So I finally have new replacement over my old ASUS A456UR laptop which I used for more than 3 years. Here's my old laptop specifications:
- Intel Core i5-7200U
- NVIDIA GT 930 MX
- 8GB of DDR3L RAM (not quite sure for the type actually). It was come with 4GB soldered RAM.
- 512GB of SATA SSD. It was come with 1TB hard drive which now I repurpose as external drive.
- 1366x768 screen, NTSC
And here's my new laptop specifications:
- AMD Ryzen 7 4700U
- 16GB of DDR4-3200 RAM (both soldered)
- 512GB of M.2 SSD. I have plan to upgrade it to 1TB later, but it's not my priority at the moment.
- 1920x1080 screen , 98% sRGB
- Touchscreen and stylus support, 360 degree hinge
From gaming perspective, this is a downgrade since my previous laptop had NVIDIA Optimus but from my overall perspective, it's overall upgrade (the 16GB RAM and the 8-core processor is important). I also ended up picking AMD because they have nice reputation nowadays and I don't want to fall into this Intel driver problem. Furthermore Genshin Impact doesn't play well with Intel GPUs/drivers.
NOTICE: Consider performing clean install when you get the laptop after you reedemed the Office Home & Student and Dropbox Promotion (if available).
First Impression
My first impresion, this laptop is quite small. It's interesting to see a smaller laptop have better specs than bigger laptop. This laptop also has Windows 10 and Office 2019 for free (although the latter may not available depending where you ge tthe laptop, ask the store first!) so I don't have to use cracked version of those which was my case for the old laptop (that I eventually reinstalled to ArchLinux).
Booting speed is fast. I don't have to see any moving circle loading indicator and it just straight boot into the lock screen, or is it just be first time experiencing laptop with M .2 SSD. The screen is also bit yellow, but quick search shows that sRGB tends to bit yellow due to its white point stands at 6500k.
It has some bloats which you can simply uninstall. For example: I'm not a fan of McAfee so I uninstalled it, thus Windows will switch back to its built-in Windows Defender. It also comes with Dropbox promotion (may vary depending on stores) which I simply reedem to my dummy Dropbox account then uninstall. There's probably one most important app that you'll most likely use: The HP Command Center. This one controls the thermal profile of the laptop. Because the laptop has aluminium chasis, it can be uncomfortable to touch on long CPU (and GPU) stress usage.
Battery Life
The battery life is simply amazing. I often use the laptop unplugged and it's enough to attend 2 consecutive online class which both can lasts for 2 and half hours. At night, it lasts for 5 hours and that even still left me with 25%.
Performance
8 cores without SMT is fine. Definely an upgrade from my previous laptop (2 cores + SMT). I feel significant speedup on compiling Android projects, transcoding, and everything in general while still being efficient. There's one thing to note however: if you're pushing the whole cores to 100% (i.e. video encoding) then you need to take care of the thermal. If you're using the laptop in air-conditioned room then it's fine to leave the thermal profile on performance. Otherwise you'll most likely need external fan.
Touchscreen & Stylus
The touchscreen and the stylus functions okay, not perfect. For some reason, the touch input and the stylus input has jittery/wavy lines, so the pen can only used for coloring or quick writing at best. Some reviewers said it's MS Pen Protocol to blame however. You also need to press slightly harder for the stylus input to register. For the touch problem however, I don't think it's a problem and it's a plus point on having touchscreen because I can test touchscreen-specific code in my LOVE projects.
(seek to 2:01 to see what I'm talking about the jittery thing)
Bluescreen
If you encounter bluescreen with SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED message pointing to msgpioclx.sys when performing full shutdown (restart also counts), then it's most likely the WiFi driver. Simply rollback the Realtek WiFi driver to resolve the issue. If it gets installed again, then use Windows Update Minitool to blacklist/hide the driver update.
UPDATE: If you encounter Live Kernel Event without bluescreen (screen just blank then restarts), then it's the AMD driver to blame. Downgrade to 27.20.11044.7!
Genshin Impact
Why do I even put this? Well fine.
The game recommends medium settings. Mind you, the game runs with integrated graphics and the default recommended settings can run the game at 30 FPS. I prefer 60 FPS so I can simply turn off motion blur and set the render to 0.8.
 |
| Default graphics setting. |
Again, make sure to have external fan or playing in air-conditioned room and set the thermal profile to performance. Otherwise you're risking the laptop to overheat. There was one case where I overheated the laptop, resulting in force shutdown. At that time, I opened Android Studio, Photoshop, and Genshin Impact at same time since I need to get some information from the game and put it to Android Studio for my assignments.
There's only one annoyance I found however. When I restart the laptop or after a day, the game logged me out from my game account, forcing me to login again. This never happends in my old laptop and in my phone. Maybe it's just because I copied the game files from my old laptop and used the launcher "Locate Game Files" option instead of fully downloading the game from scratch. I'll update this section once I have solution.
UPDATE: Reinstalled the game at 1.5. Problem still occurs sadly.
UPDATE2: Disabling "HP Support Solutions Framework Report" task at "Task Scheduler/Helwett-Packard/HP Support Assistant" seems helped on the random logout. You'll still logged out when performing restart/full shutdown however.
UPDATE3: I'm currently "playing ping-pong" between their customer service to get this problem fixed. I ended up offering myself to assist fixing the issue. Not sure how it will goes (or maybe not).
UPDATE4: I ended up performing clean install and so far the problem no longer occurs, but there's no vendor-specific apps installed yet.
Additional Notes
- The laptop screen support AMD FreeSync between 40 and 60 FPS.
- You need to charge the stylus first.
- Careful when opening the pen box. I accidently spilled two stylus heads inside the box because I opened the box wrong way. I found both back however.
- It defaults to "Action Keys Mode". Pressing "F" function keys runs the respective action icon instead (i.e. pressing only F4 toggle the keyboard backlit). This can be changed in UEFI setting.
- It comes with multi-port hub with USB Type-A, Type-C, and HDMI, one for each.
- Anything on the keyboard won't function when you flip the laptop more than 180 degrees. This includes the power button and the fingerprint. This can be annoying when the screen turned off by Windows and it automatically locks.
Conclusion
I think that's what you need to know. Whetever you want to get this laptop or not depends, but my suggestion is to wait for the Ryzen 5000 series
... because those has SMT too.
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