Centrino 2 Laptop Roundup

Conclusion

We finally got some retail Centrino 2 notebooks into our labs for testing. How much of a difference does Centrino 2 make? If the results didn't already make this clear, most of the improvements are hardly noticeable. The biggest change comes in terms of gaming performance on the G50V, but in that case it's simply a faster midrange GPU and has nothing to do with Centrino 2.

That doesn't mean that you shouldn't purchase a Centrino 2 notebook; we just wouldn't recommend replacing a recent laptop purely for the sake of getting Centrino 2. As we mentioned when Centrino 2 officially launched, the changes are hardly revolutionary. The new Intel 5100 WiFi Link wireless adapters in day-to-day use don't seem to be any different than the 4965AGN (none of the laptops we've seen have used the 5300 WiFi Link), so the only actual change comes from the updated chipset. A slightly faster front side bus, faster DDR2 or DDR3 memory, and improved deep sleep states on the CPU are all incremental steps forward, and the new Centrino 2 notebooks do appear to offer better battery life than older laptops; it's just that the difference isn't huge, particularly in light of what Apple does with battery life.

If you tend to carry your notebook from place to place and plug it in, battery life may not be a huge concern, but for people that truly like to be untethered (remember those old Intel Centrino ads?), let's put things in perspective. The 2008 Apple MacBook (standard model) is only slightly larger and heavier than the ASUS U6V, and it comes with a 45 Whr battery. We measured a battery life of 3.1 to 4.8 hours during normal use. With a slightly larger battery capacity, the ASUS U6V can only manage about two hours of video playback or 2.5 hours of Internet surfing.

Is this something that OS X manages to do superbly well and Vista just falls flat on its face? I can't say for sure, but for the price I would undoubtedly to go with an Apple MacBook or MacBook Pro if battery life is a primary concern. Honestly, we want our cake and we want to eat it too when it comes to laptop performance and battery life. We can't see any reason why battery life under OS X should be roughly double that of Windows Vista, and we're not entirely sure Windows Vista is that much worse than Windows XP. If you don't absolutely have to run Microsoft Windows, you should seriously consider the Apple MacBook laptops. (Or you could always get a MacBook and dual boot.)

Looking at the laptops we are reviewing today, where does that leave the ASUS U6V? It's stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place. This is an ultraportable laptop by every metric we can conceive of, but battery life is only slightly better than the much larger G50V - with the same size battery. Whatever the cause, we simply can't recommend a $1500 12.1" laptop that can't run typical office tasks for at least four hours before the (55 Whr) battery is dead. Apple has shown that it's possible to provide all of that in a notebook that weighs less than 4 pounds and costs less than $1500, so their competitors need to match that level of performance - or at the very least come close.

The ASUS G50V and HP dv5t are in a better position, since they offer reasonable gaming performance. Battery life is even worse, but at least in the case of the G50V we can state that it would be faster than anything Apple has to offer - and quite a bit cheaper than the MacBook Pro. An overclockable CPU, GeForce 9700M GT graphics, 4GB of RAM, and dual hard drives providing 500GB of storage for under $1600? Including a two-year warranty and one year of accident protection? That's actually a very good deal. We are still inclined to recommend the G50Vt for less money and better gaming performance, although again we would prefer if ASUS increased the price slightly and kept the WSXGA+ LCD panel.

As for the HP dv5t, the overall design is pretty nice but the 1280x800 LCD panel is nowhere near as good as the panel on the G50V. Contrast ratio is extremely poor, and anyone who dislikes reflective LCDs will probably find that the HP "designer glass" is as bad as the new MacBooks - although unlike Apple you can actually save $50 and get a regular glossy LCD where the glass doesn't extend to the borders of the laptop. Hopefully the 1680x1050 panel is better, but without testing it we can't say one way or the other. The true selling point of the HP dv5t is going to be the ability for users to customize the configuration. This may be one of the best gaming notebooks that HP manufacturers, but we would recommend something else for gaming, in which case you can get the dv5t with integrated GMA X4500 graphics and be fine. That will save you money and battery life should improve quite a bit as well. For around $1100, you can get a very good HP dv5t.

If you're keeping track of the latest in mobile hardware, you may have noticed that we still haven't reviewed any new Centrino 2 notebooks with integrated graphics. We have a review in the works, and battery life is improved quite a bit over the other midrange offerings we've tested. It still can't touch the MacBooks, but at least getting more than three hours of battery life is feasible. We're also still waiting for a notebook that allows users to switch between integrated and discrete graphics (similar to the MacBook Pro). We have another notebook that does feature that capability, but we're a little surprised that it isn't more of a gaming notebook. It seems to us that the best place for NVIDIA's Hybrid Power technology would be in laptops like the ASUS G50V/G50Vt or Gateway's P-7811 FX - again, we want to have our gaming performance without sacrificing the battery life cake. Otherwise, you might as well just stick with IGP, since the 9300M class hardware is only a small boost in performance over the X3100/X4500. We'll have to wait and see if anyone is willing to step up to the plate and offer such a notebook.