Gateway ID47H07u

Whether it's laptops or HDTVs, one thing you seldom hear anyone say is, "I wish it had a bigger bezel." The bezel around the screen of the Gateway ID47H07u ($699.99 list) is pencil-thin, helping to squeeze a 14-inch widescreen into the body of a 13-inch system. The result is a mainstream laptop contender that's more portable (4.4 pounds) than many of its competitors, as well as well-equipped with everything from a USB 3.0 port to Intel Wireless Display (WiDi) technology for cloning the PC's screen on a (suitably thin-bezeled) HDTV.

The addition of WiDi (which requires Netgear's Push2TV adapter, a $100 extra, for the TV set) and a fractionally faster Core i5 processor differentiate the ID47H07u from the Gateway ID47H02u ($699.99 list, 4 stars). The price is unchanged, which is always nice. And we readily found some online resellers offering the ID47H07u for $50 less, which is even nicer.

Design
Instead of chintzy plastic, the 9 by 13 by 1.1-inch (HWD) ID47H07u flaunts a handsome aluminum-alloy lid and keyboard deck, the latter setting off the metallic chiclet-style keys. You won't find the backlit keyboard seen on our Editors' Choice Dell Inspiron 14z (Core i5) ($750 direct, 4 stars), but you'll appreciate the smooth, precise typing feel. One odd design choice: There's a rightmost column of full-sized keys just screaming to be Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn, but Gateway opted to make them volume control, mute, and social network?a button that launches Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr?keys instead. Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn are doubled up on the cursor arrows.

Similarly, the ID47H07u's plus-size touchpad has integrated (lower left and right corners) rather than dedicated mouse buttons. Normally a turnoff for yours truly, they worked well enough, but the pad's plastic surface puts up a little more friction or resistance than I'm used to. Of course, touchpads that glide too smoothly can lead to accidental cursor movements, but subjectively I felt the ID47H07u's went a bit too far in the opposite direction.

The laptop's 14-inch display offers the 1,366 by 768 resolution that's familiar in this size and price class; it's not dazzlingly bright but delivers crisp text and vivid colors. The "Professionally Tuned" (according to an inscription above the keyboard) speakers work with Dolby Home Theater software to pump out pretty good sound, if not a ton of bass.

Features
The optical drive on the ID47H07u's right side is a dual-layer DVD burner, not the Blu-ray drive found in the pricier Sony VAIO VPC-EG27FM/W ($779.99 list, 3.5 stars) or Toshiba Satellite P745-S4320 ($869.99 list, 3.5 stars). It's joined on that side by a USB 3.0 port, along with an Ethernet port. At the left are two USB 2.0 ports, headphone and microphone jacks, and VGA and HDMI video ports. A memory-card slot occupies the front edge.

In addition to the Wi twins (WiFi and WiDi), the ID47H07u offers Bluetooth, but not the Wi triplet WiMAX?as seen in the Toshiba P745-S4320, Sony VPC-EG27FM/W, and Asus U46E-BAL5 ($699.99 list, 4.5 stars)?or other mobile broadband. In addition to a one-year parts-and-labor warranty, Gateway provides a modest software bundle led by Microsoft Office Starter 2010 and a 60-day trial of Norton Internet Security.

Performance
At first glance, the ID47H07u's 4GB of RAM and 500GB hard drive look merely adequate; after all, a couple of its competitors have 640GB drives, and the Asus U46E-BAL5 offered a full 8GB of memory and a 750GB drive for the same price. But the ID47H07u's 2.4GHz Intel Core i5-2430M processor?the same dual-core, four-thread chip found under the hood of the Sony VPC-EG27FM/W and Toshiba P745-S4320?is fully competitive, as seen by the Gateway's topping its peers with a score of 2,384 in our PCMark 7 performance benchmark.

Other benchmark races were photo finishes: The ID47H07u's times in our Handbrake video encoding (1 minute 50 seconds) and Adobe Photoshop image editing (4:01) tests were each precisely one second slower than the Sony EG27FM/W, but it pipped the Sony EG27FM/W by a hundredth of a point with a Cinebench score of 2.70. Like its fellows, the ID47H07u will leave avid gamers searching for systems with something other than Intel integrated graphics?it managed an unplayable 23 and 14.1 frames per second, respectively, in Crysis and Lost Planet 2 at medium resolution and quality settings.

At 7 hours 32 minutes, our ID47H07u fell short of the magic eight-hour mark but still showed impressive unplugged life for a compact without a bulky battery pack. By contrast, the Toshiba P745-S4320 managed only 5:42, though the Dell 14z and Sony EG27FM/W each lasted over an hour longer than the Gateway. The battery is sealed within the system case MacBook Air- or ultrabook-style, preventing you from swapping in a spare for long trips or replacing it yourself when it starts to tire with age.

Unless WiMAX is a must for you, the Gateway ID47H07u offers a ton of features in a handsome, highly portable chassis for a pleasingly low price. Its bid to topple the Dell Inspiron 14z (Core i5) for Editors' Choice honors is thwarted only by our subjective impressions of its keyboard and touchpad, plus the Dell's backlit keyboard and removable battery.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS:

COMPARISON TABLE:
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