Every couple of years Acer drops a new computer that re-sets my price point expectations. Acer’s Aspire 5112 WLMi offered dual core and solid GPU for a great price back in 2006. Their TravelMate 2428 WXCi was selling for netbook like prices that same year. Then, in 2008 the Acer owned Gateway launched affordable gaming computers in the FX series. Now, Gateway brings us a $699 that offers the latest CPU, GPU, mobile platform and screen technology.
Whether you like Acer or not, this price pressure will drive down the cost of acquiring a similar machine from your vendor of choice, and that’s a good thing. Thank you Acer!
So what does the NV5909h offer that has me so excited, certainly not a catchy name.
- Intel Core i3 330 CPU
- 4 GB DDR3
- 640 GB 7200rpm HDD
- AMD RADEON Mobility HD 5650 1 GB DDR3
- 15.6″ LED LCD
- 802.11n
- Windows 7 Home Premium x64
- Multitouch touchpad
This is all shipped in a compact box with Gateway’s characteristic holstein cow print. Inside is the notebook, battery, AC adapter power cord and documentation. Having a quick start guide waiting for you when you crack open the box is a great idea – not sure why more PC makers don’t also do this.
Handling the notebook you immediately notice the interesting geometric pattern on the lid. Mine is black, but like many recent Gateways, you can get this in red as well. Construction is entirely plastic, but the materials resist flex nicely. At 25.9×3.7×37.2 cm and 2.65 kg it is quite compact and easy to carry around – I would have no complaints taking this unit on business trips.
My flash really brings the colours out, in reality it is much more subtle.
DVD Burner, 2x USB 2.0 and... a 56k Modem Port ?!?
Lock, Power, Ethernet, HDMI, 2x USB 2.0, Audio In/Out, Memory Card Reader
The rear of the notebook is kept free of ports.
Keyboard flex is almost non-existant. Having used some absolutely terrible Acer keyboards in the past, this was a huge relief. Keys are flat-topped and sized to accommodate a numeric keypad (always welcome on a chassis this size) Canadians must suffer through a multi lingual layout, I seem to be part of a dwindling minority on that hates this type of keyboard layout. There is no key illumination either, which is a shock when coming from an Apple or Alienware computer.
Flex-Free Keyboard, Numeric Keypad and Terrific Touchpad
PC makers are catching up to Apple and now offer multitouch touchpads in a 16:9 ratio, the NV5909h is no exception and it’s Alps touchpad worked great out of the box. I do miss two finger tapping tough – a feature that did not make the trip over from Apple’s design. A pity – if you are going to copy something you might as well go all the way and get it right. I was quite surprised by how well the touchpad worked for gaming – I actually completed a Mass Effect 2 mission using this input and for the first time I would consider it a viable control method.
First boot takes about 20 minutes as Gateway tries to fill your virginal 640 GB HDD with all the crap it could find. All the usual software miscreants are here; Norton, Wild Tangent, Office Trials. Nothing in the bundled software adds anything to Windows 7 that Microsoft doesn’t do better. Remove the junk, install Microsoft Security Essentials and prepare to enjoy your new computer.
While uninstalling this garbage you will have ample time to admire the low resolution LCD screen. I find that Windows 7 likes its desktop real estate so a higher resolution screen would be better. At 1366*768 the powerful GPU will have no problem filling the screen with fancy pixels, but you might miss a higher resolution screen when surfing or trying to get work done. If you have poor eyesight consider this a plus. LCD’s are not cheap, so in order to keep the cost of this machine down compromises need to be made.
On the website where I ordered my NV5909h the specs incorrectly listed a 1600*900 resolution screen.
Looking under the hood, NV5909h includes Intel’s newest mobile CPU and platform. This is good stuff. The i3-330m CPU has two actual cores, each of which supports hyper-threading. So properly written software sees four cores or threads. Will you see a doubling of performance? No, but you will get anywhere from 15-30% more performance clock for clock. These chips are also created with a smaller manufacturing process so they use less power and generate less heat. Faster, more energy efficient and cooler running for the same price as last year’s entry level Core 2 Duo? Yes please!
This CPU also has a built in integrated graphics (IGP) core although strangely it is disabled by Gateway. Its performance falls way short of the powerful RADEON in the NV5909h, so you might be wondering why you would want it enabled. The answer is switchable graphics which would allow you save save even more energy by turning off the RADEON when not performing intensive graphics tasks. Using the weaker and more power efficient Intel IGP will allow your battery to power the laptop longer. It is possible that Gateway could enable this feature via BIOS upgrade.
That brings me to memory. The Gateway does in fact have 4 GB of ram (two sodimms) but a chunk of this system memory is reserved for the Intel IGP – even though it is disabled. So you will only see 3.86 GB. I don’t see this being a limiting factor and there is a good chance that Gateway will correct it with a BIOS update. They rushed this notebook to market, but these two little items (disabled IGP and incorrect memory settings) are the only issues I discovered.
Now we get to the best feature of this notebook in my opinion; the inclusion of AMD’s newest DX11 mid-line mobile GPU. This is a significant upgrade when compared to the Nvidia 8600m GT and 9600m GT GPUs popular in $1,000-1,500 notebooks these past few years. It’s 550 MHz Core offers 400 pixel shader units and 1 GB of 128 bit 800 MHz DDR3 ram. That is plenty of power to play todays games at 1366*768 using medium or high settings and a 3DMark06 score of 7221 backs this up.
This GPU is too new for GPU-Z database. But we can verify the memory bandwidth.
Game Tests
Amazing! The latest PC games run very well on this notebook with very few compromises. It might be a good idea to bump settings down and run games with 2x anti-aliasing because a large low resolution screen like this is going to really accentuate jagged lines.
1366*768 Max In Game Settings, No AA, 8x AF
1366*768 Max In Game Settings
1366*768 In Game Settings HIGH, No AA
While gaming, fan noise is barely audible. And as you would expect, no fan noise is a result of low heat build up. After an eight hour Mass Effect 2 marathon the hottest temp on a usable surface was 42 degrees Celsius mid keyboard. On the bottom of the case the peak temp was 49 Degrees Celsius at the vent. This says a lot about the strides Intel and AMD made this year in developing smaller and cooler manufacturing processes – a few years ago this amount of power would have heated your home in winter.
Battery life is about as good as can reasonably be expected from 6-cell 4400mAH unit. To keep the price low, a 5600mAH unit was saved for the more expensive models. Surfing using Windows 7 Balanced power profile, battery life was about 2 hours 36 minutes. Power Saver mode netted an extra 25 minutes of battery life, but I found the screen to dimly lit.
A Western Digital WD6400BEVT 640 GB HDD is capacious and excellent value at this price. Even though the platters only spin at 5400rpm, performance was quite good. Startup time being ……. and HDTune delivering a respectable average transfer rate of 63.2 MB/second.
Broadcom 802.11n is included. Bluetooth is absent. Wireless performance is really good and I appreciate Gateway letting Windows handle the connection tasks and not forcing me to use a funky Broadcom wireless utility.
Audio output is great using headphones and poor using the built in speakers. Volume is low and sound is tinny.
Warranty is one year, and like just about every other manufacturer except Apple, god help you if you run into problems. I base this on my own experiences, so your mileage may vary.
Conclusion
An inexpensive notebook with decent looks, the latest technology, low noise, low heat and acceptable battery life. What’s not to like? Sure, the screen could be better but that would bump the cost up. Also, not everyone needs high resolution – after a few hours my eyes really adjusted to the large easily legible test on the NV5909h’s screen.
Disappointing as the LCD screen quality may be, all this performance is amazing for a computer at this price. Cost conscious gamers (students) will adore this computer for its mix of performance and value. Yes, this computer beats the 2009 15″ 2.8 GHz MacBook Pro in gaming centric speed tests and operates cooler. This Gateway costs one third of the MacBook Pro’s price.
Let that sink in for a minute.
Many people can live with plastic construction and a lower quality screen for that kind of cost savings. And while I still prefer OS X, many people do not care for it and would never make the switch. Those folks can buy a computer like teh NV5909h and laugh at people like me who talk themsleves into buying Apples and Alienware. More money than sense? Maybe.
If you have $700 budgeted for a 15″ entertainment notebook I can’t think of a better choice than this notebook. This is doubly true if you like playing games. Mass Effect 2 runs better on this notebook than it ever will on an Xbox 360.
M17x: "Roar! I find your combination of performance and value intimidating. Therefore I will eat you!"
Speaking of gaming, what is happening to Gateway’s excellent FX gaming lineup? It has not been updated in a while. What I would really like to see is Gateway taking this great chassis and developing an FX series 15″ notebook from it. Maybe a faster i5, RADEON 5770, a decent screen resolution and some lighting (including back-lit keys).
Pros:
- Price
- New Intel CPU
- New AMD GPU
- Keyboard and touchpad
- Low heat and fan noise
Cons:
- Screen resolution might turn some people off
- Typical low quality notebook speakers
Verdict: Buy
Great review. Thanks!
No problem – if you managed to grab one this week when they were on sale, congrats! Its another great notebook from Gateway.
Nice and detailed review indeed, but it does not reveal that 1GB of system Ram is dedicated to the Radeon graphics (which does not have its own RAM) leaving the CPU to run on 3GB only. If you add to that the fact that you can’t install any additional RAM (only two slots, both populated already) it seems kind of limited here and not taking good advantage of a 64 bit OS.
This explains the low price for an ATI 5650 graphics as the video RAM is usually very expensive.
Anyone any comments? The review indicate good graphics performance though!
I no longer have the unit to verify. But I am pretty sure my explanation above is correct. Mine had 3.86 GB of system RAM.
The confusion over the issue you describe has more to do with Gateway’s decision to disable the GMA on the i3-330 (and switchable graphics).
The performance was simply too good for shared memory (and the latency that introduces).
Very detailed and useful review. Good job!
[...] Gateway NV5909h (15″, Intel Core i3 330M, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650): Notebook Critic [...]
[...] Gateway NV5909h (15″, Intel Core i3 330M, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650): Notebook Critic [...]
[...] Gateway NV5909h (15″, Intel Core i3 330M, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650): Notebook Critic [...]
great review i picked this baby up for 625
That’s a hot deal for sure! Do yourself a favor and get Mass Effect 2.
[...] Review: Gateway NV5909h « Notebook Critic [...]
I got this laptop as well. Though there’s nothing to complain about the specs/price but it produces a high pitch sound around ESC key. I analyze the noise and it’s safe to say it’s not from the fan or hard drive. It’s either CPU, graphic card or some bad capacitors on the board.
Any one has the same problem…. Try to listen closely to the area around lower left corner of the screen where ESC key is.
I am thinking to exchange a different unit to see if the problem is there.
Thanks for the feedback – I would definitely exchange or return that unit.
Acer has terrible customer support so do not count on them to make you happy.
the squeel u hear is feedback from the mike.so just put any 3.5 device in the pink mic hole and it will disable the internal mic and presto no more squeel
Ya i have the same laptop and mine produce the same high pitch sound i learn to ignore it but it cant be ignored when using the internet i.e the sound becomes louder when using the internet
I FIXED THE PROBLEM!
[...] First Mobility Radeon 5650 Review on the Web 19 12 2009 [update] Our review can be found here. [...]
the squeel u hear is feedback from the mike.so just put any 3.5 device in the pink mic hole and it will disable the internal mic and presto no more squeel
.
There is a way better way. And it’s permanent; it’s just a small software tweak
I can’t seem to get my wireless N working properly . Only connect to 54MBits/s when Broadcom 802.11n is in the spec
Try this forum for help:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/forumdisplay.php?f=5
Lots of fellow Gateway owners there.
Thanks for very informative review… I got mine 1 mo. ago and love it! I too was at first troubled by low-res screen but really starting to like it as it somehow seems easier on my eyes than my hi-res PC monitor. Plus this baby is frackin awesome when connected to my 50″ Plasma.
Curiuous, Packard Bell uses in Europe the same cases than Gateway in USA… in the meantime, Gateway are HP Probook/IBM Thinkpad style computers here in Europe.
Great review!!
Does anyone know if this laptop supports Stereoscopic 3D? I know the GPU supports it, but does the monitor?
Besides that, I am picking one of these up for myself once my room is finished being renovated. Which will probably be in may.
I am pretty sure the panel lacks the refresh rate to support 3D. You’ll need to use an external screen.
WOW!
of all the reviews online, this has been the most thorough and informative, and, i have another caption for the bottom picture
(M17x: “Roar! I find your combination of performance and value intimidating. Therefore I will eat you!”
Gateway NV5909H: Arghhhh, Curse your sudden, but inevitable betrayal!)
Heyyo,
Definitely a great review. I agree in every part (minus the buying of Mac.. I had a 2008 17″ Macbook Pro, nice laptop.. but price to performance is what I buy into). This laptop is phenomenal. I work at Futureshop, and I ended up buying one cause it’s great for lan parties at my bud’s house when I’m feeling lazy and not wanting to drag my tower and monitor across town.
Sad news from my store.. we sold so damn many of these laptops? we can’t get anymore in stock.. haha.. they were considered “gone when gone.”
I talked a few of my pals into buying them and none of them regret the purchase. Count on Acer/Gateway to redefine value each year. This pattern stretches back at least 5 years now.
Heyyo,
Yeah true. I’ve always liked Gateway, they got some pretty nice high end stuff like their FX lineups. Acer is pretty good too but I just find it silly that we can ship Gateway laptops to an Acer depot for customers.. but Acer won’t let us send Acer laptops to an Acer depot for customers, they make customers call Acer for ship outs… which is confusing, rofl.
The only downside to this laptop? for fun I’m trying to get OSX86 going on it, and Kalyway installs 10.5.2 without issue (but of course doesn’t have the right kext’s for lan or wlan.. doh!), but as soon as I try and do an upgrade, even ideneb’s 10.5.8 combo update.. it’ll finish, but then on reboot it goes into kernel panic without any kind of error message. My guess thus far is probably something with ACPI… hmm, so much to try and figure out… another big pain is there’s no good kext for an ATi HD5650 Mobility… latest is Radeon HD4530 Mobility. So odds are no Steam for Mac and TF2. I’ll have to settle and do that the easy way with Windows 7, lol.
Heyyo,
Turns out tonymacx86.blogspot.com’s new “iBoot support” works miracles setting up Snow Leopard on pretty much any Core i series cpu. Worked like a charm on this lappy and I got instant support for airport wireless, webcam and sound! Touchpad ain’t working yet but probably fixable with voodoo’s PS/2 fix.. once again no ethernet driver right now though, lol, but a good step in the right direction!
does anybody know how well WoW would function on this model?
WoW will run very well at stock settings. With overclocking people are squeezing another 20-30% from these. Very safe bet for anything Blizzard makes.