The Clevo W110ER shows how far high-power portable laptops have come but also shows the trade-off between the Ultrabook platform and a standard notebook computing platform. Ultrabooks are unlikely to reach this level of performance in 2012; This level of processing power won’t reach Ultrabook sizes and weights!
The Clevo W110ER brings fully-clocked Ivy Bridge chips together with an Nvidia GT650M in a 37mm thick, 1.8KG chassis with an 11.6” screen. While it has a ‘gaming’ feel to it, it’s worth taking a closer look for anyone wanting a powerful 11.6’-er that will run a huge dynamic range of scenarios.
Clevo are a well-known ODM who are punting this out to the re-branders so the specs are obviously all negotiable but according to the spec-sheet, you’ve got a selection of full-speed Ivy Bridge dual and quad-core options which all offer the HD 3000 or, we assume, the HD 2500 and HD 4000 too. It’s not being offered with Ultrabook style CPUs although they may not be allowed to publish that information until the processors are formally launched in June.
Important to note is the weight. 1.8KG will feel very bulky for an 11.6” laptop although they’ve obviously had to balance the weight with the need for a bigger battery and high-throughput cooling system. Even so, a 62WH battery will only return about 2hrs of gaming. 6-7hrs of web-working should be possible. The 37mm (max) thickness is twice that of most Ultrabooks.
The screen is 1366×768 which, on an 11.6” dimension we feel is an acceptable resolution. Higher resolutions would affect gaming smoothness.
Talking of gaming, the Nvidia GT650M should provide some really decent punch and will help mobile video editors.
There are 2.5” SATA disk options that will obviously range from cheap hard drives to high-end SSDs. That will be the OEMs choice. A full SDXC card slot, a good range of ports, an internal slot for the wireless card, built-in Gigabit Ethernet, removable battery and dual memory slots for up to 8GB help to cover as many usage scenarios as possible.
OEMs have already started to talk about this model with Maingear being the one getting the most coverage today. The Maingear Pulse will ship on June 3rd with a starting price of $1099. The Verge highlights other OEMs though and includes a link to the full specifications PDF. [Link]
Look for it starting May 29th from a variety of retailers under a variety of names, including the Sager NP6110, Origin EON 11-S, Eurocom Monster 1.0, Maingear Pulse 11 and Mythlogic Chaos 1212
While less than an 1″ thick isn’t that important to me but at 1.46″, it’s pretty thick. I wonder if a non-discrete graphics version could be thinner. Maybe 1″. The bezels seem to be smaller than all the other 11.6″ ultrabooks I’ve seen too.
Anyway, I’d still get this over any 11.6″ ultrabook if I were to replace my Acer 1830T soon.
I’m definitely interested in this if I can get one with a quad core and and non-discrete graphics. That would be great when I run multiple virtual machines at the same time. I wonder why it’s only up to 8 GB of RAM instead of 16 GB. Clevo couldn’t put on that last address line to the RAM controller?
I run VMs too and a quad core non-discrete GPU option would be great. I have no need for a discrete GPU but more cores are a definite plus. So I hope a configuration like that comes out. It should be cheaper too. Otherwise, I’ll pass on this notebook.
A quad core would definitely help with my VMs. Even with a lightweight Linux distro for a host, a dual core isn’t enough for me. I was hoping for the next Thinkpad X230 to have a quad core but that’s unlikely. Hopefully this comes out in the US with a quad core and a non-discrete graphics option. I’d probably make use of Optimus and permanently disable the Nvidia GPU.
Here’s a video of it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNLUjJEZPEQ
There’s a fairly active thread here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo-reviews-owners-lounges/655833-official-clevo-w110er-sager-np6110-owners-lounge.html
Mentions some resellers are allowing you to configure and pre-order one. I clicked on some of them and there were no option to choose a quad core nor remove the Nvidia GPU.
NM, Mythlogic is planning on offering a quad core option.
That’s great. Then I’ll be getting the quad core and disabling the GT650M. Is Mythlogic the only company bringing this to the US?
The only real significant advantage of that GPU is playing games, the standard voltage CPU really doesn’t make much difference. UB’s pack plenty of power for almost all of the same tasks besides gaming.
This device has an extremely niche market, the “traveling gamer”. It has plenty of trade-off’s in thickness & weight with no price advantage.
Devices like this are completely DOA until discrete GPU ‘s can be fit into a UB form factor.
Anyone know of any sites that focus on high performance ultraportables like this Clevo (ie. not ultrabooks)? A 3612QM in a 13.3″ or smaller notebook would be great. I need performance and a small footprint for cramp labs. Thanks.
Yeah, it’s 16GB allowable RAM, actually. Two slots that can each take up to 8GB. The standard config now is a 4GB in each slot.