I bought SHADY Laptops from Amazon...

FUN FACT: i bought a Chromebook for my mother on amazon and two years later when she gave it to me to service, i noticed the back plate was peeling and when i peeled it completely off it said "PROPERTY OF X SCHOOL DISTRICTS". I purchased this "brand new" btw.

It should be illegal for companies to reward you if you leave a good review. Contractors in my area love to “request a 5 star review” which is unbelievably tacky.

Amazon has gotten real rough lately. I just helped my parents pick out new laptops, went to "the acer store" on Amazon and picked out an inspire laptop for them. They both came and wouldnt charge so needed to be sent to Acer. Acer sent them back, with a letter saying that there were mon Acer parts installed and they would not put them back in. After calling Acer to find out how this was possible I learned, they do not sell on Amazon. This is just how Amazon lists sellers that sell Acer products...as " the acer store". Anyway i got one of them working fine and aside from the now obvious fact that it was not original it is a great laptop. The other had to be sent back as it had a ton of issues. Seems to me like someone just salavaged a bunch of doa laptops and mixed and matched parts then sold them on Amazon as brand new. Also Amazon seemed completely unphased at how counterintuitive it is to buy from "the acer store" when nothing is coming from Acer.

Looks like that "Ryzen 7" is a rebranded Ryzen 3 3200u, considering the iGPU is Vega 3, and not Vega 10

It'd be fun if someone stickered over the brand labels of some brand name cheap and no-name cheap laptops and let Austin guess which is which. I bet some of these no-names would do okay.

Gotta give it to whoever schedules these things, seeing follow ups whether positive or negative, is a huge plus.

The gateway Laptop is using a tablet motherboard. However, many of those cheap Laptops are using tablet motherboards pinched from business tablets hence why they came with Windows PRO installed and had modified CPU firmware to make the hole thing function properly if at all. That Ryzen is basically a recycled Intel CPU ....As the saying goes in China "If there's a way to cheat, you cheat".

The gateway laptop has a Walmart inventory sticker on it. These have/were on clearance for $98 for quite a while

Man. I remember my family getting our first computer which was a Gateway back in the Win98 days. It was so exciting opening up that cow box in the kitchen and setting it up. I didn't know they still made computers or even kept up with the cow theme.

I think that kind of review soliciting is illegal here in the UK. From my understanding, the US is waaaaay behind on regulation and consumer protection laws.

Wow that Gateway laptop’s box has an old Walmart backroom case label on it.

As a gateway enjoyer that introduced me to laptop gaming…leave them alone man they’re trying lol I bought the gateway creator laptop that came with a GTX2060 and let me tell you almost 3 years later and I’ve played every new major game without a problem. I’m currently playing MK1 on my laptop and my runs of cyberpunk and BG3 have been awesome.

That bitecool was probably the most surprising as it at least had upgrade options but even at that I still don't think it is worthy of a recommendation. But Despite this it was exactly what I was expecting inside these machines.

Man, i remember Gateway from waayyyyyyy back. They made mediocre Desktops in the windows 98-XP era, but i think they were a very consumer focussed "computers for the family" derivative of like HP or Dell or someone...

Fun fact that gateway appears to be dead stock from Walmart as the black box sticker on the side I recognize that as the backroom inventory sticker we used when worked there a while back

This is the most Austiny Austin to ever Austin. Subscribed.

As with most reviews, if you have to give them before you have used the device they're not worth the paper they're written on.

I think Gateway is now used by Acer for branding budget laptops in Walmart, which would explain the Walmart inventory sticker. If their earlier laptops are an indication they’re ODM laptops so expect some similar designs elsewhere. A year or 2 ago they had a creator laptop with a RTX 2060 and that was a decent device (albeit an ODM design so very similar to other devices)

After a quick search, gateway is just owned by Acer now! So the quality and warranty shouldn’t be bad, I think the 140$ price tag is what made the model a PoS

They didn't scam you in the processor in the first laptop. You needed to install Ryzen Master and restart the device. This sometimes happens to ryzen cpus when booting up for the first time without Ryzen Master.