XMG is the gaming sub-brand of German laptop maker Schenker. And within the XMG range lies a choice of three levels – Advanced, Core and Pro – which correspond to the entry-level, midrange and flagship series.
So the XMG P505 is a gaming laptop from the top tier that Schenker can deliver – unless you want to step up to the Ultimate Series. This takes a desktop-class CPU and all the trimmings, making it more of a fire-breathing desktop-replacement PC; less of a notebook you’d want to place upon your lap.
The P505 is a 15-inch gaming laptops that serves as a platform to host Nvidia’s newest 900 Series mobile graphics processors, namely the GeForce GTX 965M, 970M and 980M. We tested a configuration with the top 980M, allied with the laptop motherboard’s single choice of CPU, an Intel Core i7-4720HQ running at 2.6 GHz. This chip packs 6 MB cache and can Turbo up to 3.6 GHz.
SCHENKER XMG P505 REVIEW: CONFIGURATIONS AND OPTIONS
The starting price for the XMG P505 is £891, although at this price you don’t get any internal storage, let alone an operating system to install it on, nor any wireless connectivity. Visit the laptop’s product page and you’ll find that Schenker UK has already set up a base model with a 500 GB hard disk and budget 11ac Wi-Fi card for a price of £939, although you’ll still need to pay the Windows tax of £65 and up to put your choice of gaming operating system on there.
Memory is fully configurable, from a single 4 GB RAM card of Crucial Ballistix Sport, up to 32 GB Kingston HyperX Impact. The given options are for 1866 MHz clock memory, higher than Intel's official specification for this processor of 1600 MHz. Schenker UK tells us that even higher-clocked RAM can be used, up to 2133 MHz, although this isn't stable.
We specified 16 GB of Crucial memory. There’s a total of four slots for SO-DIMM memory modules, with the pre-installed RAM installed on the reverse side of the motherboard. There’s a way in through the keyboard, to swap this out without a lengthy teardown of the entire machine. You can also add two more memory cards easily to slots on the top side of the motherboard when the bottom plate is removed.The standard 15.6-inch screen is 1920 x 1080 resolution, IPS technology, and finished with a matt anti-glare coating. You can also trade up to a 4K UHD panel of 3840 x 2160, although since even the world’s finest GPUs for laptops struggle at four-times the full-HD resolution, we suggested a 2880 x 1620-pixel panel as the best compromise, driven by the top GTX 980M graphics processor with 4 GB of GDDR5 video memory.
Storage options get very interesting, as the P505 can accept up to two traditional SATA drives, either 2.5-inch hard disk or SSD up to 9.5 mm thick each, plus two M.2 form-factor drives. One of the latter can be a PCIe-attached flash drive, using four lanes of PCIe 2.0, while the other is fixed to a SATA bus only. But this SATA-only M.2 card slot can also potentially take a cellular data modem, which is why chassis manufacturer Clevo includes a SIM-card slot on the laptop’s side. Our sample was configured with a single drive, a Samsung XP941 PCI3 2.0 x4 card, with 512 GB capacity.
For wireless communications, we added the option for Qualcomm Killer dual-stream 802.11ac. Despite the size of the laptop, there’s no third antennae in the chassis to allow a full 3x3 MIMO Wi-Fi card.
SCHENKER XMG P505: SPECS
- 15.6-inch (2880 x 1620) 212 ppi IPS matt anti-glare (Panasonic VVX16T020G00)
- Windows 8.1
- 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7-4720HQ (3.6 GHz Turbo) 4C, 8T
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M with 4 GB GDDR5 + Intel HD Graphics 4600
- 16 GB (2x 8 GB) 1866 MHz DDR3 (Crucial Ballistix Sport)
- 512 GB M.2 PCIe 2.0 x4 SSD (Samsung XP941 – MZHPU512HCGL)
- gigabit ethernet
- 802.11ac 2x2 MIMO (Qualcomm Atheros Killer Wireless-AC 1525)
- Bluetooth 4.0
- 3x USB 3.0, 1x eSATA/USB 3.0
- 2x Mini DisplayPort 1.2, HDMI 1.4
- Kensington lock slot
- SD, SIM card slots
- stereo speakers
- webcam, array microphone
- 3.5 mm headphone jack, 3.5 mm line in, 3.5 mm S/PDIF
- UK tiled, white backlight keyboard
- two-button multi-touch trackpad, 107 x 63 mm with fingerprint sensor
- 60 Wh lithium-ion, non-removable battery
- 180 W mains charger with IEC C13 inlet
- 385 x 273 x 29.5 mm
- 2591 g (+1053 g PSU)
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