Gateway GWTN156-3BK review: A gaming laptop that lives a bit too loud - alkirehonpon

Gateway's back! This once-renowned PC accompany from the 1990s was purchased by Acer some years ago. It sat idle until Genus Acer revived the Gateway brand earlier this year, complete with patched-cow mascot, as a Walmart exclusive. One of the first new offerings, the poetically named Gateway GWTN156-3BK, builds a Comet Lake-H mobile CPU and a modestly combative Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 chip into a laptop computer costing just $999 at Walmart.

Does it present? Absolutely. While some the available memory and SSD are sparser than we'd like, our tests revealed satisfactory to very good gambling performance. The aim has its highlights too, including a decent keyboard and a good mix of connectivity options.

This brush up is part of our ongoing roundup of the top-quality laptops. Survive in that respect for info on competing products and how we tested them.

Mark Hachman / IDG

The Gateway spotted-cow logo reappears on the lid of the laptop.

Gateway GWTN156-3BK: Specs and features

In a year when everyone inevitably a laptop computer to process or study from home, even a vintage PC blade like Gateway can get some traction—we saw this laptop move in and out of availability during our review period. (Thither is too a version with a Ryzen 5 4600H and a GeForce GTX 1650 for $799Remove not-product link.)  There's no relationship to Walmart's personal Motile house brand, of which we reviewed the surprisingly good Motile M142 budget laptop (presently out of stock).

With nearly premier gaming laptops priced at some thousand dollars, the question we wish to answer is where Gateway (operating theater Acer) edit corners to bring this play laptop pile to its $1,000 price point. There are none variations on memory operating theater SSD size, for example, though the amounts you puzzle out are adequate. Here are the primary specs:

• Display: 15.6-inch Liquid crystal display IPS (1920×1080, 120Hz) non-match
• Processor: Intel Core i5-10300H ("Comet Lake")
• Artwork: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 6GB
• Memory:  8GB Micron DDR4-3200
• Storage: 256GB PCIe SSD (PM8256GPTCB4B8TF-E13T2A)
• Ports: 1 HDMI 2.0, 2 miniDisplayPort 1.4, USB-C (charge+data transmit), 2 USB 3.1, ethernet, microSD, Kensington lock
• Camera:720p (user-facing)
• Assault and battery: 46.7 Wh (design and full charge)
• Receiving set: WiFi 6 (Intel AX201), Bluetooth
• Operating organisation: Windows 10 Home
• Dimensions (inches): 14.2 x 9.7 x 0.8in.
• Burthen: 4 pounds
• Color: Black person
• Price: $999 at Walmart

The external design is plain, with a fusain impressible shell and the classical Gateway spotted-cow badge adorning the lid. The quirkiness of the brand—there's another cow peering quizzically at you from the laptop computer's desktop play down—is somewhat at odds with the gamer aesthetic, especially with the cow gazing downwardly at the RGB-lit keyboard.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Gateway's GWTN156-3BK provides a button to the left of the magnate push button to flip between Office, Gaming, and Turbo modes, but it has little effect.

What does shriek "gamer" are the aggressive ventilation openings to the sides, bottom and rear. The fans scream too, unfortunately—almost always whining gently in the ground, even when manually lay to the low fan mode in the Control Center utility. It was a great deal loud sufficient to gravel Pine Tree State until I donned headphones.

Related, to the left of the power button above the keyboard there's a secondary button with three modes: Bureau, Gaming, and Turbo. For the life of me I couldn't realizewhy Gateway had enclosed information technology, Eastern Samoa our performance testing unconcealed that the modes did utterly zip that our tests could discern. In one case the fan dropped down into "low" and shut off in Office musical mode, I eventually grokked wherefore the toggle was useful.

The port layout is copious and yet frustrating. USB Type-A ports adorn both sides of the laptop, supporting an external keyboard and mouse if you so want. A dropjaw version of the ethernet connecter provides both screaky bandwidth and shrunken ping times. There's a single HDMI portand deuce miniDisplayPort connectors, perfect for my existing miniDP-to-HDMI cables. There's even an more and more rare South Dakota card expansion slot.

Bull's eye Hachman / IDG

Gateway's laptop computer provides a dua of USB-A ports and a full-sized SD card slot connected the right…

Those display expansion ports play into the laptop's ability to game on the go—either to plug into a friend's external display, or use your own. The Gateway's 120Hz display is a bit slower than some of the 144Hz or higher displays you'll see on pricier gaming laptops, but it's still an eye-pleasing refresh rate and a solid effort for a budget model.

Keep in thinker, though, that this is a 1080p display spread out all over a 15.6-edge screen. The resolution doesn't look as crisp at this size, and the display can look up to a little spent, too.

Mark Hachman / IDG

…and left, with a USB-A port, an ethernet jack, and both a mic and a headphone jack.

The biggest embrasure defeat is the single USB-C, because it'snot Bolt-harmonious. That means you can't take vantage of the latest display and storage devices using that fast connection. Gateway also positions the barrel-charger 180W power port at the rear of the laptop computer, too, and it tends to get on snagged when you put the laptop downward.

Mark Hachman / IDG

On the rear of the chassis, you'll find a pair of miniDisplayPorts, the HDMI 2.0 port, and a generic USB-C connector, plus the power port.

Keyboard: Reputable for gaming and work

The Gateway GWTN156-3BK's keyboard is decent, with man-to-man keys measuring about 1.5cm sweeping—average for most laptops we've seen, except for the pricier Microsoft Surface notebooks. For each one key is a bit stiff, with a definite "bottom" to the go on, which wears on your fingertips after a bit. As I usually do, however, I wrote this review on the GWTN156-3BK's keyboard, and it wasn't half pretty. As immoderate as the keyboard is concerned, this is a laptop that you lavatory body of work and play on.

Mark Hachman / IDG

The Gateway GWTN156-3BK keyboard is with moderation comfortable to type upon, and includes a amoun pad to satisfy lefties who utilise those keys for gaming.

It wouldn't be a play laptop without bling. Each headstone has four gradations of backlighting, to a higher degree a typical productiveness laptop, plus the "off" setting. The well-designed Gateway Control Center app (more on this later) allows you to select from a number of different colors, operating room randomly cycle through what appears to be 28 different color options. The RGB party may non be As lively arsenic what Alienware, Razer, or other gaming peripherals offer, every bit the color changes bike through the keyboard keys as a whole, rather than via individual keys or zones. Still, there's at least any reminder that you can have some playfulness with this laptop.

The Gateway GWTN156-3BK includes a broad, plasticky trackpad. The responsiveness seemed competent, though scrolling up and falling through with a web page seemed a little uneven. The trackpad ISN't quite clickable all the way to the top. There are nobelium secondary buttons, either.

Mark Hachman / IDG

The Gateway GWTN156-3BK doesn't offer too much in the way of RGB customization, but the grassroots capability exists.

Gateway takes vantage of the laptop computer's broad keyboard base of operations by seemingly positioning the downward-facing speakers rectify at the look two edges of the laptop, so that the sound seems to glucinium forced out of either side. This provides some nice audio frequency detachment, and helps positionally orient sounds—from another histrion, say, surgery a fomite—in games that stomach this option. The speakers sounded planar and somewhat nasal at the low death, simply with decent volume.

The Realtek Audio Console app, which Gateway includes with the GWTN156-3BK, helps doubly. Prime, the app's Omni Talker settings improve the speaker reply from "unqualified" to something more all-round. Realtek's included counterpoise also allows you to tune whatever audio you're playacting. Unfortunately, of course, you'll have to move on into the app itself and perform the necessary changes.

The Gateway GWTN156-3BK features THX enhancement, which is publicised on the laptop's chassis itself. For some reason the laptop also includes a second THX Spatial Audio for PCs audio app, complete with equalizer. Yet the app doesn't appear to do much of anything, if at all, because tweaking the audio settings produced no discernible effect.

Intimately, at least with the physical speakers themselves. We've written meter and again about how laptop speakers pale compared to the audio experience headphones deliver, and the THX audio enhancement kicks in when headphones are obstructed in. Everything improves substantially with the THX enhancements enabled, complete with basso hike, the equalizer, duologue enhancement, and volume equalisation. Two gaming settings—"grand" and "hyperlocator"—appear to embody for those who favor specific point audio, or those WHO don't mind a more general audio soundscape.

Patsy Hachman / IDG

Nothing operative can come of placing the webcam at the bottom of the screen.

As for the webcam… well, it exists. As a 720p camera buried at the precise hind end of the display's "chin," it will prove thatsomeone is sitting at the keyboard, even if you'll have to tug the display far game so that IT can see your face. Buy a cheap webcam as an alternative.

Gateway's GWTN156-3BK doesn't ship with much bloatware, aside from the eight-fold (Realtek and THX) audio apps as well as the Firefox browser and an queer addition,Forge of Empires. I'm not sure why the enclosed "Command Center on" app hides within a pamphlet within the Start menu, and why Gateway didn't tot up IT to the Bulge tiles. Still, Control Center is a slick-looking for app, with options to control the fan speed and available keyboard lighting.

Mark Hachman / IDG

The Gateway Control Center software.

Performance examination: Upgrade considerations

When it comes to performance, the Gateway GWTN156-3BK has two specs that should give you pause. The first is the available remembering: With just 8GB inside, you should view upgrading the laptop to 16GB or beyond past opening up the chassis via the user-accessible screws. The problem is that Gateway slapped a "warranty stamp" sticker on big top of one and only of them, which substance that you'll have to argue, via a 2018 FTC informatory, that those types of warrantee stickers don't encroachment your rights.

Just as critical, albeit in a different way, is the small-scale 256GB of SSD storage. On a productiveness laptop, this is no big shot; however, with games likeRed Dead Salvation 2,Microsoft's stylishFlight Simulator, andCall of Duty: Innovative Warfare'sWarzone all pushing 100GB of data by themselves, your internal storage options wish comprise limited. Call of Tariff: Melanise Ops Cold War will take 175GB to 250GB of storage by itself, which in all likelihood substance it wouldn't sound connected the drive at altogether.

I liked the conception of the Gateway GWTN156-3BK serving as both a function PC as well A an after-hours gaming workstation, but it fell short doubly. Even with the laptop computer set to Office mood, the fan oft whined away in the background—there's no silent mode for office work. I also wasn't impressed with how the Gateway born frames on our 4K/60Hz YouTube test video; shouldn't a gaming laptop be able-bodied to treat this?

Navigating the GTX/RTX modulation

Although this is a budget laptop computer, its bedroc are advanced: a 10th-gen "Comet Lake" H-serial CPU, plus the next-gen RTX 2060 GPU. The RTX 2060 is the lowest-end model of this generation, but plane it takes advantage of two key features that the prior generation of GTX models preceptor't: real-time ray tracing, which visually enhances games by modelling the way light reflects and refracts off of various surfaces, and DLSS 2.0, which uses AI features found inside the RTX 2060's Tensor cores to drive home visual improvements such as anti-aliasing, without requiring their computational workload. Basically, you're acquiring a prettier game at faster framerates. (We have a fuller explanation of DLSS 2.0 American Samoa well arsenic a look at what ray tracing in games like Minecraft fundament brawl for you.) In that location's a fairly broad field divide here, though: The vast majority of (older) games are coded without support for either technology.

Carrying into action testing: Benchmarks

Though we tested using some the Position and Turbo setting, the difference between the ii was virtually nonexistent save for the HandBrake and Fire Strike Uttermost tests. Even then, the differences were slight and did not involve the GWTN156-3BK's ranking.

We tested against a broad spectrum of gaming laptops here. Lenovo's Legion Y740 costs some $2,000. The MSI GS65 Stealth costs about $1,700. The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 costs $1,450. The $830 Acer Nitro 5 (2019) and the $1,335 Acer Nitro 7 are the closest comparisons to our $999 Gateway we'Re examination here.

We took a little look at productivity performance via the PCWork Creative benchmark, just to be sure that nothing prevented it from navigating finished distinctive workloads the like photo manipulation and video editing. For this try out and this test only, we compared the GWTN156-3BK against roughly budget productivity notebooks. Clearly there's zero issue here, atomic number 3 information technology tops the heap.

Mark Hachman / IDG

We've compared the Gateway GWTN156-3BK against some recent productivity laptops at or close to the $1,000 price point, antitrust for this one test. As you might expect, the Gateway tops the heap.

Cinebench's R15 release uses all of the CPU's horsepower to render a tabular setting. With a 4-core, 8-thread Comet Lake processor below the tough, the Gateway GWTN156-3BK doesn't do that well. As we'll experience later on, however, performance increases under different workloads.

Gateway GWTN156-3BK

While the Gateway' laptop's Cinebench scroe is lacklustre, it shines brighter in other tests.

We use the echt-world HandBrake tool to transcode a Hollywood movie into a format that's congruent for an Android tablet. HandBrake is most utile for evaluating how well a laptop's CPU holds in the lead under prolonged load, and how well its cooling organisation manages the emphasize. Arsenic with the Cinebench test, the Gateway's functioning is unremarkable.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Over again, Gateway's GWTN156-3BK doesn't perform altogether that well against more expensive gaming laptops. Examination with the Turbo setting enabled lowered the encoding time to 2,131 seconds.

Our last synthesized tryout is 3DMark's Fire Strike Extreme benchmark, designed specifically for gaming PCs. Gateway's contemporary RTX GPU gives it an advantage over laptops with older parts.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Here, the compounding of the 10th-gen Core microchip and the RTX 2060 GPU elevate Gateway's notebook well. Here, using Gateway's Turbo stage setting generated a score of 7,372, a 2.5% departure.

Our serious-human race gaming benchmarks reinforce how the GWTN156-3BK holds its possess. We use 2015'sRise of the Tomb Raider and the 2014 gameMiddle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. Anything above 60 frames per bit is generally considered to be playable by most gamers, and the RTX architecture really starts delivering higher frame rates in the second game, consistent with separate RTX 2060 hardware we've evaluated. While we get into't register a comparative analysis here,Rise's 2018 subsequence,Shadow of the Tomb Raider, produced average frame rates of 63 fps on its intrinsical, DirectX 12 benchmark at 1080p, Immoderate settings.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Mark Hachman / IDG

Spell the public presentation inRise of the Tomb Plundererwas perchance a bit disappointing, Gateway's notebook redeems itself in Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor.

To allow 2 more information points, I ran the inherent benchmarks on two other recent games: A Total War Saga: Troy, which was released in Honorable 2020, and 2018's gorgeous open-world racer, Forza Horizon 4.Total State of war, a real-time battle simulation, uses a modified edition of theTotal Warfare: Warhammer 2 DirectX 11 engine, and ran acceptably at 1080p Ultra settings, with 4X antialiasing, 16X anisotropic filtering, and V-synchronise turned off. Our tests averaged 44 frames per second, which for a real-time strategy game seemed acceptable.Forza's marvellously careful PC benchmark generated average form rates of 77 fps on Ultra, which should be sufficient for most gamers.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Finally, there's battery life, which forever feels alike a trifle of an afterthought with a gaming laptop. Hardware designers drop their budgets on GPUs, non battery. The 46.7 Watt-hour battery on the Gateway is quickly gobbled up by the CPU, GPU, and display. Between four and five hours isn't that unhealthy for this class of laptop computer, though.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Should you buy in the Gateway GWTN156-Berkelium?

Any budget play laptop volition have its flaws. In the case of the Gateway GWTN156-3BK, its omnipresent fan noise detracts from the everyday experience. The minimal memory and SSD also mean that you'll equal itching to upgrade soon. Minded that it offers well over 60-Federal Protective Service gaming performance at 1080p and Ultra settings, however, we'd articulate that it's hush worth considering for your next budget gaming PC.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/393653/gateway-gwtn156-3bk-review-a-good-budget-gaming-laptop-that-could-use-some-upgrades.html

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