by Kevin OBrien
The Gateway M-152XL is a compact multimedia powerhouse aimed directly at the Toshiba A305, HP Pavillion dv6700, or Dell M1530. Each of these notebooks offer the same basic features, including high glossy chassis, fast processor, dedicated graphics, HDMI outputs, and their own brand specific styling elements. So how well does the Gateway stack up to the rest? Read on to find out.
Gateway M-152XL ($1,299.99) had the following specifications:
* Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T8300 (2.4GHz)
* Windows Vista Home Premium 32-Bit w/ Service Pack 1
* 15.4" WXGA Ultrabright TFT Active Matrix (1280x800)
* ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2600 w/ 512MB GDDR3 Memory
* 3072MB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM
* 160GB Seagate 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
* 8x Multi-Format Dual Layer Slot Load DVDRW w/ DVD-RAM
* 5-in-1 Digital Media Manager
* Integrated Intel 802.11a/b/g/Draft-N Wireless Networking
* Bluetooth 2.0+EDR
* 1.3 Megapixel Webcam
* HDMI Connector v1.2
* 6-Cell Lithium Ion Battery (5200 mAH)
* 1-Year Warranty (Tech Support / Parts / Factory Labor)
* Retail Price: $1,299.99
Build and Design
The Gateway M-152XL has a very stylish design with glossy metallic blue paint contrasting the brushed aluminum trim around the frame of the notebook as well as the keyboard. This silver theme also continues onto keyboard which is painted with a matte silver metallic finish. One thing to note is while other manufacturers are going with glossy finish for even the keyboard, Gateway is staying with their matte finish for now.
The optical drive, following the sleek and stylish theme is slot loading, just like the Dell M1530 or Apple notebook line. While it does remove the CD tray from the equation for a streamlined design, I still cant get over the "optical drive is consuming my disc" noises that all slot loading drives make.
Build quality is above average with a durable chassis that feels pretty solid in your hand. The plastic is tough, flexing little under stress and producing no squeaks when tossed around. The chassis as a whole feels like it would hold up well, even in the hands of less than friendly students.
The glossy paint quality is one aspect of this notebook that falls short, leaving much to be desired. Our review sample had some paint application quirks such as paint not being applied all the way to the edges of the plastic and as well as discoloration that gave off a wavy gasoline on water effect. If you were looking at the glossy surface at an object like an overhead light being reflected from it, the reflection would be obscured by purple and green fringe. This by no means impacts the performance of the notebook or changes the texture of the painted surface, but is almost impossible not to see once you notice it.
Screen
Display quality is average, with a very narrow viewing angle which can make enjoying a movie or game difficult until you find a sweet spot. Vertical viewing has about a 10 degree +/- range before the screen either gets dark or washed out. Horizontal viewing angles are much better, keeping colors accurate even at extreme viewing angles. No screen defects were found on our review model, which includes dead/stuck pixels or backlight leakage.
When inside the viewing sweet spot, the color and brightness of the screen is very nice. My preferred brightness setting was 70 percent, or a bit darker if I was at home without as much overhead light.
Keyboard, Touchpad, and Media Keys
The keyboard on the Gateway M-152XL notebook was very nice, with a very solid feel when typing. The structure underneath the keyboard provided a great deal of support, preventing any unwanted sag during use. The key action felt great, with a decent throw height, and very little key wobble. Key spacing was fine, and the key size itself was normal for a 15" notebook.
This notebook offers a Synaptics style touchpad, which I absolutely love to find on a notebook. Sensitivity is excellent, tracking is near perfect, and above all the configuration software offers a ton of adjustments to get the touchpad working to your exact specifications. The touchpad buttons were of decent size and provided a shallow throw with an audible click.
The Gateway M-152XL offers a mixture of soft touch and touch sensitive keys for the media functions. The volume control is a touch sensitive strip that detects tapping as well as sliding action to adjust the volume. The rest of the keys are soft touch, that provide a small click when pressed. With the media keys, you can control volume, mute, play/pause, stop, skip, DVD, Music, and TV.
Performance and Benchmarks
The overall system performance of the Gateway M-152XL notebook is excellent, with its Intel Penryn T8300 processor and ATI Mobility HD2600 graphics card. This combination gives you plenty performance to play most modern games on average settings, and more than enough power for day to day tasks. The 7200rpm Seagate hard drive helped load media applications such as Windows Media Center without lag, and gave the notebook a very snappy feel when just tooling around. Compared to the other notebooks in this price segment, the Gateway M-152XL clearly leads the pack in overall system performance from what we have seen in our testing.
Pcmark 6256
Wprime 31.792
Ports and Features
Port selection on the Gateway M-152XL was decent, but I felt it was missing Firewire and an additional USB port. It was nice to see VGA still included, even though HDMI is taking the lead.
Front: Headphone/Mic Jacks
Rear: Modem, VGA, AC Power
Left: HDMI, LAN, two USB ports, 5-in-1 Media Card Reader, ExpressCard/54, Wireless On/Off
Right: Slot Loading Optical Drive, one USB port
Webcam
The webcam performed quite well, working just as I would have hoped. Clarity of the image was decent, but you cant really expect a great deal of performance from a image sensor so small.
Audio
The integrated speakers on the M-152XL were below average, sounding very tinny and lacking all bass and most midrange. For listening to the occasional YouTube clip they would be fine, but I would really suggest a pair of headphones for longer use.
Heat and Noise
Thermal performance of this notebook was excellent, operating at stealth noise levels during most activities, and mildly ramping up in speed under benchmarks. Temperature levels of the notebook a bit higher than average, but it did have the high performance excuse. When compared to other notebooks in its class, it might have been a couple of degrees warmer overall.
Battery
For having a standard, non-extended battery, the Gateway M-152XL brought in good off the grid battery time of 2 hours and 35 minutes on the Windows Vista "Balanced" profile, with screen backlight set to 50 percent and wireless on. With the extended 9-cell battery I think it would be possible to break the 4 hour mark using these same settings.
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