Gateway P-7811FX Review – an affordable gaming laptop

Wednesday, December 3, 2008, 5:02
Laptops
176 views
View Comments

The P-7811FX is a successor to Gateways gaming laptop, the P-172XFX. AT the heart of the machine lies the 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo P8400 CPU and 4GB of RAM which is an improvement over its predecessor which sports a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo T83000. But the more noticeable change is the increase in the battery life which is around 200 minutes.

As it’s review, the 17-inch display of P-7811FX is on the dimmer side. It offers a resolution of 1920×1200. But the biggest problem is the glossy coating as you can see your reflection if you are sitting close to a window. The laptop shares its looks with its successor with similar styling and copper trim but it offers you more sprout like eSATA, three USB 2.0 ports, HDMI port, flash card reader, FireWire, and a PC Express card slot, DVD-RW drive.

The similarity between the two models is also visible in the keyboard and mouse. The keys feel a bit slick but provide solid feedback. To appeal the gaming crowd, the keys are provided with more “gamey” font with touch sensitive button on the top of the keyboard. But the position of the mouse is a little bit odd as it is towards the left side of the wrist rest. The mouse lies below the W, A, S and D keys which makes it difficult while playing the game as these keys are standard command keys for most games. Another disappointing thing is the sound quality as the audio sounds tinny through the two built-in top mounted speakers which was the same problem with the P-172XFX. So, you’ll definitely need a pair of good quality headphones.

The machine also sports basic Microsoft Works suite with a couple of Cyberlink application like disc-burning and label making programs. In addition to that a recovery application allows you to create a restore disc and driver/application backup disc. As business notebooks have special application like security features to lock and encrypt the data and extra productivity applications, there could have been some game optimization features especially when you are selling something with gaming notebook label. It would have been better if users could have turn off some features that slow down the system while playing games. Yet the Gateway P-7811 offers you a good gaming experience with low cost, if you are on tight budget.