Voodoo vs. Hypersonic vs. PCTorque

PC Torque does offer paint jobs and you can get a top of the line painted and primed 5680 for less than a similarly equipped Voodoo or Hypersonic.

Voodoo engineer their laptops?? What is there to "Engineer" in a laptop?? you just stick top quality high performance stuff in there and pray!!

All those are marketing terms and I recommend you DONT get swayed by them...same goes for hypersonic and alienware...

Be aware...

I haven't bought laptops from any, but I've done some basic research and will order from Hypersonic. Here's what I've learned:

PCTorque -- and other Sager resellers -- offer cheap prices and typically very good customer service since that's what they focus on. Also PCTorque's paint jobs look excellent. You won't find a mention of them on their website but they do do them... e-mail them, I guess. However as for Sager itself, many Sagers have defective LCDs (bad pixels) and look at their resellerrating -- 4.17!!! They get slammed for bad support.

Hypersonic -- resellerrating is 8.25, but every single transaction since July got "very satisfied". Also I've e-mailed them a number of times and got very courteous and, above all, informative e-mails back. And they have a zero-dead-pixel policy for $50 on the GX6 (5680) and ZX7 (4780) systems. Also the GX6 is upgradeable, like Alienware, Voodoo, and IIRC Sager as well. Only thing is their paint jobs are crap -- on the GX6, they paint only half the case! In contrast to PCTorque which paints the entire thing very meticulously. Also, Hypersonic is more expensive -- only slightly pricier than buying direct from Sager, which is technically a more valid comparison, but buying through a Sager reseller is much cheaper.

Voodoo -- resellerrating of 9.93, really fantastic. Their notebooks are very expensive but I've heard nothing but good from them. Supposedly they get their notebooks in parts and build them themselves, changing the components if they think a different one is more appropriate. I believe this is what was meant by "engineered". But besides the price, I e-mailed them and they will only replace the screen if there's more than 5 dead pixels, regardless of placement.

Also, something I think thats worth mentioning is hypersonic's dead pixel policy - none in the center portion, no more than one in the outside the center. And, as mentioned above you can buy the - NO dead pixels for 50 bucks.

First off, I believe you mean the Voodoo m750, not the 700.
4780 has just been released, what 4 weeks ago. But I believe you can still get some benchmarks for them here in these forums. However, there's really no point in comparing benchmarks on the machines, they are, for all intents and purposes, the same machine. They have the same case, the same processor, the same motherboard, the same video system, and most likely the same drives. Yes, Voodoo buys the parts and assembles them in the US, so? Its the same parts and as the saying goes, parts is parts. There may be some minor differences in setup and some varying adjustments, but they are the same machines. If an independent tested them side by side, without knowing which was which, I doubt if they could tell the difference. They are the same machines, period.

OK, Voodoo will guaranty no bad pixels if you give them an extra $50. But given the $1850 extra they charge, you could almost get an extra 4780. Or you could go through a good 10 machines, spending $600 in shipping, to get that flawless screen (which by the way, the few problems reported (less than 3%) were on the 8890, not the 4780) and still have $1200 in your pocket. Frankly, for just have of the savings you could just go to the SAGER factory, hand select your machine and have a hell of a time at Disneyland to boot.

As for those reseller ratings, geeze, out of perhaps 10,000 machines sold in the last 6 months, SAGER got 12 ratings of which 8 were bad. Man, that's just terrible. But the fact is by far the greater portion of SAGERs are sold via resellers like PCT which selling SAGERs has an nearly identical rating as Voodoo. Resellerratings are good when there are at least of 100 ratings.

Looking at the Hypersonic, the difference in price is only $1000. That's still a serious chunk of change.

And still the machines are virtually identical. Between the Hypersonic and the SAGER, they are identical. With the Voodoo, there may be some odds and ends improvements, but not much I'll wager.

So you choose which you want. If it was me, I'd choose the SAGER and keep a fair sized wad in my pocket for the next machine in a couple of years. Properly invested, I dare say there'd be more than enough for the whole machine, unless of course, I were to try and buy a Voodoo or Hypersonic.

It seems when people rate companys, its only the people that had bad experiences. Most of them, which are good, are too busy enjoying their new computer.

so, so true

smart guy

heres the real link to pctorque's reseller ratings

http://www.resellerratings.com/seller3048.html

Resellerratings

That was my point with the reseller ratings.

Like I said, Sager sells thousands and thousands of machines. Well over 10,000 machines during that reporting period. And you get 12 ratings, that's a rate of .12%. And of those, 8 are bad, so you have a bad rating rate of .08 percent. Frankly, that's not something to be ashamed of, but rather proud of. Now if they only sold 100 units, it would be a different story.

The other issue is that most of SAGERs machines are sold through resellers like PCT. I've venture that PCT is one of the major resellers. Look at their rating, its nearly identical to VooDoo at about 9.8. That's simply amazing. And its based on 175 ratings, not 12.

Also, as was noted, people who get good machines, don't usually do the ratings. I always do so my voice gets heard and if there's a problem, maybe someone will listen and things will improve. Its generally the people that have a problem that do the ratings.

In any case, I again stress the point about money. With Voodoo runing at 90% more and the Hypersonic at 60% more and the machines are, for all intents and purposes, identical, I don't see how you can even compare them. Like I said, if you want to be sure you get a perfect SAGER, figure on going to the factory and picking it out. They absolutely will take it back and give you either a new one or your money back. And when you get home, even after spending a grand getting there and having fun while there, you still have $800 in your pocket. You can not beat that. Period.

OK, didn't realize there were so few reviews of Sager. But the latest, on November 18th, was from someone who bought from PCTorque but had to use Sager for tech-support, since PCTorque's just a reseller. And he had lots of problems with Sager. Voodoo and Hypersonic had no bad reviews anytime recently.