Gateway ZX6900-01E Desktop Review
With a Blu-ray drive, touchscreen and an impressive selection of ports, justified in the Gateway One ZX6900-01E its price premium of about $ 600-800 a standalone desktop. Nevertheless, some drawbacks that prevent them outshine higher rated systems in the mid-priced all-in-one category. It’s a solid system, but feel cheap, given its bloatware and competing in all companies offer more for your money.
Design
The ZX6900-01e, which is about 20 measures 24 by 4 inches (HWD), it looks like the gateway ZX6810-01 that I checked out last year. It comes in the same glossy black case with a 23-inch monitor front and center, looking much like an HDTV display. The touch screen has a glossy surface, which is good for color accuracy, but has an annoying mirror effect that casts reflections on the screen. If you are sitting right in front of the device, it will even reflect back on your face while you are working on the desktop.
The system has the slot-loading optical drive on the right side, and this time it’s a Blu-ray player/DVD burner. This is a great feature, and it addresses a major deficiency of the previous generation Gateway One systems. The system comes with a wireless keyboard and mouse, which I expect in this price class, but the keyboard has a spongy feel, not something you want if you pay for a premium desktop. The keyboard and mouse share a tiny USB transceiver that takes up a system of six USB 2.0 ports. The ambient lighting system that illuminates the surface of the bezel between the user and the computer, so you can see what you are typing in a darkened room. This function is useful and should be on all-in-one desktop standard. A switch on the right side of the system turns the lights on or off. The system has an external power supply, which obviously necessary, the system is slim to get lines straight. But leaner systems like the Apple iMac 21.5″ have internal power supplies, which caused so ZX6900-01e power bricks loose from the system.
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The ZX6900-01e has many ports in the back and on the page, including the aforementioned six USB 2.0 ports (five free), eSATA port, HDMI port, the usual audio ports and a digital media card reader. The HDMI port you can hook up an additional monitor for extended desktop or mirroring, you use all the usual advantages of dual-monitor. It would have been nice if it were an HDMI input as well as this is the life of the monitor when the system inevitably expand too slowly. The power switch is improved, it is now on the front of the system and the international symbol of power, whereas the previous version was not selected.
Features
The ZX6900-01e is ready for high-resolution photo and video enjoyment. can show the 1080p HD (1,920 by 1,080) resolution of the 23-inch screen, all the glorious pixels of Blu-ray movies or HD video on the Internet. The ZX6900-01e missing the previous generation gateway ZX6810-01′s TV Tuner, but adds the Blu-ray player. I think it’s a fair assessment, especially given the ZX6900-01e is almost $ 300 less expensive. The ZX6810-01also had a 64GB SSD drive that is a negligible option in systems like these. The older ZX6810-01 and a 1 TB data drive, the ZX6900-01e did not suffer too much with a smaller 640GB drive. However, you need the extra space if you used the system as a DVR with a TV tuner.
The system is Windows 7 Touch-Enhanced interface for use with the touchscreen. For example, the window close buttons much larger, allowing them to touch more easily with the fingers. Gateway has installed prior to its Touch UI portal that leads to touch the new user. Touch-Portal has a skin for Internet Explorer, making it easier for out with the fingers. The screen supports two-finger multitouch, you learn that Microsoft can use the Touch Pack. Try it with two fingers enlarge and shrink the included Microsoft Surface Globe: It’s pretty addictive zooming to see your neighborhood up close. The touch-Portal is a second to get two working for the first time you start the system, but after that it’s not so bad. Although I think, touch computing is a possible future user interfaces, the current crop of touch applications are mostly tech demos at this point. Touch screens are nice to have, but they are by no means a must-have at this time.
Like all consumer-grade gateway systems, the ZX6900-01e comes with a selection of bloatware. The usual suspects include Office 60-day trial of Norton Internet Security 60-day trial and gateway games (Wild Tangent). New this time is the Best Buy Software Installer, a program that allows you to store programs on your new PC. When Best Buy was the only program on the system, I would be happy. Hopefully, in addition to removing the preinstalled bloatware trend that HP is including similar Installer programs in their systems. Dell has already moved to the online distribution model.
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Performance
As you would suspect from the ZX6900-01e’s quad-core Intel Core i3-530 processor and exceeded 4 GB DDR3-1333 memory, the system’s performance in our multimedia benchmark tests. It was in a position to our Windows Media Encoder test to be completed in 42 seconds (less than a minute is what you are looking for), and only 1 minute 35 seconds for free on our Photoshop CS4. Similarly, the system of day to day performance was very good, with a 5995 score on PCMark Vantage.
This compares well to similarly expensive systems like the 21.5″ iMac, which lasted 49 seconds stop the WME test, although the iMac a smidge faster at the CS4 test (1:32) is. The Editors’ Choice winning Lenovo ThinkCentre B500 was the fastest in the entire multimedia tests (0:38 WME, 1:32 CS4).
With the integrated Intel GMA HD graphics, the system had some problems when playing 3D games like Crysis and World in Conflict, again slow, unplayable scores. Poor gaming performance is not too much of a concern for the HD-video games, multimedia maven, that this system is aimed at. For a reasonable price, take a look at Lenovo B500, it was playable scores of 56 frames per second (fps) at 46 fps in Crysis and World in Conflict.
The Gateway One ZX6900-01e is certainly an attractive touch-sensitive all-in-one desktop PC. It is much cheaper than its predecessor, and adds Blu-ray into the mix. However, the alternatives are more attractive on several fronts: If you are a business do all-in-one PC, the Lenovo ThinkCentre M90z is a good choice for a similar price and commercial Blu-ray for business-friendly features as a webcam with a cover.
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The major competition to this system is our current Editors’ Choice for mainstream all-in-one PCs, the Lenovo B500. The B500 does not have the Gateway screen, HDMI connection and is around $ 200 more expensive, but it has other features that make it worth the effort was. But the Lenovo B500-screen and bezel are less shiny (the screen is somewhere between matt and glossy), so there are fewer distractions when you watch TV. The B500 has much better performance on both 3D and multimedia tasks, feel and just overall better. It has a higher build quality, a bigger hard drive, much less bloatware, unique design and a multi-function motion control remote. The build-fast performance, larger hard drive and a better quality ensures that the B500 takes longer than primary (or secondary) desktop. The ZX6900-01e has its disadvantages can still bloatware and cheesy keyboard. Therefore, the Gateway One is ZX6900 is a relatively inexpensive all-in-one system with HD video, but the dollar savings over other alternatives do not seem worth it.
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