10:14
Ornov Chowdhury Bappi
2011 Gateway NV51B05u Laptop
Design:
Port selection is typical for a budget notebook. Three USB ports, a LAN jack, a mic jack, and a 5.1-surround-sound–capable headphone jack are augmented by a VGA connector for hooking up an external monitor and an HDMI port for connecting to a big-screen HDTV. On the inside, the NV51B05u includes a 500GB hard drive, which is fairly impressive given the laptop’s price. You also get an 8x multiformat DVD burner and 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi connectivity.
Thanks to a ridged wave pattern on the matte-black lid, the NV51B05u doesn’t look as plain as a super-inexpensive notebook might—although the plastic does feel a bit, well, cheap. The machine’s 5.7-pound weight is reasonable for a machine with a 15.6-inch screen, and while you wouldn’t want to carry it all day, schlepping it from home to office and back again is easy enough.
So what corners have been cut to bring the NV51B05u in at well under $500? In addition to the low-end CPU and only 3GB of RAM (which we’ll get to in the Performance section below), the card reader on the front edge supports just the SD and MultiMediaCard formats, a likely cost-cutting measure. (Most others support up to five formats.)
Performance:
Another benefit, which applies less to this laptop than to more compact Fusion-based models like the HP Pavilion DM1, is that the APU's circuitry generates less heat than a discrete graphics chipset would, so the Fusion platform can make possible very small notebooks (think 11.6- or 12.1-inch screens), while raising performance and keeping the price low. As we found in our testing, that's really the best place for this technology. The competition is more fierce in the budget-price mainstream-laptop (15.6-inch) category where this Gateway notebook fits; competing notebooks deliver about three times the performance at only about twice the price.
Built on AMD’s Fusion platform, the NV51B05u combines a budget-class main chip (the 1.6GHz AMD E-350) with 3GB of RAM to deliver performance that’s good enough for almost all of the chores a typical user does day in and day out. AMD’s Fusion technology puts both the CPU and the graphics-processing circuitry on a single chip, which AMD calls an accelerated processing unit (APU). The purported benefits of this are better graphics performance, longer battery life, and lower prices.
Similarly, the NV51B05u’s multimedia performance is slow compared with more traditional (higher-priced) models. On our Windows Media Encoder trial, in which we encode a standard 3:15 video clip, the Gateway entry required a long 14 minutes and 30 seconds to complete the test task. The Toshiba Satellite C655D was in the same ballpark (13:56), but other mainstream notebooks churn through this job in about 4 minutes. On our iTunes Conversion Test, in which we convert a standard mix of 11 MP3 tracks to AAC format, the NV51B05u took 10:48—much longer than the 3:56 average for the mainstream class and slower than the Toshiba Satellite entry, which completed the test in just under six minutes.
On the 64-bit version of our PCMark Vantage benchmark test, which measures overall system performance, the NV51B05u scored 2,409, and on the 64-bit version of the Cinebench 10 test, which tests all CPU cores, the machine scored 2,236. Those scores are in line with the 2,239 and 2,147 delivered by the $449 Toshiba Satellite C655D-S5043 (another ultra-low-cost mainstream notebook, which we tested with a single-core AMD V-series CPU), but well behind more traditional budget notebooks like the Intel Core i5–based, $749 Acer Aspire 5742G-7200 (which scored 6,111 on PCMark Vantage and 8,583 on Cinebench).
These 3D-acceleration abilities mean that you can enjoy some DirectX 9 games, as long as you don’t mind tweaking the effects settings. For example, on our older test title Company of Heroes, we saw a borderline-acceptable playback rate of 23.6 frames per second (fps) with the resolution set to 1,024x768, anti-aliasing off, and other effects set to a mix of high and medium. That’s playable, and dialing back a few more effects put the frame rate at the 30fps level that gamers shoot for as a minimum. Of course, turning anti-aliasing on, upping the resolution to 1,366x768, and setting effects to high dropped the frame rate into the unplayable zone (15.4fps). But the impressive part is that this under-$500 laptop can be considered for 3D games at all. The best the Satellite C655D-S5043 could muster was 13.9fps.
A performance bright spot of the AMD Fusion platform is its graphics handling. The on-chip graphics, which AMD dubs the Radeon HD 6310, helps the NV51B05u deliver much better 3D-acceleration scores than a machine in this price class should. The NV51B05u scored 2,443 on 3DMark06 at 1,024x768, which measures graphics performance. While this still trails the scores of 7,000 or more we see from mainstream notebooks in the $700 to $800 price range, it’s impressive for an under-$500 laptop and beats the Satellite C655D-S5043’s showing of 1,706 on this test.
This long battery life is due, in large part, to AMD, which has made big strides toward longer battery life with its Fusion platform. The efforts seem to be paying off. This isn’t the first Fusion notebook that has surprised us with its good battery life. (Note that if you're interested in more about the Fusion platform, nearly all the scores here closely reflect what we saw in our review just a week before of the Fusion-based MSI E350IA-E45 motherboard.)
The NV51B05u also delivered pretty impressive battery life for a budget laptop. On our DVD battery-rundown test, in which we set the screen brightness and volume to 50 percent and play a DVD until the battery dies, the NV51B05u’s six-cell power pack lasted for 3 hours and 23 minutes. That’s well ahead of the Toshiba Satellite C655D (2:18) and even the pricier Acer Aspire 5742G-7200 (2:07), not to mention about an hour better than the average for all mainstream notebooks.
Features:
On the plus side, the keyboard is impressive for a budget machine. The NV51B05u uses a slick "floating-key" design, in which the keytops seem to hover above their recessed bed. This design not only looks better than the Chiclet-style keyboards that seem to be everywhere, but the key travel and solid feel also make for comfortable typing. Just invest in a can of compressed air to periodically blow out the dust and crumbs that are sure to get trapped in the gaps.
While we didn't care much for the touch pad, the laptop's screen was a high point. Like most laptop screens today, the 15.6-inch panel is LED-backlit, which improves brightness and contrast while lowering power consumption. The glossy panel on the NV51B05u is particularly bright, and colors in photo images are beautifully saturated. The 1,366x768 native resolution makes for easily legible text and icons, although some users might prefer a higher-resolution panel in a notebook this size to more easily fit several application windows side by side. Video images exhibited natural color reproduction and almost no discernible motion blur. One nit, though: While the panel’s side-to-side viewing angle is fairly wide in Windows apps, it is considerably narrower when you're watching video, making the NV51B05u a poor fit for watching a movie with a friend.
The keyboard deck is roomy enough for the full-size keyboard, plus a dedicated number pad. Above the number pad, you’ll find dedicated volume/mute keys (other multimedia tasks require a Function-key combination), along with a Social Networks key that lets you launch your FaceBook, YouTube, or Flickr account.
And speaking of multimedia playback, the single speaker in the NV51B05u is a disappointment. It delivers thin, tinny sound that is good enough for Web audio but not much else. For music, movies, or a long Skype session, you’ll want to use headphones. We were also not impressed with the image quality of the 1.3-megapixel Webcam. In bright light, our test subjects appeared overexposed, and under typical nighttime room lighting (with a floor lamp and table lamp illuminating the room), the camera struggled. The image was plagued by poor color accuracy, a lot of digital noise, and an annoying amount of motion blur even with minor movements. It even looked so after updating the CyberLink-sourced Gateway Webcam utility. Clearly, a new driver or a better camera is in order.
Conclusion:
In the software-you-get-to-keep category, Gateway delivers Microsoft Office Starter 2010, an ad-supported version that delivers limited-functionality builds of Word and Excel. (The full version of Office is also preloaded, for those who want to upgrade.) Gateway also includes the Gateway MyBackup solution (for creating recovery discs and backing up important files), CyberLink PowerDVD (for DVD playback), and Nero 9 Essentials (for burning CDs and DVDs).
We’re happy to see that Gateway didn’t skimp on the operating system to help lower the price, opting for the 64-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium, instead of Windows 7 Basic. But you will have to put up with some desktop clutter out of the box, as Gateway included come-ons for eBay, Gateway Games, Netflix, Nook for PC, and others. (If it means Gateway can collect money from those sponsors and pass the savings along to consumers, we won’t complain too much; you can always prune the offending shortcuts.) You also get a 60-day trial for Norton Internet Security.
Gateway backs the machine with a one-year parts-and-labor warranty with 24/7 tech support, which is on a par with what other major laptop makers offer for their budget laptops. So whether you’re looking at the NV51B05u or one of its fraternal twins, keep a few things in mind: You’ll get a great screen, excellent keyboard, and better battery life and 3D performance than you ever thought possible from a $469 laptop. If you spend your day in a Web browser and office apps, you’ll be perfectly happy with the machine’s horsepower and will likely be able to forgive it when it does bog down for the occasional multimedia-heavy chore. Just be prepared to live with mediocre productivity and multimedia performance, as well as a crummy sound system and Webcam.
Key Specs:
Processor: 1.6GHz AMD Fusion E-350 APU
Memory: 3GB RAM
Storage: 500GB hard drive
Optical Drive: DVD±RW
Screen: 15.6 inches (1,366x768 native resolution)
Graphics: On-chip AMD Radeon HD 6310
Weight: 5.7 pounds
Dimensions (HWD): 1.3x15x10 inches
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
USA Price : $469
Gateway NV51B05u Review:
Gateway notes that the NV51B05u model is sold only at Fry’s Electronics, but that similarly configured models with slightly different model names are available from Best Buy and other Gateway resellers. If you don’t have a Fry’s near you, look for similar configurations at Best Buy (the NV51B02u with 2GB of RAM, or the NV51B08u with a lesser AMD Fusion-based processor). You can also find the NV50A10a (in red) and NV50A13u (in black) on the Home Shopping Network. It's a much different animal there, though, at $599 and coming with a quad-core AMD Phenom II N970 CPU and 4GB of RAM.
keyboard with a number pad, and some 3D-graphics abilities. No, it doesn’t perform like a Core i3 (or even a Core 2 Duo) notebook, and as with all budget machines, the company has made some compromises to hit the low price. But for students, grandparents, or anyone in between that needs just the basics, the NV51B05u is worth a look. Let’s face it: Most of us will rarely use all the processing power that today’s typical dual-core laptop can deliver. So with the Gateway NV51B05u, parent company Acer is betting there’s a market for a mainstream notebook with good-enough performance at an eye-poppingly low price. For just $469, you get a bright 15.6-inch screen, a comfortable
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