Hey guys, Jarrod here and today we’re going to check out the new Pascal based P650RS-G
laptop from Metabox.
The P650RS-G is a newer and higher end laptop in the Prime series from Metabox, an Australian
company that specialise in custom high-end laptops.
This laptop is similar to the P650RE model that I have previously reviewed with very
similar specs, however now the graphics card is a Nvidia 1070 rather than a 970M so that
should help us out a lot in games, as we’ll see a bit later on in the benchmarks.
Inside the box we have the laptop itself, user guide and driver CD, as well as the power
brick and power cable.
So let’s jump right into the specs of the laptop.
Keep in mind that you can customise these pretty drastically when ordering online so
you can select the components that you want.
In my configuration, for the CPU we have an Intel Skylake i7 6700HQ @ 2.6GHz which can
turbo up to 3.5GHz.
This is a quad core processor with 4 cores and 8 total threads with hyperthreading.
For memory we have 16GB of DDR4 memory @ 2400MHz.
In regards to storage there’s an Intel 540S m.2 SSD which runs the Windows 10 operating
system as well as an additional 1TB 7,200RPM disk for further storage.
There's even TPM 2.0 available if you're going to be using full disk encryption with something
like Bitlocker.
Finally for the graphics there’s a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 with 8GB of GDDR5 RAM.
The display is a 15.6” 1080p IPS WVA 60Hz LED-backlit panel with a matte finish, and
in this model we’ve also got Nvidia’s G-sync technology which keeps the refresh
rate of the display in sync with the graphics card, removing screen tearing which results
in a much better experience with games.
For network connectivity there’s a gigabit ethernet port, Killer 1535 Wireless-AC card
and Bluetooth.
All of this hardware is placed nicely into the Clevo P650RS-G case, which has a black
brushed metallic look to it and is made out of an aluminium alloy, making the overall
build quality really nice.
The physical dimensions of the laptop are 38.5 cm (w) x 27.1 cm (d) x 2.88cm (h), so
it’s pretty thin for the amount of power that you get inside.
The total weight of the laptop including power brick is 2.65KG which is still fairly portable
in my opinion.
The laptop has enough weight to allow you to easily open the lid with one hand which
was nice.
The screen looks nice under normal conditions, however in the dark I did notice a bit of
backlight bleed around the corners which is fairly typical with IPS backlit panels.
The brightness can be adjusted quite a bit, and the viewing angles on the screen are very
good, I can easily see details clearly from any sharp angle which was pretty impressive.
The surface of the screen has a matte finish to it which I prefer over a glossy screen,
as you can more easily see what you’re doing regardless of the lighting situation as there’s
much less distracting reflections shown.
You can optionally get Nvidia’s G-sync technology with your panel, which this particular model
does have.
I found that G-Sync significantly helped in reducing screen tearing while playing games
and should definitely be considered if you’re planning on playing a lot of games on the
laptop and want the smoothest possible experience.
Above the display is the inbuilt 2MP camera which is capable of 1080p video.
While the quality isn’t that great, which seems to be pretty common with inbuilt laptop
cameras, it’ll be enough to get the job done in video conferences.
The keyboard has been excellent and feels great to type on, this is one of the best
laptop keyboards that I’ve used and is noticeably better compared to other Metabox laptops that
I’ve previously used.
It’s a full sized keyboard so there’s a num pad included, and all of the keys are
RGB backlit allowing you to further customize them how you want.
I did find the included Flexikey software installed to be a little difficult to work
with, though that seems to be fairly standard with keyboard software for changing colouring
from my experience.
In particular it seems that you can only specifically customize different groups of keys together
rather than individual keys, and the available effects were a little limited with some of
my favourites missing, though these points could probably be all addressed in a software
update and aren’t really a problem regarding the laptop itself.
I also found very little flex when pushing down hard on the keys which was good.
The touchpad has worked well for me, it’s a decent size and easy to use.
I’ve found the physically separate left and right buttons which are either side of
the fingerprint scanner to work well, they’re clicky without being too loud.
Just above the keyboard are the front facing ONKYO speakers, which sound fairly decent
for laptop speakers, though I did notice the absence of any bass.
Now I hope you like I/O, because there’s lots of it available here!
On the left we have a vent for air exhaust, mini DisplayPort with version 1.3 which will
be useful for newer monitors as this supports larger resolutions at higher frame rates compared
to the older 1.2 standard.
Next are two USB 3.1 Type-C ports which is awesome as the user of a Nexus 6P that uses
these, and finally there are two USB 3.0 Type-A ports, one of which is powered.
On the right there are the audio jacks which include S/PDIF, microphone and headphone jacks,
followed by the 6 in 1 card reader which supports various types of SD cards.
Next there's a single USB 3.0 Type-A port, gigabit ethernet port, and kensington lock.
The front only features some status LEDs.
While the back has vents to exhaust heat, there’s also the DC power port, a HDMI port,
and another mini DisplayPort.
Underneath there’s a bunch of air intakes to help keep all the components cool, as well
as some rubber feet which both stop the laptop from moving around on flat surfaces when in
use, and also rise it a little to let cool air in.
The included battery is a 4 cell Lithium-Ion Polymer battery rated at 60 Watt Hours.
The battery is rated to last for 325 minutes, and with a full charge and doing basic tasks
such as web browsing with the screen on half brightness, Windows 10 estimated that it would
last for around 4 hours, so while that isn’t quite meeting that I still think it’s a
decent battery time considering the powerful hardware we’re dealing with.
While running the benchmarks on battery power the estimate quickly reduced to around just
1 hour, though frame rates were capped at 30 FPS which was due to Nvidia’s Battery
Boost feature, which limits FPS to 30 while running on battery in order to let you play
your games longer.
Considering the high specs of the machine I think the battery life is fairly decent,
and should allow you to get plenty of things done on a full charge with the exception of
lots of hardcore gaming which shouldn’t be surprising in general with gaming laptops.
So with all of that in mind how is the laptop to actually use?
While using the laptop normally I’ve found the performance to be really good which is
to be expected based on the high power specs inside.
I’m running Windows 10 Home edition on this and have not had any slowness or delay at
all while using the OS or installed programs, everything has performed well with no issues.
I’ve also not had any problems with heat, even while using the laptop sitting on my
lap while performing benchmarks the bottom side of it didn’t heat up much at all which
was cool, it seems quite good at efficiently dissipating the heat.
With an ambient room temperature of 20c, while sitting at idle the CPU was 31c while the
GPU was around the 40c mark.
While benchmarking the CPU got to 57c while the GPU maxed out at 84c.
Now let’s get into those benchmarks, I was excited to do these as this was my first experience
with a Pascal based graphics card from Nvidia in a laptop.
First we’ll cover some gaming benchmarks followed by synthetic tests.
In GTA 5 I have disabled VSync otherwise the FPS would max out at 60.
I tested with FXAA on with MSAA set to x8 with a 1080p resolution.
We can see that even with these settings we still averaged 66 FPS.
In the Witcher 3 I used the Ultra preset, disabled VSync and NVIDIA Hairworks, and again
ran at the full 1080p resolution.
With these settings I was able to get an average of 71FPS
While in Shadow of Mordor with ultra settings at 1080p we averaged 99FPS.
Now onto the benchmarking tools, while a useful indicator note that these results are less
practical compared to the real world gaming results previously shown.
In Heaven benchmark with the quality set to ultra, tessellation set to extreme, and anti-aliasing
set to x8 at 1080p, the 1070 averaged 81FPS.
It’s a similar story in Valley benchmark, with the quality set to ultra and anti-aliasing
on x8 at 1080p, the 1070 managed to average 76FPS.
The PassMark benchmark resulted in a score of 8373 for the CPU, 9048 for the 3D graphics,
and 4256 for the overall score putting this laptop into the 88th percentile, pretty impressive.
I ran the both the Fire Strike and Time Spy benchmarks from 3DMark and got scores of 12,151
and 4,878 respectively, I’ll leave a link to the full results in the video description.
I did have G-Sync disabled during these tests so that the FPS was not limited to the panel's
refresh rate of 60Hz.
With G-Sync enabled things are noticeably smoother with no screen tearing.
As the refresh rate of the display is 60Hz and the 1070 inside was able to run current
games well above 60 FPS on maximum settings, G-Sync should perform well and keep things
at 60 FPS consistently without screen tearing.
In Crystal Disk Mark the SSD performed around 550MB/s in sequential reads and 470MB/s for
sequential writes, while the spinning rust hard disk drive was only around 120MB/s both
read and write which is expected and is fine for a larger non SSD based storage drive.
The laptop comes with a 2 year warranty with the option of extending to 3 years, and in
the past I’ve found dealing with Metabox support to be a great experience overall.
The Metabox P650RS-G is a very powerful laptop which is easily capable of running current
games at respectable frame rates with high settings thanks to Nvidia’s GTX 1070.
The P650RS-G starts at $2,469 AUD and most of the components can be further upgraded
to suit your needs, so the final price will depend on your custom selection.
You can check out their website at metabox.com.au and customize your own high-end laptop, I’ve
left a link in the video description for this specific model.
So what did you guys think of the P650RS-G laptop from Metabox?
Considering the high specs I think it’s pretty awesome that a laptop of this size
can be this powerful.
Let me know what you guys thought down in the comments or simply leave a like or dislike
on the video, and don’t forget to subscribe for future videos like this one.