Oke ik heb deze review reeds op een ander (engelstalig) forum gepost maar wilde jullie mijn ervaringen met deze vrij onbekende maar geweldige notebook niet onthouden dus hierbij..
I was looking for a thin ultraportable with good graphics performance and decent battery life, a combination hard to find. Most of the Sandybridge-ultrabooks being released right now only have the inbuilt HD3000 gpu which really is not capable of decent HD playback/gaming.
This will likely change with Ivy Bridge-notebooks and the integrated HD4000 which, according to rumors, will have double the performance of current Sandybridge graphics.
Competition
Main competitors of the P330 in the [13-14”, sub-1000 EUR, with dedicated GPU]-market are:
- Acer TimelineX 3830tg
pros: great cobalt blue design, super battery life (up to 8 hours wifi browsing), good performance GT540m gpu
cons: bad throttling issues when under load (cpu scales back to 1.2 Ghz), size (2,25cm depth) and weight (1,9kg) are a bit on the heavy side
- Asus U36sd-A1
pros: very thin (only 1,85cm depth) and low weight (1,66kg), great battery life
cons: high temperatures when under load, GT520m = entry level gpu; not much better than the integrated HD3000.
- Msi X460DX
pros: great performance from the GT540m gpu, fast 7200rpm hard drive, dvd-drive
cons: size (2,5cm depth) and weight (2kg) are a bit on the heavy side
- Sony Vaio SB
pros: superior vaio design, illuminated keyboard, low weight (1,75kg)
cons: size (2,3cm depth), very loud fan noise even when idle, AMD 6470M = entry level gpu; same as GT520m, manual gpu switching
- Asus U44sg
pros: thin bezel, low weight (1,7kg), very thin (1,9cm depth), great battery life, 14-incher in a 13 inch design
cons: geforce 610M = entry level gpu; slightly better than GT520m, availability?
As you can see in the list above, ultraportables with a good GPU either have to sacrifice thin design and low weight or have temperature/noise issues. How does P330 hold up?
Design (9/10)
Sleek dark blue aluminium exterior gives a premium business look. Personally I don’t like the rounded Mac-like corners so the P330 is great with its sharp edges. I do like the Vaio SB design just a little bit better.
Weight (10/10)
Weight is really low at only 1.7kg. It’s comparable to the weight of Asus U36sd and the Sony Vaio SB, slightly heavier than most of the ultrabooks. They can’t cut down on weight much more in this form factor considering the performance you get.
Size (8/10)
It would have been great if they managed to keep the depth of the notebook below 2cm aka “ultrabook size”. The laptop isn’t huge but it’s definitely not the thinnest 13” either. It’s good thing the front is thinner than the backside, which gives an overall slimmer impression.
Lowering the depth most likely would have resulted in cooling problems, so I’m fine with that.
Connectivity (9/10)
Basic ports are available including 2 USB 2.0, 1 USB 3.0, Bluetooth 3.0, HDMI port, VGA, Ethernet, multi card reader and Kensington lock. The new Intel WIDI technology is missing which you do get on the MSI X460DX and the Sony Vaio SB. Placement of the ports is good 2 usb ports on the right, 1 on the left. Wi-Fi speed was painfully slow at first boot , until I removed some sort of network security software that came pre-installed. Now network speeds are acceptable but still could have been better. Speedtest.net gave me 25ms ping time, 1Mbps download speed and 0,3 Mbps upload. (this was due to my own network, testing on another network I got 2.5 Mbps download and 1.81 upload so not too bad). Network speeds are now good.
Keyboard (9/10)
Keys provide good feedback. Keyboard is not too small, not too big. Too bad there is no caps-lock / num-lock indicator light, but you do get an onscreen notification when you change state of these buttons. There is also a button to toggle fan speed between normal and silent but I can’t really tell the difference.. An illuminated keyboard like the one on the Vaio SB would have made it perfect.
Trackpad (8/10)
Nothing special here just your standard touchpad. As mentioned a bit on the small side but the texture does give a good feedback. Now the laptop comes preinstalled with synaptics driver but it is actually an elantech touchpad so you sure want to install the latest elantech drivers that make you able to use features like 2 finger scrolling, pinch to zoom, rotate gesture and more of that fancy stuff.
Display (8/10)
The thin bezel design is nice although it doesn’t reach all the way to the edge of the screen. Screen hinge is solid build, no shaking when you move the laptop. Colors, brightness and viewing angles are well enough for my needs. Images do seem a little pixelated if you look closely. I’m coming from a 1680x1050 resolution so it is adjusting a bit to the lower resolution. The slim profile of the display is nice.
Applications performance (10/10)
It doesn’t get any better than this within this form factor. The dual core i5-2435m processor is way fast enough for any application or game I use. Decompressing an archive of 8GB that took few minutes on my previous laptop is done here in less than a minute, while browsing and installing a program in the background with no lag whatsoever. Office applications, SPSS, SQL, Photoshop etc. all run very smoothly.
When stressed, the bottleneck is the 640gb 5400rpm hard drive, so I might swap it for an SSD in the future. The laptop already has a secondary 4gb SSD drive that is used for fast booting and caching. This makes it possible for the system to cold boot within 30 seconds on Win7, pretty neat.
Calculating PI to 1 million decimals takes 13sec with SuperPi.
Will add PCMark Vantage results later.
Gaming performance (10/10)
The P330 can play almost any recent game at high detail, native resolution. I think the GT555m will be capable of running new games for a good time to come. Even when Ivy bridge arrives it’s very likely the GT555m is still a lot faster. Every game <2010 is playable max detail.
One thing I did notice is when you’re on battery there is some GPU throttling. This means the integrated gpu will sometimes take over from the dedicated GT555m resulting in framedrops obviously. Most like this is due to the GT555m not getting enough power. Haven’t experienced this when plugged in so nothing to worry about.
Below the average framerates for some more recent games I tested. Only visuals of Skyrim, Metro and Battlefield 3 have to be turned down a little.
Skyrim: high/med, 35 fps
Battlefield 3: high/med, 30 fps
Unreal Tournament 3 demo: 60 fps (max)
Deus Ex HR: high, 47 fps
Dirt 3: high, 48 fps
COD Black Ops: ultra, 38 fps
Crysis 2: advanced: 35 fps
GTA 4: to be tested
Metro 2033: med, 35 fps
Just Cause 2: high 55fps
Stalker COP: max, 35fps
3DMark gave the system a 10307 score on default settings.
GPU-Z:
Battery (8/10)
Haven’t been experimenting with battery for too long but here are 3 scenario’s I tested.
Using only office applications, wifi off, 50% brightness = 6 hours of usage.
Moderate browsing, wifi on, 70% brightness = 5 hours of usage.
Don’t expect to game for a long time on battery because with heavy usage, wifi on, 100% brightness and using GT555m, the battery is dead in less than an hour.
Battery life, while not as impressive as the Asus U36sd, is good.
Temperature (9/10)
When browsing and doing normal tasks or watching a movie, the notebook doesn’t get hot at all even when using it on your lap. Haven’t tried gaming while on my lap but that’s just stupid so doesn’t matter if it gets hot. Even with the most demanding games temperature remains very comfortable.
Noise (9/10)
This thing is silent. Seriously. While browsing, using office apps, watching movie you have to hold your breath to hear the fan. Only when gaming the fan kicks in but not anything like the jet engines I had before, it’s still very quiet. Very impressed by this considering the cooling for the power under the hood that has to be done. As mentioned there is also a fan switch button but normal and silent mode both are equally silent.
Conclusion (9/10)
I’m not rating sound quality because this is irrelevant to me when I buy a laptop, but I can tell you that the sound for sure is below average and the worst aspect of this notebook if it would matter. Even a 10” netbook I bought few years ago produces better sound. There is an option to enable SRS technology which I strongly advise you to do if you would want to play any music at all through the speakers. It makes the experience a little more painful.
That aside, the non availability pretty much everywhere in the world at the moment is an issue. I had to import the laptop which made the overall cost (VAT, taxes,..) rather high about 1600usd, comparable to price of a 13” Macbook Air/Pro (heavier, no dGPU, mac). Can be different in your case depending where you live or as availability becomes better. This is something I did knew before I bought the unit and I think is definitely worth it. Will be using this one for some time to come.
Thanks Ryan for getting en shipping the laptop!
Bottom line: This really is the best 13” laptop available on the market today. Minor details like an average display don’t weigh up to all other elements, which are all extremely good. If you are looking for a 13” laptop and you have the chance to buy one of these go for it!
Summary
Pro: Design, superb performance, low weight, good battery life, low heat / noise.
Cons: Average display, just a fraction too thick, (availability/price).
Score: 9/10
I was looking for a thin ultraportable with good graphics performance and decent battery life, a combination hard to find. Most of the Sandybridge-ultrabooks being released right now only have the inbuilt HD3000 gpu which really is not capable of decent HD playback/gaming.
This will likely change with Ivy Bridge-notebooks and the integrated HD4000 which, according to rumors, will have double the performance of current Sandybridge graphics.
Competition
Main competitors of the P330 in the [13-14”, sub-1000 EUR, with dedicated GPU]-market are:
- Acer TimelineX 3830tg
pros: great cobalt blue design, super battery life (up to 8 hours wifi browsing), good performance GT540m gpu
cons: bad throttling issues when under load (cpu scales back to 1.2 Ghz), size (2,25cm depth) and weight (1,9kg) are a bit on the heavy side
- Asus U36sd-A1
pros: very thin (only 1,85cm depth) and low weight (1,66kg), great battery life
cons: high temperatures when under load, GT520m = entry level gpu; not much better than the integrated HD3000.
- Msi X460DX
pros: great performance from the GT540m gpu, fast 7200rpm hard drive, dvd-drive
cons: size (2,5cm depth) and weight (2kg) are a bit on the heavy side
- Sony Vaio SB
pros: superior vaio design, illuminated keyboard, low weight (1,75kg)
cons: size (2,3cm depth), very loud fan noise even when idle, AMD 6470M = entry level gpu; same as GT520m, manual gpu switching
- Asus U44sg
pros: thin bezel, low weight (1,7kg), very thin (1,9cm depth), great battery life, 14-incher in a 13 inch design
cons: geforce 610M = entry level gpu; slightly better than GT520m, availability?
As you can see in the list above, ultraportables with a good GPU either have to sacrifice thin design and low weight or have temperature/noise issues. How does P330 hold up?
Design (9/10)
Sleek dark blue aluminium exterior gives a premium business look. Personally I don’t like the rounded Mac-like corners so the P330 is great with its sharp edges. I do like the Vaio SB design just a little bit better.
Weight (10/10)
Weight is really low at only 1.7kg. It’s comparable to the weight of Asus U36sd and the Sony Vaio SB, slightly heavier than most of the ultrabooks. They can’t cut down on weight much more in this form factor considering the performance you get.
Size (8/10)
It would have been great if they managed to keep the depth of the notebook below 2cm aka “ultrabook size”. The laptop isn’t huge but it’s definitely not the thinnest 13” either. It’s good thing the front is thinner than the backside, which gives an overall slimmer impression.
Lowering the depth most likely would have resulted in cooling problems, so I’m fine with that.
Connectivity (9/10)
Basic ports are available including 2 USB 2.0, 1 USB 3.0, Bluetooth 3.0, HDMI port, VGA, Ethernet, multi card reader and Kensington lock. The new Intel WIDI technology is missing which you do get on the MSI X460DX and the Sony Vaio SB. Placement of the ports is good 2 usb ports on the right, 1 on the left. Wi-Fi speed was painfully slow at first boot , until I removed some sort of network security software that came pre-installed. Now network speeds are acceptable but still could have been better. Speedtest.net gave me 25ms ping time, 1Mbps download speed and 0,3 Mbps upload. (this was due to my own network, testing on another network I got 2.5 Mbps download and 1.81 upload so not too bad). Network speeds are now good.
Keyboard (9/10)
Keys provide good feedback. Keyboard is not too small, not too big. Too bad there is no caps-lock / num-lock indicator light, but you do get an onscreen notification when you change state of these buttons. There is also a button to toggle fan speed between normal and silent but I can’t really tell the difference.. An illuminated keyboard like the one on the Vaio SB would have made it perfect.
Trackpad (8/10)
Nothing special here just your standard touchpad. As mentioned a bit on the small side but the texture does give a good feedback. Now the laptop comes preinstalled with synaptics driver but it is actually an elantech touchpad so you sure want to install the latest elantech drivers that make you able to use features like 2 finger scrolling, pinch to zoom, rotate gesture and more of that fancy stuff.
Display (8/10)
The thin bezel design is nice although it doesn’t reach all the way to the edge of the screen. Screen hinge is solid build, no shaking when you move the laptop. Colors, brightness and viewing angles are well enough for my needs. Images do seem a little pixelated if you look closely. I’m coming from a 1680x1050 resolution so it is adjusting a bit to the lower resolution. The slim profile of the display is nice.
Applications performance (10/10)
It doesn’t get any better than this within this form factor. The dual core i5-2435m processor is way fast enough for any application or game I use. Decompressing an archive of 8GB that took few minutes on my previous laptop is done here in less than a minute, while browsing and installing a program in the background with no lag whatsoever. Office applications, SPSS, SQL, Photoshop etc. all run very smoothly.
When stressed, the bottleneck is the 640gb 5400rpm hard drive, so I might swap it for an SSD in the future. The laptop already has a secondary 4gb SSD drive that is used for fast booting and caching. This makes it possible for the system to cold boot within 30 seconds on Win7, pretty neat.
Calculating PI to 1 million decimals takes 13sec with SuperPi.
Will add PCMark Vantage results later.
Gaming performance (10/10)
The P330 can play almost any recent game at high detail, native resolution. I think the GT555m will be capable of running new games for a good time to come. Even when Ivy bridge arrives it’s very likely the GT555m is still a lot faster. Every game <2010 is playable max detail.
One thing I did notice is when you’re on battery there is some GPU throttling. This means the integrated gpu will sometimes take over from the dedicated GT555m resulting in framedrops obviously. Most like this is due to the GT555m not getting enough power. Haven’t experienced this when plugged in so nothing to worry about.
Below the average framerates for some more recent games I tested. Only visuals of Skyrim, Metro and Battlefield 3 have to be turned down a little.
Skyrim: high/med, 35 fps
Battlefield 3: high/med, 30 fps
Unreal Tournament 3 demo: 60 fps (max)
Deus Ex HR: high, 47 fps
Dirt 3: high, 48 fps
COD Black Ops: ultra, 38 fps
Crysis 2: advanced: 35 fps
GTA 4: to be tested
Metro 2033: med, 35 fps
Just Cause 2: high 55fps
Stalker COP: max, 35fps
3DMark gave the system a 10307 score on default settings.
GPU-Z:
Battery (8/10)
Haven’t been experimenting with battery for too long but here are 3 scenario’s I tested.
Using only office applications, wifi off, 50% brightness = 6 hours of usage.
Moderate browsing, wifi on, 70% brightness = 5 hours of usage.
Don’t expect to game for a long time on battery because with heavy usage, wifi on, 100% brightness and using GT555m, the battery is dead in less than an hour.
Battery life, while not as impressive as the Asus U36sd, is good.
Temperature (9/10)
When browsing and doing normal tasks or watching a movie, the notebook doesn’t get hot at all even when using it on your lap. Haven’t tried gaming while on my lap but that’s just stupid so doesn’t matter if it gets hot. Even with the most demanding games temperature remains very comfortable.
Noise (9/10)
This thing is silent. Seriously. While browsing, using office apps, watching movie you have to hold your breath to hear the fan. Only when gaming the fan kicks in but not anything like the jet engines I had before, it’s still very quiet. Very impressed by this considering the cooling for the power under the hood that has to be done. As mentioned there is also a fan switch button but normal and silent mode both are equally silent.
Conclusion (9/10)
I’m not rating sound quality because this is irrelevant to me when I buy a laptop, but I can tell you that the sound for sure is below average and the worst aspect of this notebook if it would matter. Even a 10” netbook I bought few years ago produces better sound. There is an option to enable SRS technology which I strongly advise you to do if you would want to play any music at all through the speakers. It makes the experience a little more painful.
That aside, the non availability pretty much everywhere in the world at the moment is an issue. I had to import the laptop which made the overall cost (VAT, taxes,..) rather high about 1600usd, comparable to price of a 13” Macbook Air/Pro (heavier, no dGPU, mac). Can be different in your case depending where you live or as availability becomes better. This is something I did knew before I bought the unit and I think is definitely worth it. Will be using this one for some time to come.
Thanks Ryan for getting en shipping the laptop!
Bottom line: This really is the best 13” laptop available on the market today. Minor details like an average display don’t weigh up to all other elements, which are all extremely good. If you are looking for a 13” laptop and you have the chance to buy one of these go for it!
Summary
Pro: Design, superb performance, low weight, good battery life, low heat / noise.
Cons: Average display, just a fraction too thick, (availability/price).
Score: 9/10
Verder wel strakke notebook maar één belangrijk punt wat ontbreekt is de verkrijgbaarheid en als je hem eenmaal hebt zit je weer met een garantieprobleem tenminste als je eens garantie moet claimen.
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