Schenker XMG P505 review

 Nvidia’s new generation laptop graphics processors have made their way into plenty of high-end gaming laptops, but to date we’ve only tested machines with the GTX 970M on board. The Schenker XMG P505 is our first opportunity to take a look at the top-end GTX 980M. It’s fitting the chip arrives inside a Schenker laptop, as nearly a year ago it was this model’s predecessor, the XMG P504, that gave us our first taste of the then top-end 880M.

There are some big differences between the two models, the most notable and obvious being the styling. The P504’s ugly box has been thrown out, replaced with a brand new Clevo-designed chassis with a thinner profile, better keyboard and more attractive materials. The P505 feels less like a utilitarian container for components and more like a laptop we wouldn’t mind showing to our friends.

The boxy edges of 2014 have been replaced with chamfered corners at the front of the lid and wrist rest. It’s thinner, too, at just over 30mm compared to the older model’s 45mm, and it weighs just 2.5kg; the old model was a hefty 3.3kg. All this makes for a much more elegant laptop, although it’s still very much stuck in “desktop replacement” territory.

Part of the reason for this slimmer, lighter chassis is the omission of an optical drive. This won’t be a problem for buyers who have fully embraced streaming services, but anyone with extensive disc libraries may be disappointed. You’ll have to buy an external drive if you really need it, as there’s no option to add an internal one.

Connectivity is otherwise generous. On the right side you get two USB3 ports, gigabit Ethernet, an SD card reader and three 3.5mm audio jacks. There’s also a slot for a SIM card, but this looks to be a leftover from an alternative product because the P505 does not have a 3G or 4G modem on board, and the slot is blocked off. On the left there’s a third USB3 connector alongside an HDMI port and two DisplayPort connectors, making this laptop perfect for connecting to multiple monitors. Dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi comes as standard, too, so if you have a compatible router you should be able to achieve wireless speeds beyond 800Mbps.

The more compact chassis is still able to keep the new-generation Nvidia graphics chip cool under load; it maintained a steady 60 degrees Celsius throughout our testing. The 980M draws the same amount of power as the outgoing 880M, so this is quite the achievement.

Actual gaming performance at Full HD resolutions is very impressive. Although the 83.5fps scored in Dirt Showdown is actually less than what we achieved with the previous generation GPU, Crysis 3 saw a more noticeable improvement. 50fps was more than playable at 1080p and High quality settings, and was also a 10% improvement over the P504. Performance will vary from game to game, but the new 980M graphics card is undoubtedly a more powerful chip than its predecessor.

As a largely by-the-numbers upgrade from the P504, performance has increased by a small amount across the board. The Intel Core i7-4710MQ has been replaced with a more powerful i7-4720HQ running at a base clock speed of 2.6GHz, although our pre-production review unit used a slightly slower i7-4710HQ running at 2.5GHz. It achieved an overall score of 78 in our new, tougher multimedia benchmarking tests. Performance peaked at 88 the image rendering test, but dropped to just 70 in the challenging multitasking test that puts the laptop to work converting photos, rendering 4K video and playing 4K video simultaneously. In real terms, the P504 will be suitable for intense multimedia jobs on top of any gaming you subject it to. It won’t last very long when away from the mains, though: we saw just 3h 6m of battery life in our moderate usage test.

The model we tested came with 8GB of RAM, but you can upgrade this to 16 or 32GB on the mysn.co.uk website. Storage is generous, too; Windows was installed to a 256GB Samsung M.2 SSD while a 1TB Western Digital Blue Slim hard disk leaves plenty of room for files and applications. Cheaper and lower capacity storage is available if you want to spend a bit less; you can get a 256GB Micron M.2 SSD for £71 less on the configuration page.

The Full HD, TN screen is good, although we’d expect nothing less for the price. It ticks the boxes for colour coverage, contrast and brightness levels. We measured sRGB colour coverage at 89.6% and 270cd/m2 brightness, creating pretty vivid onscreen images. Contrast levels were measured at 1096:1 and black levels were pretty low at 0.26cd/m2, meaning there’s plenty of detail visisble in darker scenes. You can’t expect much better from an off-the-shelf Clevo chassis, although the screen isn’t much better than those you’ll find on slightly cheaper laptops.

The Schenker XMG P505 is a powerful and nicely built laptop, perfect for gaming and multimedia tasks. The Nvidia GTX 980M is a powerful piece of kit, although it is a huge premium to pay. At this price, you could consider the slightly more expensive Aorus X7 v2 or the MSI GS70 2QE Stealth Pro, which is cheaper and only slightly less powerful. If none of those fit your needs then check out our regularly-updated Best Laptops and buying guide.

The original version of this review was first published in March 2015 and was revised in April 2015 following the discovery that the review unit we’d been sent had been shipped with a faulty screen. After receiving a fully-functioning unit, we updated our review and its score.