Gateway P-7811FX

Gateway has impressed with their gaming laptops as they offer excellent price to performance ratio which is hard to find in this category. Slowly gaming laptops are approaching the bar where they can be termed as true desktop replacements. Gateway recently introduced their P-7811FX gaming laptop that closes the margin further. It is an excellent offering from the manufacturer at an amazing price.

Gateway P-7811FX specifications :

• Dimensions : 15.7″ x 11.7″ x 1.7″
• Processor : Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 / 2.26 GHz
• Chipset : Mobile Intel PM45 Express
• Display : 17″ TFT active matrix 1920×200
• RAM : 4GB DDR3 SDRAM 1066 MHz
• Graphics card : Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTS
• Hard Disk : 200GB SATA-300 7200 rpm
• Optical drive : DVD Burner
• Webcam : 1.3 megapixel
• Battery : 9-cell lithium ion
• OS : Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit
• Approx. price : $1500

The Gateway P-7811FX laptop is based on the latest Centrino 2 platform. It has a bumped up processor, graphics card compared to the older gaming laptops produced by Gateway. The price for the configuration is a steal and probably the best you can expect right now in the market.

The chassis of the laptop is made of glossy black plastic and also has brushed aluminum detailing and copper accents. Looks are very subtle on Gateway laptops and so is the case with this one. The body is a magnet to fingerprints though which can get annoying at times. It features a full blown keyboard which includes a numeric keypad. Media control buttons can be found on top of the keyboard but sadly they are not touch sensitive apart from the volume slider.

The display is a 17″ beauty and has a full HD resolution of 1920 x 1200. This is great for viewing HD movies at full resolution and multi-tasking becomes a breeze. The display quality is great and offers crisp picture quality. Ports are selective and it has only 3 USB ports to go along with an eSATA port.

The laptop has a high-end graphics card in the form of Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTS which offers strong gaming performance. A 7200 rpm hard disk ensures faster performance along with the P8400 processor. It comes with 64-bit OS as the laptop has 4GB of RAM. Missing Blu-ray drive is probably the only downside.

The performance of the laptop as expected is top notch and manages to pull impressive frame rates in Unreal Tournament 3. It scores 117 fps at 1280 x 800 and 58fps at 1920 x 1200 resolutions. This is by far the highest scores you can expect on gaming laptops in this price range. The battery life is also good at close to 3 hours when viewing a DVD movie.

Pros :

• Great specifications
• Highly aggressive pricing
• Full HD display
• Excellent gaming performance
• Fast hard drive

Cons :

• No Blu-ray drive
• Fewer ports

Final Thoughts

The Gateway P-7811FX is an excellent laptop and probably the best one to invest your money in right now. It has everything perfect about it and the price makes it a killer deal. You can hardly go wrong with this one.

My Rating : 4.5/5