The Leader SC568 is a thin and light notebook that still has Nvidia MX250 graphics for some
light gaming on the side, let’s check it out in this detailed review and help you decide
if it’s a laptop you should consider.
For the specs it’s got an Intel i7-8565U quad core CPU, Nvidia MX250 graphics, 16gb
of memory in single channel, a 512gb NVMe M.2 SSD, and a 15.6” 1080p 60Hz screen.
For network connectivity it’s got gigabit ethernet, 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth 5.
The top is all just a plain silver colour with no logos, and the interior is similar.
Overall the magnesium chassis made for decent feeling build quality and there were no sharp
corners or edges anywhere around the device.
The weight is listed at 1.55kg, however mine was at least one kilogram lighter than this.
With the small 65 watt power brick and cable for charging the total weight rises to just
1.8kg, so it’s fairly lightweight and portable.
It’s less than 1.7cm thick, and the width and depth are similar to many other modern
slim 15 inch laptops, giving it 6mm bezels on the sides. Despite the smaller bezels,
the 720p camera is found in the ideal spot above the display in the middle, and it’s
also got infrared for Windows Hello support.
The camera looks about average for 720p, but the microphone sounded a little below average.
The keyboard has white backlighting which illuminates all keys and secondary key functions.
The lighting can be adjusted between two levels using the F6 and F7 keys or turned off completely.
Even at maximum brightness I could barely see the lighting in a normally lit room, it
was only a little useful in a dark room, and even then it was a bit patchy. I had no problems
with the layout and overall liked typing on it, lighting issues aside, here’s how it
sounds to give you an idea of what to expect.
There was some keyboard flex while pushing down hard, however it wasn’t too bad considering
that the machine is on the thinner side, and it was never an issue during every day usage.
The lid had some screen flex despite the magnesium build, though to be fair it is on the thinner
side and the hinge felt sturdy.
I liked the size of the precision touchpad, and for the most part it worked well.
As for the screen, I’ve measured colour gamut with the Spyder 5, and got 93% of sRGB,
67% of NTSC, and 72% of AdobeRGB. At 100% brightness I measured 335 nits in the center
with a 760:1 contrast ratio, so fair results overall, above average brightness and an ok
colour gamut.
Backlight bleed wasn’t too bad, there were some imperfections towards the bottom but
I never noticed this during normal use, but results will vary between machines.
On the left from the back there’s a Kensington lock, gigabit ethernet, USB 2.0 Type-A port,
USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A port, 3.5mm audio combo jack and a micro SD card slot.
On the right from the front there’s a USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-C port, no Thunderbolt support
here though, second USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-A port, HDMI output and the power input.
The version of HDMI wasn’t specified, however I could only run an external 4K monitor at
30Hz, so it doesn’t seem to be HDMI 2.0, probably 1.3 or 1.4.
On the back there are plenty of air vents, however air is only actually exhausted from
one corner, as you’ll see soon. The front was completely smooth with a very subtle indentation
for getting your finger in to open it up, and it was possible to open up with one finger.
Due to the all silver finish it doesn’t really show up fingerprints.
Underneath just has some air ventilation towards the back and rubber feet which did an alright
job of preventing movement when in use. To get inside, we only need to take out 9 Phillips
head screws.
The speakers are found towards the front left and right corners, they sounded ok, about
average but a bit muffled. At max volume there weren’t too loud, but not bad, and the latencymon
results were ok too.
Inside we’ve got the big battery down the bottom, WiFi card towards the left, single
memory slot in the center, and two M.2 slots just below this and towards the right. The
space up the top right wasn’t used, I suppose the machine is too thin to have a 2.5” drive
bay there, and I can only assume extra cooling wasn’t added to keep the weight down. Personally
I would have liked to have seen a second memory slot, as I’ve shown many times in the past
that single channel memory results in performance loss compared to a dual channel configuration.
I’ll also mention that although the stick is DDR4-2666 capable, the i7-8565U CPU only
supports DDR4-2400, which is what it ran at.
Despite being on the thinner and smaller side for a 15 inch laptop, it’s still got a large
6 cell 92 watt hour battery inside. Testing was done with 50% screen brightness, keyboard
lighting off and background apps disabled. I was able to watch YouTube for 14 hours and
25 minutes. For the gaming test I usually test the Witcher 3 at medium settings with
a 30 FPS frame cap, however due to the lower specs here we only averaged 22 FPS, though
it was able to last for 2 hours and 41 minutes like this. After this time it dropped lower
to 16 FPS and lasted for 3 hours and 5 minutes in total.
The control center software allows us to make some customizations. We can swap between standard
and eco modes, and there’s also a keyboard shortcut, F5, to do this. We also have the
option of setting 4 different performance modes, however I didn’t find these to actually
change anything, so I just did all testing in high performance mode. We do have the option
of adjusting the fan, enabling turbo mode would set it to maximum speed.
Thermal testing was completed with an ambient room temperature of 21 degrees Celsius. At
idle down the bottom it was quite cool. The stress test results were done by running the
Aida64 CPU stress test and Heaven GPU benchmark at the same time, so basically it’s kind
of a worst case with both components under heavy load.
The CPU was constantly thermal throttling at 85 degrees as that appears to be the defined
limit, so this does at least prevent it running too hot even under heavy load.
These are the clock speeds for the same tests just shown. Simply enabling turbo mode which
sets the fan to max speed was enough to boost CPU clock speed by almost 300MHz. There was
no change to the GPU as this wasn’t limited by thermals. Undervolting the CPU by -0.1v
further improved performance by around 200MHz.
Here’s what we’re looking at in terms of CPU performance with Cinebench. The single
core clock speeds are actually a little ahead of the more powerful i7-9750H CPU, as the
8565U has a 100MHz higher single core turbo boost speed. Multicore score was boosted 8%
with the undervolt, as this helped reduce the effects of thermal throttling.
As for the areas where you actually touch, at idle it was pretty average, no problems
there. When under heavy stress test there was a hot spot near the middle which got to
around 50, and this didn’t seem to change too much with or without the fan on turbo
mode as the internals were the same temperature.
Here’s what the fan noise sounded like while running these tests.
At idle it was very quiet, however the fan was just slightly audible. While under worst
case stress test with the fans at default speed it wasn’t too loud, and it only rose
a bit when we manually set the fan to maximum speed, which did help improve performance
as CPU thermals were the key limitation when we hit both processor and graphics with heavy
load at the same time.
As we’ve got Nvidia MX250 graphics inside I’ve also tested a few games. I used high
performance and turbo fan mode for best performance.
Overwatch was tested playing in the practice range, and it was running well at medium and
low settings. High was ok but occasionally a bit stuttery, and I wouldn’t want to use
it any higher than that, at least at 1080p, you could of course get better performance
at lower resolutions.
Dota 2 was tested playing in the middle lane, I thought it was playing fine at high settings
and below. Ultra was ok for the most part, but occasionally when moving around fast it
did choke a little, probably due to the single channel memory.
CS:GO was tested with the Ulletical FPS benchmark, and the averages were still alright however
1% low performance was notably lower compared to higher specced laptops.
In the end you can still play esports titles at lower settings with a 1080p resolution.
If you’re fine to drop down to 900 or even 720p you could probably play more demanding
games, but the single channel memory is going to limit performance.
I’ve used Crystal Disk Mark to test the 512gb NVMe M.2 SSD, and the speeds were fair.
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to test the Micro SD slot as I don’t have any cards
that size.
For updated pricing check the links in the description, as prices will change over time.
Given Leader is an Australian company, prices are in Australian dollars. This laptop is
going for $2000 AUD at the moment, so a little over $1200 USD if you remove our taxes and
convert for my international viewers. I don’t think that’s too bad when you consider MSI’s
Prestige 15 that I recently reviewed is $700 more, however it was recently on sale. You
are definitely missing out on features such as higher powered CPU, GPU and Thunderbolt
3, it just depends if you need those extras and want to pay more for them.
Let’s conclude by going through the good and bad aspects of the Leader SC568 laptop.
The positives of this machine are that it has excellent battery life, when the large
92 watt hour battery is paired with these specs it just sips power and lasts much longer
compared to most machines I’ve tested. This is despite it being on the smaller and thinner
size for a 15 inch machine too, it’s quite portable and the power brick is small as well.
It’s got two M.2 slots for storage inside was nice for a thinner 15” machine, considering
I’ve come across 17” models that only have one without a 2.5” drive bay either,
and infrared for Windows Hello support was a nice bonus.
The negatives include single channel memory with no option of upgrading to dual channel,
there’s just one slot. Inside there’s seemingly wasted space that could have otherwise
been used to accommodate dual channel memory, or otherwise better cooling given the CPU
has a lower 85 degree throttle limit. The keyboard lighting was only useful in a darker
room as it was quite dim, and when you can see it, it’s pretty patchy. The I/O wasn’t
too impressive, there was no USB 3.1 Gen2 ports, only Gen1, no Thunderbolt, and USB
2.0 in 2019 is a bit of a drag. HDMI was also 1.4 or lower, but at least it has a Micro
SD slot.
Overall it’s not a bad machine, the CPU power is decent and I liked the clean design,
size and portability aspects, plus that killer battery life. It even has some level of discrete
graphics, however here in Australia I think the price is on the higher side compared to
the competition. For example, I could get a last gen Dell XPS 15 new with higher tier
GTX 1050 graphics, quad core CPU with higher power limit, and dual channel memory, granted
8gb instead of 16gb and half the hard drive space, but those could be upgraded if you
want. This would likely outperform it, and you get the advantage of Thunderbolt 3 as
well.
Let me know what you thought about the Leader SC568 down in the comments, and if you’re
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like this one.