2GB DDR2
250GB hard drive
None
11.6 inches
Integrated ATI Radeon X1270
3 pounds
1.3x11.3x7.9 inches
Windows Vista Home Basic (32-bit)
On paper, many netbooks are indistinguishable from one another. Most adhere stoically to an unbending regimen of specs: an Atom-based processor, 1GB of RAM, 160GB of storage, a 10.1-inch screen, a three-cell battery, and a price that hovers around $500. But Gateway, with one of its two initial series of netbooks, has created a netbook design that’s anything but ho-hum.
The design is clean and simple, but the case attracts fingerprints.
With a glossy case design punctuated by an engraved chrome Gateway logo, the LT3103u is designed to look like the smaller cousin of Gateway’s 14-inch TC7804u. The LT3103u features an 11.6-inch screen (with a 1,366x768 native resolution), which makes it slightly bigger than most netbooks. The bigger-than-usual screen allows for a full-size keyboard, which we welcome with outstretched fingers and wish we saw more often among netbooks. The Chiclet-style keys are comfortable and good-looking. The tilde key is smaller than normal, and a few traditionally large keys have been reduced in size (namely the right-Shift, Tab, and Backspace keys), but none of these reductions affected our typing ease. Our only keyboard quibbles: The arrow keys are half-size and slightly cramped, and, inexplicably, the volume controls are located on the up/down arrows, while the mute function is located all the way up on the F8. (You access both as “Fn”-key combinations.)
As netbook keyboards go, this is one of our favorites. The touch pad is among the least finicky and best looking we’ve seen.
The touch pad is excellent: responsive, but not oversensitive. Recessed slightly and edged in chrome, it breaks up the matte black that dominates the keyboard deck. The touch pad is only a little bigger than a typical netbook touch pad, but we appreciated the extra room. To the left of the touch pad, two LED lights (indicating battery power and wireless-radio on/off) occupy a slim chrome bar, located in the extreme lower left-hand corner of the deck. Under the wireless-indicator LED, along the front edge, is a small switch that turns the wireless radio on and off.
On the little chrome bar, the left light indicates the power source and the right, Wi-Fi activity. You toggle Wi-Fi on and off via the little switch below, on the front edge.
If you’re always on the go, the 3-pound heft of the LT3103u won’t hold you back, even if the six-cell battery is bulky and tends to run uncomfortably hot. The battery juts straight out from behind the screen hinge. Large batteries can be a welcome feature for those who type a lot, since the battery's bulk often tips up the keyboard to a more comfortable angle. For this reason, the bulky battery doesn't distract too much from the LT3103u’s overall aesthetic. In fact, we wouldn’t have minded if the keyboard slanted even more. Gateway could easily have gone the road of Dell, a company that tends to place similarly large batteries underneath the screen hinge, like in the Dell Latitude 2100.
The right edge houses most of the external connections: VGA-out, a Kensington-lock slot, two USB ports, microphone and headphone jacks, and a memory-card slot.
The speakers on the LT3103u are of a decent quality. We played some Miles Davis and encountered smooth, rich sound. We were able to crank up the volume loud enough that the high trumpet notes were almost piercing. Streaming video on Hulu and YouTube looked great (thanks to the 1,366x768 display), although the maximum possible volume wasn’t as high as it was for music playback. Also, the placement of the speakers on the underside of the unit muffles the audio when the netbook is on a soft surface, such as a couch or your lap. Video playback is smooth, for the most part, although we did note some skipping in full-screen mode. On the other hand, the semi-glossy screen seemed highly resistant to glare from ambient light, which is a huge plus.
This netbook’s core internals showed an undeniable positive effect in our benchmark testing. The LT3103u returned some surprising scores on many of our tests. For example, most netbooks cannot run our PCMark Vantage test, which evaluates overall system performance; the LT3103u scored 1,096 on that test. On our 3DMark06 test, which measures 3D-gaming performance, the LT3103u scored 246 at its native resolution of 1,366x768, and it scored 258 at a resolution of 1,024x768. Both scores are more than double the netbook averages.
The LT3103u scored higher on our Cinebench 10 test (a combined measure of graphics and CPU performance) than any netbook we’ve evaluated yet. Only the Asus Eee PC 1000HE, with a score of 922, came close to matching the Gateway LT3103u’s Cinebench score of 951. It also converted 11 iTunes tracks from MP3 to AAC in 11 minutes and 13 seconds, twice as fast as the netbook average, making the LT3103u the best-to-date netbook scorer in yet another category. This time far outstrips the result we saw from the Asus Eee PC 1101HA Seashell, which we recently named our favorite netbook. Clearly, an AMD processor and ATI Radeon graphics can be a winning netbook combination—in the case of this model, though, at the cost of battery life.
Not all of the test results were netbook record-setters. The result on our Windows Media Encoder test was not nearly as impressive and, in fact, at over 32 minutes, was several minutes over the average time we’ve measured for netbooks. And, as noted, our battery-rundown test (which comprises playing back video over Wi-Fi until the battery expires) showed this netbook's one major shortfall. All else being equal, higher CPU performance usually means shorter battery life, so we were not expecting to be wowed. But we had hoped that with a bulky six-cell battery, the LT3103u would have demonstrated at least average battery life, which for the netbooks we’ve tested is 4 hours and 16 minutes. We clocked the LT3103u at just 2 hours and 41 minutes. This score is particularly disappointing when compared with the netbook leader in battery life, the Asus Eee PC 1101HA Seashell, whose battery endured for 8 hours on the same test. If you plan on traveling with the LT3103u, don’t forget to pack the power charger. That said, our battery test is something of a worst-case usage scenario, drawing constantly on the Wi-Fi radio and playing back audio and video. For more moderate use, such as with general productivity apps and light Web browsing, you should see greater longevity.
While most netbooks sport a Webcam that is 1.3 megapixels, the LT3103u’s is a merely serviceable 0.3 megapixel. The still-photo quality is not very good, but it’s not a huge demerit when you consider the LT3103u’s strong overall performance and low price. More an issue: Gateway does not offer a free upgrade to Windows 7, which is an inconvenience if you were looking forward to migrating to the new Windows later this year. The LT3103u does come with Microsoft Works, Microsoft Money Essentials, and 60-day trials of Microsoft Office and Norton Internet Security; Gateway also supplies a one-year parts-and-labor warranty.
Battery life aside, Gateway has created a mighty netbook with the AMD-based LT3100 line. The company wasted no time in releasing a less-expensive second generation, the Atom-based LT2100, which more closely resembles today's typical netbooks and will undoubtedly test closer to those models. But for today's netbook buyers, we urge you not to ignore the earlier models. The LT3103u is a standout, outperforming most others while costing $100 less than the average. It might not be the best netbook we've seen in every aspect, but it sure comes close.
Price (at time of review): $399 (mfr. est., as tested)
