Although we're really only looking at the $500 Ice Lake version today, we'll include the specs for the $350 Ryzen-powered alternative as a refresher, since we expect a lot of people may hesitate between the two. Ultimately, both machines are at least reasonable purchases—but we think the cheaper GWTN141-2 is more compelling, despite being a wimpier machine overall.
At $350, there aren't many laptop options available, and the GWTN141-2—despite its warts—comes out thoroughly on top. But at the GWTN156-1BL's $500, the market opens up considerably. Major manufacturers such as Lenovo, ASUS, and Acer all offer pretty reasonable designs for $550 or less. The refurbished market, on the other hand, still isn't very competitive—the best deals at under $600 tend to feature sixth-generation i5 CPUs, which look paltry next to the Gateway's low-end Ice Lake.
At this price point, we're also getting closer to some compelling mainstream systems—such as Acer's Aspire 5, which is better constructed and available with a considerably more powerful Ryzen 5 4500U for $610.
| Specs at a glance: as reviewed | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Gateway GWTN156-1BL | Gateway GWTN141-2 | ||
| OS | Windows 10 Home | Windows 10 Home (S mode) | |
| Screen | 15.6-inch IPS FHD (1920×1080, 210 nits) | 14.1-inch IPS FHD (1920×1080, 190 nits) | |
| CPU | Intel Core i5-1035G1 | AMD Ryzen 3 3200U | |
| GPU | Intel UHD for 10th-generation CPUs | AMD Vega 3 | |
| RAM | 16GiB DDR4 (soldered, non expandable) | 4GiB DDR4 (soldered, with one empty DIMM slot) | |
| HDD | 256GB M.2 (Foresee S345G256G) |
128GB M.2 (Netac S539N) |
|
| Networking | Intel 9461 1x1 Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5.1 |
Realtek 8821CE 1x1 Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 4.2 |
|
| Ports |
|
|
|
| Size | 14.8×9.6×0.8 inches (376×244×20mm) |
13.1×8.9×0.8 inches (333×226×21mm) |
|
| Weight | 4.3 pounds (2.0kg) | 3.5 pounds (1.6kg) | |
| Warranty | 1 year limited | 1 year limited | |
| Extras | Fingerprint reader (in touchpad), 720P camera |
Fingerprint reader (in touchpad), 720P camera |
|
| Price as tested | $500 at Walmart | $350 at Walmart | |
Overview
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Left side: Kensington lock slot, DC barrel jack, USB 3.0 type A, full-size HDMI, USB type C (charging + data).Jim Salter
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Right side: USB 3.0 type-A, 3.5mm audio combo jack, microSD card slot.Jim Salter
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The 15.6-inch Gateway keyboard looks pretty jammed-together and undifferentiated, but it's pleasantly clicky and tactile.Jim Salter
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In most light, the Gateway's relatively cheap plastic chassis looks OK. But sometimes an odd, subtle rainbowing effect is visible.Jim Salter
This Ice Lake-powered Gateway laptop is, first and foremost, a 15.6-inch upscale of its less-expensive, 14-inch Ryzen 3200U-powered cousin. It shares the same brightly colored but unusually soft plastic chassis, the same touchpad with integrated fingerprint reader, and the same port layout. The keyboard seems to be an exact repeat of the smaller laptop's as well—but in this case, with a 10-key keypad grafted onto the side.
However, the newer device is significantly heavier, at 4.3 pounds—which isn't entirely crazy for a 15.6-inch laptop, but it's heavy enough you might want to think twice before buying it for an aging parent or someone with weak or injured wrists. The extra weight also makes the flex of the plastic chassis more apparent than it was in the smaller, lighter version.
Although the keyboard looks like a jumbled mess, we found it pleasant to type with—there aren't any particularly weird key placement issues, the arrow keys are full size, and there's nothing strange going on with the Enter/Backslash keys. It was also noticeably, satisfyingly "clicky" and tactile—not necessarily the best choice for stealthy Internetting while a partner sleeps but rewarding in its lack of keypress mushiness.
The overall appearance of the Gateway is a mixed bag—the branding is applied well and attractive, and in most light, the satin-finish plastic chassis looks reasonably nice. But we found that, under some angles and some light, a subtle and slightly off-putting rainbow effect was present in the finish.
The smaller Gateway's USB type-C port was for data only, not charging. This version does support USB charging—but it may not be a great option. Our operating system consistently estimated twice as much time until full charge when using an HP Elite Dragonfly's USB type-C charger as it did with the included DC barrel jack.
Performance
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Passmark tells the same tale that Cinebench did: essentially, spend an extra $150 to double your CPU performance.
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We're graphing CPU performance here, but we might almost be graphing price: $650, $500, and $350 respectively.Jim Salter
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As always, Geekbench 5 tends to flatten the differences between CPUs in multithreaded tests.Jim Salter
The executive overview on low- to mid-end laptop performance: spend an extra $150, double your multithreaded CPU performance. That shouldn't be taken as covering every possible laptop, of course, but it covers the relationship between the $350 Ryzen 3200U Gateway, the $500 i5-1035G1 Gateway, and the $650 Ryzen 4700U Acer surprisingly well.
With that said, we found this $500 Gateway to be in the weakest position of the three: there aren't many equivalent choices at either the $350 or $650 price brackets, but there's no shortage of competition—with the exact same processor model, the i5-1035G1—in this $500 bracket. The Gateway's strengths in this bracket are its low price and 16GiB of RAM—its more mainstream competitors generally only offer 8GiB and cost $25 to $50 more.
We'll cover the Gateway's weaknesses—which are significant—in following sections.
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There's considerable single-threaded performance to be gained in upgrading from the $350 Gateway to its $500 counterpart.Jim Salter
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Passmark shows almost no single-threaded delta between the $500 Gateway and the $650 Acer Swift 3.Jim Salter
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Geekbench tends to be a significant outlier in CPU benchmarks, as seen here: the i5-1035G1 in the Gateway actually appears to lead the Ryzen 4700U in the Acer.Jim Salter
Single-threaded performance tells largely the same story that multithreaded did, although the difference between our budget-friendly laptops shrinks noticeably. Here we see the biggest gains to be made by upgrading from the $350 Gateway to the $500 one, with much smaller gains to be made going from the Ice Lake-powered Gateway to the Ryzen 7-powered Acer.
Geekbench 5 actually shows the bottom-tier Ice Lake i5 in the Gateway leading the Ryzen 7 4700U somewhat. We don't advise taking that seriously; those results are very Geekbench-specific and do not hold up in any other tests we perform, including the CPU-centric portions of 3DMark's gaming tests.
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The Foresee SSD in these Gateway laptops does not impress.Jim Salter
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3DMark Time Spy tells the same story about gaming that Cinebench and Passmark did about raw CPU performance: spend $150 more, roughly double your performance.Jim Salter
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Night Raid is one of 3DMark's gaming-oriented benchmarks targeted to less-capable systems—it tells the same story Time Spy did but with larger numbers.Jim Salter
Remember when we promised to tell you the weaknesses that offset the Gateway's strength in its $500 price bracket? Storage performance is the biggest one. The Samsung P991 in the Acer Swift 3 is, at best, a middle-tier NVMe SSD—but it absolutely dominates the Foresee M.2 SSDs in the two Gateway models, with 200-percent to 400-percent margins in nearly every storage-performance category.
Although the $500 Gateway's slightly more expensive mainstream competitors tend to have half its RAM, they also tend to double its storage performance, with leads similar to—in some cases, perhaps even larger than—the one enjoyed by the $650 Acer Swift 3 here.
Moving on from storage to gaming, we see significant differences between each laptop. Moving from a $350 Gateway to a $500 Gateway gets you about a 50-percent 3DMark performance bump—but the $650 Acer solidly doubles the $500 Gateway's 3DMark performance.
We want to be clear that none of these should be considered "gaming" laptops. With that said, you get a lot more gaming mileage out of the Acer's current-generation Ryzen CPU. If games are an important part of your laptop purchase, the extra money for the meaner, more modern machine is very much worth it.
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