Gateway NV7915u – A budget desktop replacement laptop

Gateway NV7915u is a low-end desktop replacement laptop which gives a good set of features for the price that it is offered. I reviewed a predecessor to this system an year ago, it was Gateway NV7820u and it was good example of value for money system from this company. The price has been lowered here and there is a new processor inside. This sweetens the deal further. The price of this system is $599 and it is one of the least expensive laptops you will find in the market having Core i3 chip. The performance is clearly much superior as compared to other systems in this price range which use older AMD and Intel processors especially for multitasking. The 17.3 inch screen lets you juggle between various screens and you can also use it to sit back and watch movies comfortably. My only complaint here is the low battery life but then all desktop replacement laptops have low battery life. Other than that, the Gateway NV7915u is a stellar product.

This laptop has a silver and black chassis which sets it apart from other products having a honeycomb subtle pattern on its lid. The deck of the keyboard too is matte black along with glossy strip that runs on the keyboard’s top. The display is held in place by 2 round hinges and you might spend some time looking for the power button so let me tell you that it located on the right hinge. The weight of this system is 6.9 pounds and it is 1.4 inches thick. This makes the Gateway NV7915u one of the thinner and lighter desktop replacement laptops in the market right now.

The keyboard has a new and unique look with flat and wide keys. Typing on it was comfortable and the keys are really quiet with good travel. On the right, there is a dedicated number pad and it is seamlessly integrated. There is also a row containing touch-sensitive buttons on the top of the keyboard. They include standard buttons like volume control, wireless on/off toggle, touch pad lock and user programmable key for launching any application, Website, folder or file. There is another button which launches the file back up software. Multimedia functions of fast-forward, rewind, pause and play are mapped to Function buttons.

Gateway NV7915u touch pad is recessed and it has a matte pleasing finish. There is also multitouch support so you can do gestures like two finger swipe for scrolling down, swiping 2 finger sideways for jumping back/forward in the Web browser. You can also zoom in and out by pinching your fingers on the pad, just like on the iPhone. There is a indented thin border which frames the touchpad and I didn’t like this because this spot can easily collect a lot of dirt and dust. Also, for the mouse button, the manufacturer has given a single rocker bar instead of 2 separate buttosn which I didn’t like. Two separate mouse buttons are much better. Also, the space for clicking is too small and the rocker bar is wider than the touch pad itself which is kinda odd. You will have to be careful while pressing the left or right side buttons. My thumb ended up hitting the middle of this bar a lot and it frustrated me a lot. I would recommend you to go for an external mouse.

Gateway NV7915u has a 17.3 inch display with LED backlighting. It has a resolution of 1,600×900 pixels with 16:9 aspect ratio. The display is bright and big and makes the movies look alive. This screen is also good for productivity; there is plenty of room for working on the documents side by side. There is a low end Webcam located above the screen having a 0.3 megapixel sensor with resolution of 640×480 pixels for videos and pictures. It is good for video conferencing but quality is really poor and hence I won’t recommend it for anything else.

Integrated speakers on the Gateway NV7915u have a big sound and I was surprised by this since such high levels are usually not found on laptop speakers. While listening to movies, I lowered the volume below the maximum level and still could hear the dialogs clearly. This is rare in a laptop.

The collection of ports on the Gateway NV7915u is typical. There are four ports of USB 2.0 divided on the left and right side. Apart from that VGA port, there is HDMI port which is again rare on low end notebooks. What’s missing here is ExpressCard slot and eSATA port. Options for networking include Wireless N Wi-Fi and Gigabit Ethernet.

Gateway NV7915u has a very spacious hard drive of 500 GB and this is again welcome since other laptops in this price range have 320 GB hard drives. The space inside is not cluttered with bloatware either; there are just 2 trialwares of 60 days which might interest you – Microsoft Office 2007 and Norton Internet Security.

Most budget laptops try to keep the price low by putting in an older processor but Gateway has got a Core i3 processor for this system which is successor to Intel’s Core 2 Duo chip which was a bit hit in the market. The Core iM330 chip here is a dual-core processor clocked at 2.13 GHz. It has Intel’s Hyper-Threading technology which will automatically turn the 2 cores in to 4 if the application is too challenging. This improves the multitasking performance and also the speed with threaded application. In my lab tests, this system was about 35 percent faster as compared to its predecessor, the Gateway NV7802u which had Core 2 Duo T6600 processor. The difference decreases in single application performance. For example, Gateway NV7915u was 10 to 15 percent faster than budget notebooks from Toshiba, HP, Dell and Asus on my Photoshop benchmarks.

In my anecdotal testing, I got responsive and smooth performance in heavy multitasking scenarios. It could easily play the HD video content seamlessly. The files too loaded faster than other budget systems that I have seen in the past. The performance of Core i3 chips is tangible and it is much better than the older processors which use older technology. The zippy processor is complemented by 4 GB DDR3 RAM running at 1,066 MHz.

Desktop replacement laptops usually feature a graphic card but you won’t find one on the Gateway NV7915u as it is a budget system. All you get is integrated Intel GMA HD graphics. They can play HD video smoothly but if you play any high end games, it will immediately come down on its heels.

Battery life is not really important in a desktop replacement product since they are mostly used at home itself. In my battery tests, this machine stayed alive for a little less than two and half hours when I played video on it with a six cell battery pack inside. The aforementioned Gateway NV7802u lasted for about 39 minutes longer.

Gateway NV7915u has a one year warranty along with labor and parts and a return to depot service. Gateway is offering a toll-free, 24/7, technical support over the phone and on the manufacturer Website, you will find FAQs and driver downloads. There are also options for chatting online with the tech-reps and e-mail. Retail shops often sell in-store extended warranty but I don’t recommend it because of the high cost.