Mythlogic Pollux 1613 / Clevo P157SM Review
by Jarred Walton on August 30, 2013 12:00 AM ESTMythlogic Pollux 1613 / Clevo P157SM LCD Analysis
The P157SM we received comes with the venerable AU Optronics B156HW01 v4, one of the best (if not the best) TN laptop panels around. It has a 95% NTSC color gamut, which translates into a much larger gamut than you will generally need. Of course, a wide gamut can actually end up creating seriously oversaturated colors if you’re working in an sRGB color space, but considering the poor quality of most laptop displays I prefer this panel to the other TN alternatives.
A good IPS panel would still be the best solution, and one that’s factory calibrated would be almost more than I could hope for. Mythlogic does provide a free “professional monitor color calibration” with the Pollux 1613, using a Spyder3 colorimeter, so you should at least get reasonably close to the calibrated results we show below, which is great. Unfortunately, the color profiles don’t necessarily work in all applications – a profile stored in a monitor’s LUT (Look Up Table) would be the right way of doing things, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a laptop other than the MacBook Pro Retina that takes such an approach.
There are two complaints I have with the display: it’s not able to get as bright as I’d like for use brightly lit environments, and with no calibration or profile loaded, the DeltaE on the B156HW01 v4 ends up being a rather poor 20.44 on average, with some colors hitting as high as 30 dE. Calibration thankfully fixes most of the problems, and we end up with maximum spikes of 5.3 and an average of 1.91. And as mentioned above, Mythlogic will calibrate your laptop to its specific display (using a Spyder3 colorimeter) for free; many of the other boutiques charge $50 or more for this service.
Contrast could also be better, as 700:1 isn’t as good as what we’re seeing with the new AHVA/IPS panels. Still, it’s a pleasant panel to use in general, and imaging professionals will be well served by the colors. Viewing angles, as mentioned earlier, are also about as good as you can expect from TN – a little washed out from above and below, but nowhere near as bad as something like the MSI GE40 panel.
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Meaker10 - Friday, August 30, 2013 - link
It would be interesting to compare the XTU graph of each actually to see how their behaviour is different then. I might have to investigate that when I get the chance.That does not change the fact the 4930MX can run in the MSI at 4.1ghz during game play though. Sure that might not last during full rendering load or prime (stock CPUs will not either in any system including the sager) but it still behaves and just lowers the clock as it hits the power limit (Set to a healthy 75W) rather than temp throttle.
Notmyusualid - Sunday, September 1, 2013 - link
95C sounds about right to me.Speaking for my M18x R2 - If I'm gaming for extend periods (think h o u r s), I run HWinfo64 to force the CPU fan higher than the bios would ordinarily set, and I find 4 cores @ 4.4GHz in High Perf mode to be the most stable for me. 85C is the absolute max I would see in this state, and it is often less. I can run a 4.5GHz, and some run higher, but I'm happy with the stability with 4@ 4.4GHz.
The GPUs I don't overclock, ever.
xtyling - Friday, August 30, 2013 - link
Jarred.. On a $1500 budget and need for a portable (13-15inch form factor) gaming machine... which would you choose.. Digital Storm's Veloce or this Mythlogic Pollux?JarredWalton - Friday, August 30, 2013 - link
The Veloce is just the Clevo W230ST (sold as the Mythlogic Chaos 1313, as well as by most other Clevo resellers -- http://www.mythlogic.com/configure.php?id=147), and it's in a different category as it's smaller and tops out at the GTX 765M. You can get an idea of performance by looking at the Razer Blade 14 numbers, but of course for $1500 you wouldn't be getting GTX 780M in the first place. I believe the W230ST also includes an IPS panel (that's what Mythlogic says at least), so that's actually a nice bonus.For portability at the cost of performance, I think W230ST looks like a good compromise. Gaming at 1080p will need to drop down to ~High detail with no AA in many games, but I would be okay with that. If you can push the budget to $1630, grab one from Mythlogic with the 512GB mSATA SSD. :-)
name user - Friday, August 30, 2013 - link
ah yes, a tramp stampyes i will buy this product, with money, and take it places with me because its portable, with a tramp stamp
because im a goddamn idiot
gnorby - Friday, August 30, 2013 - link
While many Clevo based systems run about the same, dollar-wise, Mythlogic has a policy called the Phoenix Upgrade Policy which means that as long as you own the laptop, you pay 5% over their cost on any upgrade components, and they will install and then run a full test suite (just like when the machine is new) before returning it to you with the new hardware. That's as close to future-proofing as I've found yet.I have a Mythlogic Nyx 17", and since getting mine, my son and nephew both bought theirs. We've all been very pleased with pre-sales support, sales and technical support. These guys are a joy to work with.
Keep in mind that I'm 53, have dealt professionally with computers since the 1980s, and am not easy to impress.
DanNeely - Friday, August 30, 2013 - link
That sounds promising; but my question would be if the extremely high prices that a 3rd party would have to pay for the parts for a DIY an MXM are AMD/nVidia's (distributors?) prices or profiteering my the people putting them up on ebay/etc.I suppose the question to ask if I was in the market for one would be what their price would be to upgrade last years model from a 680 to a 780.
nerd1 - Friday, August 30, 2013 - link
I have found that upgrading MXM GPU is prohibitively expensive and usually it is way easier and cheaper to sell and repurchase a new laptop.rpgfool1 - Friday, August 30, 2013 - link
Any differences between the Clevo P170SM and the Clevo P177SM? I'm looking to get one probably around Black Friday or Christmas. Checking out the various Clevo resellers and vendors and Mythologic seems to be quite friendly, even though their prices are slightly higher. Also looked into PowerNotebooks, Malibal, XoticPC, and LPC-Digital.JarredWalton - Saturday, August 31, 2013 - link
The P170SM and P150SM have slightly different designs, with one less 2.5" drive supported I believe, plus no backlit (tramp stamp) on the touchpad, and the touchpad is Synaptics instead of Sentelic. Basically, all reasonable tradeoffs in my book.