A no-frills workaholic
The Gigabyte G3 laptop has been built for one purpose, and one purpose only. This is a no-frills, fancy-free productivity machine, designed to handle your usual work or school duties. As such it's not a very exciting product, but that doesn't stop it from being deserving of your attention.
The 13.3 inch screen dictates the laptop's overall dimensions, measuring 340 x 239 x 20.9mm. It's surprisingly heavy for such a small laptop, tipping the scales at '.8kg, suggesting that Gigabyte hasn’t focused on weight-saving materials, instead using cheaper, heavier products to keep the build cost down. The chassis is built entirely from plastic, but it's reassuringly sturdy and not prone to scratching. However, the use of plastic throughout could explain why the keyboard has a surprising amount of flex, one of the very few flaws present n the entire package. Users will obviously get used to it, but there's something about bouncing keys that lends the device an overall cheap feel. Thankfully the touchpad couldn't be more different it's an absolute ripper, with extremely accurate tracking and buttons that click just right.
The screen's resolution of 1920 x 1080 is perfect for a display of this size, and it uses a quality IPS panel to deliver extra wide viewing angles. Contrast and brightness are excellent, but the colour reproduction comes across as a little dull. The use of a matte finish ensures it's still readable even in harsh sunlight. The twin hinges use a very simple design that is rice and sturdy, though the screen's lack of any touch capability means it doesn't need to stand up to the rigours of being poked each and every day. A healthy select on of I/O ports adorn the base of the unit, with twin USB 3.0 ports alongside another two USB 2.0, one HDMI, one VGA D-sub, and a Gigabit Ethernet port. The usual headphone jack is also present. Wireless connectivity is delivered courtesy 802.11ac/b/g/n Wi-Fi, along with Bluetooth 4.0. Twin stereo speakers sit just above the keyboard and, despite the Dolby Digital Plus Home Theatre sticker right next to them, sound just as bad as most entry-level laptop speakers do. Headphones will be a must if you're going to be listening for long periods of time, but they’ll pass in a pinch for boardroom presentations.
Where this laptop really shines is the hardware used within. Intel’s ubiquitous 4th Generation Core i7-4710HQ processor is a quad-cored, hyper-threaded beast. When idling it ticks by at 2.5GHz, speeding up to 3.5GHz courtesy of Intel's Turbo boost. A whopping 16GB of DDR3 memory is included, though it's only of the 1600MHz variety. Throw in a 128GB SSD for the Operating System and main applications, and performance is blistering. Another terabyte of mechanical storage is included for lower-speed use, albeit of the 5400RPM variety. If there’s one omission in the performance stakes, it’s the use of Intel's integrated HD Graphics 4600 GPU, but this machine was never designed for gamers. Besides, the Intel graphics are plenty powerful enough for decoding HD movie rips during lengthy train trips or flights, and can even play most free to play titles without breaking a sweat. This potent hardware configuration churned out a spectacular result of 3576 in the PC Mark Home 8 Accelerated benchmark, which is excellent for such a well-priced machine. The same benchmark's built-in battery test pegged battery life at 149 minutes, but we should point out that this is under worst case situations, with multiple applications all running concurrently.
Gigabyte has delivered a very affordable productivity laptop that has power in spades. Our only concern is the all-plastic construction, which has resulted in a slightly limp keyboard that flexes a little under determined typing. It’s a very small price to pay for such an affordable laptop, especially considering the top-shelf hardware found within. Bennett Ring
KEY SPECS
13.3 inch 1920 x 1080 display • Intel Core i7-4710HQ CPU • 16GB DDR31600 • 128GB SSD + 1TB HDD