Mobile Buyers' Guide, December 2009
by Jarred Walton on December 6, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Entry Level Laptops - $400 to $850
The next step up the pricing ladder opens up some additional possibilities, along with upgraded versions of the sub-$400 options. Some of the upgrades are more useful than others - more RAM or a larger hard drive is something you can add at any time to just about any laptop. A faster GPU, on the other hand, is something you either have for the life of a laptop or you don't. To date, no one has successfully implemented a laptop where you can upgrade the graphics as newer GPUs become available. Besides, even at $800 you shouldn't expect to get a good gaming laptop; you'll need to move to the next category for that.
Intel CULV Revisited
For us, by far the most interesting laptops in this price bracket are the many CULV offerings. With the additional pricing headroom, we are able to add quite a few options beyond the basic Celeron SU2300. Pentium SU4100 doubles the L2 cache to 2MB shared, with a 1.3GHz clock speed. The Core 2 SU7300 and SU9000 chips move to 3MB of shared cache; the SU7300 is clocked at 1.3GHz while the SU9300 is 1.2GHz, the SU9400 is 1.4GHz, and the SU9600 is 1.6GHz. These CPUs are faster than the SU2300, yes, but they do increase the cost of laptops quite a bit. Since the CPUs aren't upgradeable, however, getting a faster CPU may be a worthwhile investment.
Along with upgraded CPUs, CULV laptops are available in sizes ranging from 11.6" up to 15.6", with 13.3" and 14.0" models in between. Most of these laptops offer the same 1366x768 resolution, so it's a matter of getting a larger keyboard and pixels. The 14" and larger options also include optical drives on most models.
Storage and memory options also receive upgrades, with 3GB and 4GB RAM configurations and hard drive sizes ranging from 250GB to 500GB. Unless price considerations prevent it, we recommend 4GB models so you won't have to worry about memory upgrades. We also recommend trying to get a DDR3-based laptop rather than DDR2, since DDR3 uses less power (voltage) and thus improves battery life (all other areas being equal). Hard drives are all basically the same, unless you move to SSDs. If you want an SSD in place of a conventional HDD, consider adding the drive on your own after purchase - most vendors continue to charge a premium for factory installed SSDs, and if you're not careful you could get one of the less desirable SSDs where performance substantially degrades over time.
What CULV laptops do we like? We've got Acer Timeline 1810 and Gateway EC5409u reviews in the works (aluminum cover = yummy!), and both the Acer Timeline and Gateway EC lines are good options (provided you stick with dual-core models). We also have the Dell Inspiron 11z undergoing testing. The systems we've tested all meet the advertised battery life figures (6+ hours), albeit mostly in less demanding tests.
There's also the Lenovo U Series, which appears slightly more expensive but we know a lot of people who like the Lenovo aesthetic. You can pretty much choose any of these laptops based on features and price and you'll get a good long-battery-life laptop.
Our Favorite CULV Laptop
Another laptop we're reviewing is the ASUS UL80Vt. It improves upon the competition in a number of ways. First, ASUS allows CPU overclocking, taking the SU7300 from 1.30GHz up to 1.73GHz - a 33% overclock. This will reduce battery life by about 10% at most; it's 5% or less in more demanding tests, which is a fair trade.
The second big feature is that ASUS includes integrated GMA 4500MHD graphics as well as GeForce G210M discrete graphics, with the ability to switch between the two options on the fly (it takes about three seconds to turn off the discrete GPU and 15 seconds to turn it back on). The G210M isn't a high-performance gaming solution, but when combined with the overclocked SU7300 it will handle nearly any current title, albeit at lower detail settings.
Perhaps the biggest selling point of the UL80Vt is its stellar battery life, helped by an 83Wh battery. Running at stock CPU speed and using the integrated graphics, we have achieved idle battery life of up to 14 hours and Internet battery life of around 8.5 hours. Nothing else we've seen can come close to the flexibility and battery life.
The UL80Vt cost is quite a bit higher than competing solutions, and the laptop isn't "perfect". At just over $800, we feel that the poor contrast ratio (like most other laptops) could have easily been improved. The chassis build quality is also somewhat questionable, showing more flex and torque than we'd like, but it's not bad by any means. All of the other features make the UL80Vt a great laptop. Our full review is still in the works, but the UL80Vt has earned an Editors' Choice award and is currently our favorite laptop in the ~$800 price range.
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zicozz - Friday, December 11, 2009 - link
I'm looking for a smaller laptop and I'm currently aiming at either the Asus UV30 or the Asus F83. Can't seem to find any reviews of the F83, but the UV30 seems to be the king in this hill in it's class.zicozz - Friday, December 11, 2009 - link
Sorry UL30 not UV30JarredWalton - Friday, December 11, 2009 - link
The major difference between the UL80Vt and the UL30Vt is the screen size (13.3" for the UL30Vt) and the lack of an optical drive. It also weighs about 1 pound less. If you want something a bit smaller, go for it, but make sure you get the UL30Vt; there's an older UL30 that doesn't support Turbo33 and comes with a smaller battery I believe.jtsarnak - Tuesday, December 8, 2009 - link
I cannot recommend any Sony laptops, even the SR mentioned in this article for its good screen. I am the owner of a Z series and this laptop would have been near perfect except for one problem that is plauging most of Sony's line: Battery Drain.See here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=4...">http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=4...
And here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=2...">http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=2...
These are just two examples, there are a ton of threads out there discussing the problem. Sony's line has the unfortunate "feature" of draining the battery while the laptop is completely shut down. I say "feature" because numerous consumer attempts to get Sony to rectify the issue have been met with a canned response that this is typical for their laptops.
I have also emailed various websites and publications in an effort to get someone with a little more visibility and press to address the issue with Sony but to no avail. Sony continues to get good reviews on their machines but I'm doubting the reviewers ever bother to look for the drain during the review process.
Maybe Anandtech will take up the call. Sony is delivering a defective product (a mobile device that loses battery when it is shut off is, imho, defective) and claiming it as a "feature". Anandtech did a great job getting to the bottom of the SSD debacle with the JMicron drives, perhaps they can help us Sony owners as well. In the meantime, avoid these laptops if you don't plan on having it forever plugged in when you're not using it.
aznchum - Tuesday, December 8, 2009 - link
I'm an avid fan of IPS panels, and the only notebooks that I know carried them were the Flexview Panels on the IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads. If LCD quality is of a huge concern to you, you probably are better off picking up a Thinkpad x200 (non s) and retrofitting a BOE-Hydis HV121WX4-100 panel (12.1" 1280x800) in it. However, most of these panels floating around the market have a digitizer attached, since they're sourced from tablet PCs. So the mod is kind of a pain in the ass. I personally have modded a T60p with a QXGA screen and found it to be a relatively easy mod with the hardware maintenance manual. The 4:3 15" chassis of the T60/61 and R60/61 are probably the fastest notebooks you can buy that come with Flexview panels. If you're not snobby about LCDs, then go with the recommendations in this guide.CheesePoofs - Monday, December 7, 2009 - link
Thanks for the article, I've been looking forward to something like this!The UL30VT seems pretty interesting to me - same specs as the UL80VT but smaller package making the low-res screen a bit more bearable (I hope).
Also is there any word on when Arrandale laptops will come out? I've heard Jan 7th for Arrandale chips, but I have no sense of what the delay is between chip release and laptop availability.
btmedic04 - Monday, December 7, 2009 - link
I recently purchased a Sony Vaio VPPCW17FX at Best Buy for $799 (before tax) and I am absolutely thrilled with it (especially since i was coming from an ancient HP ZV6000 series with a desktop Athlon 64 3200 that weighed 7 lbs and looks like hell. served its purpose though, but i sure was surprised to see it survive a deployment to Iraq lol)Specs are as follows:
Intel Core2Duo T6600 2.2ghz 2MB L2 800mhz FSB
4GB DDR3 1066 (for some reason at DDR3 800mhz with no option to set 1066 in bios >.< )
500GB Hard Drive
Nvidia G210M with 256mb GDDR3 ram
Blue-Ray player
14" Monitor @ 1366x768
5.5 lbs
Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
Not bad at all for the price I paid for it. It gets almost 3 hours of battery life with the Balance power plan in Windows 7. I also love the chic let style keyboard and theres no discernible flex in the chassis (as you can understand, im not about to try to fold my notebook in half long-ways LOL) It has 3 USB ports, a firewire 400 port, VGA port and HDMI. I havent tried any gaming on it yet, however I suspect with the lower resolution monitor, I should be able to play modern games with lower settings and older games with higher settings (much better than the integrated ATI Xpress 200m in my old laptop) I have hooked this laptop up to my 32" LCD TV and watched blue-ray movies at 720p with out any issues. Also, Sony released updated drivers for the G210M the day Nvidia did (I dont want to risk the nvidia release drivers as my friend totally destroyed all gaming capabilities on his laptop equiped with a Go7900GS. needless to say Toshiba sucks when it comes to driver updates) All in all, the VPCCW17FX is a great notebook at a great price
Roland00 - Monday, December 7, 2009 - link
No intel Celeron t3000 dual core love?It is the same chip as the intel pentium dual core t4200 except it runs at 1.8 ghz instead of 2.0 ghz and intel speedstep has been disabled (thus it won't get good battery life). Yet I seen this chip routinely in the 320 to 450 price range for laptops and it should blow away the competition in that price range.
http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=40738">http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=40738
JarredWalton - Monday, December 7, 2009 - link
Is it really that much cheaper than the Pentium T4200/T4300 laptops? I see prices of $430 (Toshiba Satellite L455-S5980) to $500+ (Lenovo ThinkPad SL410/SL510), and that's not even with a well-equipped laptop (i.e. 2GB of RAM, 160GB HDD). The Lenovo G550 is 3GB, 250GB HDD, and T4300 for http://www.provantage.com/lenovo-2958acu~7LENO1EE....">$495 or so. It's obviously not a huge jump from 1.8GHz 1MB to 2.1GHz 1MB, but SpeeStep is a pretty big omission IMO.Roland00 - Monday, December 7, 2009 - link
The pentium t4200/t4300 will be about 50 dollars more on average. For example without any sale go to the Toshiba website and you can get a T3000, 2gb memory, 160 gb hd and wifi n For $400, it costs 44 more for the pentium dual core.Now the whole point of the t3000 though is not to buy the laptop at the normal price, the same or similar laptop will go on sale. For example fry's has had a similar laptop to the toshiba but an msi 14 inch on sale a couple times for $319 (once) and $349 (twice). The msi also didn't use intel integrated graphics but instead the 8200m (half the speed of the ion but still 30 to 40% faster than the 4500m hd)
$319 is only 20 dollars more than those mythical $299 acers/hps that walmart was selling that was using the amd single core at 1.6 ghz (tf-20)