Update 11/28/2020 07:29 PT:
This laptop has gone up in price by $50 but at $449 it is still well under the $699 list price.
Original article:
No one expected a Gateway laptop to land on our list of Best Cyber Monday laptop deals here in 2020. But the 14-inch Walmart-exclusive GWTN141 is hard to ignore at its current price of $399, down from an MSRP of $699. For that low price, you get a current (10th Gen) Intel Core i5-1035G1 CPU (with four cores and eight threads), 16GB RAM, 256GB of solid-state storage, a Webcam, and even a fingerprint reader.
That's a whole lot of laptop for the price, given most modern options with 16GB of RAM and a recent CPU cost $1,000 or more. The Gateway GWTN141 also has a 1080p IPS screen, comes in your choice of four colors, and is 0.8 inches thick. It's a bit heavy at 3.5 pounds, but at half the price of budget ultrabooks like Asus' Zenbook line, you can only ask for so much.
Acer has owned the bovine-associated Gateway brand since 2007 and has long since put it out to pasture before resurrecting it earlier this year for a line of Walmart-exclusive laptops and tablets. But according to what a rep told Ars Technica, Acer isn't involved in the production of these laptops. According to Ars, these new low-cost cows are made by Shenzhen-based Bmorn.
So, are you taking a risk by buying one of these laptops? Sure. We haven't tested them, we know next to nothing about the manufacturer, and only have the company's claim of "up to ten hours of battery life" to go on when it comes to unplugged longevity.
But how bad could this thing be? It packs the parts of a laptop more than twice its price, and it sure doesn't look like a clunker. If the answer turns out to be 'pretty terrible, actually," most of us in the US live within a few miles from a Walmart. So you could fairly easily return it. But if you're after a budget-friendly laptop with modern components and lots of RAM for all the tabs you can't seem to close, you could wait until the cows come home, or just bring this cow-themed box home yourself. one thing's for sure: You won't likely find a similar collection of components without spending several hundred more. Maybe it's time for the cows to come home.
If you're after a $400 laptop with modern components and lots of RAM for all the tabs you can't seem to close, you basically have two options. You could wait until the cows come home, or you could buy the Gateway GWTN141-4BK and bring this cow-themed box home yourself. One thing's for sure: You won't likely find a similar collection of components without spending several hundred more, even if you spend the next week scouring our Best Cyber Monday Tech and PC Deals page.
For more savings, check our list of best Cyber Monday deals overall, best Cyber Monday monitor deals, best Cyber Monday SSD deals, best Cyber Monday CPU deals, best Cyber Monday graphics card deals, best Cyber Monday laptop deals, best Cyber Monday gaming PC deals and best Cyber Monday Raspberry Pi deals.
