Yeah, same here. I was thinking this would be a first party reference design sold at retail, like a GeForce Founders Edition or a Google Pixel. Now I suppose we get to wait and see what kind of markup OEMs tag on and which corners are cut on the race to the bottom.
Exactly. Since this is exclusive to channel partners its basically no different than a design template except Intel is controlling the manufacturing OEM for tier-2 distributors to rebadge. If anything they are competing against Clevo, etc, with this move, not their tier-1 partners.
I'm wondering why Intel has any interest in getting into the whitebook space. As mentioned, margins are tight. My guess would be it's a "why bother engineering your own AMD notebook when you can slap a rebrand on this whitebook" kind of thing for the smaller laptop players where it's a substantial cost.
A Motile or an Overpowered out of this might be a good value though.
maybe because they feel they can push good designs by having whitebooks on the market which typically has a lot of shit laptops, which might be necessary to compete with vertically integrated companies like apple.
I feel that the laptop situation is not so different from the mobile phone, in the sense that if you want good performance you have to go with a few high end options, while there's a gazillion of phones all "meh" and virtually indistinguishable. For example, I'm an Android fan but I have to recognize Apples iPhone 12 mini as perhaps the only phone for small hands that has good (not decent: good!) specs. I find it incredible. Same for the laptops: if you want a good screen, you need to go to 1Kusd or higher, but then you also get ultra thin, few ports, non-removable battery and a lot of other "nice to have" that bring the price high. Why can't there be a decent laptop, with decent screen, decent battery, decent SSD with a decent CPU at a reasonable price? Here in Europe is impossible to find laptops with Ryzen 4800U, and the ones with 4700U are scarce, at best. We do have some decent 3700U for 700eur+, with FHD displays, but may come with 256GB SSD and 8GB of Ram, which is garbage.
"For example, I'm an Android fan but I have to recognize Apples iPhone 12 mini as perhaps the only phone for small hands that has good (not decent: good!) specs. I find it incredible."
Uhmm someone obviously didn't do much research, you also have Samsung S20 and Huawei P40 as compact phones with flagship specs on the Android side.
5.18" x 2.53" x .29" is 3.80 cubic inches for the iphone 12 mini, at 135 grams 5.97" x 2.72" x .31" is 5.03 cubic inches for the s20, at 163 grams 5.86" x 2.80" x .33" is 5.41 cubic inches p40, at 175 grams iphone 12 mini is 75% the size, and 83% the weight of the s20. It's also 70% the size, and 77% the weight of the p40
Netbooks. The era of the late 2000s was plagued with both cheap and expensive shit. That was why intel started the whole "ultrabook" thing, to show laptop OEMs how a proper thin and light laptop should be with their chips. OEM laptop design improved dramatically after that.
They've been making reference laptop designs to help OEMs out for years. I'm guessing some of their partners/potential partners pressured them to let them just sell the base design as is instead of having to make minor pseudorandom fiddles and then setup separate manufacturing.
Intel have been doing whitebox designs for decades.
There were the 50 MHz 486 DX (not DX2) systems, when a lot of chipsets / motherboards / manufacturers couldn't make their existing 486 designs run at 50 MHz.
There were whitebox Pentium Pro servers, so second-tier and national manufacturers could have their own server range without much engineering (at a time when IBM, HP, Sun, Digital and others had their own RISC servers).
There were whitebox Itanium systems when Itanium 2 was new(-ish): partially because companies like IBM couldn't justify producing their own designs (they couldn't imagine who'd want to buy Itanium), and partially because Intel wanted to get everyone on board with selling Itanium, to make it more obviously The Future Of The PC.
Each time, they have been trying to grow a market.
You'll get 2x DDR4 SO-DIMM in future models of the VISION product family. But for the Intel reference model, they were really keen on going for LPDDR4x for the additional efficiency which helps with iGPU performance and battery life. This kind of memory is not available in socketed form and is part of the Intel Evo Platform design recommendations (although it's not a "must have" item on the requirements list). // Tom
16 GB of RAM may be OK but not having only 250GB of SSD in a laptop costing over $1500 - at that price it should have at least a 1TB drive. I know that Intel is trying to push Thunderbolt - but how many users are ever likely to make use of 2 Thunderbolt ports ? Replacing one of the Thunderbolt ports with another USB port would make for a more useful system. The keyboard also looks bad - there is room for a full keyboard with a number pad but instead it has a cramped basic keyboard with loads of wasted space on each side.
Using 2 Thunderbolt ports is not so unlikely. Use one for your Docking Station or USB-C Power Supply and the other one for some very fancy Thunderbolt Device (DAW or eGPU) that you wouldn't want to daisy chain behind your dock.
SSD can be upgraded on bestware. Keyboards without number pads are a valid choise to center the touchpad in the middle and give the hands more room to navigate. We have numpads on most of our 15" devices but that doesn't mean that everyone likes them. Also, the smaller keyboard helps with items like battery size and speaker placement.
For more Q&A, check out our "[Launch] SCHENKER VISION 15 with Intel for 2021" thread on Reddit.
The SSD can be upgraded - but for the price of the laptop a larger SSD should have been included. The keyboard could have been full size while leaving the touchpad in its current position.
Probably fewer than one in 10 purchasers of this laptop will even use one of the Thunderbolt ports (except possibly as a way to charge the laptop to free up a USB port). The number that will use 2 Thunderbolt devices at the same time is very small. (In general Thunderbolt devices and cables cost more than their USB equivalents - there are only a few devices that are only available on Thunderbolt.) Quoting the battery life at a dim 150 nits may make the spec look better but will not do anything to improve the real life video viewing time at an acceptable 300 nit brightness.
Aren't the two thunderbolt ports also USB-C / 3? I'm happy to let USB-A die at this point. Good if laptops stop including them, so device manufacturers start coming along.
So it seems like Intel is just directly contracting a 3rd party to produce a to-spec laptop that they intend to sell for rebranding and subsequent resale to consumers. How is that much different than an OEM simply selling a laptop to a consumer without the markup of an additional set of profit-seeking participants in the middle? Is it that Intel's leadership believes that applying the NUC branding will drive interest and sales because that's really what it looks like at surface level.
€1499 seems like an awful not for a moderately decent notebook with an also-ran CPU and 256GB of storage. That's higher than MacBook prices, and the MacBook Pro 13 based on the M1 is an all-around better proposition for someone who's prepared to go with macOS. For everyone else, even here in the UK you can get a mid-tier Zephyrus G14 with a more capable 4800HS CPU, twice the storage, a better display and a genuinely gaming-capable 1660Ti GPU for £1399. I know where I'd put my money.
All due credit to Schenker - they offer a compelling package overall, especially accounting for the warranty - but I can't help but feel Intel are bringing very little of value to the table.
This type of thing is what AMD needs to be doing as well with ryzen mobile. Intel has done it for years with fantastic results. I've been saying that since the days of Llano, that AMD needs to partner with clevo, MSI, or tongfang and show the rest of the market what a proper APU laptop should be.
The problem is that you listed MSI -- MSI has reliably delivered designs that lack proper cooling and demonstrate what a proper APU laptop is not. This is why AMD needed design wins like the Asus G14 Zephyrus. Clevo and MSI don't make proper laptops for the mainstream to buy, and will never convince the rest of the market to do much of anything except add more cooling.
Curious if Micro-Center, Newegg or even Amazon would consider jumping in on this (an AmazonBasics laptop anyone?) Might be the kind of non-gaming laptop that the desktop HW enthusiast might cross-shop?
microcenter has a long history of whitebooks, even going back 20+ years when they were a much, much smaller operation. Winbook is their in-house whitebook brand.
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DigitalFreak - Thursday, November 19, 2020 - link
Meh. Would have been more interested if Intel sold them to end users like the NUCs.Mr Perfect - Friday, November 20, 2020 - link
Yeah, same here. I was thinking this would be a first party reference design sold at retail, like a GeForce Founders Edition or a Google Pixel. Now I suppose we get to wait and see what kind of markup OEMs tag on and which corners are cut on the race to the bottom.Samus - Saturday, November 21, 2020 - link
Exactly. Since this is exclusive to channel partners its basically no different than a design template except Intel is controlling the manufacturing OEM for tier-2 distributors to rebadge. If anything they are competing against Clevo, etc, with this move, not their tier-1 partners.Roy2002 - Monday, November 23, 2020 - link
I think they would. I heard they listed it under EPP without SSD/RAM and will be in stock later.tipoo - Thursday, November 19, 2020 - link
I'm wondering why Intel has any interest in getting into the whitebook space. As mentioned, margins are tight. My guess would be it's a "why bother engineering your own AMD notebook when you can slap a rebrand on this whitebook" kind of thing for the smaller laptop players where it's a substantial cost.A Motile or an Overpowered out of this might be a good value though.
Murloc - Thursday, November 19, 2020 - link
maybe because they feel they can push good designs by having whitebooks on the market which typically has a lot of shit laptops, which might be necessary to compete with vertically integrated companies like apple.gfkBill - Thursday, November 19, 2020 - link
How many "shit" $1500 laptops are there??yankeeDDL - Friday, November 20, 2020 - link
I feel that the laptop situation is not so different from the mobile phone, in the sense that if you want good performance you have to go with a few high end options, while there's a gazillion of phones all "meh" and virtually indistinguishable.For example, I'm an Android fan but I have to recognize Apples iPhone 12 mini as perhaps the only phone for small hands that has good (not decent: good!) specs. I find it incredible.
Same for the laptops: if you want a good screen, you need to go to 1Kusd or higher, but then you also get ultra thin, few ports, non-removable battery and a lot of other "nice to have" that bring the price high. Why can't there be a decent laptop, with decent screen, decent battery, decent SSD with a decent CPU at a reasonable price? Here in Europe is impossible to find laptops with Ryzen 4800U, and the ones with 4700U are scarce, at best. We do have some decent 3700U for 700eur+, with FHD displays, but may come with 256GB SSD and 8GB of Ram, which is garbage.
vladx - Friday, November 20, 2020 - link
"For example, I'm an Android fan but I have to recognize Apples iPhone 12 mini as perhaps the only phone for small hands that has good (not decent: good!) specs. I find it incredible."Uhmm someone obviously didn't do much research, you also have Samsung S20 and Huawei P40 as compact phones with flagship specs on the Android side.
christarp - Friday, November 20, 2020 - link
5.18" x 2.53" x .29" is 3.80 cubic inches for the iphone 12 mini, at 135 grams5.97" x 2.72" x .31" is 5.03 cubic inches for the s20, at 163 grams
5.86" x 2.80" x .33" is 5.41 cubic inches p40, at 175 grams
iphone 12 mini is 75% the size, and 83% the weight of the s20. It's also 70% the size, and 77% the weight of the p40
Thats a huge difference in size.
TheinsanegamerN - Friday, November 20, 2020 - link
Netbooks. The era of the late 2000s was plagued with both cheap and expensive shit. That was why intel started the whole "ultrabook" thing, to show laptop OEMs how a proper thin and light laptop should be with their chips. OEM laptop design improved dramatically after that.Jorgp2 - Saturday, November 21, 2020 - link
tonsDanNeely - Thursday, November 19, 2020 - link
They've been making reference laptop designs to help OEMs out for years. I'm guessing some of their partners/potential partners pressured them to let them just sell the base design as is instead of having to make minor pseudorandom fiddles and then setup separate manufacturing.jamesindevon - Thursday, November 19, 2020 - link
Intel have been doing whitebox designs for decades.There were the 50 MHz 486 DX (not DX2) systems, when a lot of chipsets / motherboards / manufacturers couldn't make their existing 486 designs run at 50 MHz.
There were whitebox Pentium Pro servers, so second-tier and national manufacturers could have their own server range without much engineering (at a time when IBM, HP, Sun, Digital and others had their own RISC servers).
There were whitebox Itanium systems when Itanium 2 was new(-ish): partially because companies like IBM couldn't justify producing their own designs (they couldn't imagine who'd want to buy Itanium), and partially because Intel wanted to get everyone on board with selling Itanium, to make it more obviously The Future Of The PC.
Each time, they have been trying to grow a market.
nandnandnand - Thursday, November 19, 2020 - link
I'll take 4x user-accessible SO-DIMM slots, plz.XMG Support - Thursday, November 19, 2020 - link
You'll get 2x DDR4 SO-DIMM in future models of the VISION product family. But for the Intel reference model, they were really keen on going for LPDDR4x for the additional efficiency which helps with iGPU performance and battery life. This kind of memory is not available in socketed form and is part of the Intel Evo Platform design recommendations (although it's not a "must have" item on the requirements list). // Tomnandnandnand - Friday, November 20, 2020 - link
Thanks for the info.Duncan Macdonald - Thursday, November 19, 2020 - link
16 GB of RAM may be OK but not having only 250GB of SSD in a laptop costing over $1500 - at that price it should have at least a 1TB drive.I know that Intel is trying to push Thunderbolt - but how many users are ever likely to make use of 2 Thunderbolt ports ?
Replacing one of the Thunderbolt ports with another USB port would make for a more useful system.
The keyboard also looks bad - there is room for a full keyboard with a number pad but instead it has a cramped basic keyboard with loads of wasted space on each side.
shabby - Thursday, November 19, 2020 - link
I'd make sure the screen also isn't 1366x768.Toadster - Thursday, November 19, 2020 - link
the details show 1080p capable screen, so thankfully beyond the netbook days of 1366x768 :)XMG Support - Thursday, November 19, 2020 - link
Using 2 Thunderbolt ports is not so unlikely. Use one for your Docking Station or USB-C Power Supply and the other one for some very fancy Thunderbolt Device (DAW or eGPU) that you wouldn't want to daisy chain behind your dock.SSD can be upgraded on bestware. Keyboards without number pads are a valid choise to center the touchpad in the middle and give the hands more room to navigate. We have numpads on most of our 15" devices but that doesn't mean that everyone likes them. Also, the smaller keyboard helps with items like battery size and speaker placement.
For more Q&A, check out our "[Launch] SCHENKER VISION 15 with Intel for 2021" thread on Reddit.
// Tom
Duncan Macdonald - Friday, November 20, 2020 - link
The SSD can be upgraded - but for the price of the laptop a larger SSD should have been included.The keyboard could have been full size while leaving the touchpad in its current position.
Probably fewer than one in 10 purchasers of this laptop will even use one of the Thunderbolt ports (except possibly as a way to charge the laptop to free up a USB port). The number that will use 2 Thunderbolt devices at the same time is very small. (In general Thunderbolt devices and cables cost more than their USB equivalents - there are only a few devices that are only available on Thunderbolt.)
Quoting the battery life at a dim 150 nits may make the spec look better but will not do anything to improve the real life video viewing time at an acceptable 300 nit brightness.
ABR - Saturday, November 21, 2020 - link
Aren't the two thunderbolt ports also USB-C / 3? I'm happy to let USB-A die at this point. Good if laptops stop including them, so device manufacturers start coming along.PeachNCream - Thursday, November 19, 2020 - link
So it seems like Intel is just directly contracting a 3rd party to produce a to-spec laptop that they intend to sell for rebranding and subsequent resale to consumers. How is that much different than an OEM simply selling a laptop to a consumer without the markup of an additional set of profit-seeking participants in the middle? Is it that Intel's leadership believes that applying the NUC branding will drive interest and sales because that's really what it looks like at surface level.oRAirwolf - Friday, November 20, 2020 - link
Lack of a 16:10 or 3:2 screen = No thanksLaptop makers need to come to terms with the fact that 16:9 is not a good screen ratio for laptops.
zodiacfml - Friday, November 20, 2020 - link
Intel, you can't do this. Apple M1 and AMD Ryzen selling for less than thisSpunjji - Friday, November 20, 2020 - link
€1499 seems like an awful not for a moderately decent notebook with an also-ran CPU and 256GB of storage. That's higher than MacBook prices, and the MacBook Pro 13 based on the M1 is an all-around better proposition for someone who's prepared to go with macOS. For everyone else, even here in the UK you can get a mid-tier Zephyrus G14 with a more capable 4800HS CPU, twice the storage, a better display and a genuinely gaming-capable 1660Ti GPU for £1399. I know where I'd put my money.All due credit to Schenker - they offer a compelling package overall, especially accounting for the warranty - but I can't help but feel Intel are bringing very little of value to the table.
TheinsanegamerN - Friday, November 20, 2020 - link
This type of thing is what AMD needs to be doing as well with ryzen mobile. Intel has done it for years with fantastic results. I've been saying that since the days of Llano, that AMD needs to partner with clevo, MSI, or tongfang and show the rest of the market what a proper APU laptop should be.lmcd - Friday, November 20, 2020 - link
The problem is that you listed MSI -- MSI has reliably delivered designs that lack proper cooling and demonstrate what a proper APU laptop is not. This is why AMD needed design wins like the Asus G14 Zephyrus. Clevo and MSI don't make proper laptops for the mainstream to buy, and will never convince the rest of the market to do much of anything except add more cooling.UNCjigga - Friday, November 20, 2020 - link
Curious if Micro-Center, Newegg or even Amazon would consider jumping in on this (an AmazonBasics laptop anyone?) Might be the kind of non-gaming laptop that the desktop HW enthusiast might cross-shop?DigitalFreak - Friday, November 20, 2020 - link
Maybe Microcenter. I can't see Newegg being interested, and a laptop is a lot more support than a Firestick.drexnx - Friday, November 20, 2020 - link
microcenter has a long history of whitebooks, even going back 20+ years when they were a much, much smaller operation. Winbook is their in-house whitebook brand.patel21 - Friday, November 20, 2020 - link
ASUS G14 over this any daytygrus - Saturday, November 21, 2020 - link
Is it called NUC as in Nuke because it still gets hot with full turbo? 84C with fan noise of about 41dB