Gigabyte U2442 - a good laptop with a difficult future

On August 1, the Gigabyte U2442T laptop, a touchscreen model and Windows 8 preinstalled, appeared on the Russian market. In my opinion, the ability to click on large angular icons directly on the display is still a controversial option, so I’ll tell you about almost the same device, but with Windows 7 and without unnecessary sensors - U2442.

The company itself calls this model an ultrabook, but since the term is still owned by Intel, I prefer to use the word laptop in this case. The fact is that it is slightly thicker, heavier and ... maybe even slightly more powerful than those gadgets that are called ultrabooks.
')

Design

The case of the gadget is made of plastic, but the lid is covered on top with a layer of metal painted approximately the same color. And in the upper part of the cover there is also a plastic insert, under which there are antennas of wireless modules (Wi-Fi b / g / n and BT 4.0).



The bottom panel is attached to the chassis with 21 screws and can be easily removed. The screwdriver will have to be twisted, of course, decently, but Gigabyte’s design turned out to be very, very solid. Feelings are almost the same as from all-metal cases.



By removing the bottom panel, the user will have access to the cooling system and the hard drive. If you suddenly want to change the RAM, it will be enough to unscrew one screw out of 21 to open a small hatch giving access to a pair of DDR-3 slats of four gigabytes each.




The ports on the ends of the device are not very many, but quite enough for 99% of users. On the left, there is an Ethernet connector, already obsolete (but still not useless) VGA, a pair of USB, 3.5 mm microphone and headphone jacks, as well as a Kensington lock connector. On the opposite side - the power connector, HDMI, two more USB (but already high-speed 3.0), as well as a card reader.




There is a pair of cooling system nozzles on the back. And it is curious that inside the case, the hot air flows seem to be separated (see photo above), as if in order to heat up the processor and the powerful NVIDIA graphics in varying degrees, they only loaded their own coolers. But for all that, copper heat pipes pass through both heat sources. Well, the coolers start spinning both at once. Noisy turns out.

Display

The screen of the device has a diagonal of 14 inches and a resolution of 1600x600. Matt sheeting that minimizes the amount of glare, but the brightness of the backlight is not always enough. Of course, there are no problems in the room, but if you go out to the balcony, for example, the image fades quite a bit. The horizontal viewing angle is maximum (not 180º, naturally, but close to that), but vertically it turns out to be 110 degrees, and not in all positions it is possible to achieve the correct color rendition.



As for attaching the cover to the case, two small hinges do their job perfectly. The display does not sink under its weight, it does not falter when shaken (for example, in Acer Aspire S3), but it doesn’t open too tight - you don’t have to hold the base with your hand. The only point is that the hook could be a bit more comfortable, and even after a month and a half of working with a laptop, you have to look for him for a couple of seconds.

Keyboard / touchpad

You can quite easily fit a comfortable keyboard into a 14-inch laptop, and Gigabyte has not made a mistake here. An unrealistically wide right Shift (on the left could be bigger, but also normal), large Ctrl keys, full-size Enter and an impressive Backspace. Personally, I don’t need anything else for happiness - typing long texts on this keyboard is quite convenient. The keystroke, I would say, is slightly more than is now customary in laptops, but in general this does not interfere with anything. But about the sound of pressing the engineers, it seems, did not think, because the buttons still rattle a bit, and over time it starts to irritate a bit.



The touchpad is big - that's good. But lately I have become accustomed to the fact that the “mouse buttons” are not highlighted, but inscribed on the touchpad surface. In U2442, under the touch surface, there is a wide plastic strip in the color of the case, which is not always convenient to press on to the touch. Plus, it is pressed quite tightly and at the same time makes not the most pleasant sound.

But pleasantly pleased with the support of gestures. The sensor recognizes a maximum of three touches at the same time, but personally I usually don’t use more than two fingers: zooming, scrolling, going back and forth in the browser - that's basically all you need. And in U2442 it works without brakes.

Sound

The speakers in this model are located directly below the screen. Gigabyte says it has implemented Creative THX TruStudio Pro's super-duper technology. But I personally did not notice anything special. The sound around, crystal clarity, that's all ... Speakers are loud, you can not argue with that, but at the maximum they start to croak a little, but about surround sound and other buns - this is pure marketing.

Performance

The U2442 uses Intel Core i5 Ivy Bridge processors (third generation). In my case, the modification was 3210M and worked at a frequency of 2.5 GHz.



A couple of solutions are immediately responsible for the graphics: Intel HD Graphics 4000 and NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M. When the load is small, naturally, the built-in Intel core works, and in games a discrete card is connected.



RAM - 8 GB DDR-3 - a pair of 4 GB Transcend slats. The volume for the laptop is quite sufficient, there is also enough speed.

But with a hard drive more interesting. By default, the minimum configuration includes a 128 gigabyte SSD, which, of course, is not enough, considering how much the OS currently weighs and the accompanying software, so you can optionally also install a 750 GB hard disk (if desired). Thus, the system will work on a fast solid-state device, and the content can be thrown on the volume screw.

Working hours

Working time is a critical parameter for me. Even at home, sometimes you want to get up and just pull the plug out of the laptop, go to the kitchen, drink some tea under the film and not think about what you need to still pull out the plug from the outlet and carry the power supply with you. In short, I decided to use the standard "home" test - I launched a movie on the laptop (720p, 2273 kbps), turned the brightness of the backlight up to 100% and waited. A couple of hours passed, and the gadget asked for mercy. It didn’t have quite a bit to watch “What is eating Gilbert Grape,” but for most of the movies, the 4300 mAh battery should be enough. Well, if you do not gesture, set the brightness to 60%, and not watch the movie, but sit, say, on the Web, then the battery will stretch more - about 2:40.

Summary

As a result, we have a perfectly assembled 14-inch laptop with a good screen and powerful stuffing, but by today's standards its thickness (21 mm) and weight (1.8 kg) is still a bit more than we would like. I would not call it really portable. And besides, they ask for about 40 thousand rubles. For this money, for example, you can buy a fresh 13-inch MacBook Air. I agree, these are two different laptops for different tasks, but I just want to say that in this price segment there is something to choose from (here it’s not just about Apple). Gigabyte has a good reputation in the field of iron production, but the question is, how many buyers will make a choice in favor of a laptop with such a nameplate? If on the cover of this model a more “laptop” logo, perhaps, the future of the gadget would be more definite.