Gateway LT3201u review: Gateway LT3201u

Netbooks have settled into a comfortable set of stock components, offering basic PC functionality for prices unheard of even a few years ago. The typical setup of a 10-inch display, Intel Atom N450 CPU, 1GB of RAM, and Windows 7 Starter is easy to find for as little as $299, and more than adequate for many tasks, from e-mail to surfing the Web.

7.5

Gateway LT3201u

The Good

More powerful than Intel Atom Netbooks; reasonably priced; big keyboard.

The Bad

Still a single-core processor; unimpressive touch pad and multitouch gesture controls.

The Bottom Line

Offering a little more Netbook for a little more money, the Gateway LT32 is a solid step up in power, screen size, and price.

But those low, low prices mean that PC makers are eager to upsell, and a handful of similar systems have turned up, with larger HD displays, more RAM, and even better CPUs and graphics capabilities, such as the Asus Eee PC 1201, which pairs a bigger screen with Nvidia's Ion GPU for what we sometimes call a "premium Netbook" experience.

A recent system to offer this mix of a little more Netbook for a little more money is the Gateway LT3201u. This 11.6-inch laptop skips the typical Intel Atom for an AMD Athlon Neo II K125 processor. Though still a single-core chip, AMD has always positioned the Neo as a better performer than the Atom, and during initial anecdotal hands-on use, that certainly seems to be the case. The LT32 also includes ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4225 graphics--still not a discrete GPU, but a small step up from the integrated Intel graphics found in most Netbooks.

Almost as important to the end-user experience is the 2GB of RAM (double what's in a typical Netbook) and the Windows 7 Home Premium operating system instead of the more common Windows 7 Starter Edition.

Note, however, that we're also starting to see dual-core versions of AMD premium Netbooks, including the Dell Inspiron M101z, which is even faster, but also more expensive, crossing that important psychological barrier of $500.

The design of the LT32 is reminiscent of the Acer Ferrari One, an excellent 11-inch premium Netbook from earlier in 2010. That system was even better, with a dual-core AMD CPU and 4GB of RAM, but it also cost nearly $600, putting it in solid mainstream laptop territory. The Gateway LT32 is more reasonably priced. Gateway is listing it for $449, but hopefully some adventurous retailer will sell it for $399, which would make it a great $100 upgrade from entry-level Netbooks.

The large keyboard is typical of 11-inch Netbooks, and certainly easier to type on, although the wide, flat, closely packed keys felt a little wobbly, especially around the center of the keyboard. The touch pad is undersized and made of the same material as the rest of the wrist rest, demarcated only by a faint raised line. Like most current laptop touch pads, it includes some basic multitouch gestures, such as two-finger scrolling, but they were hard to use, failing to register much of the time. At least the left and right mouse buttons are actual separate buttons, skipping the unfortunate recent Gateway trend of using a single, thin rocker bar in place of buttons.

The 11.6-inch screen has a 1,366x768-pixel native resolution, the current standard for nearly all laptops with 11- to 15-inch displays. It's a useful midlevel resolution that allows one to play 720p HD video files with no loss of fidelity, and doesn't make the small 11-inch screen feel cramped.

One of the things we like most about this new breed of premium Netbooks is the inclusion of an HDMI output, useful for hooking up to a larger display. It almost makes up for the lack of Bluetooth; otherwise this is a standard set of ports and connections.

In our hands-on use, the LT32 felt like a definite step up from Atom-powered Netbooks. We spent less time staring at the spinning Windows wait icon, and launching and switching between apps resulted in less hang time. Both the Neo processor and extra RAM likely play a part in this.

The Radeon graphics weren't much for 3D games (although some more-basic games are certainly playable; see our list of great games for Netbooks for some examples), but HD video playback was great, including streaming Flash video in HD, something that trips up even Netbooks using Broadcom's Crystal HD video accelerator.

Juice box
Gateway LT3201u
Off (60%)	0.45
Sleep (10%)	0.54
Idle (25%)	9.36
Load (05%)	25.38
Raw kWh Number	34.45
Annual power consumption cost	$3.91

One area where the Intel Atom still has a clear advantage is battery life; the LT3201u lasted 3 hours and 28 minutes in our video playback battery drain test. That's nowhere near the 6-plus hours a highly efficient Atom Netbook can get, but we got closer to 4 hours in anecdotal use.

Gateway includes an industry-standard one-year parts and labor warranty with the system. As the company only sells systems through third-party retailers, extended warranties of various types are available from the actual reseller, whereas a customized list of documentation and driver downloads is available by entering your serial number on Gateway's support site. Gateway also has a bad habit of hiding its toll-free support phone number, which is 1-800-846-2301.

Find out more about how we test laptops.

System configurations:

Gateway LT3201u
Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit); 1.7GHz AMD Athlon II Neo K125; 2,048MB DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz; 384MB (Dedicated) ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4225; 250GB Hitachi 5,400rpm

HP Mini 210
Windows 7 Starter; 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz; 250MB (Shared) Intel GMA 3150; 160GB Toshiba 5,400rpm

Asus Eee PC 1201PN
Windows 7 Home Premium; 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450; 2,048MB DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz; 512MB Nvidia ION; 250GB Western Digital 5,400rpm

Acer Ferrari One
Windows 7 Home Premium; 1.2GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core L310; 4,096MB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz; 384MB (Dedicated) ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3200; 250GB Seagate 5,400rpm

Lenovo Thinkpad X100e
Windows 7 Professional; 1.6GHz AMD Athlon Neo MV-40; 2,048MB DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz; 384MB (Shared) ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3200; 320GB Hitachi 5,400rpm