The good: It feels faster than an Intel Atom Netbook, but keeps the price down, high-definition screen.
The bad: Battery life Boring, terrible mouse buttons, no Bluetooth.
The bottom line: The 11-inch AMD-powered gateway LT2802U does well on price and performance, but dropped the ball on the battery life compared to the competition.
In the battle for supremacy Netbook market share, Intel Atom CPU is almost indisputable, despite a handful of deals with AMD and Via processors. Therefore, it is surprising that we found as much as the 11.6-inch Gateway LT2802U, which uses an AMD Athlon 64 processor L110 to provide smoother overall experience than most netbooks Atom power, keeping the price in the typical Netbook arena.
The widescreen display has a high definition 1366 x 768 resolution, which is becoming more common in high-end netbooks. However, only $199, the gateway is cheaper than other 11-inch netbooks like the Asus Eee PC 1101HA, and 10-inch models with HD displays like the Sony Vaio W.
The battery life while not insultingly short, it is definitely a weakness (especially for a bulky six-cell battery) – and the Windows Vista operating system is a bottleneck known for Netbooks. However, AMD CPU we had one of the best experiences I’ve had Netbook, while undercutting the 11-inch, high definition screen competition
The basic design of the LT31 black will not turn many heads – despite gateway receives consistency points to adapt the industrial design of their main series laptops MD, below the vertical chrome accent bar in the back cover. The system also feels like a slightly refined version of 11-inch Aspire Acer sister brand, Acer One 751h.
The interior is matte black keyboard tray, glossy black on the bezel of the screen, with a subtle pattern of dots recorded in the wrist rest. We were ripped off by the keyboard. The large, flat keys looked elegant with slightly rounded corners, and were large enough, even for fat fingers to use comfortably. However, they also felt a little pointless, flexing our fingers too low and had a price, quality plastic snapping.
The touch screen is of adequate size, but the mouse buttons were relegated unfortunately one of those thin bars, rocker annoying – an application that regularly discouraged. Like almost every gateway and current models of Acer, the touch screen multi-touch gesture support limited, such as zooming photos with a pinch of two fingers. The pad is small enough to prevent this is a particularly useful feature, but we liked to slide two fingers horizontally forward and back in our Web browser history.
The 11.1-inch screen has a native resolution of 1366 x 768, which is becoming more common on netbooks, but the vast majority still using 1024 x 600 screens. Of the 1,366 x 768 netbooks we’ve seen (both 10 inch and 11 inch models), the LT31 is one of the least expensive. Sony and Dell to charge a premium of about $ 100, while 11-inch Asus 1101HA is around $ 40 more. Acer Aspire One’s corporate cousin 751h is less than $ 300, but his poor performance should be out of the race.
One thing is clear: high-resolution displays, in fact, work in small netbooks, and once you get used to be owned by a little more screen real estate is hard to go back.
A standard collection of ports and connections gave no surprises, since this system is only available as a laptop retail fixed-configuration, there are no options to talk about. If you need high-end features such as 802.11n Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, look elsewhere.
The most interesting of the LT31 is the choice of processors. Instead of the Intel Atom, which uses an AMD Athlon 64 L110. With a 1.2GHz clock speed alone, it was expected that this is a non-starter, but in reality, we are the gateway ran smoother and faster than almost any Atom netbook we’ve tested. The comparison is especially interesting because the other 11-inch netbooks we’ve seen have all used the version of the Intel Atom Z520 (instead of the more common N270), which was painfully slow performance in general.
The single-core CPU L110 was better than most netbooks in a single application of tests, such as iTunes, but much worse in the multitasking test. It is worth noting that the multitasking test is not always an accurate measure of a single core CPU, and the use of anecdotes, we found it to be one of the Netbooks zippiest feeling-I’ve used.
AMD, like other Atom CPU, Neo, has been in the few most expensive way to systems such as
HP dv2, making it a pleasant surprise to get a better than average performance in the same sub-$ 400 Netbooks ballpark as typical. Have twice the RAM of most netbooks, 2 GB, also helps, and explains why the LT31 uses Windows Vista Basic operating system. (Although this product, like most netbooks, not qualify for a free upgrade to Windows 7, might make sense to hold off a purchase until October.)
Jump off the shelf typical Atom gateway also allows ATI Radeon X1270 include, helping with some very basic casual gaming and video viewing, making it easier to take advantage of the high-resolution screen video HD (but are still full screen video streaming HD from time to time stuttery).