MySN XMG P502 (Clevo P150EM) Notebook Review

1. Introduction2. XMG P502: Packaging and Bundle3. XMG P502: Design4. XMG P502: Connectivity5. XMG P502: Hardware6. BIOS and Testing Methodology7. Synthetic: 3DMark 118. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage9. Synthetic: PCMark 710. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven11. Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra 201212. Synthetic: Cinebench R11.513. Synthetic: Super Pi14. Synthetic: CrystalDiskMark15. Real World: Media Encoding16. Real World: MKV Playback17. Real World: Blu-Ray Playback18. Gaming: Battlefield 319. Gaming: DiRT Showdown20. Technical: Acoustics21. Technical: Thermal Dynamics22. Technical: Battery Life23. Technical: Power Consumption24. Closing Thoughts25. View All Pages

Everything considered, we're very impressed with the XMG P502 and we think it's a great option for anyone looking for an extremely high performance gaming notebook.

The build quality of the machine is reasonably good with the exception of the keyboard which is below average at best. We usually make a point of typing out the whole review on the laptop we're testing so we can get a good idea of how it feels.  In this case we barely made it past the introduction before we found ourselves itching to plug in our Corsair Vengeance K60.

The keys feel spongy and unresponsive but by far the most annoying part of the typing experience is the touchpad which seems to activate every few words and moves the cursor across the screen. Thankfully it can be disabled. It is nice to see XMG using LED backlighting on the keyboard, though.

We were very impressed by the performance of the XMG P502 as it showed excellent performance throughout our test suite.  We were especially impressed with the crazy performance of the nVidia GeForce GTX 680M graphics card which achieved some impressive framerates in our gaming tests. The CUDA power with media rendering is also very noteworthy.

The LED Backlit screen is excellent and boasts impressive brightness and viewing angles.  We love the matte finish of the screen on our test sample but there is a gloss option available at no extra cost for those who have a strong preference in that direction.

Even though the mSATA solid state drive is limited to SATA-300 speeds, it's great that you can configure the machine with both a SSD for speed and a hard drive for storage.  You can also configure the machine with a single large SSD if you want the best possible performance.

At a price of £1641.20 inc. VAT from MySn.co.uk for our particular configuration, the XMG P502 is quite pricey but this is the price you'll have to pay to get your hands on a gaming notebook of this calibre.

A similarly specified Alienware M17X would set you back well over £2000 which makes the P502 quite good value for money.  The base version is available from £839 with none of the optional extras we have on our test sample. We would recommend investing in a quality gaming keyboard, though, as the built in unit isn't up to scratch for intensive typing duties.

Pros

• Impressive screen.
• Attractive design.
• Good connectivity.
• Killer 1102 Wireless-N card.
• Powerful graphics.
• Good value.

Cons

• Awful keyboard.

KitGuru says: An impressive gaming laptop which is only let down by a substandard keyboard.

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