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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JarredWalton - Wednesday, March 11, 2015 - link
I suppose Intel can keep with Z97, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a new chipset -- this is Intel after all. When we were on LGA 775 forever, Intel had something like six chipsets. A few companies like ASRock even supported Core 2 and such on old "P4 only" chipset. I'm trying to think of any new CPU from Intel that didn't have a new chipset released around the same time -- not that a new chipset was always required, but it has always been available. I'm sure someone can remember a time or two when that wasn't the case, though. :-)will54 - Wednesday, March 11, 2015 - link
P751ZM has the same components but in a 17" form factor. I'm sure they will update both machines with broadwell when the time comes for them to be released.bji - Tuesday, March 10, 2015 - link
Beveled corners on keyboard keys are a FEATURE. It's one of the subtle ways that one's fingers feel their placement on keys. I find Apple keyboards disconcerting because they lack these bevels and my fingers had an awfully hard time adjusting to my rMBP keyboard at first. Still prefer almost any other keyboard to the rMBP keyboard but I've come to tolerate it and be reasonably proficient on it.Don't knock Clevo for being clever enough to actually include bevelled keys!
Sushisamurai - Tuesday, March 10, 2015 - link
yeah, i actually prefer bevelled keys to chic-let style keys. I was a little dismayed when my 15" MBP in 2008/2009 was refreshed with chic-let keys and the removal of a dedicated trackpad button. I certainly bang the right side of my hinged trackpad more than the left, and it's starting to show on my current MBP with a slight depression on the right side :(JarredWalton - Tuesday, March 10, 2015 - link
I wasn't trying to ding them, merely pointing out the difference in look and feel. As I said, I don't find the keyboard to be dramatically different from other laptop keyboards, which is generally a good thing. Then again, I can type fine on a variety of keyboards without complaining much. I just find it interesting how after going to chiclet keys for a while, we're now seeing keyboards start to look a bit more like the older beveled keys from years back.bji - Thursday, March 12, 2015 - link
Agreed. I was just reading about the new Macbook on the Apple site and they're actually advertising that the keys on the new keyboard are more concave for exactly the reason I mentioned. Since the industry often follows Apple I expect deeper concavity to become the new chiclet style keyboard norm, which will be welcome.Sushisamurai - Tuesday, March 10, 2015 - link
Overall pretty cool review, I wish they had/gave you a 1080p with 120Hz refresh display to test. Overall, I think 120Hz refresh is a better option/upgrade than 4K, as viewing movies and other media has a nice "smooth" effect.Sushisamurai - Tuesday, March 10, 2015 - link
errr... where's that edit button. I'm really looking forward to that overlocking article. I wonder if it's actually viable in a 15" chassis. That being said, is the i7-4790K removable/user replaceable? It's not soldered to the MB is it?JarredWalton - Tuesday, March 10, 2015 - link
Correct, LGA1150 (Haswell) desktop parts are all socketed; there are certain soldered down SKUs like the i7-4770R, but that's an OEM only part.Regarding overclocking, the CPU is already tapped out, but with the right BIOS and drivers (and with the cooling fans at 100%), you can get a substantial boost in performance. I've seen some people claiming "stable" performance at +350 core and +500 RAM, but at least on my sample notebook that's not remotely likely. +225 core and +350 RAM on the other hand passed all the benchmarks I threw at it.
D2ultima - Wednesday, March 11, 2015 - link
It is not soldered, and is change-able.Clevo machines pride themselves on easy user access to parts and upgrade-ability (even if the BIOS doesn't always support a new video card... but that's what Prema is for).
Also, the 120Hz screen you want does not exist. Only four 1080p 120Hz panels exist between 13.3" and 18.4" and all four are 17.3" panels. One 16.5" 900p 120Hz panel exists, but would not fit in that. All other existing 120Hz panels are in the vicinity of 720p and 768p in resolution and ALL twelve 120Hz panels in the size range I listed above are discontinued.
Nobody cared for 120Hz enough, so they didn't sell well enough to keep production.