- A little while back,
Walmart tried to get into making gaming computers
which was basically only good
for giving reviewers like us a good laugh.(laughs)
That died and their second
even cheaper foray was even worse.
I've used $150 phones that perform better than this.
But today, that changes.
This is the Gateway 15.6 inch
performance notebook GWTN156-3BK.
And sure, it might not sound like much,
and it might not look like much,
but it also doesn't cost much.
It's currently on sale at Walmart
for 700 bucks while packing an RTX 2060.
That means, this could very well be
the cheapest gaming laptop
that's able to deliver a proper AAA
high frame rate gaming experience.
But does it also deliver a good laptop experience?
Well, it depends.
Just like I depend on reliable sponsor segues like this one.
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(upbeat music)
Rocking a core i5-10300H
and an Nvidia RTX 2060
this thing should on paper
be flippin capable as a gaming machine.
So then let's get right into it.
Can it run Cyberpunk 2077?
Oh, heck yeah, it can.
Here we are on medium settings
running at about 60 frames per second,
which for a game like this,
is about what you need to have a good time.
And it still looks really good.
Even if the sliders in the game
aren't all cranked to the right.
Now you might be concerned that the RTX 2060 we have in here
is gonna be last gen very soon.
But remember guys, this is a good thing.
This laptop is compelling because of the $700 promo price.
And with new hardware just around the corner,
we can expect this promo price to stick around,
well, not for that long,
probably until they're all sold out.
Back to games then.
It also delivered very reasonable frame rates
in Shadow of the Tomb Raider
and in Rainbow Six Siege,
we easily got over 120 frames per second on ultra,
which is good because yes, pleasant surprise.
It also has a high refresh rate display.
More on that later though.
Now we would have run some more benchmarks
but, this thing only comes with a 256 Gig SSD.
So after installing those three games, she was full.
So I think at this point,
we gotta open it up
and find out if the storage and RAM for that matter
are easily upgradeable.
'Cause if they aren't,
it's gonna be pretty hard to recommend it.
After just 10 Phillips screws,
good news everyone,
two easily accessible SO-DIMM slots
and two M.2 slots each only half full.
This means over the first year or so
with a little bit of saving,
it would be simple to turn this thing
into an even more capable machine.
Just like you'll be a capable machine
if you wear the LTT Beanie.
lttstore.com.
I like it.
So performance wise then,
the performance notebook 15.6 inch
is checking all the boxes.
But, I wasn't really concerned about that.
What was more of a concern for me
was all of the other things that make a laptop good,
like the keyboard,
the screen and the trackpad.
To compare then,
we brought in the HP Omen 15.
On paper, the specs here are the same,
but, when on sale, the Omen 15 is still $300 more
so, where did Gateway find $300 of cost cutting?
Well, in a few places.
First of all, build quality.
Both of these laptops do have plastic chassis,
but HP wrapped the top half in aluminum
leading to quite a bit more stiffness
and generally a more premium feel
everywhere your hands make contact with it.
With that said,
the Gateway isn't terrible in this regard either.
With a solid, acceptable C plus.
For IO, they're shockingly similar
even sharing the exact same Intel Wi-Fi 6 networking card.
That's an area that lots of other companies
have cheaped out on in the past with their budget offerings.
Though the HP does gain a couple of points
for including Thunderbolt 3.
Moving on to the display.
Previously, some cheap high refresh rate panels
would have either been TN
or only support 6-bit color.
And I'm happy to report
that the Gateway has a proper IPS type 120 Hz panel
with 8-bit color.
The high refresh rate display
simply means that you will be more competitive
in multiplayer games than someone with a 60 Hz screen.
And at 1080p resolution the RTX 2060
will be running just about everything above 120 FPS
to really take advantage of it.
In a vacuum then looks really good.
But then side by side with the HP,
it's just no competition.
The brightness and colors on The Omen
just blow the Gateway machine out of the water.
It's not gonna be a huge problem
if you only plan on gaming
or you sit in the dark a lot,
but if you're doing any photo or video editing,
I would save up for something with a better display.
Another area Gateway could have cheaped out is the cooling.
Good cooling means a lot of copper
and copper is very expensive.
And running FurMark for half an hour
confirmed that, sure the HP does have better cooling,
its GPU leveled out at just 67 degrees
while the Gateway was at 72.
But, given that both managed
basically the same clock speeds
and ended up being constrained by power, not thermals,
I was pretty happy.
Although the HP did end up with a two to three FPS lead.
Both of them are also similarly loud.
But the fans in the Gateway
had a bit more of that high pitched whine
that makes them more annoying.
Truthfully though, with either of them,
you'll probably wanna stay away
from open back headphones while you're gaming.
This general trend of this being good
and this being better continues for the keyboard,
trackpad, and speakers.
The HP wins, but only just.
And the Gateway remains good enough
such that you won't be complaining
while using any of those things.
Bringing us then to our first real problem, battery life.
In PCMark 10s modern office benchmark
the Omen 15 put up a respectable six hours and 14 minutes.
In the same benchmark with the same settings
and screen brightness,
our gateway managed just an hour and a half.
That is a big oof right there.
If you catch my drift.
An hour and a half isn't just bad.
Like, it's way worse than what made sense to us.
So we started the test again and realized,
Oh, good old Norton Antivirus
was chewing up 90% of the CPU
scanning every part of the test that opened.
By using the best piece of software Norton makes
we were able to increase the battery life of this thing
to nearly six hours.
Freaking wow!
At least it wasn't a hardware problem, right?
Now it should be mentioned that HP
did still deliver more performance on battery
and has a much bigger battery.
So if you plan on doing anything away from the wall
besides watching videos or using Word,
it will be a better choice.
But the Gateway wasn't nearly as bad
as it seemed out of the box.
I do still have a question though,
I keep calling this a Gateway.
But who the heck actually made this laptop?
Gateway has been basically a dead company
for the last 10 years
with its owner Acer letting it slowly rot.
At first I thought
maybe it was just like a rebadged Nitro 5
packaged up for Walmart.
But looking at the Nitro 5
and the performance notebook side by side.
They're clearly not the same machine at all.
My next guest then was Clevo.
But I couldn't find any matches
and it also wasn't Bmorn technology
who makes Gateway's other Walmart exclusive laptops.
We actually looked at one of those a little while back,
so go watch that video if you wanna see
what a slow motion dumpster fire looks like.
No, this was made by Tongfang,
the GK5NR0O to be exact.
Is that right? - [Male voice] Yup!
- The zero-oh, wow, unbelievable.
Which is good to know
if you wanna find some upgrades for it
off of sites like AliExpress.
For example, this much juicier 62.3 watt hour battery
can be had for just $68.
Almost a nice price.
Basically then from this comparison,
the HP Omen 15 is a better laptop in every single way.
And if you find it on sale,
it's the one you should get out of the two.
But, the Gateway performance notebook 15.6 inch
also doesn't have any brutal flaws.
At $700 the performance notebook
gives you everything you need
and over the next year or two
it can easily become a fair bit better
as you upgrade the RAM, storage and maybe even the battery.
So, it's certified cheapskate legit.
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If you guys aren't even bigger cheapskate by the way,
we also checked out a $250 laptop from Walmart
a while back that was shockingly good.
Thanks to the power of AMDs!
Return to competition!
Thank you AMD!
Thank you AMD for blessing us
with competition in the CPU market.
Praise be to AMD.