xm15: i7 review

EDIT: as of 4 months, my laptop is doing great.

It has been about 4 months sense I got my laptop and it has done everything asked of it.

Netflix, School work, Engine Tuning, Skype, Web Browsing, light gaming (more on this), FTP. video encoding, etc. - None of that has given me a single problem. 

I upgraded my hard drive to a samsung 840 pro and man is it the fastest thing on earth.  Combined with an i7 and this thing handles business.   Bootup is very fast. It is fast enough for me to turn the laptop completely off between tuning sessions for our "race motors" and quickly being ale to get back into my program without much downtime/annoyance.  Everything is pretty instant with no lag.

The 1080p screen makes web browsing and using Office or even tuner studio at the same time easy.  You dont need to run programs full screen, rather you can run two side by side for quick back and forth research. 

Here is a screenshot of Tuner Studio, sorry if it is huge, it is 1920x1080 res :D




Now for gaming.  We all know the i5/i7 will handle any game just fine.  Even in a laptop games run pretty good.  The bottleneck in my system is the 635M gpu.  I can play Dirt3 and Skyrim just fine at lower resolutions and maintain 40-50+fps.  Playing at 1080p tends to cause the system to slow down in dirt3, as if its getting too hot.  Dropping the resolution probably makes things easier.  Its hard to notice a difference anyways on a 15inch screen when gaming.  I did not guy this laptop for games but it is nice to be able to go to a friends house and play skyrim side by side without having to bring my desktop.

Now onto battery life.  I never game without being plugged in so I cant comment on that part.  Battery life while running tuner studio is great. Sometimes I have the laptop datalogging my engine while I go on large drives (45min).  I do this with the screen closed 99% of the time.  Usually the battery level hardly even drops.  With the screen open/on, battery life suffers more but thats expected.  I NEVER find my self needing the laptop to run on battery for over an hour and a half.  Sometimes I leave it on and unplugged so I can fully drain the battery and let me tell you that it takes a while and can be annoying because I want to go to bed but I cant because im still at 30% battery haha. 


LINUX.  I wanted to run Ubuntu a majority of the time.  With the ssd everything was fast and smooth.  Performance in linux was great but I could not get the 3rd party nvidia driver that switches to the intel gpu when the 635M is not needed (honestly I dont need the 635 when running linux).  I think the lack of proper drivers for the dual gpu setup caused the system to have issues with battery life.  It was not terrible but it was worse than windows.  Because of that, I opted to run windows full time. 


Long story short, I am still satisfied. All the little things like usb3.0, webcam, mic, speakers, keys, touchpad, lights, fans still work like day one and dont give me issues.   It honestly feels like ive had the laptop for much longer than 4 months.  Im so comfortable with it now its great.

Thanks

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I got my XM15 from Digital Storm today, 2 days early according to Fed Ex.  Super Satisfied.


Packaging was great, nothing difficult to get into yet the laptop was protected and came out spotless. 

The laptop its self is very nice and feels well built.  Everything is just nice.


I got the xm15 with everything stock except for the CPU, I opted for the 3630 i7.  I cant stand slow laptops (not that the i5 would have been slow) but I wanted to be sure.  Combine the i7 with 8GB of ddr3 and Nvidea 635M gpu and you get a pretty tough laptop.  It will be used for Video editing, School work and maybe a little skyrim.  I did a couple benchmarks just to compare to my AMD systems, and Lets just say I am VERY satisfied (this is my first modern Intel setup)

- True Crypt AES bench 5mb

     3630 i7 = 1.5gb/s

     A4 APU = 800mb/s

    Phenom II quad 3.8ghz = to little to remember.  It was less than the APU (this cpu does not have an AES instruction set!)

- Win Rar

    3630 i7 = 4300kb/s (on battery)
    3630 i7 = 7000kb/s (plugged in)

    AMD 965 3.8ghz = 4300kb/s

The AMD 965 has faster ram.  Same speed but tighter timings.  Im glad the laptop is more powerful (in these tests), I can always upgrade the desktop.  The CPU and board are both somewhat dated.  


Thank you Digital Storm for the great laptop, and quick service!




Edited by firefoxx04 - 27 Aug 2013 at 5:20pm

Thank you for taking the time to post your review!

Congrats on your new laptop!

Thanks guys 

I have two friends with DS laptops, they both love them.  I knew if I wanted something fast, I only had one choice.


Edited by firefoxx04 - 01 May 2013 at 8:27pm