AVADirect Clevo P180HM Gaming Notebook Review
Performance Summary & Conclusion
Performance Summary: AVADirect's Clevo P180HM opened a can of whoop-ass in Futuremark's PCMark Vantage benchmark and never lost momentum until the battery test portion of this article. Even then it wasn't as disastrous as you might expect for a system spec'd like this one. Having a second GTX 560M GPU in SLI proved the difference maker on more than one occasion, in terms of getting playable framerates at the P180HM's native 1920x1080 resolution, versus watching pretty graphics stutter sadly across the screen. That's before dialing down the eye candy, which means it's going to be awhile before you need to think about upgrading this notebook.
Outside of gaming, the P180HM ran like a thoroughbred, with much of the credit being owed to the OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS solid state drive. But it wasn't the SSD alone that drove the P180HM, credit also goes to AVADirect's selection of parts and overall build quality, all of which was top notch.
Outside of gaming, the P180HM ran like a thoroughbred, with much of the credit being owed to the OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS solid state drive. But it wasn't the SSD alone that drove the P180HM, credit also goes to AVADirect's selection of parts and overall build quality, all of which was top notch.
;)
Let's talk price. At over $2,500, the P180HM's price tag is as big and burly as the notebook itself, and that's certainly a deal killer for cash-strapped folks. But what you get in return is a great looking desktop replacement machine, stuffed with high end hardware, so we're not going to knock the cost of entry just because few will be able to afford it. We'll just mention that yes, it's expensive, as you'd expect for a machine configured as such. It's also customizable and there are several ways to save some scratch and still end up with a respectable machine. You can opt for a slower processor, trade the SSD for a mechanical hard drive, and ditch the Bigfoot Networks NIC, for example. Likewise, if you hit the jackpot or just inherited a ton of cash, you can build a ridiculously spec'd (and ridiculously expensive) system with even more bells and whistles than we tested.
While on the topic of price, we headed over to Alienware to see how much it would cost to configure a similar setup built around the M18x, and the total came to $3,239. It's not a complete apples to apples comparison; the Alienware's SSD was twice as big and the amount of RAM was 4GB less, but otherwise the two systems were virtually identical. Either way, that's a $700 premium and puts AVADirect's price tag in perspective.
Here's the bottom line: The Clevo P180HM from AVADirect is an impressive machine inside and out. It's well spec'd, well assembled, and easily deserving of our recommendation.
|
|
|
|
|
;){kind=link}