The Gateway Laptop Review: A Gaming Powerhouse at an Unbeatable Price

After months of searching for a gaming laptop that wouldn't break the bank, I finally found myself with a Gateway laptop that exceeded my expectations. The device was initially offered as a steal, with a price tag of $650, making it an attractive option for gamers on a budget. With some modifications and upgrades, this laptop has become a formidable force in the gaming world.

Upon first glance, the laptop's metal casing appeared to be flimsy, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it felt decently built, with mostly metal construction. The only area where I noticed some heat was on the exterior of the laptop, which was actually a good thing as it could help dissipate heat away from the components. In contrast, the keyboard area remained surprisingly cool, a welcome feature in any gaming laptop.

The laptop's hardware is impressive, particularly when considering its price point. With an 2060 GPU and up to 16GB of RAM, this device can handle demanding games with ease. My personal favorite game, Call of Duty: Warzone, was able to maintain a smooth 60fps on low settings, making it perfect for casual play.

However, the Gateway laptop's hardware is not without its limitations. The initial configuration came with only one 8GB RAM stick, which was single-channel and left room for improvement. Fortunately, I was able to upgrade the RAM by adding an additional 8GB stick, bringing the total to 16GB of dual-channel memory. Additionally, expanding the storage from a single 512GB NVMe drive to a larger capacity is essential for gamers who want to download games and store their progress.

The Gateway laptop's cooling system is also noteworthy. The laptop's fans are designed to work in harmony with each other, creating a smooth airflow that helps keep the components cool under heavy load. While I did notice some heat on the exterior of the laptop during intense gaming sessions, it was not excessive and never interfered with my ability to play.

The laptop's display is another area where it excels. Although Notebook Check reported a relatively slow response time of 38ms, in practice, the screen performed well and seemed responsive enough for me. However, I did notice that the color accuracy was lacking, which might be a concern for users who rely on accurate color representation.

One of the standout features of this laptop is its ability to stream content. With the updated NVMe drive, streaming becomes much more feasible, making it an excellent option for gamers who also enjoy live streaming their gameplay.

The price point is still the most impressive aspect of this laptop. At $650, it's a steal considering what you get. Although the deal has since expired and the laptop returned to its regular price of $999, I highly recommend keeping an eye on Black Friday deals and other holiday promotions that may bring it back down to earth.

Overall, I'm thoroughly impressed with the Gateway laptop, which offers exceptional performance for its price point. While there are some limitations and areas for improvement, this device has exceeded my expectations in every way. If you're a gamer looking for an affordable option without sacrificing too much quality, I highly recommend considering the Gateway laptop.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enaffordable gaming laptops that are actually worth it are hard to come by especially if you want to play modern aaa titles on the go a gaming laptop with the gtx 1060 in the 650 range yeah they exist but one with an rtx 2060 for that price oh yeah let's get into it my name is chris this is coalition gaming and today i'll be your computer technician gateway yeah you heard me right seeing the gateway box hearing the gateway name it's all definitely a throwback i used to work in retail consumer electronics and i saw so many of these come through our doors so yeah this really takes me back anyways i was tagged on twitter a while back being asked about gaming laptops on a budget someone else responded leaking this gateway laptop for 650 dollars and i was shocked when i saw the specs so let's go over that this laptop is gateway creator series model gwtn156-3bk and comes with an intel i5 10300h 4 core 8 thread cpu with the base clock of 2.5 gigahertz and a max turbo of 4.5 gigahertz an rtx 2060 six gigabyte dedicated graphics card a 256 gigan vme ssd eight gigabytes of ram and importantly a 1080p 120hz screen an interesting gimmick here is that the specs say that the screen and speakers are tuned by thx all i can hope is that this means the screen is more accurate and the speakers sound good i guess we'll see or hear going over the i o and other stuff on the laptop we have an hd front camera however it's on the bottom of the monitor so it's more of a chin cam than a face cam come on chin cam there they could have put it at the top all right here we go here we go a battery life rating of five hours one hdmi port two mini display ports a usb type-c port that supports data transfer and charging two usb 3.1 type a ports a micro sd card slot bluetooth 5.1 a built-in microphone and a weight of about four pounds additionally the dimensions of this laptop are actually kind of nice it's not too thick but it also isn't some kind of ultra thin laptop either which makes sense for its price point and the specs this laptop measures 14.2 inches by 9.7 inches by 0.8 inches that .8 inches thick is actually kind of impressive in my opinion so i jumped on this because my current gaming laptop before buying this one of course was an hp omen 15 with an i7 7700 hq 16 gigs of ram a 512 gig nvme ssd and a one terabyte hard drive downside to this one is that it only uses a 60hz screen and even worse well for gaming since this is actually great for productivity is that the screen on it is 4k all powered by a 1050 ti needless to say i would play everything at 1080p either medium or low settings games like call of duty war zones struggled to maintain 60 fps on low but other games were mostly fine i had gotten this hp omen for free but it had a bad motherboard which eventually cost me a total of 500 to get it properly repaired still a good deal but 650 dollars for a laptop of 2060 sign me up but wait the gateway still needs some love and thanks to an open m.2 slot and an open ram slot i pulled over the 512 gigan vm me drive and one of the 8 gigabyte ram sticks from the hp omen and now the gateway has 16 gigs of ram and a lot more storage let's hit those benchmarks foreign then the metal casing of the laptop does get decently warm but the keyboard area actually stays surprisingly cool in comparison oh by the way this isn't some flimsy plastic case laptop either it feels decently built for what it is and it's mostly metal the metal getting hot is actually a good thing as it can help sink the heat away from the components what's important is where it gets hot and fortunately this seems to not get as hot where your hands go but instead it gets hot elsewhere works for me speaking of heat i saw the cpu reach a max peak of 89c and to my surprise the gpu peak around 76c not bad at all the laptop itself like any gaming laptop can get decently loud when under a heavy load when the fans ramp up to max to keep things under control it hums along but the thx tuned speakers do a good enough job of being loud enough to not be drowned out by the fans i feel like they are kind of tinny though you might have noticed my laptop stand i'd figure anyone with a gaming laptop would try to use a solution to keep the thing breathing well be it like a fan pad or something like that and that's what this helps accomplish in a small portable package i'll have a link down in the description below also the speakers on this laptop are bottom firing so the stand also helps with that this laptop intakes air from the bottom with a lot of cutouts to help it breathe which this laptop stand also helps with that as well the exhaust comes out of the side vents on both sides of the laptop something i was worried about was the response time of the monitor with notebook check saying it was something like 38 ms but in practice the screen looks good for gaming seems to work pretty well and and you know that's just my opinion on it it was responsive to me got the job done for me notebook check also reports the screen isn't very color accurate though so for a laptop labeled as creator series doing any kind of color correction work with it probably isn't the best idea having the updated nvinc though this laptop does have the capability to be uh to be able to stream pretty decently so that's nice but don't use the built-in chin cam nobody will want to look at your double chin or mine so for 650 in my opinion this thing was an insane deal i'll be able to sell my old laptop to make up a good chunk of what i spent on this one so that's nice but the default configuration leaves a little bit to be desired in terms of storage and ram it comes with a single eight gigabyte stick so that means single channel which also isn't ideal throw a second eight gigabyte stick of ram in it most switch go for about 30 bucks and you're in business expanding the storage is also kind of mandatory especially if you want to play warzone a 512 gig nvme drive goes for about 50 and well there you go i'll leave some links down in the description below unfortunately this deal was rather fleeting the morning after i bought it it went back up to 8.50 and the last time i checked it's back to normal price of 999 i can't recommend it at those prices but with black friday and other holiday deals right around the corner you may want to bookmark this page because there is a good chance you'll see it back at 650 do you have a gaming laptop what are the specs what do you think of this deal drop a comment down below let's talk about it hopefully you found this video informative entertaining useful or helpful if you liked it you know what to do click that subscribe button and that bell and remember i stream every friday to twitch at twitch.tv coalition gaming crew friday's 8 pm pacific feel free stop by drop a follow and let's talk some check i'll see in the next one bye oh also uh there's other videos you want to check out our related videos over here check some of them out we got a bunch of cool stuff other reviews builds stream tips all sorts of stuff you gonna click one you should click one didn't click one and you weren't gonna click oneaffordable gaming laptops that are actually worth it are hard to come by especially if you want to play modern aaa titles on the go a gaming laptop with the gtx 1060 in the 650 range yeah they exist but one with an rtx 2060 for that price oh yeah let's get into it my name is chris this is coalition gaming and today i'll be your computer technician gateway yeah you heard me right seeing the gateway box hearing the gateway name it's all definitely a throwback i used to work in retail consumer electronics and i saw so many of these come through our doors so yeah this really takes me back anyways i was tagged on twitter a while back being asked about gaming laptops on a budget someone else responded leaking this gateway laptop for 650 dollars and i was shocked when i saw the specs so let's go over that this laptop is gateway creator series model gwtn156-3bk and comes with an intel i5 10300h 4 core 8 thread cpu with the base clock of 2.5 gigahertz and a max turbo of 4.5 gigahertz an rtx 2060 six gigabyte dedicated graphics card a 256 gigan vme ssd eight gigabytes of ram and importantly a 1080p 120hz screen an interesting gimmick here is that the specs say that the screen and speakers are tuned by thx all i can hope is that this means the screen is more accurate and the speakers sound good i guess we'll see or hear going over the i o and other stuff on the laptop we have an hd front camera however it's on the bottom of the monitor so it's more of a chin cam than a face cam come on chin cam there they could have put it at the top all right here we go here we go a battery life rating of five hours one hdmi port two mini display ports a usb type-c port that supports data transfer and charging two usb 3.1 type a ports a micro sd card slot bluetooth 5.1 a built-in microphone and a weight of about four pounds additionally the dimensions of this laptop are actually kind of nice it's not too thick but it also isn't some kind of ultra thin laptop either which makes sense for its price point and the specs this laptop measures 14.2 inches by 9.7 inches by 0.8 inches that .8 inches thick is actually kind of impressive in my opinion so i jumped on this because my current gaming laptop before buying this one of course was an hp omen 15 with an i7 7700 hq 16 gigs of ram a 512 gig nvme ssd and a one terabyte hard drive downside to this one is that it only uses a 60hz screen and even worse well for gaming since this is actually great for productivity is that the screen on it is 4k all powered by a 1050 ti needless to say i would play everything at 1080p either medium or low settings games like call of duty war zones struggled to maintain 60 fps on low but other games were mostly fine i had gotten this hp omen for free but it had a bad motherboard which eventually cost me a total of 500 to get it properly repaired still a good deal but 650 dollars for a laptop of 2060 sign me up but wait the gateway still needs some love and thanks to an open m.2 slot and an open ram slot i pulled over the 512 gigan vm me drive and one of the 8 gigabyte ram sticks from the hp omen and now the gateway has 16 gigs of ram and a lot more storage let's hit those benchmarks foreign then the metal casing of the laptop does get decently warm but the keyboard area actually stays surprisingly cool in comparison oh by the way this isn't some flimsy plastic case laptop either it feels decently built for what it is and it's mostly metal the metal getting hot is actually a good thing as it can help sink the heat away from the components what's important is where it gets hot and fortunately this seems to not get as hot where your hands go but instead it gets hot elsewhere works for me speaking of heat i saw the cpu reach a max peak of 89c and to my surprise the gpu peak around 76c not bad at all the laptop itself like any gaming laptop can get decently loud when under a heavy load when the fans ramp up to max to keep things under control it hums along but the thx tuned speakers do a good enough job of being loud enough to not be drowned out by the fans i feel like they are kind of tinny though you might have noticed my laptop stand i'd figure anyone with a gaming laptop would try to use a solution to keep the thing breathing well be it like a fan pad or something like that and that's what this helps accomplish in a small portable package i'll have a link down in the description below also the speakers on this laptop are bottom firing so the stand also helps with that this laptop intakes air from the bottom with a lot of cutouts to help it breathe which this laptop stand also helps with that as well the exhaust comes out of the side vents on both sides of the laptop something i was worried about was the response time of the monitor with notebook check saying it was something like 38 ms but in practice the screen looks good for gaming seems to work pretty well and and you know that's just my opinion on it it was responsive to me got the job done for me notebook check also reports the screen isn't very color accurate though so for a laptop labeled as creator series doing any kind of color correction work with it probably isn't the best idea having the updated nvinc though this laptop does have the capability to be uh to be able to stream pretty decently so that's nice but don't use the built-in chin cam nobody will want to look at your double chin or mine so for 650 in my opinion this thing was an insane deal i'll be able to sell my old laptop to make up a good chunk of what i spent on this one so that's nice but the default configuration leaves a little bit to be desired in terms of storage and ram it comes with a single eight gigabyte stick so that means single channel which also isn't ideal throw a second eight gigabyte stick of ram in it most switch go for about 30 bucks and you're in business expanding the storage is also kind of mandatory especially if you want to play warzone a 512 gig nvme drive goes for about 50 and well there you go i'll leave some links down in the description below unfortunately this deal was rather fleeting the morning after i bought it it went back up to 8.50 and the last time i checked it's back to normal price of 999 i can't recommend it at those prices but with black friday and other holiday deals right around the corner you may want to bookmark this page because there is a good chance you'll see it back at 650 do you have a gaming laptop what are the specs what do you think of this deal drop a comment down below let's talk about it hopefully you found this video informative entertaining useful or helpful if you liked it you know what to do click that subscribe button and that bell and remember i stream every friday to twitch at twitch.tv coalition gaming crew friday's 8 pm pacific feel free stop by drop a follow and let's talk some check i'll see in the next one bye oh also uh there's other videos you want to check out our related videos over here check some of them out we got a bunch of cool stuff other reviews builds stream tips all sorts of stuff you gonna click one you should click one didn't click one and you weren't gonna click one\n"