Walmart.com - Gateway 15.6" FHD i3-1115G4 laptop, 8GB / 256GB SSD, Tuned by THX audio, webcam, fingerprint $249.00

[VirtualLarry]

Gateway 15.6" Ultra Slim Notebook, FHD, Intel® Core™ i3-1115G4, Dual Core, 8GB Memory, 256GB SSD, Tuned by THX™, 1.0MP Webcam, HDMI, Fingerprint Scanner, Cortana, Windows 10 Home, Blue - Walmart.com

Arrives by Thu, Nov 9 Buy Gateway 15.6" Ultra Slim Notebook, FHD, Intel® Core™ i3-1115G4, Dual Core, 8GB Memory, 256GB SSD, Tuned by THX™, 1.0MP Webcam, HDMI, Fingerprint Scanner, Cortana, Windows 10 Home, Blue at Walmart.com

www.walmart.com

Click on "more sellers", scroll down to shipped and sold by Walmart, click "Add to cart". Should be $249.00.

DO NOT JUST BLINDLY click "Add to cart", you will end up with 3rd-party seller.

 

[jiffer]

That's a good deal, but I keep thinking better deals are just around the corner. I bought a couple of Gateway laptops on Halloween which would probably be considered early Black Friday deals that were a lot hotter than this one. The build quality seems okay to me (the shells seem to be reasonably scratch-resistant and flex-resistant, the keyboards and touchpads seem okay, and the 1080p back-lit screens are clear and bright), but they have annoying drawbacks such as no PCIe SSD support, just SATA M.2 support, and soldered RAM and WiFi cards that can't be upgraded. I'd also be willing spend extra money for a back-lit keyboard, especially on a laptop computer.

Didn't mean to thread-crap, I'm just hoping we get better deals. (Maybe this week?) Thanks for posting, Larry. You're a great contributor to this forum!

 

[VirtualLarry]

That's a good deal, but I keep thinking better deals are just around the corner.

I have my doubts. 12th-gen stuff is literally twice the price, and has worse battery life than 11th-gen.

Edit: Give me a 12th-gen, with 8GB (LP)DDR5 and 52GB NVMe, for $350 or less, then we can talk about hotter deals.

 

[jiffer]

Well, I was talking about 11th gen stuff at a lower price, or more for your money.

Here's one:

Gateway GWTN156-9BK 15.6" FHD i5-1135G7 2.4GHz Intel Iris Xe Graphics 16GB RAM 512GB SSD Win 10 Home or higher Black - VIP Outlet

Product Details: Manufacturer: Gateway Series: Model: GWTN156-9BK Screen Size: 15.6" Touchscreen: NO Processor: i5-1135G7 Speed: 2.4GHz RAM: 16GB Solid State Drive: 512GB Installed Operating System: Windows 10 Home (or higher)

vipoutlet.com

I got one of those on Halloween from Walmart for $299. (See my remarks about it above.)


EDIT: That one is "currently out of stock". I ordered one last night and I got a notice that it was "shipped" (probably going out of their warehouse today). We'll see if it's brand new as advertised.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yeah, I've been using that model as my daily-driver; we'll see how long that the screen-hinges last. (I'm looking at you, less-than-one-year-old-Lenovo, whos screen hinges failed, and is now unusable.)

And VIPOUTLET is, in my personal experience, one of the LEAST reliable resellers, in terms of actually getting what was advertised.

 

[jiffer]

I bought six "certified refurbished" computers from VIP Outlet a couple years ago and three of them looked brand new. The others had only a couple of marks on them. They were spotlessly clean. I also bought a couple pairs of Bose PC speakers that were new.

Shortly after that, I bought four computers that appeared to include monitors for a ridiculously low price, so I only half expected them to honor the deal. Sure enough, half of them came with a monitor; the other two didn't, hehe. I had no trouble returning those two for a full refund.

Take it with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary, but that is my experience with them so far.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Dell Precision 7520 I7-6820HQ 16GB 512GB 4GB Quadro M1200 15.6 FHD Gaming Laptop $359

Are you a human?

www.newegg.com

 

[jiffer]

That's not 12th gen, Larry. Interesting find, though. I can't find many benchmarks, but that GPU's FP32 performance appears to be roughly equivalent to i5-1135G7 and inferior to Radeon Vega 8 integrated graphics. One review site says NVidia 960M GPU family drivers are not optimized for gaming. The GPU alone is rated at 45W TDP (28nm) so I imagine it needs a lot of cooling. This is a workstation laptop, and I try to keep that in mind when trying to make any comparisons. I'm not sure how "thin and light" it could be. I imagine it's very solid. It has two extra M.2 PCIe slots (older generation). The Skylake processors officially support Windows 7 through Windows 10. Processor performance probably depends on power and frequency settings and I can't tell how much control Dell and Intel give you. (My 11th gen Gateway has a lot of settings in the BIOS; the default settings keep it on the slow side but it can be improved.) I like the TN display panel because I hate IPS panels (always washed out, usually uneven, and not dark enough compared to TN and VA). I'd pick Dell over Gateway because of the trust factor, and Dell uses high quality materials for the shell. I don't have any experience with CNE Direct. They have an 80% positive rating from buyers.

 

[jiffer]

VIPOUTLET is, in my personal experience, one of the LEAST reliable resellers, in terms of actually getting what was advertised.

Well, this time they did not deliver what they advertised. I was supposed to receive a brand new laptop. The one I received was obviously a customer return. VIPOutlet is in the business of refurbishing customer returns from stores such as Walmart. As long as they sell it as "used" or "refurbished" I think it's good business. The laptop I received has no signs of wear itself and it is very clean aside from a couple of fingerprints on the screen where someone opened or closed the lid, but the box is in bad shape. It's hard to tell how much wear and tear happened during shipping, but it it is beat up and has water damage (water stains, mildewy smell, cardboard separation, etc.). The real giveaway is the yellow return sticker. It would have been better if they had replaced the packaging instead of using the original box. The refurbished computers I received from them a couple of years ago were packed very well. Buyer beware.

FWIW, I placed the order on 1/2, the shipped it from NY on 1/3, and FedEx delivered it to TX on 1/10.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, this time they did not deliver what they advertised.

Buyer beware.

Par for the course, for them, IMHO.