Nexoc G739 (Clevo N870HK1) Laptop Review

For a gaming laptop the Nexoc G739 is remarkably unremarkable. If you deactivate the colorful keyboard illumination, the gray plastic case could easily be taken as an office system as well. We like the modest design of the Clevo Barebones, but anyone who likes a more aggressive look with lit-up elements should look elsewhere to the competition.

The stability of the base unit turns out to be especially very good. Only in the area above the keyboard does pressure lead to slight creaking noises. Though both hinges are firm, the large screen bounces back quickly. Moreover, you need both hands to open the lid. Pressure also does not give any trouble to the display lid, and we cannot observe any waves forming on the panel. When twisting, however, the image brightens quickly.

The Clevo Barebones does not offer any maintenance hatches - in order to access the components, the whole bottom cover has to be removed. At least the battery can be removed from the outside. But unfortunately the case wobbles when it is removed, since one of its feet is on the battery.

Compared to the other competitors, the G739 appears a little compressed. With the exception of the very thin Asus GL702VM, all the comparison notebooks are thicker, but in terms of its footprint, the tested device is one of the largest of the gamers. At 2.9 kg (6.4 pounds) however, it is not one of the lighter models in our comparison.

Though the Nexoc G739 offers many ports, their positioning on both sides is not optimal. The ports are either in the middle or, on the right side, even very far to the front. Using both the mini-DisplayPorts (1.2) and the HDMI port, altogether three external monitors can be connected. So together with the internal display, four screens can be controlled at the same time. 

With its USB ports the test system does not quite go with the current standard. Of the three regular Type-A ports, one uses only the slower 2.0 standard, and even the USB Type-C port supports no more functions other than the USB 3.1 protocol (Gen 1). So potential buyers have to do without Thunderbolt 3 as well. At ~320 MB/s the performance of the USB 3.0 connectors is okay (Samsung SSD T3), but it could be even higher.

The SD-card reader operates at an average speed. With our reference card from Toshiba (Exceria Pro SDHC UHS-II 64 GB, max. 260 MB/s), we get transfer rates of 80-90 MB/s. The competitors almost go head-to-head with that, only the MSI GE72 7RE is clearly left behind here.

In contrast to many other gaming notebooks, the G739 Nexoc does not bet on the networking products by Killer, which offer particular functionalities for gamers. Instead, a Realtek module handles the cable network connections, and the well-known Intel 8260 is responsible for wireless networks. It supports all current standards and always provided a stable connection in our experience. In our WLAN tests with the Linksys EA8500 router (1 m, ~3 ft distance) however, we observed mixed results. The average values were 443 Mbit/s (receive, max. 656 Mbit/s) and 388 Mbit/s (send, max. 508 Mbit/s).

Aside from the notebook itself, the test system is delivered only with a 120-watt power supply, a DVD with the drivers, and the usual service manuals. There are no specific accessories for the Nexoc G739.

The warranty is 24 months. Please see our Guarantees, Return Policies and Warranties FAQ for country-specific information.

All configurations of the Nexoc G739 use the fast Intel Core i7-7700HQ processor in connection with the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Pascal graphics card with 4 GB VRAM. The differences are limited to the memory configurations. Overall, with this the G739 is also geared for demanding tasks. In models without an SSD, however, the subjective work performance can be noticeably different.

In the Cinebench tests the Nexoc G739 is able to make excellent use of the power of the processor, and in our comparison the test device takes the lead in versions R11.5 and R15. We also only observe minimal fluctuations under constant load. In the Multi-test the old Core i7-6700HQ falls behind by about 10%. More information and benchmarks of the i7-7700HQ can be found in our technical section.

The operation is very fluid in practice, mainly thanks to the primary SSD and fast components. There are no unnecessary waiting times during application startup, and the system also boots up quickly. No restrictions appeared in the PCMark 8 tests as well, and in PCMark 7 the test device even came out on top. During the whole time of our testing there were no problems whatsoever.

A fast Samsung PCIe SSD is deployed as primary data storage. The M.2-2280 model (PM961, NVMe) currently belongs to the fastest consumer models and also achieves very good transfer rates in the benchmarks. But since modern games need quite a lot of storage and would fill the 256-GB SSD very quickly, Nexoc also builds-in a conventional 1 TB HDD by Seagate. This operates at 5400 rpm and according to HD Tune achieves a good average transfer rate of a little more than 100 MB/s. More benchmarks of many SSDs/HDDs are available in our comparison chart.

As we already mentioned, the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti is a very good choice for the Full HD resolution. Even modern and very demanding titles can be played with high and often even maximum detail levels. In the gaming benchmarks, a similar picture as before in the synthetic tests is shown. The GTX 1050 Ti again falls between the smaller GTX 1050 and the faster GTX 1060, however, the distance to the GTX 1060 tends to be slightly larger here. 

For further gaming benchmarks we point to our extensive list of games.

Frequency diagram in comparison (checkboxes above can be checked or unchecked!)