Schenker XMG Fusion 15 in Review: Intel's reference design challenges the competition

[Redaktion]

Intel and Schenker have created a thin gaming laptop with good battery life, lots of performance and an enthusiast level port selection. Will it wipe the floor with competing Razer, Acer, Gigabyte and Asus offerings?

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Schenker-XMG-Fusion-15-in-Review-Intel-s-reference-design-challenges-the-competition.435952.0.html

[DF]

Imagine what could be done on a 17" ref design.  This really is a machine well done.

[Worldliner]

The battery runtime is a little bit disappointing compared to its capacity. Aero 15 with similar 94wh batteries and a much more demanding 4k oled screen can last 7 hours in pcmark10 tests.

[Diogo Dimas]

Does the battery last 6 or 8 hours with the NBC WI-FI test, cause on the text it says 8 hours while in the graph its 6 hours, after all if its 6 hours i would have a Triton 500.

[DjebbZ]

Hi, just saying that on the home page of notebookcheck.net, when filtering the articles by "Reviews" AND "Laptop", this article doesn't appear, it only appears when filtering by "Reviews" only. Nice review as usual, and very good laptop. Thanks!

[XMG Community]

1/ Display measured values

We regret that we have a very significant measurement error here. Notebookcheck gives a contrast of 690:1 - but we measured a contrast of 1029 (sample #1) and 1161:1 (sample #2) on both MP samples before shipping. This is also in line with the extensive quality controls at the previous Mass Production and is also confirmed by Intel: each panel has at least 900:1, usually over 1000:1.

Where the discrepancy between the measurements of Notebookcheck and XMG/Intel comes from is still unclear. The editor was kind enough to point out the rather strange measurements to us before the article was published. We tried together with the editor to exclude other driver, firmware and setting causes, unfortunately without success. It can hardly be due to the methodology and the measuring device - so far our values were always quite close to the review values. Nevertheless, we cannot rule out a certain dispersion in panel production or a previously undiscovered firmware bug.

We will get the two samples back from NBC shortly and then measure them a second time. Until then: don't panic, the display is identical to the one in the XMG NEO 15 and Razer Blade 15, so it can't be that bad. :p

[Update]: Computerbase now has a review online and reports a contrast of 997:1 (vs. Notebookcheck 690:1).
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.computerbase.de%2F2019-10%2Fxmg-fusion-15-test%2F


2/ Battery life and power consumption in idle mode

Notebookcheck comes up to 6 hours in the NBC WiFi Websurfing Battery Test 1.3. Here we can add that a 1080p Youtube video over WiFi with the same screen brightness (150cd/m²) comes up to 8 hours.

The previous firmware still had 1-2 minor problems with the energy consumption in idle. Under certain circumstances this has increased from the very good 7W to not so good 20W. One reason for this was that the NVIDIA GPU didn't go to sleep in certain situations and thus kept the x16 PCI Express lanes on the CPU package awake. We are in contact with Intel and received an update on Wednesday (BIOS 0052 and CC 2.1.0.15). Further updates are planned, so that the power consumption in idle should be stable at the very good ~7W in the future.

If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to contact us in the collecting thread, on Reddit or via PM.

Cheers
XMG|Thomas

[Fufabi]

After the XMG explanation are expected new tests made by notebookcheck?

[william blake]

50 degrees keyboard, 50 db noise
industry standard
unpleasant in use but you can be proud your bezels are thin
sometimes they even give you a super muper high-end technology called thunderbolt

[Ngoro]

In the article you wrote:
"The Samsung SSD 970 Evo Plus (500 GB) can be used in a RAID 1 (redundant) or RAID 0 configuration. For users who do not need redundance, 400 GB of storage space is available.

RAID 1 offers optimal safety, but only 130 GB is available in this mode. Since a second M.2-2280 slot for an additional SSD (PCI Express x4) is available, this is not a problem."

this RAID (0 or 1) is on the first M.2-2280 on one Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus (500gb) SSD?

Can I have a real RAID 0 using both first and second M.2-2280 slots? I each I plan to put Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus (500gb) SSD.

Thanks

[XMG Community]

After the XMG explanation are expected new tests made by notebookcheck?

Notebookcheck has sent the review sample to another editor and updated the article today as follow:

Update 10/18/2019: We repeated the display measurements of the Fusion due to a defective measuring device and implemented the new results below. The display sub-rating improves from 80.7 to 84.3 %, but the overall score of the Fusion is still 84 % (after the rounding of the decimal place). We can now confirm the advertised contrast ratio of >1000:1.

(Quote from Notebookcheck. Source)

50 degrees keyboard, 50 db noise
industry standard
unpleasant in use but you can be proud your bezels are thin
sometimes they even give you a super muper high-end technology called thunderbolt

Those values represent Furmark+Prime and other extreme cases like playing every AAA always on "Ultra". If you reduce some graphical details like post processing and motion blur and maybe even add a 143fps frame limiter on top, the average load can be greatly reduced while still retaining the neccessary horsepower to avoid stuttering during performance spikes like explosions, smoke grenades or mass enemy ambush. Most games can be played with 70% fan speed which translates to 45.6 db(A) as outlined in this table:

(https://abload.de/img/xmg-fusion-fan-table_sxjra.png)

Please also keep in mind that Notebookcheck is not using the ISO 7799 industry standard but puts the microphone 10cm closer to the chassis. This makes Notebookcheck's noise data incomparable to data published my manufacturers like other laptop brands or even NVIDIA themselves.

And yes, the narrow bezel and the extremely low weight of this chassis is very nice indeed.

(Quote from Notebookcheck) RAID 1 offers optimal safety, but only 130 GB is available in this mode.

This quote contains a wrong statement. Of course the capacity of RAID 1 on a 500GB SSD is not reduced to 130GB: This was a mistake in the original review sample where (for some internal mishap) we put a 250GB partition (further divided into System and Recovery) on a 500GB SSD. This was fixed in the 2nd review sample which became the baseline for the rest of the article. (The 2nd review sample was supplied due to irregular screen brightness/contrast readings which have since been pinpointed to a defective reading device on Notebookcheck's behalf)

Can I have a real RAID 0 using both first and second M.2-2280 slots? I each I plan to put Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus (500gb) SSD.

Yes, no problem!

Cheers,
XMG|Tom

[romanov]

Hello, about the editor's note at the start, it is not completely accurate.

In the Eluktronics model there is a diffetent SSD drive, Intel 660p.
Also, there is at least one keyboard difference. At Schenker the Enter is big, Eluktronics and Mingear have a smaller enter and a slash button above (and so does the Aftershock Vapor 15 pro), so the layout of the keyboard is a bit different.

[XMG Community]

The other vendors use US/ANSI keyboard, we are using UK/ISO.

We have also customized the whole keyboard printing layout to make it look more clean. Thanks to our repositioning, the secondary functions are getting more LED backlight than in Intel's original layout.

The list goes on... :)

// Tom

[XMG Community]

Latest Update from December 13, 2019

Control Center 2.1.0.19

This update is recommended for every owner of XMG FUSION 15 and other compatible laptops based on Intel QC71.

Instructions:
- Download Control Center 2.1.0.19 from our Download Portal
- Uninstall your current Control Center via Windows: Apps & features
- Install Control Center 2.1.0.19 and restart
- You can now also update your Intel and NVIDIA Graphics Drivers to the latest official versions

BIOS Update 0058

Installing this update is safe and very recommended. It can be installed in Windows (please close all programs before proceeding) or via the F7 Update Tool in BIOS-Setup.

Instructions:
- Download BIOS 0058 from our Download Portal.
- Follow the instructions in our PDF File.

Please follow our on-going thread on reddit.com/r/XMG_gg

→ XMG FUSION 15: Drivers / Firmware / BIOS Updates

Cheers,
XMG|Tom

[CocoLoco]

What about circuit whine? Most, if not all, slim laptops with 9750H seem to have it. For me, is a deal killer.

[XMG Community]

What about circuit whine? Most, if not all, slim laptops with 9750H seem to have it. For me, is a deal killer.

Sorry for late reply. There have been a few isolated reports but so far nothing widespread. All systems that I personally checked have no audible coil whine from a normal seating position.

Cheers,
Tom