Hey, how's it going Dave 2D here
So this is a laptop that's been out for a couple months, and I've had it for a couple months
And you guys haven't asked me to make this video for a couple months
But I've purposefully avoided doing it because I wasn't sure if I was gonna make this video
I wasn't sure if I was gonna make content on this thing because of an interaction that I had with the company and
You'll understand at the end of the video why
but this is the Xiaomi Notebook Pro
And this is for all intents and purposes a really really good laptop for the money
It starts at nine hundred bucks, and it's packed with just great performance great specs and a really good design
It's obviously been inspired by Apple. Inspired is a gentle word, but it looks a lot like Apple laptops
They've done a great job building this thing and there's a lot to like about it
So I'm gonna kind of go through things. I like about it
talk about a few things that I don't like about it, and then kind of go into the reasons why I
Kind of hesitated on making this video okay first the build quality in this thing is great
It's got aluminum everywhere very minimal design it has very little branding on the top and on the bottom. The only obvious branding
You'll see on this entire laptop is right at the bottom of the screen
And it's just a very muted look to a very well-built laptop. Now it comes pre-loaded with Chinese Windows 10
Which you're gonna have to wipe and then install whatever language of Windows 10
You'd like. I used English and well the good thing is that the digital license is activated
So you don't have to purchase a separate license or anything. It's just it works Windows 10 home ran perfectly fine on this laptop
I like the port selection on this thing. There's two USB A's and HDMI, two USB C's as well as an SD card slot now
There's only one USB C that supports charging as well as high resolution display output
But it is a good selection of ports. It's pretty easy to get inside
it's a bunch of screws on the bottom one of them being underneath one of the feet and when you're inside you can't replace the
Wi-Fi card it's a good one the 80-65, but it looks like it's built on board
But you can replace the SSD and there's room for a second SSD if you want the keyboard is nice
it's easy to get used to it actually reminds me a lot of the older generation Mac books like the
2015 and earlier MacBook Pros, it's got like a nice plush key travel and the layout is really good
I mean it's kind of weird that a Chinese company has one of the better English keyboard layouts
But they do a good job at it, and I also like the speakers now
They're positioned on the bottom, so they don't have the best location, but I mean they sound good
It's just you lose some of the audio clarity because it's sitting on the table and just kind of deflects off of whatever surface
You're using but they do sound good now the screen I have
Kind of mixed feelings about it's a 1080p panel not touchscreen and it looks pretty sharp
The color gamut and accuracy are a little bit lower than expected
It just looks nicer than it actually is but when you measure with the spider comes out kind of mediocre
The battery life is really good though
So this thing's coming in at seven and a half hours of regular use with the screen at 215 nits
I've mentioned this in other videos with 15-inch ultrabooks
But I really like laptops that have 15 inch screens that are using u processors
You just get better battery life and for a lot of people
It's a good fit
This particular model is running 16 gigs of ram and an i7 kabylake-r CPU and for multi-core stuff in short bursts this thing
Kicks ass the thermals are good. They're running two fans in the chassis
Which is pretty rare for a u processor
and
The thing is there's so much thermal Headroom with those two fans that you can bump up the waters on this thing pretty comfortably like
You can hit 35 watt TDP on this thing
Pretty easily and that lets you sustain higher clock speed higher boost speed so if that's what you want to do
This is a great laptop for that option the fan noise that stock is pretty quiet
Not that it's a completely silent computer anything like that. It does come on, but it's just a quiet fan
Now this thing is paired with an MX 150, which is one of the best budget GPUs out there
It'll give you reasonable gaming performance, and it's just better than the integrated chip from Intel
And it gives you a little kick when you're doing some 3d applications or video edits
I mean it's not a beast for 3d stuff, but if you're looking to do some casual gaming or graphical work
It's a good option now
There's a couple things that I don't like about this laptop
But the truth is most of it is just nitpicky stuff the first thing
I don't like is when I mentioned the build quality everything about it is good
Except the bottom edge is super sharp like it feels unfinished compared to the rest of the laptop
And it's actually a little bit uncomfortable to hold and the other thing
I don't love is the trackpad so the actual tracking surface is good. It's very smooth. It's a great glass texture
It feels very similar to a Mac trackpad, but the button mechanism. Oh, I don't love it
It needs way more force to press down than almost any other laptop that I've tried
And I also don't like the fingerprint sensor location. It's just in the way of the actual tracking stuff
I've seen fingerprint sensors that have been on track pads that have been fine
But this one kind of gets in the way when you're just using the trackpad
Another thing that's kind of weird is that they only give two PCIe lanes for the drive so instead of the regular four lanes
They're given two and the drive that they include is a really fast drive as the Samsung
Pm 961 is one of the fastest oem drives
You can get out there, but the speeds are crippled a little bit because of the reduced number of PCIe lanes
But overall this is an awesome laptop for the money right 900 bucks gets you so much on this laptop
And it's such good value that when you compare it to North American brands or just any other big named laptop brand
It's really hard to compare them because you're just getting such good value with this device, but the big issue with this thing is
The customer support. So, I had a friend who
Purchased the xiaomi air like their smaller lighter laptop under my recommendation because I said it's a good value
He bought it, and then like three months later something went wrong with it
And he went through hell to try to get that thing replaced
And I would you know I tried to get involved and just it never happened
we're literally sitting on a brick of a laptop so I
Don't know how to recommend this thing like I feel like for 99.9% of people that purchased this thing. They'll be happy
They'll get this great laptop with great value, and they'll just those people get it great
But for that small percentage of people that purchase this if you guys are watching this and you're interested in buying this it if you
Buy it and it busts like that would just break my heart. There's people that save up for months
Maybe even a year to buy one of these things and if it breaks
like, that's
this is a Chinese company and
If you're trying to get customer support with this thing like this is the bottom of the barrel when it comes to customer support
These guys are one of the most difficult companies have had to interact with for repairs or replacement of a laptop
But you kind of expect it for the price of this thing right. Okay. Hope you guys enjoyed this video thumbs
if you liked it subs if you loved it. See you guys next time
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