AVADirect Clevo W230ST

A case of too much power in a too-little chassis

As much as we enjoy pure PC power in our gaming laptops, we hate having to lug around big, hulking notebooks. Thankfully, this is something AVADirect attempts to address with its latest Clevo laptop, the W230ST. Its compact 13.3-inch gaming notebook chassis is crammed with impressive hardware, including a quad- core 2.7GHz Core i7-4800MQ, GeForce GTX 765M, and 16GB of RAM. While it may sound like you’re getting the best of both worlds, AVADirect’s Clevo ends up biting off more than it can chew.

In terms of portability, AVADirect’s offering really does pull through. Using the same 13x9x1.25-inch chassis as Digital Storm’s Veloce reviewed in our December issue, it’s smaller than most other gaming laptops, save for Razer’s 14-inch super-slim Blade notebook. And weighing in at less than five pounds, we had no complaints lugging it around CES with us for an entire week.

AVADirect Clevo W230ST

Aesthetically, the W230ST is generic. There is a small AVADirect sticker next to the trackpad but no other branding. The lid's black rubberized top contributes to the plainness, but at least gives it some grip when carrying it with one hand.

While we love the notebook for its portability, its performance is mixed despite its specs. The GTX 765M performed quite well and managed from three to nine percent gains over our Alienware 14 zero-point laptop, which uses the same mobile graphics card. When we turned to our CPU-centric tests, though, it turned ugly. The AVADirect saw a 4 to 14 percent deficit against the Alienware, which has a Core i7-4700MQ that’s clocked 300MHz lower than the AVADirect’s CPU. It took the biggest beating in the multithreaded X264 HD 5.01 run. Even though the Core i7-4800MQ is spec’d to hit a max turbo of 3.7GHz, it’ll only sit there on light loads. On loads that push four threads, such as our ProShow Producer test, it mostly hangs tight at 3GHz, where the Alienware will chug along at 3.2GHz. The reason is thermals and the bigger, thicker Alienware can quietly dissipate the heat while the AVADirect clocks down and cranks up the fans. And that brings us to the next issue: noise.

AVADirect Clevo W230ST’s upside

Noise during multi-threaded loads is understandable, but the fans often ran embarrassingly loud even when we were just browsing the web. To make matters worse, the laptop’s speakers are quite weak and were often drowned out by the fan. Battery life also let us down, with a disappointing two hours and 45 minutes on video playback. On a gaming notebook it’s usually forgivable, but the portability of the AVADirect carries an expectation of good battery life.

Less offensive was its keyboard, which features chiclet keys and white LED back-lighting. Its Synaptics trackpad is serviceable and we liked how it had two separate dedicated buttons, though we found two- finger scrolling horribly unresponsive on it. On the bright side, the notebook’s IPS screen looks fantastic and offers excellent viewing angles (we wish more vendors would choose the option).

AVADirect’s W230ST does have a lot going for it. In addition to its awesome display, the notebook offers impressive GPU performance and is very portable. At $1,557 it’s priced fairly, though if you intend to use it just for gaming, we would suggest saving 80 bucks by going for 8GB of RAM instead of the 16GB configured here, as that's still plenty for gaming. At the end of the day, however, with its ho-hum battery life and annoyingly loud fan, we can’t confidently recommend the W230ST without the buyer being aware of its drawbacks.

AVADirect Clevo W230ST’s back