AVADirect's Clevo B5130M: GeForce GT 425M with a 15.6" 1080p Chaser
by Dustin Sklavos on November 23, 2010 12:00 AM EST15.6 Inches of 1080p-ness
It's a fact: we gripe incessantly about bad screens around here, and with good reason. The screens that go into notebooks are almost consistently terrible across the board, even by woefully cheap TN panel standards. Dismal viewing angles, dire color gamut, mediocre contrast and brightness...these are the problems that consistently plague the review units that pass through our hands. Which is a large part of how Dell wound up snaring our Gold Editors' Choice award with the XPS 15: that notebook had an awesome screen.
That said, there are other 15.6" notebooks with 1080p screens, and though they're rare, the Clevo B5130M is one of them. Upgrading from the stock 1366x768 screen to this 1080p panel is a paltry $56 from AVADirect, making it pretty much a slam dunk if you plan on ordering from them. But how well does it perform?
So it's not the best screen we've reviewed here. That said, the 1080p Hannstar panel in the Clevo B5130M does come awfully close. Even subjectively it's a nice screen with good viewing angles and a fairly wide "sweet spot," but the numbers back it up. When doing battery testing, our standard 100-nit brightness is the second-lowest setting in Windows for the screen, and believe me when I say it goes way up. If there's any disappointment here, it's that Clevo doesn't use the same AU Optronics panel that Dell does, but this screen also doesn't have the benefit of the kind of backlighting Dell's does either. The result is a great contrast ratio but only better-than-average color gamut.
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JarredWalton - Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - link
Yeah, the base AVADirect model has OS, 500GB HDD, but only 2GB RAM. Setting up equivalent specs XoticPC comes out ahead on this one (though that may always change). In the past, I've compared the two companies and AVADirect always came out ahead, but that's not always the case. Also note that XoticPC appears to charge a bit more on some upgrades, but then AVADirect charges a bit more on others. Not sure on shipping costs or any other factors, but go with whoever gives the better price. :-)gomakeit - Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - link
Since the laptop as configured is $1200 which is mightily close to the Asus G53J that sports a GT460M, I'm wondering what're your thoughts when comparing the two. Is the G53's LCD better than G51 (which was pretty lousy)? I hope you'd do a review on the G53 at some point!gomakeit - Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - link
Of course I meant the non-3D version of the G53 (Newegg prices it at $1450).Rasterman - Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - link
I got my G53 from Amazon last week for 1299 shipped, I have no idea why you would get this Clevo when the G53 exists.Meegulthwarp - Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - link
I was looking for a new laptop to replace my ageing Clevo M860TU (w/ 9600M GT) and this looked like the perfect replacement but I've come away sad. I was really expecting better battery life from this, my biggest complaint with my M860TU is the 2 hour battery life. I was hoping they would improve battery life after 2 years worth of die shrinks and architectural changes. Also the performance numbers don't seem to be much higher than what I'm getting right now not to mention they are 5 - 10 degrees hotter than mine on both idle and load. Can't justify another £1000 purchase just yet it seems.Hrel - Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - link
I wouldn't think you'd be able to justify that purchase until Sandy Bridge. But on the battery life note you can always get an external battery. I got an external Energizer battery, works for all laptops and mp3 players and phones and just about everything. Sure it ads a little bulk but if you carry your laptop around in a bag anyway it's not a problem. And it ads about 6 hours of intensive web surfing to my Dell Studio 1535, on top of the 3 hours I already get.On an aside I agree, I was really expecting better battery life from this. But when you look at load battery life it's comparable to similar systems; I think 3+ hours gaming is pretty darn good. There is an interesting Compal unit over at Cyberpower.com that uses the HD5650 and offers several options. Without OS and with a good CPU you can get it for like 800 bucks, 1080p and all. My friend got one and he plays Civ 5 on it for over 4 hours without needing to plug in. Gaming battery life, I think that's incredible.
TareX - Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - link
I'm impressed by the benchmarks... I'd like to see how it would compare to the Hp Envy 15, which supposedly has a much better GPU (sans Optimus though)SteelCity1981 - Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - link
No doubt that the 640UM is more suited for today's programs then the 720QM as of now. fast speed Dual Core over slower speed Quad Cores are still a lot more favorable with many programs out there, because there are still a lot of programs out there that don't take advantage of Quad Cores yet. But when more and more programs become Quad threaded, the 720QM going to have the advantage every time over the 640UM Dual Core and has more and more programs support Hyperthreading the performance gap will just get wider between the 720QM and 640UM due to the fact that the 720QM has double the amount of Hyperthreading virtual cores then the 640UM does.PlasmaBomb - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link
You mean i7 640M - The 640UM is an entirely different processor which runs at 1.2 GHz and Turbos up to 2.26 GHzSteelCity1981 - Thursday, November 25, 2010 - link
Yeah, i mean the 640m not 640UM.