Gateway NV5934u

 Gateway NV5934u The Gateway NV series’ design hasn’t changed a lick since it debuted a year ago. The lid (ours was a teal color) has a fine honeycomb pattern and glossy finish, which makes it a fingerprint magnet. The mostly black chassis is set off by a cylindrical matte silver hinge. On the inside, the area above the keyboard is glossy, and houses responsive touch-sensitive controls for adjusting and muting the volume, enabling or disabling Wi-Fi, and launching Gateway MyBackup (there’s also one programmable button). Otherwise, the palm rest and keyboard deck are made of plastic with a flat finish. At 5.6 pounds and 14.7 x 10.2 x 1.5 inches, the NV5934u is a reasonable size for a mainstream machine: light enough to shuttle from room to room, but not ideal for long trips outside the house.
For $599, the NV5934u comes equipped with a 2.13-GHz Intel Core i3-330M processor, 4GB of RAM, a 5,400-rpm, 320GB hard drive, and Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit). The $599 A6200 and G62t also both offer 4GB of RAM, while the G62t also adds a larger (and faster) 7,200-rpm, 500GB hard drive. That said, the NV5934u delivered solid performance. Its score of 4,702 on PCMark Vantage, a benchmark measuring overall Windows performance. That score is above the category average (3,885) and the MSI A6200 (4,191) but below what the HP G62t turned in.
Unfortunately, the NV5934u’s 320GB hard drive is slower than other budget laptops on the market, even though its speed of 5,400 rpm is standard. Meanwhile, the Satellite L505-ES5018 completed the same task at a rate of 18.7 MBps, and the MSI A6200, 23.2 MBps. The HP G62t transferred the same folder at a relatively blistering rate of 31.8 MBps.

While using the NV5934u, we were able to zippily switch between various open tabs in Internet Explorer 8, including our bustling Twitter feed; NYTimes.com, which loaded stories briskly; and Facebook, where we quickly clicked through dozens of our friends’ photos at a time. When it came to more heavy duty computing, the NV5934u converted a 114MB MPEG-4 clip to AVI in 1:04 using Oxelon Media Encoder, which is anywhere from 4 to 10 seconds faster than other budget 15-inch notebooks we’ve tested lately, including the HP G62t, MSI A6200, and Toshiba Satellite L505-ES5018.

Gateway NV5934u Specifications
CPU
2.13GHz Intel Core i3-330M
Operating System MS Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
RAM
4GB
RAM Upgradable to
8GB
Hard Drive Size
320GB
Hard Drive Speed
5,400rpm
Hard Drive Type
SATA Hard Drive
Display Size
16
Native Resolution
1366x768
Optical Drive
DVD SuperMultiDrive
Optical Drive Speed
8X
Graphics Card
Intel GMA HD
Video Memory
Shared
Wi-Fi
802.11b/g/n
Bluetooth
Mobile Broadband
Ports (excluding USB)
Ethernet; HDMI; Headphone; Microphone; VGA
USB Ports
4
Card Slots
5-1 card reader
Warranty/Support 1 year/24/7 toll-free
Size 14.7 x 10.2 x 1.0-1.5 inches
Weight 5.6 pounds

Gateway NV5934u