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| PortableOne UX Review Article Contents | |
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Introduction
Robin Williams in Disney's Aladdin could have been describing the PortableOne UX when he said, “Phenomenal cosmic power.....itty-bitty living space.” Perhaps that is a bit of an overstatement, but the PortableOne UX packs a lot of power in a tiny frame. PortableOne rebrands notebooks from various ODMs. In this case, the UX is a rebranded Clevo M520N. However, they made some modifications on the original design:
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PortableOne UX Specs as reviewed:
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What's in the Box?
Design and Build Quality
Simple and sleek are the words that come to mind when I look at the UX. It is all silver, except for the black on the bottom of the notebook and on the trim around the LCD. I like the fact that the edges tend to be rounded so that it doesn't have the boxy look that a lot of business notebooks have. I also appreciate the bamboo hinge look that is similar to the Asus W3J. Its circular nature helps make the notebook seem less “square”. The brushed metal name plate is also a very nice touch. I even like how they added the silver accents on the 8-cell battery that mimic the accents on the hinge, blending it into the general looks of the notebook.
However, not everything is perfect. One thing I noticed was that the keyboard was not level. The left part of the spacebar and the right arrow key are raised a millimeter or two above the rest of the keys. It isn't nearly as bad as the warped keyboard on my N3530, and is probably a problem that is isolated to this unit. Another minor cosmetic flaw is that the back of the notebook doesn't look very nice due to the missing ports. In place of the ports, there are black rubber covers that aren't that appealing. But again, it isn't a huge deal.
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As for the build quality, the UX feels very solid. From what I have been told, the only two areas that lack the magnesium alloy are the palm rests and the plastic frame around the LCD (note: the back of the LCD does have magnesium alloy, and the difference in material is visibly noticeable). The main reason for not including magnesium alloy in the palm rests was to avoid the shock problem that has been documented with the Sony SZ series.
Anyway, there seems to be very little flex. If I put a decent amount of pressure on the palm rest, there is minimal amount of flex of maybe a millimeter or two. There is noticeable flex on the LCD, but not to the point where I would feel it would be problematic. If you press hard enough, you can produce a small ripple one the upper portion of the screen. The hinges on this notebook feel sturdy. When I shake the notebook, the screen does not wobble.
Compared to my massive Fujitsu N3530, the UX seems minuscule in comparison. However, I found that I was quite comfortable with the screen size. Though it seems to weigh a little more than other popular ultraportables (e.g. Thinkpad X60), it certainly offers more. Unlike other ultraportables, it actually has an optical drive and a touchpad (no pointing stick, though). Also, it has more ports and a media card reader. To fit all that in addition to a magnesium alloy casing in 4 lb is not bad.
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Screen
The UX has a 12.1” WXGA glossy screen. It is fairly similar to other notebooks of its size in terms of screen quality. The screen is quite bright. In fact, I have gotten used to working on it on one notch above minimum brightness, though one or two below max brightness is the most comfortable. One point that I should note is that its color reproduction was somewhat different than the color reproduction on my N3530. For example, the blue text of the forum names in NBR is a lighter blue than on the N3530. Since I am no expert, I have no idea which notebook properly represents the colors.
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As you can see from these pictures, there is some light leakage. Note that the camera tends to exaggerate the light leakage a bit.
Fujitsu N3530 on the left, Portableone UX on the right (view large image)
Considering that the white seems even across the screen (the picture inaccurately may show some darkness), the backlight is evenly lit throughout the screen.
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Unsurprisingly, horizontal viewing angles are good, but vertical viewing angles are all pretty bad.
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Input and Output Ports and Additional Features
Although the UX is an ultraportable, it surprisingly has a decent amount of ports.
Left side of PortableOne UX (view large image)
Right side view of PortableOne UX (view large image)
Back side view of PortableOne UX (view large image)
Front view of PortableOne UX (view large image)
Unfortunately, the card reader doesn't support xD card, which is what my camera uses. Near the front, there are also 3 LED indicators. The first light on the left shows whether or not the notebook is on AC power. The next one shows the battery charging status. It isn't lit when you are not working on AC. It changes to orange when the battery is charging. Green shows that the battery is fully charged. The third LED shows wireless status. It is blank when neither wifi nor bluetooth is on. It is orange when only wifi is on, and green when only bluetooth is on. It turns a yellowish color when both wifi and bluetooth are on.
At the top of the keyboard area, there are four buttons. The first one on the left is to open up an email client (Thunderbird in this case). The second is to open your web browser (Mozilla Firefox). The last of the small ones opens up the webcam software.
As for the webcam...it's okay, I guess. The image quality is subpar. The colors are washed out, and the pictures are dark. The settings on the software don't really improve picture quality. However, it is nice that the webcam is rotational. If you're one of those kids that for some reason, likes to record lectures, you can just flip the camera and type while recording. It can do both stills and video.
Picture taken with web cam (view large image)
Keyboard and Touchpad
Like most other ultraportables, the keyboard is slightly cramped. According to my crude measurements the keys are approximately one millimeter shorter in height and width than your average notebook keyboard. There is a little flex on the keyboard that is completely unnoticeable when typing. The shallow key travel is also quite comfortable for me, but some may prefer to have a longer key stroke. My biggest gripe with the keyboard is that they shrunk the “,” “.” “/” keys even further. I would rather have a shorter left shift than have those specific keys shrunk.
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The cool thing about the UX touchpad is that it has an extra layer...and you can't even tell. The customized touchpad improver seamlessly blends into the notebook. Since it is a good bit thinner than the non-customized touchpad improvers, the sensitivity decrease is less of a problem, though still noticeable. Its texture is also less grainy than the original touchpad improvers, making it easier to move across the touchpad. One problem that I ran into is scrolling. For some reason, the area doesn't always pick up my scrolls. If I want to make sure it works, it seems that I have to have my finger all the way to the right edge of the touchpad with part of my finger not even touching the pad, if I want the scrolling to register properly. I should also mention that the touchpad is shorter than normal touchpads, which may problematic for some. The buttons themselves were a little stiff.
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Audio
When I first received this notebook, the audio was abysmal. With the notebook on my lap, I could barely hear a thing. But with a helpful tip from Ivan at P1, I got the audio up to an agreeable volume. Basically, I went to the Realtek Audio Manager and changed the equalization setting to powerful and voila! I have decent audio volume. I would still recommend headphones because notebooks just don't have great speakers.
Heat and Noise
Regrettably, heat and noise are not the strong points of this notebook. However, when evaluating this subject matter, one has to understand the drawbacks of shoving high powered components into a small chassis. When you are using a larger notebook, say a 15.4”, the notebook can support a larger, more efficient cooling system. There is also a larger area for heat and sound to dissipate. When you take the same components and put it into a smaller frame, the smaller notebook has to push its cooling system harder to achieve similar temperatures. Furthermore, the heat produced by those components becomes more easily felt because the heat has less space to dissipate into. The end result is a warmer, louder notebook.
This notebook tends to almost always be a bit warm. The keyboard/palmrest area is only slightly warm with the left portion being warmer than the right. It definitely doesn't get uncomfortably warm. I have typed on this for hours without being bothered by the warmth felt on the keys and palmrest. On the other hand, the bottom of the notebook can get quite toasty. In order to improve the cooling of the internal components, PortableOne implemented the “Air Vortex”. Mainly, they replaced a portion of the bottom with a more heat conducting magnesium alloy with larger holes for better air flow. The metal part also works as passive cooling, drawing heat from the components around it. The problem is that the metallic segment becomes quite warm as it absorbs heat. With pants on, the notebook was a very warm, bordering on hot. Regardless, I could still bare through typing with it on my lap for a few hours. I do not think I would be able to stand the heat without some sort of barrier between me and the laptop. Using some sort of heat insulator (e.g. the iLap) is recommended.
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The noise produced by this notebook comes from three main sources: the fan, the hard drive, and the cpu. Because this is a high performing laptop in a small form factor, the fan is always on. From the looks of it, there is only a single fan to cool the system. Compared to other notebook fan noise, this one sounds a bit more grating, like the sound of a box fan versus the sound of a car air conditioner. On low usage (word processing, web surfing), the fan noise is audible, but not too bothersome. However, when on high load, the fans become quite loud...almost as loud as my fans on my old notebook with the lap-burning pentium 4.
The hard drive in this notebook is the Hitachi Travelstar 100 GB 7200 RPM. While using my Fujitsu N3530 (80 GB 5400RPM Fujitsu HD), I literally forgot what sounds a hard drive made. When people complained about loud hard drives on the forums, I couldn't even imagine what that could possibly sound like. Unfortunately, I was quickly reminded of the irksome clicking of hard drives when I received the UX. Hitachi's 7200RPM hard drives are among the fastest in the market, but you sacrifice quietness for performance.
Much to my chagrin, the UX also exhibits the dreaded CPU whine. Because the fans continue to run even after the notebook goes to sleep, I knew this high-pitched whine wasn't due to the fans when the whine disappeared after I closed the lid. Furthermore, when I was browsing web pages, the sound would stutter to the page scrolling. What makes things worse is that it is audible only when you are running on battery, which is usually when you want your notebook to be more silent than usual.
Experimenting with RMClock
So is there a way to reduce the heat and noise? Luckily, the answer is yes. With the help of a nifty little utility called RMClock, we can reduce fan noise, lower CPU temperature, and even rid ourselves of the pesky CPU whine. RMClock can do all this by altering the way the CPU operates.
Undervolting is a common way of reducing heat output in notebooks. I would have used NHC because it was software I was comfortable with, but of course, it gave me a blue screen of death when I tried to run it in Vista. With some help from our resident sage, John Ratsey, I got RMClock up and running. I used CPU Burn In for 20 minutes to stress the processor and raise the CPU temperature. Here are the results:
| Voltage | Core 0 Temp at Max Load |
| 1.237v (Default) | 71C |
| 1.137v | 65C |
| 1.050v | 63C |
| .987v | 61C |
As you can see, undervolting gives a significant drop in temperature. It also means that the fan doesn't have to work as hard to keep the notebook cool. Thus, there is a marked decrease in fan noise as well.
The CPU whine can also easily be fixed. A quick NBR forum search will show you that the CPU whine surfaces when the CPU enters the C3 sleep state (a power saving state). So how do you stop the whine? You keep the CPU from entering that sleep state. You can do this by checking the box to “run HLT command when OS is idle” in the management settings.
Just like almost every good thing in life, it has its drawbacks. Undervolting can cause your system to be unstable. For example, when I finished testing the .987v, the CPU went haywire. I kept going from 0 to 100% repeatedly, causing major system instability until I rebooted the computer. In addition, I have gotten different measurements for the loads and clock/throttle speeds in the different runs of CPU Burn In. If you plan on undervolting, it is suggested that you run some sort of stress test with error reporting for many hours to ensure stability.
Running the HLT command also causes its share of problems. Because it essentially disables a power saving state, you are destined to lose some battery life. In the case of the UX, approximately 30 minutes is lost. Vista seems to have an issue with this command as well. If you use the Vista sidebar CPU usage meter, running the HLT command on OS idle will cause the meter to read 100% all the time, even on idle.
Performance and Benchmarks
This notebook flies. Granted, you certainly won't be able to game with this, but it will perform well on any application that doesn't require a dedicated GPU. FYI, you DO NOT need a dedicated GPU for Vista. This little system handles Vista without an issue (well...at least performance wise).
SuperPi Benchmark Results
| Notebook | Time |
| PortableOne UX (2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo) | 1m 04s |
| MSI M677 (1.8 GHz Turion X2) | 1m 53s |
| Fujitsu LifeBook N6420 (2.00GHz Core 2 Duo) | 1m 02s |
| LG S1 (2.16 GHz Core Duo) | 1m 11s |
| Dell Inspiron e1505 (2.0GHz Core Duo) | 1m 16s |
| Lenovo ThinkPad T60 (2.0GHz Core Duo) | 1m 18s |
| Toshiba Satellite M100 (2.00GHz Core Duo) | 1m 18s |
| Samsung X60 (1.66GHz Core Duo) | 1m 29s |
| Sony VAIO FS680 (1.86 GHz Pentium M) | 1m 53s |
PCMark05 Results
| Notebook | PCMark05 Score |
| PortableOne UX (2.0GHz Core 2 Duo, Intel GMA 950) | 3,607 PCMarks |
| Fujtisu Siemens Amilo Xi1554 Review (2.0GHz Core 2 Duo, ATI X1900, Windows XP) | 5,066 PCMarks |
| Fujitsu LifeBook N6420 (2.00GHz Core 2 Duo, ATI X1600) | 4,621 PCMarks |
| Fujitsu LifeBook N6410 (1.66GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400) | 3,487 PCMarks |
| Sony Vaio SZ-110B in Speed Mode (Using Nvidia GeForce Go 7400) | 3,637 PCMarks |
| Asus Z84Jp (2.16GHz Core 2 Duo, Nvidia Go 7600) | 4,739 PCMarks |
| Asus V6J (1.86GHz Core Duo T2400) | 3,646 PCMarks |
| Alienware M7700 (AMD Athlon FX-60, Nvidia Go 7800GTX) | 5,597 PCMarks |
Comparison Results for 3Dmark05
| Notebook | 3D Mark 05 Results |
| PortableOne UX (2.0GHz Core 2 Duo, Intel GMA 950) | 590 3DMarks |
| Alienware Aurora M-7700(AMD Dual Core FX-60, ATI X1600 256MB) | 7,078 3D Marks |
| Lenovo ThinkPad T60 (2.0GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400 128MB) | 2,092 3D Marks |
| Asus V6Va (2.13 GHz Pentium M, ATI x700 128 MB) | 2,530 3D Marks |
| Fujitsu n6410 (1.66 GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400 128MB) | 2,273 3DMarks |
| HP Pavilion dv4000 (1.86 GHz Pentium M, ATI X700 128MB) | 2,536 3D Marks |
| Dell XPS M1210 (2.16 GHz Core Duo, nVidia Go 7400 256MB) | 2,090 3D Marks |
HDTune Hard Drive results (view large image)
Windows Vista Experience Performance Index score
Battery Life
The UX comes with two batteries, a 4-cell and 8-cell battery. On battery saver mode and with screen brightness at one notch above minimum, I got 2 hours with the 4-cell and about 4 hours with the 8-cell. It is somewhat disappointing, especially since they advertise up to 8 hours on the 8-cell with the ULV processor. However, considering the components in the machine and the fact that the fans are constantly on, I think that 4 hours is not good, not bad, but reasonable.
One thing to mention about the power adapter is that it is fairly small and doesn’t really add too much extra weight.
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Software
Vista Business is the OS that comes with the UX. I have to say that I have some mixed feelings about Vista. I hate how certain programs that I like using, such as NHC, aren't compatible. A lot of programs have yet to be “Vista-compatible” so even if they function, they function with glitches (e.g. RMClock). I couldn't even get Adobe Reader 8.0 to install. I had to go to Properties > Compatibility and switch it to XP. This doesn't seem to work for most programs, sadly. Another problem I had was that the computer would not properly go to sleep when I closed the lid with the webcam on. When I would open up the screen there is just a blank screen, and I have to power it down. Luckily, Microsoft/P1 have fixed this issue. Finally, Ready Boost didn't want to work with my USB drives (not the one included with notebook) even though they met the requirements. I decided not to pursue it further because Anandtech has shown that Ready Boost doesn't really help with high performance systems such as the UX.
It's not all bad. Vista has some interesting features that I wished XP had, other than the pretty looks. I really like how easily the power options are accessible in the tray icons. Moreover, I think it's great that you can easily change the different things to power down. For example, if I really needed good wifi signal while on battery, I could change my settings to keep wifi on max performance and power down another feature that I didn't need as much. Another cool feature is the ability to partition on the fly. If you right click on Computer (start menu) > Manage > Disk Management, you have the option to delete and create new partitions. You can also shrink and expand existing partitions. One shortcoming is that you can only expand your most recently created partition.
The P1 UX is essentially bloatware free. Other than the drivers, the only other software included was Firefox, Thunderbird, the camera software, and VCOM7 (anti-virus, and maintenance utilities). They do not even install the CD burning programs that they include disks for. The Inspice Trace software is part of the package, but it is not pre-installed or on CD. It is something that you have to set up with PortableOne.
Customer Support
Yeah...I know. You're thinking that I really can't comment on this because I have a review unit, instead of a system purchased directly from PortableOne. Admittedly, they were very responsive to my questions and problems, but I honestly do not think it was a guise. What really surprises me about P1 versus some other resellers is that they actually listen to their customers problems and work with the notebook manufacturer to make a change. When their customers complained about how frequently the fans changed speeds (and thus, noise), they contacted Clevo and worked jointly to produce a new bios that reduced the amount of times the fan speed changed. When I told them about my sleep problem, they immediately identified the webcam as the culprit and told me that new drivers were on its way to fix this. Even though Microsoft was supposed to fix it, they went ahead and made their own driver fix.
Conclusion
The PortableOne UX is meant for the power user on the go. It is a great fit for the traveling photographer who needs a durable and portable notebook, and one that can also run Photoshop without a glitch. I don't think it is the best choice for a student who needs a portable email and word processing machine that they can use at the library. Although I am not what you would call a power user, I still enjoyed using the UX so much that it’s somewhat difficult to readjust to my large N3530.
Pros:
Qualms:
Cons:
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