Digital Trends

Gateway NX570 February 18th, 2007 | by Justin Whitaker

Feature and Design
The new design of the NX570X serves in both a functional capacity (the materials are designed to be resistant to scratching and to fingerprint smudges) as well as to stylistically differentiate the laptop from the competition. The cover for the laptop is made of a textured, hard casing that is a departure from the traditional smooth casing found in previous Gateway models. Along each side of the laptop is a silver stripping around each of the connection ports that further distinguishes this laptop as more than just a box of chipsets and components.

Most notable to the new design is the interior portion of the laptop. Surrounding the touchpad and the bottom half of the laptop is a brushed, aluminum palm rest. While the palm rest is not the most comfortable surface in the world, it does give the laptop a sleek, modern look that begs to be shown off to family and friends. This aluminum is completely smooth to the touch and is accompanied by a silver finish surrounding the keyboard. The 15.4-inch display is surrounded by a smooth, thin, black-colored lining that doesn’t distract from the screen display.

Thankfully, the magnesium alloy casing and the brushed aluminum interior don’t add a significant amount of bulk to the NX570X. Weighing in at 6.5 pounds, and measuring 1.4-inch (H) x 14-inch (W) x 10.5-inch (D), this laptop is comparable to other mid-sized notebooks in its class. This respectable size is both small enough and light enough for use when traveling and for the daily commute, but it is not the lightest or the smallest in its class.

Overall, the laptop has an industrial look that is as modern and hip as any other competitor in its class. Aside from the power button in the upper right-hand corner next to the keyboard, there are no other buttons outside of the keyboard to complicate the layout. No volume controls, mute button, “sleep” button or any other controls muddy up the intentionally minimalist layout. Traditionally, look and feel of this caliber has been reserved for the flagship models from each manufacturer, such as the Ferrari 5000 from Acer. Gateway should be commended for choosing to bring a higher fit and finish to the mainstream without bringing the corresponding higher cost.

Price from the Gateway website at the time of publishing: $1160 as tested

- Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T7200 (2.00 GHz, 667MHz FSB, 4MB L2 Cache)
- 1024MB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM (2x512MB)
- 15.4" WXGA TFT Active Matrix (1280 x 800 max. resolution)
- 100GB 7200rpm Serial ATA hard drive
- 24x/10x/24x CD-RW / 8x DVD-ROM optical drive
- Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005 (Rollup Update 2)
- 6-cell lithium-ion battery with AC pack and 1 yr. limited battery warranty
- Mobile Technology: Features Intel® Centrino® Duo Mobile Technology
- 4-in-1 media card reader (Memory Stick®, MemoryStick Pro®, MultiMediaCard™, Secure Digital™)
- One type II PC card slot
- (4) USB 2.0, VGA, S-Video (TV Out), IEEE 1394 (FireWire)
- Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950
- Full-size keyboard and EZ Pad® touchpad
- Integrated SigmaTel audio and stereo speakers, headphone/speaker jack, and microphone jacks
- Integrated V.92 56K modem
- Integrated Marvell® 10/100 Ethernet adapter
- Integrated Intel® 802.11a/b/g wireless networking card

The NX570 line is a very configurable line of notebooks with CPU, hard drive and RAM options that can be tweaked to cater to either the budget conscious crowd (the most basic configuration can be had for a mere $649) or the power hungry crowd looking for a fully-loaded desktop replacement machine.

The most notable exception is the lack of options available for upgrading to a more powerful graphics card. With the NX570X, you are limited to using the integrated graphics chip with the motherboard. This is fine for most day-to-day tasks and will fit the needs for most users, but rules out using this laptop for any gaming or heavy duty video-editing tasks. With the inclusion of Windows Media Center Edition as the OS, I would have expected an option to upgrade the video card for those users who want to take full advantage of the video recording and TV features offered by Windows MCE.

Note that at the time of publishing this review, Gateway is now offering Windows Vista Home Premium Edition as the standard OS on the NX570X. Windows Vista Home Premium Edition offers many of the same TV, video and music features as Windows Media Center Edition.

Image Courtesy of Gateway