The Metabox Prime-S P970EF is a powerful 17 inch laptop while being in a thinner Clevo
chassis, so let’s find out what’s on offer in this detailed review. I’ll be looking
at gaming performance, thermals, overclocking, battery life and basically everything in between
to help you decide if it’s worth buying.
Starting with the specs my unit has an Intel i7-8750H CPU, Nvidia RTX 2070 Max-Q graphics,
32GB of memory running in dual channel, a 17.3” 1080p 144Hz screen, and a 500GB M.2
NVMe SSD. It’s also got gigabit ethernet, 802.11ac WiFi, and Bluetooth 5, however hardware
can be customized while ordering, you can check the options using the link in the description.
The laptop has a metallic body and the lid is a matte gunmetal colour, while the interior
is matte black, and there are no sharp corners or edges anywhere, overall it felt quite well
built compared to other Clevo units I’ve tested.
The weight of the laptop is listed at 2.5kg barebones, so expect differences based on
hardware selection. Mine was just basically spot on with this, and with the 180 watt power
brick and cables for charging included the total weight rises to just under 3.2kg.
The dimensions of the laptop are 39.8cm in width, 26.8cm in depth, and just under 2cm
in height, so not too large for a 17” laptop. The smaller overall footprint gives us thin
bezels around the screen, which are about 8mm or so based on my own measurements.
The 17.3” 144Hz 1080p IPS-level screen looks pretty good, all viewing angles were fine
however there was no G-Sync available here.
I’ve measured the current colour gamut of the screen using the Spyder 5 Pro, and my
results returned 97% of sRGB, 68% of NTSC and 74% of AdobeRGB. At 100% brightness I
measured the panel at 316 nits in the center, and with a 700:1 contrast ratio, so overall
pretty good for a laptop for either gaming or other tasks like photo or video editing.
I’ve taken a long exposure photo in a dark room as a worst case backlight bleed test,
and there were some issues particularly from the left, which could be seen while viewing
darker content, but results will vary between laptop and panel.
There was less screen flex than I expected, considering that the lid is on the thinner
side, however it does mostly seem to be metal and having the hinges out towards the corners
further aids stability.
The laptop can just be opened up with one finger, the weight distribution is somewhat
even due to the cooling towards the back and battery up the front and I had no problems
using it on my lap.
Despite the thin screen bezels the camera is found above the display in the center.
The 720p camera was a little blurry but not too bad, while the microphone sounded pretty
good.
The keyboard in my unit had three zones of RGB backlighting which could be controlled
through the included control center software, and even the secondary functions on the keys
get lit up. Overall I liked typing on the keyboard, here’s how it sounds to try and
give you an idea of what to expect.
There was a little keyboard flex while pushing down hard, which I think should be expected
given the keyboard gets removed in order to access the internals, no issues during normal
use in any case.
The glass touchpad has precision drivers and was excellent, same as the P960ED and P970EN,
definitely one of the smoothest feeling touchpads I’ve ever used. The touchpad itself does
not press down, however it has physically separate left and right click buttons. It’s
actually got an in-glass fingerprint sensor, so after setting up Windows Hello the touchpad
will glow where you need to place your finger in order to log in, and it seemed to work
fast enough.
Fingerprints and dirt show up on the matte black interior, but as a smooth surface they’re
easy to clean.
On the left there’s the only side exhaust vent, so no hot air blowing on your hand if
you’re right handed, along with most of the I/O, including the power input, HDMI 2.0
output, mini DisplayPort 1.3 output, two USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C ports, the first of which
also has DisplayPort 1.3 available, however no Thunderbolt here, followed by a USB 3.1
Gen1 Type-A port.
On the right there are 3.5mm headphone and microphone jacks, second USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-A
port, SD card slot, gigabit ethernet port and Kensington lock.
On the back there’s just air exhaust vents towards the left and right corners, while
the front just has some status LEDs towards the right hand side.
Underneath there’s heaps of ventilation holes to assist air flow, and we’ll see
how a cooling pad can help take advantage of these soon. The two speakers are found
on the front left and right corners and face down, they don’t sound that great and were
tinny at higher volumes. Here’s what we’re looking at in terms of max volume while playing
music, and latencymon seemed to suggest it was alright.
The bottom panel can be removed by taking out 12 screws with a Phillips head screwdriver.
Once removed the keyboard needs to be popped off, just be careful as it’s attached by
ribbon cables. Underneath the keyboard are a further 4 screws to remove before taking
off the bottom panel. Once inside from left to right we get access to the battery, two
M.2 slots, two memory slots, WiFi card and 2.5 inch drive bay.
It’s pretty much the same as the P970EN I’ve previously covered, the difference
being that the EN has 2080 max-q graphics.
Powering the laptop is a 4 cell 62 Watt hour battery, and with a full charge and just watching
YouTube videos with the screen on half brightness, keyboard lighting off and background apps
disabled, I was able to use it for 3 hours and 54 minutes. The Intel integrated graphics
were in use during this test, thanks to Nvidia Optimus.
While playing the Witcher 3 with medium settings and Nvidia’s battery boost set to 30 FPS
the or battery lasted for 1 hour and 14 minutes, and the frame rate didn’t drop at any point.
The result while gaming was about average, perhaps a little lower outside of gaming though,
and both were just slightly ahead of the P970EN. I didn’t see the battery lose charge at
any point with the 180 watt power brick plugged in, but more on whether it’s enough soon.
Thermal testing was completed with an ambient room temperature of 24 degrees Celsius, so
expect different temperatures in different environments. Also keep in mind there are
heatpipes shared between processor and graphics, so a change in one of these will affect the
other.
Let’s take a look at some combined CPU and GPU workloads. Starting at the bottom of the
graph, at idle the temperatures were pretty good. The gaming tests were done with Watch
Dogs 2, as I find it to use a good combination of CPU and GPU, while the stress tests were
done by running the Aida64 stress test and the Heaven benchmark at the same time in order
to attempt to fully utilize both the processor and graphics. There were no problems while
gaming in my tests, and we can see that the cooling pad improved temperatures by around
3 to 4 degrees Celsius. While the temperatures were a little warmer under the worst case
stress test, no thermal throttling happened at any point during my testing. There was
power limit throttling, even with the CPU undervolted by -0.12v, as shown by UV on the
graph.
These are the average clock speeds for the same tests just shown. We’re not seeing
any improvement in CPU performance with the cooling pad in use as there was no thermal
throttling taking place. The CPU undervolt makes the biggest improvement, as the power
limit was the main factor holding back performance. While the cooling pad doesn’t necessarily
help improve performance here as we’re not thermal throttling, as we just saw it does
help with the temperatures if you want to run cooler.
Here’s what we’re looking at in terms of average CPU TDP. The limit was 45 watts
in Intel XTU, but I was not able to change this. The CPU undervolt lowers it a bit, though
I’m not too sure why using the cooling pad lowers it further. Anyway at stock there was
only power limit throttling, no thermal throttling here. I did however see some intermittent
current limit throttling before undervolting, so I’m not sure if the 180 watt power brick
is completely adequate. I wasn’t losing performance and never saw the battery drain
under any load, so it seems like the power limitations in place prevent this, making
the 180 watt brick enough.
These are the clock speeds I got while just running CPU only stress tests without any
GPU load, and without that combined load the results are better. There was power limit
throttling at stock which prevented the full 3.9GHz all core turbo speed of the i7-8750H
CPU. The -0.12v undervolt allowed us to get full performance in this CPU only stress test.
I wasn’t able to raise the power limit in CPU only load here either, so that couldn’t
be used to improve the performance. The undervolting also improved the temperatures by 7 degrees
while also improving performance at the same time.
To demonstrate how this translates into practical performance I’ve got some Cinebench CPU
benchmarks here. Full performance was achieved with single core in either test, as power
limit throttling only takes place under multicore workloads, and once undervolted there was
a nice improvement to the multicore score.
Here are the GPU only clock speeds while under a graphical only stress test, and the results
with a manual 100MHz overclock applied through MSI Afterburner. There’s no real difference,
and this shows in the temperatures, as we’re hitting power limit throttling even at stock.
As for the external temperatures where you’ll actually be putting your hands, at idle it
was in the low 30s, fairly average. While gaming and under stress test it got fairly
warm in the center and towards the lower left of the keyboard, reaching the mid 50s between
the keys though a bit lower on the keys themselves.
As for the fan noise produced by the laptop I’ll let you have a listen to some of these
tests.
At idle it was close to silent, just slightly audible. While gaming or under stress test
with the fans at default speeds, we can see that they were just as loud manually maxed
out, as they were already running at full speed under these loads, and it was approaching
the louder side here, not too unexpected given the specs inside a thin chassis.
Finally let’s take a look at some gaming benchmarks, I’ve tested these games with
these Nvidia drivers and Windows fully updated with performance mode in the control center
software enabled.
Battlefield V was tested in campaign mode rather than multiplayer, as it’s easier
to consistently perform the same test run. I’ve got RTX on shown by the green bars,
and RTX off in the purple bars. With RTX on at ultra and high it was actually quite playable
for the most part, but generally you’ll want higher FPS in a first person shooter
game like this, so it makes more sense to leave RTX off, considering RTX on at lower
settings in my opinion looks and performs worse than with it off at high.
Apex Legends was tested with either all settings at maximum, or all settings at the lowest
settings. Even with max settings over 100 FPS was achievable from this test, with minimum
settings boosting frame rate by around 15%, honestly I’d just play at higher settings
here and enjoy it.
Far Cry New Dawn was tested with the built in benchmark, and the results here were pretty
good, actually beating out the 2080 Max-Q in the P970EN previously tested, not too unexpected
as I’ve even seen the 2060 match or beat the 2080 Max-Q in this specific test.
Far Cry 5 was also tested using the built in benchmark, and the results here are above
most other laptops I’ve tested, and above those of the newer Far Cry New Dawn just shown.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was tested with the built in benchmark, and it was performing
about as expected, still perfectly playable at ultra settings as this one doesn’t need
a high frame rate to play in my opinion.
The Witcher 3 was tested with hairworks disabled, and once again the performance was quite good
here. Even with ultra settings 90 FPS averages were possible, with around 60 for the 1% low,
so easily playable no problem while looking great.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested with the built in benchmark, with the results at
higher settings lining up with other 2070 Max-Q laptops that tested, and we’ll see
how this game and others compare with some other laptops shortly.
CS:GO was tested with the Ulletical FPS benchmark, and like always high frame rates were possible
from this test, with not really a noticeable difference between minimum and medium settings.
Dota 2 was tested in the middle lane with an average amount of action going on, and
the results were very good, basically able to make good use of the 144Hz display even
at ultra settings.
Rainbow Six Siege was tested with the built in benchmark and tends to favour Nvidia’s
new turing architecture compared to other games, and as I’m using the default built
in presets they automatically set a 50% render scale with TAA, so the frame rates are very
high here.
Fortnite was tested using the replay feature, and as a well optimized game the frame rates
from this test were very high, no problems at all running it with maximum epic settings.
I’ll note that the replay tested here was different to the one tested in the P970EN,
so those results are not directly comparable.
Overwatch is another game that is well optimized and runs on pretty much anything. At low settings
the 300 frame cap is being hit at times, while even epic settings ran very smoothly without
any problems, with even the 1% low being above 100 FPS.
Watch Dogs 2 is a resource intensive game, however as I think it plays well with a solid
30 FPS even the near 50 FPS averages at ultra settings worked fine with no problems.
Ghost Recon is another demanding game, with ultra settings always killing performance
in most laptops, though 50 FPS isn’t too bad, but you can get a much smoother result
at lower setting levels.
PUBG was tested using the replay feature, again like Fortnite the replay is unfortunately
slightly different to the one used for the P970EN as they expire over time as the game
updates, so not directly comparable. Either way still almost 100 FPS at ultra settings
with 60 for the 1% low.
Metro Exodus was tested with the built in benchmark which is known to perform worse
than actual game play, so this is more of a synthetic test for comparing with my previous
results rather than representative of what to expect in game.
Overall the gaming performance was good pretty good, in general at max settings it wasn’t
quite as good as the P970EN with 2080 Max-Q, however at lower settings in general I found
the EF to be a little ahead due to the differences in CPU speed.
To get some context let’s see how it compares with some other gaming laptops, use this information
as a rough guide only, as tests were done at different times with different drivers.
Here are the results from Far Cry 5 using the built in benchmark at ultra settings,
with the P970EF shown up the top in red. It’s only just slightly behind the P970EN in average
FPS with a larger difference to 1% lows, and only just slightly ahead of another 2070 Max-Q
laptop, the Apex 15X, down the bottom.
In Shadow of the Tomb Raider with the built in benchmark at highest settings the P970EF
is performing about as expected, slotting right in between the other two 2070 Max-Q
laptops I’ve tested down the bottom, while the 2080 Max-Q in the P970EN was 11% higher
now in average FPS.
In Battlefield 5 with ultra settings we’re seeing the P970EF coming in between the other
two 2070 Max-Q laptops, with the P970EN’s 2080 Max-Q 12% ahead this time in terms of
average frame rate.
Now for the benchmarking tools, I’ve tested Heaven, Valley, and Superposition from Unigine,
as well as Firestrike, Timespy, Port Royal and VRMark from 3DMark, just pause the video
if you want a detailed look at these results.
As we saw earlier we’ve got the option of overclocking the graphics and undervolting
the CPU to increase performance, so let’s see how this actually helps in gaming.
Far Cry 5 was retested using the built in benchmark at 1080p, with the manual tweaks
shown by the red bars. There was less of a difference in average FPS as we move up in
setting levels, but a much larger boost to the 1% low performance, with our tweaks boosting
this by 11% at ultra settings, while average FPS only rose 1.7% at ultra. Still, free performance
though.
I’ve used Crystal Disk Mark to test the storage, and my 500GB Samsung EVO 970 Plus
was getting very nice read and write speeds, however this will of course vary based on
the storage you select. The SD card slot was tested with a V90 card, and the results were
very nice, some of the best I’ve seen from a laptop.
For updated pricing check the links in the description, as prices will change over time.
At the time of recording in Australia the base model goes for about $2,600 AUD, though
a hundred more to get dual channel memory. For my international viewers that’s under
$1700 USD if you remove our taxes, although stuff in Australia still tends to cost more.
This puts it around $1000 under the P970EN with 2080 Max-Q graphics, so you’ll have
to decide if the extra is worth it. As mentioned in some games I saw almost no difference,
while in others the EN was 11 to 12% faster in average frame rate.
So what do you guys think about the Metabox Prime-S P970EF gaming laptop? Like the P960ED
and P970EN I recently covered, I think this is a pretty good Clevo laptop, and definitely
a step up compared to what was available previously. The thin bezel design is appreciated, the
glass touchpad with fingerprint scanner was nice, and it’s got powerful specs considering
it’s just 2cm thick with decent build quality. Despite the thinner build it doesn’t get
too hot considering the specs, and we could improve things with some simple tweaks as
shown. The backlight bleed was more significant here than I would have liked, but that varies
by panel and laptop so hard to say for sure how that is in a general sense.
The performance overall was pretty good, performing in line with other 2070 Max-Q laptops, or
in the case of the thermally throttled Gigabyte Aero 15 X9 it’s actually performing better
for a much cheaper price.
Here in Australia for these specs the price is honestly quite impressive, yeah the larger
brands generally have better build quality and overall the finish seems more premium,
but that’s nothing new when it comes to these Clevo units, I think Metabox are providing
a good value machine here for the specs that you get.
Let me know what you guys thought about the Metabox Prime-S P970EF laptop down in the
comments, and if you’re new to the channel get subscribed for future tech reviews like
this one.