Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro i5 Laptop Preview

[Redaktion]

Who invented it? To recognize similarities to the Apple design language in other manufacturers has become a tradition by now. The inhibition threshold for this is particularly low in the Chinese brands. With the Mi Notebook Pro, Xiaomi follows Apple's MacBook Pro, at least in terms of the looks. At a price below 1000 Euros (~$1160), the device offers an attractive package with a quad-core CPU, dedicated graphics card, and pleasing aluminum case. But what is behind the exterior?

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Xiaomi-Mi-Notebook-Pro-i5-Laptop-Preview.262386.0.html

[uniffy]

Everywhere I look, the battery life is between 7 and 8 hours. Xiaomi says up to 9 hours, so I assumed 7-8 hours is what to expect. But now I see ~10 hours. I dunno who to believe? I want a laptop of this calibre but cheaper price with >=10 hours, hopefully Ryzen can bring that but man AMD is teasing us with Ryzen mobile. I also can't wait till Feb. too far... :-\

[WMei]

Where's the gaming test?!!

[WMei]

Where's the gaming test?!!

Oh it just preview, sorry  ;D

[dthrp]

I just think this is too heavy and expensive for a 15 inch laptop with little power. 15.6", ~2.2 kg, i7-8xxxU, GTX 1050 / 1050 TI, 95+ Wh and I'll buy it.

[interacter]

Everywhere I look, the battery life is between 7 and 8 hours. Xiaomi says up to 9 hours, so I assumed 7-8 hours is what to expect. But now I see ~10 hours. I dunno who to believe? I want a laptop of this calibre but cheaper price with >=10 hours, hopefully Ryzen can bring that but man AMD is teasing us with Ryzen mobile. I also can't wait till Feb. too far... :-\

I have this laptop and with mixed normal use (YouTube videos, web browsing, Spotify streaming, word processing etc.) at approximately mid brightness I get around 7 hours or so. It really depends on what you're doing on it but the battery life has been more than satisfactory so far; enough to get me through most of the day without bringing the charger around.

[uniffy]

Everywhere I look, the battery life is between 7 and 8 hours. Xiaomi says up to 9 hours, so I assumed 7-8 hours is what to expect. But now I see ~10 hours. I dunno who to believe? I want a laptop of this calibre but cheaper price with >=10 hours, hopefully Ryzen can bring that but man AMD is teasing us with Ryzen mobile. I also can't wait till Feb. too far... :-\

I have this laptop and with mixed normal use (YouTube videos, web browsing, Spotify streaming, word processing etc.) at approximately mid brightness I get around 7 hours or so. It really depends on what you're doing on it but the battery life has been more than satisfactory so far; enough to get me through most of the day without bringing the charger around.

Thanks. I'm really tempted with this laptop cause I need a new machine really soon. Waiting for some linux reviews. Hopefully the fingerprint works and battery is comparable if not better than windows.

[Tweaker]

Another fake aluminum chassis like the Asus Zenbooks.  You can clearly see the plastic structure in the internal shots and brass screw inserts into the plastic.  Why can't any one else do a proper aluminum chassis like Apple that is thoroughly aluminum, not just aluminum veneer+plastic underneath ?  I just hate it when you carry around your laptop or service it and the brass screw inserts eventually rips out of its plastic holes.

[dthrp]

Limited speed on PCIe-NVMe SSD may be caused by the implementation of OPI GT2 which tries to save power consumption by cutting performance.
Much like the well known PCIe 3.0 x 2 interface adoption on M.2-2280 slots and TB3 ports, using GT2 is an ongoing issue on a lots of intel ULV-CPU laptops such as the popular Dell XPS 13.

Source: goo.gl/ixrBpj

[Tomm]

Nitro 5 AN515-31 (new model with 8250U + MX 150 + 8Gb + 256Gb SSD variants for 800 euros) is overall better and cheaper than Xiaomi model.

Most noticeable differences with screen are with flickering and display response times.

Overall temperatures are lower even on max load, even case is plastic compared to magnesium / aluminum case on Xiaomi, maybe because ventilation is much better?

Connections (qualcomm) seem to be slightly better than on Xiaomi Intel band.

[is dthrp serious?]

You're complaining about weight while simultaneously asking for more than 50% increase in battery capacity? How does that make sense? You can't have both. Almost every 95+ Wh laptop weighs 4.7 lbs or more, which is more than this thing.

As for price, it will fall with due time. Especially from competition when more similarly specced laptops are released and with holiday season discounts / sales. It is a windows laptop after all and not apple which seem to be immune from such events.

Also, you're asking for GTX-class gpu's but keep in mind they all generate significantly more heat and require much beefier cooling solutions (which adds to weight). Not to mention every GTX 1050 / 1050 ti laptop so far has been paired with a high voltage quadcore cpu.

As a result, I don't think there is any notebooks with gpu's equivalent to gtx-class in 2.2 kg range which don't throttle. They pretty much all throttle due to insufficient cooling. And the ones which have proper cooling solutions that don't weigh almost 3kg or more.

Not entirely sure why you're that interested in i7 U-series 8th gen cpu's. Yeah, it is faster but most vendors are charging $200 more for it. Not sure it's really worth that much especially when the i5 is already quite capable.

IMO, i5 8th gen U-series + mx150 laptops are pretty much hit the sweet spot for price / performance in the < 4.4 lb form factor range while keeping decent thermals and not throttling (since those low power components generate so little heat to begin with). If you really need more power, just egpu or use a desktop. You simply cannot cool a 45w cpu + 50w gpu without breaking your back or running into serious throttling/thermal issues.

I would still not buy this laptop but I am excited to see what similarly specced systems other vendors come up with. Yes, there are other 8th gen U-series + mx150 laptops which are far lighter and cheaper but this is one of the few that has been shown to keep constant maximum gpu turbo boost (1600+ mhz) while playing heavy/intensive games, which shows it has a decent cooling system.

So I think your words are abit harsh, especially considering gtx 1050 laptops such as xps 15 and zenbook pro ux550ve have trouble keeping gpu clocks under mixed cpu load....

[dthrp]

@is dthrp serious?:

Okay.

[nitesh]

You can unlock the TDP of this device with the Intel tuning utility and the Nvidia something or other, i.e you can make these behave more like 45W chips. Since there's a lot of cooling overhead in this system for the modest chips, could you test this for the final review?

See here for methodology

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IAsVlxppu8

[acgw]

this is review done right :)

[ExF1]

We have this laptop, and so far it has left an excellent impression. It packs excellent performance in a very stylish and solid feeling package. Could you buy an Acer (Nitro) for a similar price? Perhaps, if you are into the "gaming look". No thanks.

As mentioned below, there is a party-trick to this model, which has quite good dual-fan cooling: Undervolt the CPU slightly, bump the TDP from 15W to 30W (35W) and you can run max turbo on 4 cores without throttling (stable around 72C without laptop cooler). Result? Cinebench 15 coming in around 730.

Anyway, we bought the i5 model on Gearbest for around 720 euro after subtracting a small cashback. Well worth it.