76.96WH)
Power Lead & Adaptor
2 x UK Power Lead & 180W AC Adaptor (£49)
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£109)
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Carry Case
TARGUS CITY GEAR 15" - 15.6" CARRY CASE TCG400 (£35)
Keyboard & Mouse
INTEGRATED UK KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD
Mouse
LOGITECH® OPTICAL USB MOUSE (£5)
Webcam
INTEGRATED 2.0 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Gold Warranty (2 Year Collect & Return, 2 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£69)
Dead Pixel Guarantee
1 Year Dead Pixel Guarantee Inc. Labour & Carriage Costs (£19)
Delivery
PCS EXTRA-CARE DIAMOND DELIVERY - MON-FRI, PRE-NOON (£9)
Build Time
FAST TRACK 3 WORKING DAY DISPATCH (£59)
Quantity
1
I ordered the PC on Monday morning last week, and by Tuesday afternoon it was ready for dispatch - very impressive.
Unfortunately when the machine did arrive it was DOA; it wouldn't power up, and within an hour of arrival it was back in its box ready for collection. Fair play to PCS for getting it collected and fixed (complete new chassis, apparently) without delay.
So, today my PC finally arrived, and I've had chance to have a play.
First impression was how similar it is to my G860. Although it's obviously an all new chassis, the overall weight and dimensions are about the same, and the keyboard is identical apart from the red WASD arrows. (For a machine I'll be using for business, these are actually a bit of an embarrassment... any chance of a 'stealth' keyboard option please? It looks absolutely identical to the W860CU keyboard otherwise.)
I've gained USB 3.0, and lost an Express Card slot which I never used (Did anyone?)
For some odd reason there's a CD and DVD logo on the optical drive bay, even though I have a second hard drive in this space instead. There's even a fake eject button, which is downright odd.
I still get Firewire, the extra USB port is nice to have, and the battery looks like it might last a bit longer too. The "THX" and "HDMI" stickers look at odds with the otherwise classy and understated look of the rest of the machine and will, I think, have to go. (Seriously, is having an HDMI port really such a big deal these days?)
The most immediately obvious difference from the G860 is the time it takes to boot up. I've never used an SSD before, but I won't be going back; the speed at which Windows 7 boots and shuts down is astonishing compared to my previous hard drive (a WD Scorpio Black, no slouch itself by magnetic drive standards). I expected the SSD to be rapid, but I was blown away by how quickly I found myself staring at the Windows desktop. It's a new PC with no crapware on it, of course - but even so, the performance was remarkable. (Just as well really, given that I ended up having to reboot at least a dozen times while installing all the drivers that came with the machine. Would having them pre-installed really have been so much to ask?)
The sound is a bit better than the G860, though that's not saying much, and I do wonder whether the world's smallest "subwoofer" on the underside of the machine is really helping. The THX software improves the audio a bit, but it can't work miracles. My old Dell Inspiron 8200 - a big, heavy machine which I'm sure had something to do with it - had the best sound I've heard from a laptop; since then it's all been a bit downhill. Good thing I'm a Sennheiser junkie.
But despite all that, the most attention grabbing feature of the PC has to be the screen. My G860 has a glossy full HD screen with LED backlighting, and I love it - it's bright, clear, sharp, totally uniform and with accurate colours. With display technology moving so fast, I had high hopes for the wide gamut display on the Vortex II. Better quality and with less glare and fingerprints? Bring it on...
I was disappointed
First impression is that the saturation is very high, and that's to be expected. It should also be fairly straightforward to tame using nVidia's control panel; knocking the "digital vibrance" control down from 50% to 40% took the edge off and made it a bit easier on the eye. Going through the calibration process in Windows (Color Management in Control Panel) improves the display too.
But - and it's quite a big but - I can't achieve a display which is anything like as natural and pleasing to the eye as the display on my G860. The matte screen looks much softer than the glossy G860 display, and side by side the difference in sharpness is quite striking.
Worse, the viewing angle and uniformity aren't comparable either. A white screen takes on a green tint when viewed from above and a magenta tint from below, which really surprised me, and makes trying to achieve a neutral white through calibration all but impossible. It takes only a few degrees shift in viewing angle to give a very noticeable colour cast. Looking head on at my screen right now, the bottom half is definitely greenish and the top half is pinkish, and the colours shift if I tilt the LCD even a few degrees.
For playing games it's probably fine. Accurate colour isn't really an issue, and you don't spend long staring at a white screen which really shows up the colour shift. But I don't actually play games that often, and I can't help but feel I'd have been better off keeping my £79 and taking the glossy standard screen instead.
I'm not really into benchmarking, but I did quickly run Furmark on both PCs for a quick comparison. The G860 with a GTX 285M card managed 11 fps at 1920x1080 and topped out at 81 deg C, while the Vortex II's 560M managed 13 fps and ran a few degrees cooler too - as expected, really. If I'd wanted state-of-the-art performance I'd have had the 580M instead, but it's a costly option and I'd rather my battery lasted a bit longer. The G860's pitiful lifetime was a nuisance.
Having set up the Vortex, I did then brave the innards of my G860 and replaced the faulty display cable - so now I have the two machines both working and can choose which becomes my everyday PC and which gets relegated to occasional use.
The speed of the Vortex and its SSD is hard to argue with. The G860 was no slouch, but the newer PC is quicker in every respect. For this reason alone, I think it's likely to end up labelled as the games machine.
For work stuff it's trickier to call. The sharpness and uniformity of the G860's screen make the Windows desktop much nicer to look at than on the Vortex, and for browsing, email and lightweight CAD the difference in performance is unimportant. Whichever PC I use I do at least now have a redundant spare.
Pictures to follow, but I think it's only fair to take any suggestions as to how the Vortex's LCD might be encouraged to give its best before showing the two screens side by side. Suggestions welcome, as it's the only real weakness (IMHO) in an otherwise top notch PC.