Opinions on Mecer laptops.

thestaggy

thestaggy

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As the title suggests, what are your opinions on Mecer laptops?

I'm in the market for a new one and I am trying to find what I'd call a low end gaming laptop. I'm not a hardcore gamer, only playing grand strategy games from an indie developer (Paradox Interactive). Their current games run fine with an integrated HD3000 or HD4000 GPU, but they are uprating their game engine and adding a lot more to their 3D maps, so for future releases I don't want to come up short. I do not want to exceed R7500 if I can though. The problem is, if you go Dell or HP (what are considered the more respectable brands) the cheapest low end "entertainment" rigs I can find come in at around R8000 to R9000 and I don't want to go there.

Somebody put me on to laptopdirect and I discovered Mecer barebone units that come fitted with a Geforce GT 630M, pretty much all I should need for a long while. I can then add my own choice of CPU, HDD & memory to it and I can come up with something cheaper and stronger than what I can find in stock units. An i5 3210M CPU, 320 GB (7200rpm, 16MB cache), GeForce GT630M 1GB GPU and 8 GB RAM for ~R7,400 is a pretty solid unit and far cheaper than what I've been able to find in stock units. But that raises the quality question.

Another option are stock Toshiba laptops. Also what I'm looking for at good prices, but are they any good?
 
Wife has been using one for a while now(17inch). No problems after 2 years and she works on her pc fulltime.

I personally like them.
 
I've been using Mecer for a long time based on price. Haven't had any problems. They're ugly though - the older models at least. :)
 
Had one bad experience with a Mecer laptop:

I was asked to upgrade a friend's Mecer laptop that had Vista pre-installed to Windows 7. Getting drivers was a big problem. The Mecer website had no record of the laptop at all. I traced the part number to a Chinese website that eventually turned out be a rebranded version of some other brand. I still don't know who really made that laptop. Eventually used the device and vendor ID's to source compatible drivers from other manufacturers.
 
vinodh said:
Had one bad experience with a Mecer laptop:

I was asked to upgrade a friend's Mecer laptop that had Vista pre-installed to Windows 7. Getting drivers was a big problem. The Mecer website had no record of the laptop at all. I traced the part number to a Chinese website that eventually turned out be a rebranded version of some other brand. I still don't know who really made that laptop. Eventually used the device and vendor ID's to source compatible drivers from other manufacturers.
Click to expand...

As far as I know all Mecer laptops are rebranded Chinese laptops.

Haven't had an issue with drivers. The default Windows drivers work fine. Upgrades from 7 to 8 recently
 
vinodh said:
Had one bad experience with a Mecer laptop:

I was asked to upgrade a friend's Mecer laptop that had Vista pre-installed to Windows 7. Getting drivers was a big problem. The Mecer website had no record of the laptop at all. I traced the part number to a Chinese website that eventually turned out be a rebranded version of some other brand. I still don't know who really made that laptop. Eventually used the device and vendor ID's to source compatible drivers from other manufacturers.
Click to expand...

One criticism I have heard is that they have no set supplier when it comes to branding, so aside from not knowing what you are getting, quality could possibly fluctuate.
 
nadimm said:
As far as I know all Mecer laptops are rebranded Chinese laptops.

Haven't had an issue with drivers. The default Windows drivers work fine. Upgrades from 7 to 8 recently
Click to expand...

Obviously a different laptop then. I've installed Windows 7 on more than a hundred different laptops/desktops since it was released and most of the machines have very few driver issues. I did one last week that had every single driver built in (Compaq).

Most common missing driver for me was mass storage. That Mecer was a standout because it had several missing drivers and it took a long time to source each one.
 
A friend of mine has a mecer laptop, he had a hassle with it and they came to him, checked it and then replaced it the next day. The new one it was replaced with had a better gpu too so I cant fault their service.
 
Hi there

I'm also in the same boat as you, looking for a low-end gaming laptop. I also checked out laptopdirect and saw the same Mercer lappie. I wasn't too sure about the quality of Mercer, just as you are, but the fact that you can build your own is fantastic. This also happened to catch my eye : laptopdirect Its a Gigabyte with an i5, 4GB RAM, 750GB HDD and a GT640 2GB. Can anyone comment on the quality of a Gigabyte laptop ?
 
Dylan_G said:
Hi there

I'm also in the same boat as you, looking for a low-end gaming laptop. I also checked out laptopdirect and saw the same Mercer lappie. I wasn't too sure about the quality of Mercer, just as you are, but the fact that you can build your own is fantastic. This also happened to catch my eye : laptopdirect Its a Gigabyte with an i5, 4GB RAM, 750GB HDD and a GT640 2GB. Can anyone comment on the quality of a Gigabyte laptop ?
Click to expand...

Mecer* :p

Gigabyte laptops are good quality. I've seen the Q1532 and P2532 and was impressed. Much better value than Asus with similar warranty (2 year).

What's better though is that for about R500 more, there is an i7 version of the Q1542 you saw. Have a look. :)

http://www.gigabyte.co.za/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4227#sp

Here it is, bit more than R500 but well worth it in my opinion for quad core. http://www.laptopdirect.co.za/laptop_specifications.php?laptop=61530
 
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Dylan_G said:
Hi there

I'm also in the same boat as you, looking for a low-end gaming laptop. I also checked out laptopdirect and saw the same Mercer lappie. I wasn't too sure about the quality of Mercer, just as you are, but the fact that you can build your own is fantastic. This also happened to catch my eye : laptopdirect Its a Gigabyte with an i5, 4GB RAM, 750GB HDD and a GT640 2GB. Can anyone comment on the quality of a Gigabyte laptop ?
Click to expand...

Yeah, it is great to have the options with regards to what internals you want.

Thanks for that Gigabyte, I'll have a look at that too. I found these two HPs as well, seem very appealing. Both have the same internals besides the GPUs; one has a 2GB GeForce, the other a 1GB AMD Radeon. According to online opinion the Radeon is slightly better, but for the games I play, I'm not worried as both will be more than enough.
 
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Why not look at the Lenovo z580 Linky R7,149 630m and 3210m sounds like what you were looking at.

The cheapest Mecer similarly configured (including OS) would cost around R7500 and the Lenovo looks quite a bit better. If you don't use windows the Mecer is a good option.
 
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PostmanPot said:
Mecer* :p

Gigabyte laptops are good quality. I've seen the Q1532 and P2532 and was impressed. Much better value than Asus with similar warranty (2 year).

What's better though is that for about R500 more, there is an i7 version of the Q1542 you saw. Have a look. :)

http://www.gigabyte.co.za/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4227#sp
Click to expand...

Do you need to have an account with Rectron to check the prices out ? From the link, I go to "Where to buy" and then I go to the Rectron site but you need to login to download a pricelist. Can you show me where you're seeing the price from, please ? :)
 
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SomeoneEls said:
Why not look at the Lenovo z580 Linky R7,149 630m and 3210m sounds like what you were looking at.

The cheapest Mecer similarly configured (including OS) would cost around R7500 and the Lenovo looks quite a bit better. If you don't use windows the Mecer is a good option.
Click to expand...

Now that ain't too shabby son. Thanks for that.
 
Dylan_G said:
Do you need to have an account with Rectron to check the prices out ? From the link, I go to "Where to buy" and then I go to the Rectron site but you need to login to download a pricelist. Can you show me where you're seeing the price from, please ? :)
Click to expand...

Edited my post and added link. :)
 
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