Eurocom Racer Clevo P150HM Battery Life, Heat and Noise

Heat and Noise
The P150HM chassis is cooled by dual fans that vent hot air out the back of the notebook on both the left and right sides. We found that the fans remain on most of the time but the fan noise is only noticeable above typical office background noise when the graphics are being stressed. If you're playing a visually intense game then you'll need to turn up the volume on the built-in speakers or use a headset if you don't want to be bothered by fan noise.

The cooling system does a great job keeping internal components cool; the GPU never reached 70 degrees C and the processor topped out in the 60s. The external temperatures were equally mild for a gaming notebook; all temperatures shown below are listed in degrees Fahrenheit.

Battery Life
When it comes to our battery life test it's important to keep in mind that your chosen hardware configuration will have a profound impact on battery life. The P150HM has a large eight-cell lithium-ion battery but our review unit has a power-hungry Core i7-2960XM Extreme Edition processor and an equally thirsty AMD Radeon HD 6990M graphics card. During our standard battery rundown test (Windows 7 Balanced power profile, 70% screen brightness, wireless active, and refreshing a web page every 60 seconds), the Eurocom Racer delivered just 2 hours and 31 minutes of battery life from its 8-cell battery. That's a full hour less than the Alienware M14x, but the 14-inch Alienware doesn't pack this kind of hardware. While this isn't very impressive battery life it's in line with the kind of battery life loss we saw in a fully equipped Dell Precision M4600 which was also using a Core i7 Extreme Edition processor.

Battery life test results (higher scores mean better performance):

CONCLUSION
The Eurocom Racer is an excellent example of the latest and greatest in custom gaming notebook technology in a 15-inch size. Yes, it's based on the same Clevo P150HM that is available from multiple resellers, but Eurocom offers an impressive range of configuration options that aren't available from every reseller.

It's the optional extras that really separate one custom notebook from another. If you're in the market for a "bleeding edge" gaming laptop or the most powerful mobile workstation that money can buy then Clevo-based custom notebooks are often the solution.

At the time of this writing, there are few 15-inch notebooks on the market that exceed the performance of the Clevo P150HM and the Eurocom Racer is certainly among the best configurations out there.

As we mentioned, be sure to visit our discussion forums to find out more about Eurocom and other Clevo offerings.

Pros:

• Perhaps the most powerful 15-inch gaming notebook on the market!
• Fantastic matte screen options
• Impressive variety of customizable options

Cons:

• No backlit keyboard option
• High-performance options add significant cost
• Poor battery life as configured
• You need to know what you're buying

Individual Ratings: *

Software & Support 
Upgrade Capabilities 
Usability 
Design 
Performance 
Features 
Price/Value Rating 
* Ratings averaged to produce final score