At last, I have a real computer again! After months of research, I finally retired my borrowed netbook for a high-performance computer. I decided on the Sager NP8690 laptop because of its awesome hardware and warranty for a reasonable price.
Weighing at 7.38 pounds and nearly 2 inches at its thickest point when closed, the 15.6″ screen 8690 isn’t exactly netbook-portable, but it certainly gets more than the job done. Sager sells laptops from Clevo, a base manufacturer who has designed barebones units for companies like Alienware. They are not very well-known to the general public, but have garnered a respectable amount of admiration from those in the performance computing camp. In this post I’ll give my general opinions on its build and performance.
The following are the specifications I chose:
15.6″ 1920×1080 Full HD WLED screen
Intel Core i7 840QM
8GB DDR3/1333 RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 460M (1.5GB GDDR5/DX11)
500GB Seagate XT Hybrid HDD/SSD
Blu-Ray/DVD Writer, 2MP camera/mic
USB 3.0, HDMI, Card Reader, e-SATA, ExpressCard & other I/O ports
Build quality is solid and heavy in a good way. The chiclet keyboard feels and types nicely, very little keyboard flex is present when pressed hard. The chassis is easy to open to access the user-upgradeable parts. The synaptic touchpad works well, though like most laptop users I prefer a separate mouse. A pop-out optical drive means no worries about getting discs stuck inside a picky slot-load drive. The screen hinge is strong and does not wobble easily. Most of the body is non-glossy so fingerprints are not a constant nuisance. The CPU/GPU fans make noticeable noise under heavy performance load, but this is to be expected; temperatures are acceptably low and the heat dissipation is designed not to bother the user.
The visual quality of the screen on this laptop is something to behold. Blu-rays are a pleasure even on the 15.6″ LED screen, and brightness can be adjusted to many levels. Black levels are very deep and true, though the glossiness makes the surface become a mirror when the display is dark (this can be mitigated by lowering the amount of light in the room, but it really doesn’t bother me much). Performance-wise this thing can handle any major software thrown at it to date and is bound to be future proof. On games like StarCraft 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 I can easily max out the settings and still achieve enjoyable frame rates.
I purchased this particular laptop from PowerNotebooks.com, a Sager reseller who offers better prices than the manufacturer’s site along with great service and warranty to boot! It was refreshing to make an important from a small business that cares. Every purchase has a 30-day return policy and is afterwards protected by a 1-year parts/3-year service warranty (upgradeable). The actual shipment was well packaged and came with a free laptop bag, small cleaning cloth, driver/utilities discs, and a DVI-to-VGA display adapter.
Overall this is an excellent notebook for the power user or gamer on the go, especially those who want comparable power to a desktop in a more mobile package.