Gateway NV7915u

When it comes to the sheer performance you get for the price, few laptops we've seen offer as favorable a ratio as the Gateway NV7915u. It holds its own in terms of performance (until you consider gaming and graphics, anyway), and it stands alone in its size and price class. A 17-inch desktop replacement, this giant $649 laptop is made for the price-conscious consumer who doesn’t want to skimp on features and will revel in that huge screen. And for that buyer, this is a budget dream machine.

The NV7915u includes a 2.13GHz Intel Core i3-330M processor, 4GB of DDR3 memory, a bright 17.3-inch display, and all the checkmark items you'd expect. Gateway also offers other NV-series versions of this laptop based on AMD processors and with smaller screens; if you opt for a model with a 2.2GHz AMD Turion X2 processor, settle for a smaller 15.6-inch screen, and make some other trade-offs, you can pick up a base model for as little as $479. Plus, you can add some color to your computing life—the NV-series machines come in gray, black, red, and blue.

Design

Ever since Gateway rebranded itself as a more fashionable notebook manufacturer, the company has been on a roll in churning out good-looking budget laptops, and the NV7915u is no exception. The glossy NightSky Black lid, with its subtle Honeycomb pattern, isn’t as luxe as something like the HP Envy 15, but neither does it look cheap. However, the lid doesn’t hide fingerprints as well as the Midnight Blue color found on the NV5807u. Other design flourishes include a matte silver hinge with the power button built into the side (like Sony VAIOs), a glossy upper deck, and LED lights and touch-sensitive controls that glow red. At 6.8 pounds, this notebook is not one you’re going to tote around much, but it’s lighter than many desktop replacements. The touch-sensitive controls responded to even the lightest tap. While there are volume controls and a mute button, there are no external controls for multimedia playback. However, there are buttons for Launch Manager, MyBackup (more on that later), disabling the trackpad, and enabling or disabling Wi-Fi. When you tap the Launch Manager button (a bold P above the keyboard), you can configure the notebook to automatically launch an application of your choosing the next time you press the button.

Keyboard & Touchpad

The keyboard has a unique look and feel with its wide, flat keys. We found typing to be comfortable; the keys are quiet with perfect travel. A dedicated number pad is integrated seamlessly to the right of the keyboard. Above the keyboard is a row of touch-sensitive keys. It includes standard buttons such as volume controls, turning on and off wireless, and locking the touch pad, and a programmable launch key for opening a file, folder, Web site, or application, and another button that launches software for backing up files. Play, pause, rewind, and fast-forward are mapped to the Function keys.

The touch pad is recessed slightly and offers a pleasing matte finish. It also offers multitouch support, so you can, for example, swipe two fingers to scroll down Web pages, swipe two fingers sideways to jump forward and back in your browser, and zoom in and out by pulling apart or pushing together two fingers. We don't like the thin, indented border that frames the touch pad; it looks like a spot were dust and dirt could collect. We also don't like the mouse buttons--or button, as it were. Instead of two separate mouse buttons, the Gateway VN7915u features a single bar below the touch pad. For starters, it's too thin; we kept hitting the space below it when attempting to click. It's also wider than the touch pad, which looks odd, and you have to be diligent to hit the right or left side of it to make a corresponding mouse click. We found our thumb constantly hitting the middle of the bar, which does nothing but frustrate.

Display and Sound

The NV7915u’s 17.3-inch, 1600 x 900-pixel display was bright and crisp. While streaming Ghostbusters from Hulu, we noticed nice contrast between blues and reds in addition to rich, deep blacks. While images didn’t reverse colors until we were viewing the screen at extreme angles, its glossy finish kicked back a good number of reflections. The NV7915u’s stereo speakers delivered very good quality and more than adequate bass when we streamed John Mayer’s “Why Georgia” from Pandora. When cranked to its maximum settings, the volume was more than loud enough for movie watching, and we ended up scaling it back to around the medium setting.

Ports

You won't find many surprises with the ports, which are average for a budget system. They include a five-format card reader, four USB 2.0 ports, HDMI and VGA ports, and headphone and mic jacks. Connectivity is provided via 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Gigabit Ethernet, as well as a modem for those desperate times when one must resort to dial-up. As for other hardware, there's also a built-in Webcam. (It performed well, even in low-light situations.) And on the right side is an 8x dual-layer DVD writer. Unfortunately, Gateway says a Blu-ray-drive option is not in the cards, which is too bad because one would have complemented the huge screen well.

Performance

Armed with a 2.13-GHz Intel Core i3-330M processor, 4GB of RAM, and 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium, the NV7915u delivers strong performance. Its PCMark Vantage score of 4,907 is about 400 points above the desktop replacement category average, and just 90 points below the Toshiba Satellite P505-S8010, which uses the same processor but is $300 more expensive. The NV7915u’s 5,400-rpm, 500GB hard drive transferred a 4.97GB mixed media folder at a rate of 24.2 MBps. While that’s just 3.3 MBps slower than the category average, its boot time of 1:15 seconds is 9 seconds longer than average. You’ll definitely want to uninstall trialware and get rid of some startup programs. Anecdotally, we didn’t experience any lag as we switched between tabs in Internet Explorer (one of which was Gmail, sending attachments). We were also easily able to move back and forth between open windows on the desktop while playing music, including Windows Explorer and the Control Panel.