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October 25, 2015

Lenovo L11M3P01 Battery

At under 1kg, it's perfect as a secondary laptop to take with you on the road when you don't want to take your main desktop with you. Its quad-core Atom processor is hardly quick, but if you moderate your expectations and don't open too many web browser tabs at a time, you shouldn't have many issues. We've tested the laptop with Windows 10 installed and everything works as expected, so there's no reason not to upgrade.

The HP Pavilion x2 has a similar technical specification to the Asus EeeBook shown above. However, its party piece is a docking system that lets you use it as a 10.1in tablet. As a result, it's a bit more expensive than a conventional laptop, but if you're looking for a tablet that you can also get a little work done on, this is a great shout.

It's worth bearing in mind that other specs have been cut in order to keep the price low. Some buyers will be put off by the low resolution 1,200x800 pixel screen, for example. You also only get 32GB of storage, but this can be expanded with a microSD card if you wish.

A common complaint about cheap laptops is that they cut the size to cut the price. The Toshiba C40-C addresses this issue, slotting in a reasonable set of components into a 14in chassis. This has two key benefits: First everything on screen is larger, meaning you won't have to squint at the 1,366x768 pixel panel if you're hard-of-sight. Secondly, the keyboard is larger and includes a proper number pad, giving your fingers more room to type.

Even the chassis looks decent, with a black, brushed metal-style plastic that looks very classy indeed. Superb battery life rounds off an excellent little laptop that's well worth the cash.No doubt youâ€™re thinking â€˜What, Broadwell and DDR3?â€™ and thatâ€™s a fair point and Skylake and DDR4 would doubtless give more performance â€“ but it would come at a higher cost. P55W isnâ€™t exactly cheap at £1150 but neither will it break the bank, and that is of keen interest for gamers on a budget.
This spirit of compromise is a constant theme with the P55W so there is a 128GB M.2 SSD to ensure the laptop boots fast and is responsive and it is backed up with a 1TB hard drive. Clearly it would be more elegant if Gigabyte had used a 256GB or 512GB SSD but that would have raised the price significantly.

It is less obvious why Gigabyte has specified Intel Wireless-N Wi-Fi as that can surely save very little money compared to 802.11/ac, and the retro theme continues with the inclusion of a DVD Supermulti drive. The P55W makes no claim to be a thin and light laptop and instead sits squarely in the middle ground at 2.5kg and a thickness of 34mm at the thickest point.
Gigabyte has used the size of the chassis to good effect by installing two USB 3.0 ports on the left side and two more on the right side. It would be nice to also see a Type C connector but youâ€™re out of luck on this model. Other ports and connectors include headset jacks, Ethernet, VGA and an SD card reader on the front.

We asked Gigabyte about the specification of the HDMI port and were told that P55 v4 has HDMI v1.4 while the forthcoming P55W v5 (Skylake) will have HDMI v2.0. While this is technically better it doesnâ€™t make much difference in the real world as you wonâ€™t be doing much 4K gaming with GTX 970M graphics. It would have been pleasing to see either Thunderbolt or DisplayPort however it is clear that Gigabyte has deliberately shied away from cutting edge technology on the P55W v4, presumably to keep the price lower.
Initial impressions when you turn the laptop on are less than ideal as the screen is covered with a number of icons that give the impression that Gigabyte has loaded the P55W v4 with bloatware, however this is not an accurate picture. Gigabyte LAN Optimizer and Smart USB Backup are par for the course but SmartManager and Smart Update are both excellent.
These two utilities work like a combination of software we have seen from Lenovo and MSI. The first manages short-cuts for screen brightness, speaker volume, Wi-Fi and that sort of thing while the second handles driver and BIOS updates. Both work really well.

As you will see in the video, the hardware works well and the combination of GTX 970M and Broadwell CPU gives you enough grunt to play games at Full HD. The IPS screen is bright and sharp with good colours so games and videos also look good, as well as running at a decent frame rate.

Thermal Dynamics
The cooling system uses heat pipes to remove heat from both the CPU and GPU and then take it to the left side of the laptop where is is exhausted. The DVD drive occupies the right hand side, otherwise Gigabyte might have used a twin cooler approach. The result of using a single cooler on two pieces of performance silicon is that it can get a bit noisy, and it was also notable that the cooler would spin into life as soon as the laptop was placed under any sort of load.

Using the synthetic AIDA64 stress test showed that the CPU idled at 54 degrees and rose to 85 degrees under load. The underside of the chassis was 27 degrees near the exhaust vent when the laptop as idling and rose to 34 degrees under load. The rest of the laptop chassis was cool to the touch.
Acoustic Performance
You can clearly hear the cooler spinning up however it is not especially noisy in general use. When youâ€™re playing a game and the laptop is working under sustained load the smart move is to wear headphones.

Battery life
Battery life is good and delivered two hours 59 minutes of continuous PC Mark 8. Call it six hours in the real world, which is pretty acceptable without breaking any new records.
Closing Thoughts

Pretty much every aspect of the Gigabyte P55W v4 is a success, with the sole exception of the chassis which looks understated and feels a bit plasticky. It works perfectly well but doesnâ€™t inspire the sort of lust and avarice you might hope to feel when you spend £1,150.
One area that caused us to raise a quizzical eyebrow was the Wi-Fi as we pretty much assumed it would be 802.11ac, however it proved to be Intel 802.11n which is undeniably good, but honestly, how little extra would the faster ac cost?
Planning on ditching your old desktop PC and finally getting a laptop? Asus wants to tempt you with the A555LF, which offers the bells and whistles of a PC with the portability of a notebook computer. But can it really deliver an experience where you wonâ€™t miss your desktop?