Gateway NV Series NV52L06u Notebook AMD A-Series A6-4400M(2.70GHz) 15.6" 4GB Memory 500GB HDD 5400rpm DVD±R/RW AMD Radeon HD 7520G

Pros: Great little laptop with the power and speed I expected. Fantastic price and the system came as if it was new. I only deducted one point for the hard drive failing as it is to be expected at some point. That's the main reason for doing backups.

Cons: As others have said the mouse pad is without a doubt something that takes a lot of getting used to. I bought a wireless mouse to get around it. The hardrive gave an error message about a month ago and now has died. I will replace it with a 7200 RPM drive which should improve performance a bit. Likely will add another 4GB ram.

Other Thoughts: Bought this for my wife and to use on trips. I already have built many computers and have 3 desktops I built in use currently but we both like this laptop. It may not be for games or video editing but for everyday use its just fine. "Very pretty" the wife said.

Pros: Awesome machine. I needed a second laptop like I need a hole in my head, but these were practically being given away. Solid, well-rounded performance.

Refurbished model was received in immaculate condition, no flaws of any kind.

RAM is a single 4gb module PC3-10600 (DDR3-1333, 9-9-10-24 timings). I received Nanya NT5CB256M8GN-CG, date code 1143. Some may consider the single module a con as this is not a dual-channel configuration, but it makes an upgrade to 8gb dual-channel very easy and affordable with the addition of another 4gb in the empty slot.

Quite the looker- Vivid red exterior over a white with pearl accent interor, with black base. Gateway did a great job with the design, if the color scheme was intended to draw people to it, it definitely worked its magic. Layout of controls, indicators, ports are comfortable and well thought out.

Screen is great, nice and bright, may have to reduce brightness to bring back true blacks. I haven't observed off-angle viewing quality to be any worse than my other laptop or others I've used.

Cons: How the poor excuse for a touchpad escaped quality control/testing in its shipped configuration I will never know. Did they use the laptop before declaring it okay to manufacture? I don't see how they could; the um-teen pre-configured "gestures" are MUCH too sensitive. In normal use it will slide, zoom, scroll, magnify and every other nuisance that you DON'T want it to do, instead of simply moving the cursor where you point it. Fortunately you can disable them, but I opted to leave "tap-to-click" and edge-scrolling enabled as there is an area to the right of the touchpad intended to emulate a scroll wheel. Still the tap-to-click is hard to control but I will have to live with it as I consider that an essential function.

The Atheros AR5B125 b/n Wi-Fi chipset is a half-height mini PCIe adapter that only supports the crowded 2.4ghz band. I found the range to be adequate, though I believe Gateway's primary consideration in the selection of this chipset to be cost rather than performance and featureset.

Sound is bland and one-dimensional. Volume and clarity are okay, but lacks the richness found in higher end laptops.

Other Thoughts: Gigabit ethernet is made possible by an Atheros AR8151 chip. Product literature highlights the chip's ultra-low power requirement which seems appropriate for a mobile application.

Hard drive is a Toshiba HDD2J53 (MK5059GSXP) which is a two platter, SATA/2, 5400 rpm drive with 8mb buffer. Height is 9.5mm.

Optical drive is a Lite-On DS8A8SH, with all the standard bells and whistles of a slim DVD-writer.

System chipset is the robust A70M with native USB 3.0 and SATA/3 support. Webcam is average quality, enough for Skype or other video conferencing, but image quality in low light drops substantially.

Battery life seems quite good so far, lasting over 2 hours under moderate to heavy use.

Windows Experience Index:

5.5 | CPU
5.9 | RAM
4.6 | Desktop / Aero Graphics
6.2 | 3D / Gaming Graphics
5.6 | Hard Disk Drive

For comparison, my Toshiba laptop with a first generation Core I3 CPU @ 2.26ghz scores a 6.4 in CPU. Therefore, the AMD A6 is no powerhouse, but is adequate for 99% of what I (and most others) use it for. Many don't realize that CPU and Gigahertz do little for the perception of speed in a computer. Rather it is mostly the hard drive. Toss an SSD and another 4gb of RAM into this, and you'll have quite a screamer on your hands.

I would recommend this to anyone who needs and affordable, attractive, solid performing laptop for general home/office use.

Pros: When I first received it I thought for the price it was an awesome laptop. They were prompt on the response and paid shipping to and fro.

Cons: I noticed that the system didn't recognize any cd I attempted to read! Had to send it in for repairs.

Other Thoughts: Haven't received the repaired product, but via tracking I noticied they mailed it back to me two days after they received it. One spark of hope is that when I bought mine there were no comments on this page re: the product (pretty risky), and now there are several and pretty good for that matter; but I had researched it elsewhere and it seemed to be good, except no other seller had it. Rating it high because other than the cd issue (which they appear to have fixed) I thought it was a pretty good product.

Pros: Performance for the Money, can't tell its a refurb!

Cons: Screen, Some Bloatware. Only available in red.

Other Thoughts: I purchased this to use Ableton live with a MIDI controller as my 5 yr old VAIO wasn't cutting it. I could not believe the cost vs performance. I am absolutely amazed with the deal on this laptop. If you compare the specs to other laptops you would be paying at least $250 more to get the same specs.

My ONLY complaint is the viewing angle on the screen. If you are at any bit of an angle you can see the color degradation. **** Note: I actually had to turn my brightness down and it helped*** I would not suggest doing any type of graphic design or photoshopping. (though the specs can handle it w/o problems) Again the price way out weighs this con and I have a desktop for my graphic needs.

Also, I actually like it as a refurb. Came with a charger, battery and machine. All you need. No visible signs that it was a refurb on mine.

If you need a laptop that is cheap and powerful and want to save some $$$ this is the laptop. Great value.

Pros: Great value for the money. Refurbished but laptop arrived in pristine condition. Laptop feels very snappy.

Cons: None so far. Laptop works as expected.

Other Thoughts: I realize refurbished may be a gamble for some but for me it has always paid off. Thank you Newegg!

Pros: Very fast, handles the games I wanted to play very well, no complaints.
Runs World of Warcraft, Star Wars: Old Republic, Fable 3, League of Legends, and many older games VERY well! I haven't tried any other games on it yet, but I run most at max graphics with shadows turned off and it handles them at 30-60 fps.

Cons: I got mine Refurbished, and the F1-12 keys were setup so you had to hold function to use them, but the shortcuts were active at all times. It took about 30 seconds of navigating through the Bios to change this to how i prefer, so when i want the shortcuts (like play, skip, brightness, etc) I use the function keys. It's not really a bad thing, it's just the way it is supposed to be versus the way i prefer.
No real complaints about the laptop though, speakers are a bit weak, but it's a laptop, you shouldn't expect anything terribly powerful.
Keyboard also feels a bit funny because of how the keys are, but once you get use to them, it's pretty nice.

Other Thoughts: I originally bought this with the intention of putting a 7,200 rpm or solid state hard drive in it to speed things up, I wanted a gaming laptop. I was EXTREMELY impressed when I installed my games and they worked just fine with the 5,400rpm drive. No lag of any kind that I have encountered and no real complaints of any kind. I am 100% satisfied with my purchase and I would recommend this laptop (and I have) to everyone I know!
(I may still get a 7,200 rpm or solid state drive for it, altho it doesn't seem to need it)

Pros: See below.

Cons: See below.

Other Thoughts: If you are purchasing a SSD for the Gateway NV52L06u laptop like I did, note that the laptop's hard drive bay will require that 2 small plastic notches need to be removed/snipped in order for the drive to mate properly with the SATA connector and for the screw holes on the hard drive chassis to line up properly. With this small modification, there is absolutely no problem with the SSD staying in place or being loose in any way. It looks like these "notches" are there, more or less, to hinder the process of a new hard drive being installed that has a slightly more "box" shaped form factor to it.

Pros: Running smooth so far , I would recommend this to a friend . Sexy and i like it :-)

Cons: There are 2 little scratches on the back of the laptop , but i put a Razer sticker on it , so it's not that big of a problem to -egg . and some bloatwares .

Pros: Hard drive size
Processor
Condition of Unit
Bang for the buck
Screen

Cons: Not much in the way of packaging, just kind of in foam and swinging around in a box too big.

Other Thoughts: Wanted a laptop for my son that was capable and better than the new $300 units out there. This one fit the bill. Set up easily. Moved fast on the internet, not too much bloatware and the condition of our unit was like new. I like AMD so this looked like the way to go. It's now $30 cheaper then when I got it and free shipping. Wow what a deal.

Pros: The specs out of the box are very good for the laptop all around, and this one was purchased with gaming in mind on a tight budget (specifically capable to run Diablo 3 on low settings). The game runs and is playable.

Cons: Even the Windows resource monitor shows that the hard drive is the biggest bottleneck in this machine. Running Diablo 3 on lowest possible settings, the hard drive is at 100% utilization while CPU and Memory never go above 50% utilization. The computer comes loaded with a large amount of bloatware from Gateway, all of which I uninstalled immediately.

Other Thoughts: A simple upgrade to a solid state drive will provide a worry-free performance increase which should meet the performance of all the other components. While this puts the total price of the laptop around $500 for a 128GB drive, it seems like a smart choice given that the overall price point is still excellent for the expected performance increase. It also provides the opportunity to reinstall the operating system to a totally clean state without all of the added Gateway nonsense.