One of this writer's first computing memories was booting up the family Gateway PC to play 3D Pinball Space Cadet. It was an incredibly large and heavy PC tower with that instantly recognizable cow logo emblazoned on the front. That was then, this is now; Gateway computers (a sub-brand of Acer) are still around, but now relegated to mostly lower-end configurations sold at Walmart. The 15.6-inch Gateway Ultra Slim (model GWNC21524, $229) reviewed here still has that iconic spotted logo proudly printed on its top cover. With such a low price, this laptop might seem like a fair option for a child’s first computer, or as an alternative to a similarly priced Chromebook. It could suffice for that, but know that it feels as cheap as the price suggests, with the prime culprit being a poor, faded-looking screen.

A Wobbly, Low-Resolution Display

This model of the Ultra Slim shares the same 15.6-inch screen size as its older brother, the GWTN156-1 we tested a couple of years back. The current 15.6-inch Ultra Slim comes in three colors: blue, green, and the red of our review unit. The red color is everywhere, broken up only by the logo and the footpads along the bottom.

When the laptop is open, the screen is bordered by an aggressively thick (by modern standards) black bezel, and a run-of-the-mill keyboard. The hinge doubles as a kickstand, which elevates the keyboard at a slight angle for a more comfortable typing experience. This arrangement does lead to a significant amount of screen shake when opening the panel, and a small amount when typing, however.

The Gateway Ultra Slim laptop is available in multiple screen sizes, from 11.6 inches to the 15.6-inch size reviewed here. The 15.6-inch version comes in one configuration, with an Intel Celeron N4020 mobile processor, 128GB of eMMC storage, and 4GB of RAM. In a world where you can buy a 128GB USB thumb drive for $15, I would've liked a larger storage capacity or a faster format than eMMC, but eMMC is common in most Chromebooks and the cheapest Windows portables.

The laptop has an LCD IPS HD screen (1,366 by 768 pixels), which is below the minimum full HD resolution (typically 1,920 by 1,080 pixels) that we recommend for budget laptops. There's a 1-megapixel webcam sitting above the screen. The webcam does have a physical privacy slider, but it’s a little finicky. I found in using it that the slider got caught more often than not, and it also lacks any visual indication that it's closed, aside from you looking for the plastic over the lens.

The keyboard is a nice 79-key layout with plastic Chiclet-style keycaps. The touchpad is made of a similar plastic, with a noticeably loud click along the bottom. To the left of the pad, the laptop proudly displays the statement “Tuned by THX” etched in white. The set of stereo speakers were, in fact, tuned by THX, according to Gateway, and they sound pretty good, at least until you max out the volume. The speakers are so strident at upper levels that they shake the entire bottom of the chassis, leading to unwanted distortion.

Connectivity: You Can't See USB-C

Along the right side of the laptop, there’s a dedicated headphone jack, two USB Type-A ports, and a microSD card reader. The left side has a third USB Type-A port, an HDMI port for using a second screen, and a barrel-style port for charging. There are no USB-C ports, a surprising omission for a modern laptop.

For wireless peripheral connections, the laptop has Bluetooth 4.0, and it paired quickly with my wireless headset. While I was listening to music, I noticed a delay between pausing the track and the music stopping on my headphones. There’s always a slight delay when using wireless headphones over Bluetooth, but it was long enough to be noticeable here.

The laptop does come with some bloatware, including an advertisement-strewn Solitaire game. There are also website shortcuts to Walmart and Forge of Empires, the latter a free-to-play online strategy game. The laptop’s documentation includes a 50%-off coupon code for a year of Kidomi, a subscription service for educational children’s media content.

Testing the 2022 Gateway 15.6-Inch Ultra Slim: Down in the Budget Depths

When pitted against similarly priced laptops on specs alone, the Gateway Ultra Slim starts to show some of its better qualities. The Celeron chip is about the best you can get in this price range, although many competing laptops also use it. The Gateway also sports more storage than its closest recent competitor we have tested, the Asus Laptop L410. The $450 MSI Modern 14 has a wider variety of ports and much better build quality, but it costs almost twice as much. The Dell Inspiron 15 3000 (3501) and the Lenovo IdeaPad 1 14 round out the list of comparable laptops for our benchmark tests.

Productivity Tests

We ran the Gateway through the whole gamut of testing we put all of our laptops through, even though it's clearly not intended for the types of tasks some of the benchmarks measure. It failed to complete PCMark 10, which measures the performance on real-world productivity tasks such as running Microsoft Word. This isn't to say that the Gateway can't handle everyday programs, just that a software glitch or memory limitation kept the test suite from completing.

Tests like Cinebench and Geekbench stress your computer's CPU to gauge how well it would handle especially taxing programs that scale with available cores or compute power. The Gateway performed as expected in Cinebench, coming up about the same as the Asus L410, but losing out in Geekbench.

Handbrake is a tool used to convert videos from one format to another. Our test converts a 12-minute 4K video to a 1080p format. The Gateway had the longest render time out of the laptops we pitted it against, behind the Asus Laptop L410 and taking twice as long as the Core i3-equipped leader, the Dell Inspiron 15 3000.

Graphics Tests

For graphics processing, the Gateway Ultra Slim relies on Intel's UHD 600 integrated GPU. While the Solitaire app might be fun for some users, others might be inclined to play more demanding games on it. Since the laptop is capable of running DirectX 12, we can benchmark it against its competition using the 3DMark Night Raid test.

The UHD 600 might be capable of running some older DirectX 12, titles but doesn't hold a candle to the performance of the processors that include beefier flavors of integrated graphics. It also doesn't come close to beating out the Dell Inspiron 15 3000, with its 11th Gen processor and faster SSD.

We normally run additional tests, including a test of Photoshop image editing, 3DMark's more demanding Fire Strike benchmark, and a second graphics test suite called GFXBench. The Gateway Ultra Slim couldn't complete any of these. Photoshop benchmarks usually fail on machines with less than 8GB of memory, and 3DMark and GFXBench require a graphics memory minimum to run many of their subtests.

Battery and Display Tests

The Gateway's display leaves a lot to be desired, even at this price. While its results on our color gamut test matched its competitors across the board, it fell short on our brightness test. Even at 100% brightness, the Gateway couldn't stand up to the competition, falling almost 70 nits short of the Asus Laptop L410. And it's clear just from a glance at it; the panel looks washed out and dim, at times almost looking like you're viewing it through a thin gauze sheet.

On the plus side, the dim screen and its more conservative power consumption probably accounts for some of the Gateway's stellar battery performance. (We set our test screens at 50% when battery testing, a dim prospect indeed for this machine, but a battery saver.) In testing, we found that the Gateway's battery outperformed even the MSI Modern 14's, lasting at least a third longer. If you're the kind of person who constantly forgets to charge your laptop, you won't be needing a charger for a while.

Rich History Meets Lowered Expectations

Some concessions have to be made when shopping for a budget laptop. You won't be playing Elden Ring very well on anything much less than $800, and you might even have trouble running multiple programs on something in this price range. The Celeron N4020 was never meant for heavy workloads, and the 4GB of RAM is a tough limitation. Pair them with a mostly plastic chassis and a lackluster screen, and the Gateway Ultra Slim feels like a machine that offers what you pay for it, and no more.

The once-mighty Gateway may not be a heavy hitter in the PC industry anymore, but you aren't spending this kind of money to get powerful specs, and if you're shopping for someone who will use a computer only minimally (say, for basic browsing and email), you can definitely do worse for $230. If you’re looking for a machine with better performance, though, you should expand your budget slightly more. A limit of $400 to $500 will get you an excellent Chromebook like the Acer Chromebook 514, or perhaps a configuration of our Editors' Choice pick for budget laptops, the Lenovo Ideapad 3 14.