MALIBAL Veda series – A Worthy Gaming laptop

For:

If you are a gaming fanatic, then Malibal is custom made for you and with its influential desktop gaming performance it surely will please you. Then there is superb support, service, and pricing policies that lures the consumers.

Against:

Deprived speaker performance; small touch pad and keyboard for a gigantic notebook are some of the flaws in the Veda series that might upset a few consumers.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

Measuring, 17.2 in width, 11.7 in depth and 1.7 in height and weighing around 12.6 lbs the Malibal Veda series is a gaming laptop from Malibal which is known for making superb custom-made desktop replacements. Veda comes with 64 bit, Intel Core 2 Duo P8700 / 2.53 GHz processor with data bus speed of 1066 MHz.

Other specifications for Malibal Veda includes 3 MB of cache memory, with DDR3 SDRAM – 1333 MHz 4GB of RAM that can be expanded up to 8 GB and storage hard drive of 320 GB – Serial ATA-300 – 5400 rpm.

The screen specs for Veda includes 1920 x 1200 (WUXGA) of Max Resolution for a display type of 18.4 in TFT active matrix. The notebook comes with interfaces including 1 x Display / video – HDMI – 19 pin HDMI Type A , 1 x Microphone – Input – Mini-phone 3.5 mm , 1 x Audio – Line-out/headphones – Mini-phone stereo 3.5 mm , 3 x Hi-Speed USB – 4 pin USB Type A , 1 x Display / video – DVI-Analog/Digital , 1 x Audio – Line-in – Mini-phone stereo 3.5 mm , 1 x Storage – eSATA-300 – 7 pin external Serial ATA , 1 x Network – Ethernet 10Base-T/100Base-TX/1000Base-T – RJ-45, 1 x Audio – SPDIF output , 1 x IEEE 1394 (FireWire).

Razzle Dazzle:

Despite its atrocious size, the laptop with an 18.4-inch LCD is good looking overall. Further you can load it with Core 2 Quad Extreme QX9300, 4GB/8GB of DDR3 memory, and dual Nvidia GeForce GTX280M graphics cards. The body might not be flooded with branding, but surely has a pleasing look with its pouring colored light from the rear fan vents, a clannish tattoo-like intend on the lid and the front-firing speaker grills. There is a touch-sensitive key given above the keyboard to let you control the colors, you either can cycle through diverse colors or can shut them off. The high gloss plastic covers entire keyboard including palm rests, the string of touch-sensitive keys and the touch pad.

Inside Dope:

It looks like the boutique notebook developer Malibal is all set to see the desktop pass away. Malibal expertise’s in developing custom-made desktop replacements and with its Veda series which can be loaded with Core 2 Quad Extreme QX9300, an 18.4-inch LCD, dual Nvidia GeForce GTX280M graphics cards and 8GB of DDR3 memory. The company brings a top-notch product into the market, and while the components are all superb the design we think could have used a little more help.

In Malibal’s defense all we can say is, that the company has taken good care of what was in its control and the complaints are about things beyond their control, like the design. The system has been designed by laptop OEM/ODM Clevo. But what can be attributed to company is the connoisseur assembly, a guarantee of admirable service and support, generous component offerings, a no-risk purchase policy and most of all its competitive pricing.

Except for the power ports, all the other input and output ports are given on the left and right hand sides, so if at any time you decide to connect it to a speaker or headset, external monitor, mouse, Ethernet and keyboard; you will be having a mess of cables spewing from the sides. Talking about mess brings us to the keyboard, which despite the gigantic size of the notebook had noticeably small keys. But what’s even weird is that the keys actually are pretty good for the gaming purpose, but certainly aren’t ideal for typing. There aren’t any physical borders for the touchpad except for a thin blue line. Also, it’s nice to have eight programmable macro buttons at the left of the keyboard, but they take apparently needless amount of space.

The screen resolution for the notebook is standard for an 18.4-inch wide-screen LCD display and offers a 1920 x 1080 of native resolution. And despite its sleek “Glass View” panel, the performance for the display is pretty well, with decent color and contrast, and exceptional wide viewing angles. Just above the screen is a 3-megapixel Webcam that gave splendid performance in our Skype tests and so did the dual, built-in mics. But, what disappointed us the most was the speaker system, and regardless of having a subwoofer and five speakers, the sound output lacked depth, for movies, music and games. So instead of going for the unimpressive speakers you probably will like to go for the Veda’s S/PDIF output for peripheral headphones or speakers.
The notebook comes equipped with all ports and whether it’s the inputs or outputs, or networking, you name it and its there, so there isn’t anything that we found was missing. The audio I/O jacks are given on the right side amid an eSATA/USB 2.0 combo port and a USB 2.0 port. If you want an external tuner to be connected then there’s an RF-in for it. All the other remaining things are on the left side, which again creates a mess if you use all the ports or even have some of them occupied.

While we were getting our hands on every high-end option in the market that can cost more than $5000 for reviewing, the Veda actually started at $2,272. Though, the specifications for that system are significantly less exciting: a 250GB 5,400rpm hard drive, 2GB of DDR3 RAM, 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P8700, no operating system and a DVD burner. Even the dual cost for Nvidia graphics card is included in that price.

In comparison we had along with 8GB of DDR3 RAM, a 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme QX9300, the dual 512MB Nvidia GeForce GTX280M graphics cards and three 80GB SSDs. This configuration performed exceedingly well on our multitasking, audio processing and image-processing tests. But the both the configurations were crushed by AVADirect Clevo D900F, though it had a 3.33GHz Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Quad Core desktop processor.

In our gaming test, Veda definitely did not crushed the competitions, but definitely outperformed many of the other laptops including Alienware M17x, that has the same configuration. However, at 1920 x 1200, resolution the frame rates were predominantly good and provided smooth play on graphically demanding games.

Malibal Veda comes with a standard one-year parts-and-labor warranty, and you can avail the Two- and three-year plans for $149 and $269, correspondingly. Those prices are considerably reasonable, considering the expense of system. The US based support can be accessed through a 24-7 ticket, toll-free phone line, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. ET and live-chat support. You even can get driver downloads and online knowledge base for free. Finally, Malibal Veda comes with 30-day money-back guarantee, of-course minus shipping charges, a low-price guarantee, and a reduced price for the customers paying through money order, Paypal eCheck, bank wire and check.

Nitty Gritty:

Our final verdict for MALIBAL Veda series will be that it might not be the best notebook to type on, or might not have crushed some notebooks in gaming tests, but definitely can outperform many notebooks and is worth considering.

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