Mobile Roundup: A Trio of Midrange Laptops

Conclusion

As we indicated in our last gaming laptop "roundup", we have by no means tested a large percentage of the current offerings. In fact, with just seven recently tested laptops we've hardly scratched the surface. Testing each laptop does require quite a bit of time, of course, and it can be difficult to get all the units we'd like. Nevertheless, we do have a fair number of test results to come up with some recommendations. It's shouldn't be too shocking that much of what we'll say here echoes what we said in our mobile buyers' guide.

The way I figure it, most potential laptop users fall into one of several categories. First, you have the people that just want a mobile computer; they don't really care about performance or features, they just want it to be inexpensive. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have the people that really care a lot about performance and/or features, and they're willing to pay top dollar. In some cases, that will mean they want a gaming powerhouse, but just as likely is that they want a very lightweight laptop and/or five (or more) hours of battery life. While it would be nice to get all of those things in a single package, simple logistics make it impossible to fit high-performance gaming into a small chassis while still providing long battery life. Falling somewhere in between the extremes, there's a large group of users that don't necessarily want the best, but they might want very good quality in one or two areas, or in some cases they're looking for a jack of all trades. The midrange sector caters to these people, and there are dozens if not hundreds of potential laptops.

So let's say you're looking for a midrange laptop; what do we recommend? Out of the laptops we've tested so far, two manage to break away from the crowd. The Gateway P-7811 is pretty much untouched in terms of affordably priced mobile gaming. Our second recommendation for those that don't care about gaming is the Acer 6920G. The 16:9 aspect ratio makes this a better fit for a multimedia notebook; it seems like a little thing, but watching 16:9 widescreen without black bars on the top and bottom makes a difference. Even better is that you get colors quality and accuracy that surpasses the vast majority of notebooks. As mentioned, we'd recommend bypassing the Blu-ray drive for most users, but if you have the extra money it's not a terrible addition. Just watch out for compatibility problems with drivers and software - yet another victim of DRM.

If you're looking for other alternatives, we would focus on the various Centrino 2 notebooks that are now shipping. Raw performance may not be dramatically better, but some of the updates do improve battery life. In particular, we definitely recommend the P-series Core 2 Duo processors over the older T-series. Intel TDP numbers might not be the best indication of real-world power requirements, but the 25W parts clearly improve battery life compared to the 35W parts. DDR3 memory would be an added bonus. You might also want to look at business notebooks that come with a standard 3-year warranty. Dell's Latitude E6400 and HP's EliteBook 6930p are two options that fall into this category (though unfortunately without DDR3 memory).

We're not done yet with our laptop reviews; we'll continue as soon as more arrive for testing (which should happen this week). We're also still waiting on any Centrino 2 notebooks that support the ability to switch between integrated and discrete graphics; frankly, we can't imagine why anyone would make a Centrino 2 notebook with discrete graphics and choose to omit this feature. Alienware showed that it's possible to do this even with X3100, but so far no one has contacted us regarding a G45 laptop with this feature. Hopefully that will change - sooner rather than later.