So... I got my Conceptd 7 ezel and I feel like I owe you guys a review

Hi Worzyl, IMO speakers are weak. Definitely NOT enough bass or volume in general. I don't know if it's an issue with just my unit, as it's the only one I've used. If I were looking for a good media experience, I would definitely be looking to pair it up with headphones or bluetooth speakers.

For reference, I'm coming from a Surface Book and Macbook Pro (~2015 model) and the speakers on my ConceptD 7 Ezel are noticeably worse than either of those.

Otherwise, for my primary needs (Software Development 1st, visual design/drawing 2nd, gaming 3rd), I love the CPU horsepower, and the sensitivity / light activation force of the EMR pen is a joy to use compared to my previous two units (Surface Book and Vaio Duo), so I ended up keeping the device.

 

Don't know how Apple do it but nothing else really compares for speaker output really. My 2013 macbook still outperforms any Windows laptop I've tried in any shop display.

 

Thanks for the additional context for comparison doobiedoobiedum. I can't wait to be able to see these in the store to know if I got a bum unit or not.

Other not-great things about the unit so far:

• The webcam is horrible.
• When I had the fingerprint sensor enabled, I was getting a ton of "phantom clicks". I disabled it since it's not something I normally rely on anyways.

But again, I kept it despite all these flaws because the display, horsepower and pen experiences were all way better than my old SB and MBP. I would have preferred to wait for more 11th gen Intel devices hit the market before deciding, but I needed something immediately and no regrets with the performance at all.

 

I wish I had €4000 to spare to get this, sadly it's not going to happen any time soon and it's a pity also because it currently comes with 4 years of warranty.

 

I think the model has a lot of potential -- and I would love to see what happens in the next hardware refresh. I kind of feel they have some kinks to work out in the design. So I think you're better off waiting for the refresh / next gen anyways.

Regarding the sound issues, I noticed that I could get a bump in volume by boosting all the bands in the "DTS X Ultra" config menu. I wonder if that driver was artificially throttling the volume to leave room for the equalizer to selectively boost things -- and maybe was designed with slightly overpowered speakers in mind?

 

, yeah it is a super cool device. Bit late to reply but just wanted to mention if you can wait than it is now probably good time to wait till more Tiger Lake (/much better igpu compared Comet- & Ice Lakes) / new Ryzen laptops are released. There seems to be a swift to 16:10 / 3:2 displays and that combined with drastically better igpu's I think we will get more & more interesting options available to choose from.