Walmart- Gateway Ultra Slim notebook Ryzen 3500U $199

[DAPUNISHER]

Gateway 14.1" Ultra Slim Notebook, FHD, AMD Ryzen™ 5 3500U with Radeon™ Vega 8 Graphics, 256GB SSD, 8GB Memory, Tuned by THX™ Audio, Fingerprint Scanner, 1MP Camera, HDMI, Windows 11 Home


https://www.walmart.com/ip/Gateway-...-Fingerprint-Scanner-1MP-Camera-HDM/351253346

I think I have seen this deal here before. Bummer that the ram is not upgradable, but other than that, hard to beat for the money. 4/8 CPU with Vega 8 will do some esports, emulators, and older games. Ram is soldered but 2x4GB. Thanks to @gibster for that info. He has an initial review in post #14.

 

[igor_kavinski]

My office colleague got it when it was $349. He gave it to his 5 year old daughter. He's happy that the laptop has survived the torture she puts it through

 

[VirtualLarry]

3500U / 8GB / 256GB, for $200 (well, $199)? HOTTTT!

In 4 1.

Edit: Oh. Win11 Home. Hopefully not "S Mode". Ah well.

Touchpad is complete garbage.
I have to constantly uninstall the touchpad driver and restart this piece of crap because the touchpad gets messed up. I'm talking weekly. everything was fine for the first month or two, but now this is an ongoing problem. Obviously I can hook up a mouse if I need it, but either way this product never should've been sold. I don't know if it's just a faulty touchpad, or all of them are junk and this eventually happens. Either way, last time I buy anything made by Gateway, and last time I buy a computer from Walmart. Absolute, infuriating trash.
adam

Hopefully that's just a one-off.

 

[gibster]

3500U / 8GB / 256GB, for $200 (well, $199)? HOTTTT!

In 4 1.

Edit: Oh. Win11 Home. Hopefully not "S Mode". Ah well.

Hopefully that's just a one-off.

Needed 1 for my wife, her 6 year old Toshiba is embarrassingly slow, she liked the blue, so also in 4 1, crossing fingers the review is an outlier as well.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Hopefully that's just a one-off.

Yeah. My colleague has no complaints. He's a picky person (has an iPhone 13 even though he really didn't need it. Bought it simply to experience the Apple side of the fence. Was on a Samsung Galaxy before).

 

[igor_kavinski]

Needed 1 for my wife, her 6 year old Toshiba is embarrassingly slow,

She will love the speed of this new laptop. Just make sure not to fill the storage completely with stuff. It should remain snappy as long as storage is around 25% free.

 

[gibster]

She will love the speed of this new laptop. Just make sure not to fill the storage completely with stuff. It should remain snappy as long as storage is around 25% free.

I think so, love these Ryzens... I just checked, I bought that Toshiba in July 2015, so it's pretty much 7.5 years old atp, 2GB Celeron unit. Worked fine all this time except in Costa Rica, where it refused to boot (probably because of humidity?), I figured she suffered enough

 

[igor_kavinski]

2GB Celeron unit.

That's one patient lady!

 

[VirtualLarry]

Worked fine all this time except in Costa Rica, where it refused to boot

They say a prophet processor is never recognized in their home town...

Luke 4:24 - The Rejection at Nazareth

Then He added, Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown.

www.biblehub.com

 

[jiffer]

Can the memory be upgraded, and can the SSD be replaced? Or are they soldered onto the motherboard? Either way seems fine to me, but I'm curious what sort of options there are. If it's not impractical, I'd consider installing Windows 10 since I'm not used to Windows 11.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Can the memory be upgraded, and can the SSD be replaced? Or are they soldered onto the motherboard?

RAM is soldered. M.2 SSD is upgradable but I think it's only a SATA SSD.

For $279, Gateway has a Core i5-1135G7 laptop with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD. If you can afford that, that has better longevity potential due to the extra RAM.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

RAM is soldered. M.2 SSD is upgradable but I think it's only a SATA SSD.

For $279, Gateway has a Core i5-1135G7 laptop with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD. If you can afford that, that has better longevity potential due to the extra RAM.

I checked Youtube, and the i5 with iris Xe seems overall better for gaming than the 3500U stuck in single channel with what looks to be 2400MT/s ram. That's a lot more notebook for $80.

You should make a hot deal thread for it.

 

[jiffer]

I wish I could have "liked" Igor's post twice. Once for the information about upgrade paths, and a second time for the suggestion to get a different laptop. I'm ordering the one for $299.

 

[gibster]

So my order came today, really fast. I was excited to see a door on the back of the laptop, was hoping it's for RAM, but it's for the NVMe expansion, so space can definitely be added (not sure if SSD or PCIe variant can be added, but if only SSD it would be disappointing). So it is stuck at 8GB RAM, but after going into the BIOS, it is 2 x 4GB, so running dual channel, yay, it is not stupidly crippled at least! Also, running at 2400MHz, but the memory apparently supports 2667MHz - alas I do not see any settings for memory speed in the BIOS So far I've only been in the BIOS, have not booted it yet, but it looks like the screen quality is good, flex of the keyboard is acceptable. The fan seems a bit on the loud side just in the BIOS, we'll see how it behaves when booted up. Will report more after I run some memtest86 on it...

memtest86 was successful, 4 passes.
So, after booting up, stoopid Windows 11, I really hate it... Had to google for how to log in with a local account, so that worked, but come on... Can't move the taskbar to the left (it uses less screen real estate there, duh). Screen looks OK, but there is a lot of background light leaking through, especially in the corners. The touchpad seems ok, but it was not recognized in memtest86, so it probably needs drivers to work at all.
In Windows, the fan is somewhat quieter, unless it's doing some compute intensive stuff. I wish there was a way to set the fan profile, unfortunately I don't remember seeing anything in the BIOS for this... After disconnecting the power supply, the fan is almost totally quiet, it may go into a lower power state.
The drive you get is a SATA/600 drive, mine came with 110 power on count, 53 power on hours, 9198GB reads, 10246GB writes, WTF? I only just turned it on and set it up? I'm seriously considering returning because of this - 10TB usage for a new unit is kind of ridiculous.
I benchmarked the drive, getting decent for SATA/600 under 500MB/s reads, only under 260MB/s writes though...
Just discovered that nudging the screen slightly a certain way (not even close to closing the lid) will make it go to sleep, LOL.
Wireless is Realtek 8821CU, meh. Camera average at best. Keyboard keys large, layout a bit weird, no backlighting, feels funky.
After a few minutes of battery usage with light browsing, it shows 6.5+ hours of battery time remaining, not too terrible.

So, for a $200 laptop, I'd say OK, definitely not perfect, but probably as much as you can get for the money...

 

[igor_kavinski]

I benchmarked the drive, getting decent for SATA/600 under 500MB/s reads, only under 260MB/s writes...

Netac SSD?

 

[gibster]

Netac SSD?

Not sure, Crystal Disk Info identifies it as W800S 256.0 GB...

 

[igor_kavinski]

Not sure, Crystal Disk Info identifies it as W800S 256.0 GB...

W800S W800SHMQ 512GB SSD SSD Benchmarks

W800S W800SHMQ 512GB SSD specs and benchmarks

www.notebookcheck.net

Seems it is a Chinese brand.

 

[Oyeve]

Damn, I bought the 4gb memory version of this in July of this year for the same price. I am thinking of getting another one in red and give to my Niece for Christmas. Think this will play Sims 4 acceptably? That's her go game as she is a quadriplegic.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Damn, I bought the 4gb memory version of this in July of this year for the same price. I am thinking of getting another one in red and give to my Niece for Christmas. Think this will play Sims 4 acceptably? That's her go game as she is a quadriplegic.

It will definitely play it fine. The system requirements are low. Old 4 thread CPUs and 1GB cards.

 

[VirtualLarry]

The lettering on the keyboard is just stickers.

If it lasts two years I'll be happy, I guess.

 

[gibster]

Just removed the back cover.

So the W800S drive is a 2280 m.2 removable with B+M notches, likely just a SATA drive, not sure if a PCIE version could go in there and work. Both the filled in and expansion slots are just with the M notch, but it could still be just SATA interface only, I may try to add a PCIE drive to see how it comes up and how fast it can get. I was also looking for the wireless for a possible replacement with an AX210, but could not find it, it may use some different interface or may be inaccessible (after reading up on the Realtek 8821CU, it seems it uses the USB interface, so it's probably soldered on somewhere on the MB). The battery is removable and could potentially be exchanged. So it's not really that bad other than the soldered-on memory.