Eurocom P5 Pro / Clevo P750ZM Review: True DTR
by Jarred Walton on March 10, 2015 10:00 AM ESTClevo P750ZM Battery Life and Power
Battery life is one area where the P750ZM really falls short, but we knew that going before even testing. MSI’s GT72 at least has the option to switch to Intel’s HD 4600 Graphics and can hit 5+ hours; with a desktop CPU and no integrated GPU option, P750ZM has no chance of doing much more than an hour and a half of mobility. It’s a case of going after performance at the cost of battery life.
As expected, the P750ZM ends up offering the worst battery life of any notebook we’ve tested in the past couple of years. Even the Alienware 18 wins by a large margin, as it can be manually switched to integrated graphics. We ended up just shy of two hours in our Light workload, and nearly 1.75 hours in our Heavy testing. If you were to get a 1080p display instead of the 4K IGZO, you could probably break two hours on the P750ZM but not by much.
We also did a test of gaming battery life; interestingly, it appears that Battery Boost works, and not only that but it was forced on when we tested. Disabling Battery Boost had no impact, and the FPS target was stuck at 30. Newer drivers may have addressed this issue, but the only thing that would happen is that battery life would go down. With a 30FPS target running Tomb Raider at 1080p Ultimate settings, we measured battery life of one hour. Battery recharge time was 140 minutes, which is pretty good for an 82Wh battery.
Switching over to power draw, even at idle the P750ZM shows close to 40W power draw at the outlet, which basically reinforces the above results. Things change a bit on battery power, but in the Light test the P750ZM uses ~42W (give or take) and ~47W in the Heavy workload. Plugged in and running games, however, the power draw can easily crest 200W sustained.
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mrcaffeinex - Thursday, March 12, 2015 - link
I have the 7850K in one of my computers at home. It performs satisfactorily for everything I ask of it, including some gaming. The 7800 is a slightly neutered version of the 7850K, but has the advantage of a 1/3 power consumption reduction (less heat output being the key here). It also puts it at about 1/2 the power consumption of the reviewed unit (again, less heat being important). In this regard, if I could take it with me on the go, still do the work I need, plus entertain me when I want, it would be great.I know that mobile i5s are performance-competitive with the 7850K/7800. The market just doesn't offer a lot of options with the aforementioned mobile i5 CPU paired up with a dedicated GPU of comparable performance to the integrated GPU of the 7850K/7800 that I am aware of. The integrated GPU on the i5s, in my experience, do not offer enough performance when gaming, even if the CPU is more than adequate. AMDs mobile APUs have proven inadequate in this regard as well, at least compared to the 7850K/7800.
I would think there might be a market for a mobile solution with a desktop AMD APU. If Clevo is able to produce a cooling solution for a laptop that can dissipate the output of both a Core i7-4790K and GTX 980m, it should theoretically be possible to dissipate the heat generated by a single chip with a lower TDP than the CPU alone in the reviewed configuration. Also, last I knew, the price of a mobile i5 CPU was more than the price of the AMD APUs in question, which could make the AMD APU equipped unit cheaper than an i5 unit with dedicated GPU or offer a better quality screen/faster memory (to take advantage of the APU's iGPU) in the same price point.
Manch - Thursday, March 12, 2015 - link
Why even have a battery? I'd rather they use the space to provide better/quieter cooling. Make a sheet battery you can attach underneath it if you really want a battery for one of these. I have a GX70 and I've rarely ever had it untethered from a wall. Usually its just to power it up while I fish out the brick from my backpack so I can get to work.boeush - Thursday, March 12, 2015 - link
I, for one, do appreciate a built-in UPS. On DTR laptops, that's about all a battery is, anyway. So yeah, as long as it can provide ~30 min off the mains from full charge when new, it'd be good enough for me. Agreed, the rest of space/weight might as well be used for better cooling, or an optical drive, or something.caplus12000 - Sunday, May 24, 2015 - link
Anyone know the refresh rate of the 4K panel on this laptop? On the xotic pc website, it the samsung one claims to be running @ 60Hz, but I remember someone on a forum said they only operate at 48Hz?