Gateway Is BACK! - But Is Their $200 Laptop Any Good?

so a few weeks ago it was announced that the gateway brand of personal computers was being brought out of retirement and put into use once again parent company acer announced an exclusive deal with walmart enabling them to sell gateway branded products it's the first time that the gateway brand has been used in about six years so why then has gateway's official website not been updated with these new products well that's because these laptops and tablets yeah gateways making tablets now but they're not actually making these tablets because none of these devices are manufactured or even designed by gateway so what's going on here well let's find out this video is sponsored by skillshare get a free trial of skillshare's premium membership for a limited time by following the link in this video's description gateway was founded way back in 1985 and quickly became one of the most popular computer brands out there back then they were known as gateway 2000 but simplified their name in the late 90s to just gateway they later bought out e-machines in 2004 and were eventually acquired by acer in 2007 and afterwards the gateway brand slowly began to be discontinued you probably haven't seen one of their laptops in a store in a while but all of that changed recently when acer announced a plan to start using the gateway brand once again a new website was launched gatewayusa.com that contains information about the new laptops two-in-ones and even tablets yeah ever thought you'd see a tablet with a gateway logo on the back well you can pick up one of them at walmart starting at 69.99 they come in both 8 and 10 inch varieties you've got three tiers of laptops ultra slim convertibles and creator and there are a total of nine laptops as of me recording this they start at 179 for an 11.6 inch machine this one comes with an amd a4 cpu four gigs of ram and 64 gigs of storage and it's worth noting that these lower end models don't have ssds but rather emmc storage the highest end machine costs 999 dollars and it's one of their creator machines with a 15.6 inch screen a 10th gen core i5 8 gigs of ram an nvidia geforce rtx 2060 and a 256 gig ssd so i was intrigued the moment i heard about these especially considering the mixed reviews you can find on walmart's site most of the machines rank pretty decently though there aren't many reviews except for the lowest end machine which has 83 reviews and ranks 2.6 out of 5 stars most of these reviewers gave the machine a one star rating so i knew i just had to purchase this because i wanted to see what all the fuss was about what exactly was so wrong with this computer that it only got 2.6 out of 5 stars i've also been in the market for a smaller form factor laptop mainly to write video scripts while on the go i currently have a 15 inch machine which is an acer actually and it works great but it would be nice to have something a little more lightweight and compact so i was gonna purchase this one but i instead decided on the 11.6 inch two in one machine because it had better reviews not as many but better reviews it wasn't 2.6 out of 5 stars and it was only 20 dollars more most of the hardware in this model is the same but it comes with an intel celeron cpu instead of the amd a4 and it includes a year of office 365 personal which costs 70 dollars on its own obviously the largest change is the touchscreen which can be folded back to create a tablet so i placed an order for one and it just arrived so let's open this thing up and see what it's all about alright everybody here it is it just arrived uh anyone noticed something strange with this picture here yeah the the box isn't even taped shut look at this they just folded the flaps in there's no tape on the top here there is on the bottom thankfully there is tape here but yeah this came from walmart.com which is the only place you can order this from i don't believe these are being sold in stores at least not at my local walmart i had to purchase this online and things don't look very good so far i mean look at this um so this shipped via fedex they have this label on here and uh are you kidding me there's no there's no packaging look at this it's just in here there's no bubble wrap or anything like yeah that's it and oh my look at the what the heck happened is this thing used or something it's completely torn there uh so either this was broken i mean i don't see how this could have gotten damaged in shipment because if it did then the the other pieces of uh the cardboard that ripped off would be in the box so this was i guess like this on the shelf and they just sent it anyway hopefully the laptop is okay let's open it up i guess um okay we've got our thx card here this device features audio that has been tuned by thx well isn't that great so we've got some packaging here here's the laptop itself we'll take it out it's actually much heavier than i thought yeah the stickers are on the bottom actually the um the windows and intel celeron stickers we'll just set it on top here and we'll open it up see what it's all about so we've got our little keyboard protector and yeah here it is there's nothing on the screen there's like no um you know plastic covering like you'll have sometimes we'll put something on the screen um but yeah you got your gateway branding down here tuned by thcs your track pad very very clicky buttons there you can probably hear that and the screen does fold back so it folds into a tablet so that's how that is so if you want to use it in tablet mode doesn't really lock into place at all you can see it's literally just kind of there so that's not the greatest i mean it still works like you can have it as a tablet but it's not going to like lock into place or anything you can also i mean i've like seen it in the ads where they will have it um up like this like you can have it on a on a stand uh i mean i'm i'm sure we all know how these kind of devices work so we'll set the laptop aside or they're the two and one aside and let's see what else we got in the box here so we've got a little cardboard insert that holds the laptop we have a oh my very tiny power adapter this is the power supply right here this is probably the smallest laptop charger that i've ever seen and we've got our documentation right here what on earth do we got in here so we got this is probably a little manual here important product information blah blah blah to obtain warranty service please contact gpu company gpu company i i guess that's just maybe the company is actually called gpu company or that's just a generic like filler that's kind of funny very small this is probably just your like warranty information yeah it says gpu company that's in another line here's the english right here to obtain warranty service please contact gpu company at support gateway usa.com and there's their phone number so all right that's cool here's your office 365 card it tells you how to use microsoft word and all the other programs or let me tell you how to use this says you get a free year membership here's your little quick start guide it's got the model number down there and it tells you how to plug in the laptop and use it and then oh well here's a code what is this percent off your first year of kiddomi fingerprint digital product of fingerprint digital hundreds of games books and videos for all learning levels from ages three to thirteen well uh if anyone wants a free kidomi code there you go first come first serve with that and that's it everybody so even though the laptops box was damaged and partially open not to mention the laptop box being shipped in a unsealed shipping box i guess everything arrived safe and sound but i'm kind of concerned about the fact that that box was open taking a look at the machine itself it's got a decent amount of ports for a laptop of its size on the left you've got your power port a usb 3 port and mini hdmi and on the right side you have your power button a micro sd card slot a usb 2.0 port and a headphone jack yeah we still have those in 2020. it ships with windows 10 home version 1909 in s mode and it also came with some pre-installed crapware which i removed if you've never heard of s mode it's a special mode of windows 10 that takes the place of windows 10 s you remember this this was a dedicated version of windows 10 that could only run apps from the microsoft store well now it's a mode of windows 10 and it comes enabled by default on certain computers and this happens to be one of them what's nice is you can switch out of this mode for free to get standard windows 10 home and you'll need to do this if you want to run standard windows applications that aren't in the microsoft store otherwise you'll be pretty limited with what applications you can install and you'll be stuck with microsoft edge for the web browser it's a one-time change too once you leave s mode you cannot return to it oh and remember that warranty pamphlet with the weird gpu company name well it turns out that that is the name of the computer manufacturer at least according to windows but when you call the support number the automated system tells you that you've reached gateway support so i'm not sure yeah hi i'm trying to reach gpu company the keyboard and trackpad aren't great the trackpad especially feels very cheap it's very loud and it takes a larger amount of force than i'm used to to click the buttons at first i thought it was complete trash because i was having some major issues with it just moving my finger across the trackpad was causing the mouse pointer to go haywire luckily this was fixed after a restart the keyboard is crammed to say the least but what can you expect from an 11.6 inch laptop it's got some annoying layout changes too like the size of the up and down arrow keys being cut in half and merged together i've seen this on many laptops it is pretty common but it's still annoying it's even this way on my acer laptop but then there are some weird oddities like the backslash key being moved down by the space bar and the delete key taking its place it certainly isn't the greatest typing experience in the world but it is doable in fact i typed this portion of the script on it as for the machine's performance i'm really not that impressed but keep in mind that this only has a dual core processor with a base speed of 1.1 gigahertz and 4 gigabytes of ram meaning the processor barely meets a windows 10 minimum system requirements of 1 gigahertz and the ram is only double what windows 10 requires which is 2 gigabytes but it's still usable the touch screen is pretty responsive too i was able to scroll through menus and windows with no problem but using microsoft edge was not pleasant it had trouble just keeping up as i was typing this part of the script in google docs but chromium-based web browsers aren't known for being the best when it comes to memory usage oh and it's also got a webcam by the way but it's only 480p definitely not going to give you the best video quality but the build quality of the machine is actually pretty decent the plastic used for the outer casing doesn't feel cheap it's slim and sleek and it's also virtually silent as there aren't any moving parts at least as far as i can tell there's not even a fan on the back my only complaint is the hinge because you cannot open the laptop with one hand you'll just pick the entire machine up off the table so you have to hold the base down with one hand to be able to open it now you may have noticed throughout this video i've been using the phrase gateway branded laptops and that's for a reason the poor reviews on the lowest end laptop got me to do some digging and it turns out that these machines are not sold by gateway or acer this is evident in the copyright text at the bottom of the new website gateway and the gateway logo are the registered trademarks of acer incorporated and are used under license from acer america corporation it explains why gateway's main website gateway.com hasn't been updated in years according to it the newest gateway products are the lt series of laptops the sx and dx desktops and the 1zx tablet all of which run windows 8. ours technica has a great article on this that i'll have linked down below they discovered that the laptops are manufactured by a company called shenzhen bmorn technology company limited and they're imported to the us by evo products an acer rep quoted in the article stated that although acer does own the gateway brand it is not directly involved in the production or manufacture of these devices so you're essentially getting a generic machine with a gateway logo slapped on the back in fact the people who import this machine have their name on a line of laptops sold at walmart which look almost identical one of them costs the same as the lowest end gateway machine and it has pretty poor reviews as well it got 2.9 out of 5 stars from 421 reviewers if you decide to buy one of these i'd recommend the gateway branded one since it has four gigabytes of ram instead of two but i really wouldn't recommend buying either of these i also found a two in one machine that's very similar to the machine that i got though this one costs more and has less storage only 32 gigs as opposed to 64. but the rest of the specs are the same four gigs of ram a dual-core intel celeron cpu it even comes with the same one-year subscription of office 365 and looking at the product photos it looks exactly like the gateway one and if you had to pick between these two machines i'd recommend the gateway one because well you're gonna get more storage for less but like i said gateway has nothing to do with these computers aside from licensing their brand name to the manufacturer they didn't design them they didn't manufacture them and it seems like they're not even the ones operating the new website and that really sucks but you know what doesn't suck today's video sponsor skillshare who made the purchase of this laptop possible skillshare is the online learning community that gives you the tools to boost your creative skills through interactive video lessons whether you're wanting to learn a new skill or brush up on a topic that you already know i'd recommend checking out their wide range of classes on productivity creative writing and video editing just to name a few topics but that doesn't even scratch the surface of what skillshare has to offer maybe you're thinking of getting into video editing and if so check out this skillshare class from sean dye kink that gives some great tips on creating visually appealing video projects you'll even be able to download the assets used in the video lessons so that you can follow along and maybe get creative with your own edits most of these classes are under an hour in length and are split up into multiple sections for more convenient viewing and since skillshare is a learning community you can chat with other users taking the same class and read feedback from people who have already finished it with skillshare's premium plan you'll get access to every class on the platform and it's less than ten dollars per month if billed annually and for a limited time skillshare is offering you a free trial of their premium membership all you have to do is click the link in this video's description and sign up so what are you waiting for check out skillshare today and start learning something so that's my take on the new gateway two in one machine that isn't made by gateway for two hundred dollars this is what you get a re-badged machine that isn't really that different from the evo model if you're considering buying one of these laptops i'd certainly stay away from the lowest end machine because the reviews aren't that great as the saying goes you get what you pay for if you want a better windows 10 experience i'd recommend getting a machine with a faster processor rather than one that barely meets its system requirements though i am interested in seeing what the higher end gateway models are like and if any of you guys own one be sure to let us know how it is in the comments below that's all for today's video i want to thank you all very much for watching if you enjoyed this episode be sure to give it a like and get subscribed and as always i'll see you all in the next video [Music] you

Channel: Michael MJD

Views: 457,739

Keywords: video, michaelmjd, mjd7999, game, review, overview, apple, microsoft, unboxing, tutorial, windows, how-to, mac, os, operation, system, Gateway Is BACK! - But Is Their $200 Laptop Any Good?, gateway is back, gateway laptops, new gateway laptops, walmart, gateway walmart, gateway 2000, gateway new laptop, gateway laptop review, acer, michael mjd gateway, michael mjd laptop, windows 10, windows 10 s mode, windows 10 s, michael mjd windows 10, gateway new laptop review, skillshare

Id: d1FPvK5nlgE

Length: 17min 53sec (1073 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 07 2020