Eluktronics RP-15 Laptop Review: The Ryzen 7 4800H Impresses Yet Again

[Redaktion]

AMD's latest Renoir series is popping up on more and more gaming laptops and for good reason. If you can deal with the loud fan noise, then you won't be disappointed by the CPU performance of the surprisingly small Eluktronics RP-15.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Eluktronics-RP-15-Laptop-Review-The-Ryzen-7-4800H-Impresses-Yet-Again.466470.0.html

[chxei]

Very interesting device, is this a known brand? I heard only once or twice only about Eluktronics. Do they have good reputation?

[LHPSU]

A dedicated End key but no Home key?

[undervolter0x0309]

I've owned a few of their machines. Not only do they deliver peak performance but also have a very hands on and supportive team!

I buy exclusively from them as I know they're always looking to maximize customers' dollar to get the best perf. They have very little marketing and business expenses so they can invest most of the money in R&D and bettering their produts.

[wertzius]

Except they do near to no development apart heir boosting features as they are just reselling the same barebones any other custom notbook reseller also does.
Nevertheless, always a good choice if you search for repairability, customization and performance.

[Alex544]

Very interesting device, is this a known brand? I heard only once or twice only about Eluktronics. Do they have good reputation?

They are the enthusiast brand.
Their laptops crush basically any of the "main brand" laptops (ie MSI, ASUS, etc) in terms of not only performance, but also value.

This is what I wanted to see. A good laptop with an AMD CPU inside. Not garbage like the ASUS ones with 60% srgb screen and performance throttled by 15% thanks to s*** cooling.

[techdude]

7 nm and still runs hot as hell - the weak point of AMD cpu for decades.
No undervolting possible.

[Alex544]

7 nm and still runs hot as hell - the weak point of AMD cpu for decades.
No undervolting possible.

now compare it to the 8-core i9s.

[mrdoubtfull]

7 nm and still runs hot as hell - the weak point of AMD cpu for decades.
No undervolting possible.

LOL you must not be keeping up with the latest tech.. And right now you only see Ryzen CPUs in cheap laptops but go ahead and pop a 10980hk in this sucker and see what happens HAHAHHAAA..

[duy]

damn a laptop that can keep a 8 core cpu at 4 ghz... 90°C is a price i can take.

[XMG Community]

We are distributing this laptop under the name XMG CORE 15 in Germany and the European Union.

We have shared Notebookcheck's review with the ODM in Taiwan and received the following response.

1/ Idle Power Consumption

The ODM says that this model usually only an Idle power consumption in the 10W range - not the 21 to 35W that is quoted in the NBC review.

The ODM assumes that this is either related to the Windows installation from Eluktronics or the NBC editor was running some applications in the background that kepts the dGPU awake. Usually, in Idle Desktop, the dGPU should be sleeping unless you add an external desktop.

To understand more about which kind of software can keep the dGPU awake, please read the section My battery life is less than it should be / I have high Idle power consumption / my dGPU is not turning off in this article:

XMG Gaming Laptops: First Steps & Troubleshooting

Elevated power consumption due to software background activity might also explain elevanted skin temperatures and fan noise activity in Idle.

Regarding skin temperature in Idle, the ODM has measured the following data:

Touchpad: 26°C
Keyboard: 33°C
Hotspot above keyboard: 34°C

This is at Idle desktop with dGPU sleeping and fans turned 'OFF' due to low CPU temperature, at 25°C ambient temperature.


2/ Balance of Performance vs. fan noise

This is not from the ODM but from me, personally. IMHO, the NBC review does not represent the true nature of the product very well. There is no mention of fan noise for CPU-only tasks (which is something the AMD CPU really shines at) and almost all of the fan noise data is recorded in the extremely high "Turbo" mode. Thin & Light products have multiple performance profiles for a reason. There is always a sweet spot in the lower profiles, and it's up to the user if they want to squeeze out the last percentage of performance of the system or not. NVIDIA calls this sweet spot "Max-Q" (see this chart) but the same logic also applies to the CPU and the whole system.

In the moderate "Gaming" profile (which is selected by default), Witcher 3 at "Ultra" quality settings on the boosted RTX 2060 (110W, much more than most other RTX 2060 competitors) records only a moderate 48 db(A).


3/ DPC Latency

The test scenario for DPC latency is relatively unclear in Notebookcheck. The German editors seems to use Prime95 (including start and stop) under full load. The US editors is randomly clicking around on their website (probably without Adblock). At any rate, it is our understanding that the ODM has recently begun some serious work on improving DPC latency stability across the whole product range. We have already been informed about significant improvements on one of our premium models, a collaboration with Intel.

Feel free to ask more questions. To read our full FAQ on this series, check out this thread on Reddit.

BR,
Tom

[Skyline]

This review was great but now I'm torn between either this or the ASUS TUF A15 not really sure which one to snag and where I'm from the price difference is about $300

[Yaroslav]

Do you mean the ASUS TUF A15 with the 1660ti, or the one with the 2060?
And I am going to assume that the RP-15 is 300$ more than the ASUS, right?

Either way, from the research I've done, The Asus has a bigger battery, so in theory will have an hour or two of extra use time for non-gaming related tasks. And it might be cheaper for you.

On the other hand, the Asus has pretty crappy screen colors, compared to fairly good colors on the Eluktronics. If you plan to do anything other than gaming, the Asus might let you down with the screen.

Personally, I totally considered the Asus TUF A15, but I also do Lightroom photo processing on the side, so good screen colors matter to me, so I went with the RP-15.
If the Asus had a bit better screen, would be the perfect mid-range gaming/photo laptop.

[Skyline]

Yes it was for the 2060 version! My main plan at first was going to be just gaming but granted I'll be doing coding soon and planned on possible using it for work as well! That's why I was leaning more towards the A15 for the price point and the power it had! The only
Thing that really worries me is the temperature of the machine while gaming. I would be ordering it with thermal paste which I feel would be just fine considering all reviews are just stock and that the paste helps significantly in my experience.

But then I have the RP-15 and the temps are all below 90 even on heavy work loads which seems incredible! So that's why I'm torn on which to go! Plus with the RP-17 being the same price I also thought if I was to get that bigger size that the thermals would be improved more due to more air flow being able to. But that battery only being 62w is killer

[Beeeeeeep]

Very interesting device, is this a known brand? I heard only once or twice only about Eluktronics. Do they have good reputation?

This looks like an OEM from Qinghuatongfang, 清华同方，whcih has a bad rep I'm afraid.