Zepto 6625WD Complete Review

[blackbird]

Pictures comming soon, also anyone know how I send this thing so that it appears in the Notebook Reviews section ??

Overview and Introduction

Zepto is a Danish company and a reletivly new commer to UK shores which produces laptops mainly for those in Europe. The Znote 6625WD is a high end gaming and desktop replacement laptop which incorporates the latest technologies available such as the Santa Rosa platform from Intel and DirectX 10 from Microsoft in a 15.4” size thus remaining portable.

Specifications

• Znote 6625WD
• 2.00 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 800MHz
• 15.4" WSXGA+ 1680x1050 - 6625WD
• NVIDIA Geforce 8600M GT 512 MB
• 2048MB (2x1024) DDR2 667/PC5300 SODIMM. Zepto
• 160GB 7200rpm SATA Harddisk Samsung
• 6 Cell Battery
• Intel Pro/Wireless 4965AGN
• SAMSUNG COMBO 6xx4w/6xx5WD/2xx5W
• Keyboard Znote 6x15W Black UK
• 1.3 Mega Pixel Camera
• Realtek HD Sound with support for 7.1 surround sound
• Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate (not purchased from Zepto)

Reasons for Buying

I was in search for a laptop that would get me through university, would provide the latest technologies, great gaming performance and be affordable for a student. Other laptops that I looked at prior to making my choice include the Asus G1s and the Dell Inspiron 9400. I turned down the Asus G1s due to its price and gaming look, turned down the 9400 since it did not have Santa Rosa nor DirectX 10.

Where and How Purchased

Customized and Purchased the laptop from uk.zepto.com. Price including everything came to around £950, I think this is the best deal available for someone in the UK looking for a great gaming laptop since the Rock P670, Asus G1s and Dell 9400 all cost about £150 - £200 above the Zepto.

Build and Design

The Design of the Znote 6625WD is simple yet stylish, I thank Zepto for not giving the notebook flashing lights and other features that give a hardcore gaming feel which I personally dislike. The Build quality of the laptop is good, it feels like a properly built laptop. The laptop’s weight is standard for a 15.4” and is easy to carry around. Pushing on the lcd display does not produce ripples. The hinges of the screen should have been a bit better though as it does shake when I tap on it.

Screen

The screen of this laptop is a 15.4" Glossy WSXGA+ with a resolution of 1680 x 1050. These specs for the screen make it a joy to look at, it is very sharp there is no leakage, no dead pixels and at this resolution everything from movies to word documents look absolutely fantastic. At first I was a bit worried the Glossy screen would be like those on the Sony Vaoi notebooks (they have a lot of reflection) but am glad it is not that glossy, it is almost in between a glossy and a matte slightly leaning more towards glossy. The brightness is great too however I think Zepto should have added a bit more brightness levels so that I can turn the brightness a bit more down at night then the default low settings.

Speakers

The speakers offer clear and loud audio quality thanks to Realtek HD Audio support, they also provide the posibility of hooking up 7.1 surround speakers to the laptop.

Processor and Performance

The Processor that I have is the Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 @ 2.00 Ghz and 800 Mhz fsb, this equipped with 2GB of ram and Nvidia 8600M GT graphics card provides a beast of a laptop. Everything opens right away with no delay, encoding videos is very fast ~ 40 min to encode a 700MB avi file into highest quality Ipod Video format, gaming performance is also great.

Cpu-Z Information



Gaming Performance and Screenshots

I will let the pictures speak for themselves

Oblivion

1280 x 800
Vsync On
Everything max except medium textures, HDR instead of bloom and no AA















Counter Strike Source

1680 x 1050, everything max except no AA and trilinear filtering.




Battlefield 2142

1024 x 768, since I cant select any other resolution, and If I force wide screen image gets squashed. Everything max, no AA


fps on the top left corner in red










Halflife 2

1680 x 1050 Everything max, 6 x AA, trilinear filtering







Battlefield 2

1024 x 768

Everything max, 8 x AA in first screenshot, no AA in the rest








Bioshock



Benchmarks

3D Mark06



I ran the test at 1280 x 800 to see how my results compare against those advertised by Zepto at that resolution. Zepto did not provide results for the default 3dmark06 res and thus I did not do the test at the default resolution.

I got 3394 marks with my configuration, the advertised ones are 3486 marks which are obtained using a better processor than mine, the t7700 instead of my t7300 so the slight difference is justified.

Windows Experience Index



Wprime – 32M speed test



Super pi



Heat and Noise

The laptop like any other notebook does get hot during intensive tasks such as encoding video’s and gaming but it feels reletivly cool compared to other laptops, the palm rest is cool during intensive tasks and so is the bottom of the laptop, this is an indication of a properly built heat dissipation system. The noise however is very loud, I can hear my notebook even when I am next to an open window with cars rushing by and the phone rining. Other users claim to have this problem too whilst some say their Znote 6625WD is silent. The Noise problem used to be a problem with other Zepto notebooks but due to extensive Bios fixes it has been fixed, Zepto support team memeber Rene assures me they are working on getting the same done to the 6625WD.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The laptop is great however one aspect of the it that lets all the high end hardware underneath the laptop down is the keyboard, they keyboard feels like its made out of cheap plastic and the quicklaunch launch keys should have been better decorated, in other words the keyboard should have been made so that it fits with the sleek exterior look of the laptop. The touchpad feels looks like its been made out of the same material as the palm rest which I do not like, the right and left click buttons should have been flat,made of the same color as the touchpad and should not make a heavy click sound like the mouse when pressed I think. One thing I do like about the touchpad is the tap to click function.

Input and Output Ports

• 4 x USB 2.0
• 1 x Firewire
• 1 x Card Reader
• 1 x VGA Out
• Ethernet
• Modem

Wireless

The wireless card is the new Intel Pro/Wireless 4965AGN offering 300Mbit wireless over the previous 54Mbit, I have not seen the 300Mbit performance since my wireless modems signal is only of 54Mbit. However the internet performance is very fast, as fast as if I connect it to the net directly thorugh ethernet cable.

Battery

At the time of purchase the only option was the 6 Cell Battery. I am quite dissapointed with the advertised battery life on Zepto’s site, they are inaccurate. My system lasts for about 1h:50min on powersaver plan in vista whilst doing activities such as surfing the web, whilst advertised battery life for such activities is above 2 hours and 20 minutues.

Operating System and Software

I chose the No Os option from Zepto and according got No Os with ny notebook, other than that the laptop came with only a driver dvd.

Customer Support

The customer support from Zepto UK has been exceptionelly incredible for me, a quite notable person from UK Zepto is Iann. He has answered to my emails within minitues, provided information that I need when I need it, answered every question that I have whilst mantaining a very friendly attitude. There were complications in my order such as I asked to remove the OS and refund me the OS price which was taken care of by Iann.
Only negative aspect about Zepto support is the technical support takes ages to answer, they put me on hold for 30 minitues before picking up.

Conclusion

Pros

• Beast of a laptop
• Simple yet stylish looks, thank god it doesnt have those retarded flashy lights on gaming laptops such as the dell xps and asus g series.
• Excellent screen
• Excellent gaming performance
• Excellent customer support for me atleast from UK branch, especially Iann.
• Priced very well

Cons

• Fans are just too loud, its day I am sitting near my window with cars passing by, phone rining and stil I can hear the noise of the laptop
• Keyboard should have been of better quality
• Bugs which you may or may not encounter such as dvd drive not showing up in vista which took ages for me to fix
• Batterly life is not as advertised on their website, stated 2h:45min on 6 cell with minimum use, I get about 1h:55min
• Microphone is poorly placed, have to speak loudly to get it to recognize my voice

I am quite happy with my notebook, it has everything I was looking for and works just like I want it to. There are a few flaws as mentioned in the review but some will be taken care of as a result of the bios update and as for the others, nothing is perfect.

[djcla]

good revew mate, but my 6625wd is near silent in normal use so that is odd..... Hopfully a bios update will fix it for you

[maati]

I agree with Zepto concerning battery life. I get 2h 45min to 3h. See my Sig.

Mine was very quiet, too.

[AppendixMan]

Nice review, I agree with most of the stuff you said however I too have very silent fans. Perhaps one of your fans was not fitted properly or maybe they are just faulty.

[blackbird]

I payed close attention to my notebooks sound today since all of you are saying the fans are silent.

My fan goes silent for a bout one minute and then turns a bit on again. Other than that the noise I get is something along the lines of very heavy airflow, like when air tries to flow through a narrow opening.

Its hard to put sound in words so I will record the sound and post it here, maybe its a fan problem, maybe its a build problem, maybe my ears are just too sensitive il let you be the judge when i upload the sound file

[Megatron]

Nice review blackbird!
I think the ingame pictures don't say that much. Just post a few, not a gazillion
No superPI?

and when you do print screen in windows you could use Alt+prtSc and you just get a picture of the active window.

Other than that it's a great review! good job

[blackbird]

Originally Posted by Megatron

Nice review blackbird!
I think the ingame pictures don't say that much. Just post a few, not a gazillion
No superPI?

and when you do print screen in windows you could use Alt+prtSc and you just get a picture of the active window.

Other than that it's a great review! good job

Thanks

I read on these forums that Wprime is the new super pi, since it uses both cores, if you insist I can post super pi results as well.

Those pictures were what I posted in the 8600M GT screenshot thread so I just copy pasted them here

thanks for the alt+prtsc tip didnt know about that till now.

[Sprint]

As a owner of a 6625wd, I just cant say that the fans are that silent. At minimum rpm I an hear them, it allmost has the same amount of noise that my old IBM Thinkpad A31 wich is OLD. Thats not so good is it.

[Rene S - Zepto]

Sprint, but how powerful is the A31 compared to the 6625WD?

[Sprint]

1.6ghz single core 512 ram 32mb graphics card