14-15" laptop with graphics card / backlit keyboard

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GreenMonkey

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Hi all,

I'm in the market for a laptop. I would prefer 14". 15" might be OK if I really had to do so.

It needs a decent dedicated graphics card, and a backlit keyboard. I would prefer room for a mini-pcie or m.2 SSD as well as a HDD.

I REALLY liked the Lenovo Y410p, but there is no 5ghz option which, in 2013, is a deal breaker for me (we are in an apartment building currently with a lot of 2.4 networks). And apparently the BIOS requires hacking due to a pci-e whitelist of network cards (which is ridiculously stupid).

So, no Y410p. :( Why on earth would they leave out 5ghz support?

I would *prefer* not to have a 1080p screen. 1600x900 would be ideal.

Any recommendations? I would need to be able to grab it on a deal for under $1k at some point, so no crazy Sager units or whatever.
 
Vostro 3450 or 3460 from dell outlet to get 1080p you gotta step up to 3550 and 3560
 
No backlit keyboard on the Vostros... :(

Man, it is really hard to find a decent 13-14" laptop with a dedicated graphics card and a halfway decent display (IPS preferably).
 
MSI has a lot of great 15.6" options with backlit steelseries keyboards (much better than normal notebook keyboards by far). I personally have the GT60 0NE-403US and love it, the MSI notebooks have great build quality and have stood up to me so far which makes me happy. There are many choices so I would suggest taking a look since there are a lot to list
 
Dell XPS 14 is getting some rather large discounts right now on the Ivy models to clear out inventory for the Haswell ones.

You can get a 500GB HD for under 900 with Nvidia 630M graphics and 1600x900 screen. Seems to hit all of your mentioned specs. The 512GB SSD model is only 1200, pretty good deal on an SSD that large.
 
The ThinkPad T440 Ultrabook has a 1600x900 IPS panel screen. There will be an option for a backlit keyboard. Sadly, it only comes with a GT 720m to fulfill your gaming needs. As a consolation WiFi works at 5GHz. It is expected to go on sale in November.

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/t-series/t440/
http://gdgt.com/lenovo/thinkpad/t440/specs/


The ThinkPad T440p can be equipped with a GT 730m, however, nothing specifically state if it will also get a IPS panel like the T440 which is considered the "budget" T series ThinkPad laptop.

http://news.lenovo.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=1717

I'm trying to decide if I want the 14" T440p or the 15.6" T540p. Leaning towards the T540p though. I wonder when they will officially go on sale??
 
GreenMonkey said:
No backlit keyboard on the Vostros... :(

Man, it is really hard to find a decent 13-14" laptop with a dedicated graphics card and a halfway decent display (IPS preferably).
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you can add them for about $25 as the mb have the connectors for the back lit ones. My 14" has it and i like it a lot.
 
Erasmus354 said:
Dell XPS 14 is getting some rather large discounts right now on the Ivy models to clear out inventory for the Haswell ones.

You can get a 500GB HD for under 900 with Nvidia 630M graphics and 1600x900 screen. Seems to hit all of your mentioned specs. The 512GB SSD model is only 1200, pretty good deal on an SSD that large.
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I hadn't stumbled into that one, seems to fit the bill, thanks. I'll put it on my short list.

arr4ws said:
asus g46 is very nice if you can find a deal on it.

http://www.amazon.com/Asus-G46VW-BH...=UTF8&qid=1381927320&sr=8-4&keywords=asus+g55
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I did find the g46 but it also seems to have the Centrino 2230 chip with no 5ghz support. :S But as long as it doesn't have a whitelist maybe I could install a different one.

JaguarSKX said:
The ThinkPad T440 Ultrabook has a 1600x900 IPS panel screen. There will be an option for a backlit keyboard. Sadly, it only comes with a GT 720m to fulfill your gaming needs. As a consolation WiFi works at 5GHz. It is expected to go on sale in November.
Click to expand...

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/t-series/t440/
http://gdgt.com/lenovo/thinkpad/t440/specs/

Ooh, that seems nice, GT720 is a bit underpowered I think, but the IPS screen is nice. I'll keep an eye out for it. I use a couple of Lenovos at work - W510 and an x220 - they're solid laptops.

I think I've put the Lenovo y510p back on my list because it has everything except for 5ghz - I'd just have to use a usb adapter or hack the BIOS which doesn't seem to be that hard. Just annoying. I found someone on a forum that said you can order them over the phone with a Broadcom card with 5ghz support - maybe I'll try that - I can get a decent Lenovo discount from my employer so I don't necessarily have to use a code...

I think my problem is that I want dedicated graphics and NOT 1366x768...and would also like IPS...not a lot of IPS laptops with dedicated graphics, it seems like. Will have to arrange my priorities and think about it.

The XPS 14 seems like a really good option though as does the T440 Ultrabook if I don't mind a little less graphics oomph.
 
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The most powerful discrete graphic card in a ThinkPad is the GT 730m in a T440p and T540p. But I don't know if they have an IPS panel.

The GT 730m would be a bit faster than the GT 555m and I am almost certain a bit faster than the GT 640m.
 
1. There is a modded bios for the Y410p so you can replace the WiFi card to one that supports 5GHZ

2. How about the V7-482PG? Excellent IPS screen (1080p, touchscreen). GT 750M (DDR3), very good battery running times
 
Too bad you aren't looking into Clevo/Sager notebooks because the Clevo W230ST / Sager NP7330 is practically exactly what you're looking for.

It's 13" with a 1080p IPS screen (which looks gorgeous and scales well even at 900p), a GTX 765m, an i7 4700MQ (in the base model), and it even has a backlit keyboard! It also has room for a standard 2.5" SATA drive as well as TWO mSATA SSD drives. You can also equip it with an Intel Dual Band AC 7260 Wifi card that does indeed support 5ghz.

It's practically the most powerful and feature rich 13" notebook on the market right now.

I just picked one up a few weeks ago and as my first Clevo notebook, I must say it left very good first impressions. I can't recommend it enough. The base model on AVADirect is available at $1260, which is a bit more than what you were looking for, but it's well worth it.
 
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I read that laptops based on the Clevo W230ST chassis are more or less loud with constant fan noise. Not sure if that's due a BIOS glitch which does not lower the fan speed or if it is simply due to heat generated in normal usage.

How's the fan noise? How's the battery life when not playing game?
 
I've had mine for a few weeks and I can say that unless the system comes under a significant load the fan isn't noticeable at all. Every now and then the fan will kick in while watching a YouTube video or something, but it's not really that bad.


Battery usage is around the 3.5 hour mark for just web browsing. That's with the brightness turned down and the keyboard backlight brightness set to low. It's not the best by any stretch, but it's adequate for my needs.
 
CompuG##K said:
I've had mine for a few weeks and I can say that unless the system comes under a significant load the fan isn't noticeable at all. Every now and then the fan will kick in while watching a YouTube video or something, but it's not really that bad.


Battery usage is around the 3.5 hour mark for just web browsing. That's with the brightness turned down and the keyboard backlight brightness set to low. It's not the best by any stretch, but it's adequate for my needs.
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That battery life is atrocious lol.
 
CompuG##K said:
What can you expect with specs like that? It's not like it's a netbook or anything.
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I would expect the Optimus to kick in, throttle the GPU down to about nothing, and use the integrated graphics where you can get 6 hours EASY on a Haswell part just browsing and watching Youtube. If the Razer Blade 14" can get 6+ hours of battery life with that GPU in a much smaller and nicer chassis then the clevo should at least approach 5.
 
Erasmus354 said:
I would expect the Optimus to kick in, throttle the GPU down to about nothing, and use the integrated graphics where you can get 6 hours EASY on a Haswell part just browsing and watching Youtube. If the Razer Blade 14" can get 6+ hours of battery life with that GPU in a much smaller and nicer chassis then the clevo should at least approach 5.
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Hmm. I wonder how big the battery is on the Razer Blade. The Clevo appears to have a 6-cell battery with 62.16WH. Also I believe I read somewhere that a BIOS update was in the works to further improve battery life. Maybe with some optimizations we'll start to get some better battery life out of the W230ST. It's still a fairly new system with some room to improve.

With that said my recommendation still stands.
 
junky said:
1. There is a modded bios for the Y410p so you can replace the WiFi card to one that supports 5GHZ

2. How about the V7-482PG? Excellent IPS screen (1080p, touchscreen). GT 750M (DDR3), very good battery running times
Click to expand...

Thanks, seems like a nice option. I'll keep it in mind. I'd prefer 1600x900 for viewability over 1920x1080 (I'm not big on the "OMG pixel density!!" mentality) but it is IPS with a video card and a backlit keyboard.

The Sagers and such are too hardcore for me and pricewise, are also, really. I don't really need a power-sucking i7 performance laptop - just a midrange device. I am still using my HD4670 and my Phenom II on my desktop - I don't crazy amounts of oomph.
 
CompuG##K said:
Hmm. I wonder how big the battery is on the Razer Blade. The Clevo appears to have a 6-cell battery with 62.16WH. Also I believe I read somewhere that a BIOS update was in the works to further improve battery life. Maybe with some optimizations we'll start to get some better battery life out of the W230ST. It's still a fairly new system with some room to improve.

With that said my recommendation still stands.
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The battery is roughly the same capacity on the blade. The Clevo is getting battery life about 35-40% of what it should.
 
It should be a reasonable machine, it's just a shame a lot of the hardware is soldered in.
 
5 month bump here, gonna be buying in a couple of weeks.

Any new laptops to consider?

The y410p has gone down in my list a bit due to the lack of an IPS display and the fact that Lenovo doesn't seem to ever be releasing the dual-graphics ultrabay add-on. :S

There's a couple of new variants of the y510p out now which have an Intel 7260, so that solves my wireless N problem, but still no IPS screen. :(

I think the top runners so far are the Asus N550jv and the Asus Q550 models (which seem to be mostly Best Buy exclusive). Or the y510p.
 
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Wait for Cebit (March 12) announcements especially since it seems like you've already waited 5+ months. Nvidia will launch the 8xxm series, 860m and lower parts will be Maxwell (860m will be configured like a GTX 750ti with different clocks).

Right now is a poor time to buy unless you're getting sale price discounts (especially GTX 765m and lower parts) as those laptops are basically becoming end of life as the refreshes/replacements will be coming out, Lenovo has already announced the Y40/Y50 for example (just no GPU information as technically Nvidia and AMD have not officially announced the new GPUs yet).
 
limitedaccess said:
Wait for Cebit (March 12) announcements especially since it seems like you've already waited 5+ months. Nvidia will launch the 8xxm series, 860m and lower parts will be Maxwell (860m will be configured like a GTX 750ti with different clocks).

Right now is a poor time to buy unless you're getting sale price discounts (especially GTX 765m and lower parts) as those laptops are basically becoming end of life as the refreshes/replacements will be coming out, Lenovo has already announced the Y40/Y50 for example (just no GPU information as technically Nvidia and AMD have not officially announced the new GPUs yet).
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Thanks, that's about the timeframe I'm looking at (next week) so I'll keep an eye out.

I love buying on the price/performance curve also though, so if the new releases push prices down on some other models, esp. refurbs/etc I might go that route.

The Y40 and Y50 look nice. I see they dropped the ultrabays but added nicer IPS screens, perhaps...so, will be worth checking out.
 
Just saw this one on Anand review

http://anandtech.com/show/7838/dell-xps-15-haswell-edition-qhd-with-a-refined-design

Well, heat issue and throttling on this one...You would think by now they could learn how to cool a laptop

The initial drivers (Intel and NVIDIA) had an issue where playing games at non-native resulted in severe letterboxing (basically everything ran at 1:1 pixels on the display), so that was a problem that needed to be fixed. The updated drivers worked properly in this area, but as I commenced testing something became immediately apparent: GPU throttling was back, and it was quite severe. It’s at this point that I basically got lost in a web of troubleshooting, trying to figure out what was going on. Generally speaking, when the GPU hits 80C or more, the clocks start to drop, and in some cases things are apparently bad enough that the GPU simply gives up and runs at 135MHz core/405MHz GDDR5. As you can imagine, this makes running any game a very poor experience – running on just the iGPU would in most cases result in better performance.
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MrGuvernment said:
Just saw this one on Anand review

http://anandtech.com/show/7838/dell-xps-15-haswell-edition-qhd-with-a-refined-design

Well, heat issue and throttling on this one...You would think by now they could learn how to cool a laptop
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I have had that laptop for awhile now and I have not experienced any of the throttling issues reported (in fact if you read the review they said that the throttling went away with different drivers/bios). The throttling he is experiencing is almost 100% a driver problem. The drivers he was using had a bug that would cause unneeded throttling (From 100% to 0% like a step function) if the laptop had not been rebooted in a long time and the temperature passed a certain threshold. If he rebooted the laptop it did proper (and very minor, like 50MHz) lowering of the GPU clocks to keep the heat down. I expect that this odd issue will be solved soon in another driver update, but personally it has not effected my machine/experience at all and I have played for prolonged gaming sessions without rebooting the laptop in a long time.

My basement recently flooded, so my Desktop has been out of commission for the past month or so. In that time the XPS15 has been my primary machine for everything including gaming and it has been very solid. I like it a lot and think it is one of the best Windows laptops on the market.
 
Coincidentally the motherboard seems to have gone out on my desktop last week, so yeah...laptop sooner than later would be nice. :S

I'm torn because I like the Lenovo Y410p / y510p and they're a really solid deal right now, but they lack IPS screens. Maybe the new models will be priced OK.
 
As far as I know the y410p/510p prices currently aren't actually on "sale" and have been that sale price since last year (at least September, give or take a few tens of dollars), it's basically the regularly price.

There's been two prices mentioned for the y50 as starting at $699 or $999. There also wasn't really an indication of what configuration "starting at" would be.

GTX 850m GPUs with GDDR5 memory config will likely end up as the best in terms of value especially with overclocking.
 
I'm eyeballing up the Asus G46vw as well as the Y410p. Really don't want to go to 15.6", already lugging a Lenovo w510 for work around in my bag, this would be a second lappy.

Which is faster, the GTX 660M in the Asus, or the Y410p's GT 755M? Not too up-to-date on GPU knowledge, especially mobile (and haven't had an Nvidia chip in a long time). Some googling didn't find me a clear answer.

I'm not sure about continuing to wait for the 800m laptops which will probably be $700-$1k. I'm really in a $600-$800 budget tops and with no computer right now besides my work lappy it's a bit aggravating.
 
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If Lenovo was saying anything about a release date for the Y40 that would be nice. I can't find anyone with an 800m series laptop ready for sale despite most of them showing in January at CES.

I've seen conflicting reports on the y40/50 release dates, everything from mid-March to "end of spring" which could be not until May.
 
Ended up with an Asus N550JV for $900 plus some cash - I didn't like that the video card has DDR3 memory instead of GDDR, but it was one of the few laptops with an IPS screen and I decided that mattered more day-to-day, seeing as I'm not a heavy PC gamer these days.

Might have gotten a y510p with SLI graphics if I'd seen one in the outlet, but it didn't pop up in the couple of days I was looking.
 
Edit: Whoops, nevermind! Seems you got what you were looking for already. Well, in case anyone else comes along looking for something similar...

Razer Blade 14" - great specs, high end chassis/features etc... luxury type, expensive.

MSI notebooks - There are some very nice 14" and 15" models, all of which have a multicolored backlit user controlled Steel Series keyboard. Be wary, there are a lot of models with very similar model numbers that may be different in a number of ways! I suggest going to www.xoticpc.com and checking them out there. It is of special note that there should be a 15" "GHOST Pro" model, which is made to be thin and powerful (they already have the Stealth Pro model which is the same idea but in 17") with luxe materials. Can be somewhat expensive, but lots of options and known to have good quality. Definitely buy from Xotic-PC or a similar type of place which have HUGE options for customization, such as adding in a secondary copper heatsink and/or high end TIM goo.

Clevo/Sager - For price/performance these tend to be great - you can get excellent specs. Look towars their "special edition" models. The only downside tends to be them being sort of light on "luxury" features - you won't find full metal unibody chassis here. Still, well regarded in most cases, and upgradable. Look on XoticPC as well for them

Asus - Right now Asus has just updated their 17" gaming notebooks and they're worthy competitors for MSI for instance, but they don't have much in the way of 15" or less.
 
Like the blade there are euro versions of the MSI GS60 with the 870M. That will be interesting.
 
The Alienware 14 was actually pretty much perfect for me (OK, a bit heavy/blingy), but even from the outlet I was looking at $1200-$1500 for an i7 model and I wanted to stay in the $600-$800 range if possible.

Too much extra $$ for me, for the glowy gamer bling and graphics power.

The newest Razor Blade looks awesome too, but same deal, over my price range.
 
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