A. PC Mark scores are not representative of performance in enough varied workloads.
B. All of these come with half the storage space.
C. Gateway comes with a touch, full HD screen (not saying anything about the color quality and accuracy).
My go to is Dell Outlet with coupons, cashback and Amex credits, when they have good stuff, which is very often. Can get high end stuff for very cheap sometimes. But not something you can put on DDMS, because of limited stock and you need to know what to order based on fluid inventory.
A. PCMark is not representative of performance in any particular machine altogether. True. But what is representative is the age of the processor, the cores and the TDP (to an extent), especially in low-end systems designed for office work. You can argue when it comes to old high-end hardware, but not when it comes to processors in the same wattage group. Fact is, this is a three-year-old quad core with the same TDP competing against Ryzen 3s with the same core count but hitting higher clock speeds and with greater cache sizes and with DDR5 RAM. And i3s from 12th gen and on have even greater core counts. Add the horrid build quality that Gateways have into the mix and forget competition. Plus I have never seen a Gateway review with good battery life.
B. I was wondering if you would say anything about that. I personally place next to no value in storage space because of the low cost of upgrades. But surely you would agree that getting an extra 150GB of use space is no reason to buy a cheap computer in other ways. I posted only the pick of the crop, but there were other variations nearby (in price) with more storage.
C. More than that. The Gateway is a 2-in-1 and none of the systems I listed are. Agreed. However, a 2-in-1 is the most crucial of computers to be built well, because the hinge mechanism is another design weakness that can break the computer. This is why I try to talk people out of buying them. Nevertheless, when someone is determined that they need one, I steer them to computers that are built very well: Yogas, Zenbooks, Galaxies, Latitudes... I would never trust Gateway for this.
Dell Outlet is a good address even without credit card bonuses. It is on my list when I trawl for someone. Happens to be that right now there are no codes for Inspirons and Vostros, so I didn't see anything of note when I checked.
(In case anyone cares, and in no particular order: B&H, Best Buy, Newegg, Costco, Dell and Dell Outlet, Asus and Acer's direct store, HP's store, Micro Center, Walmart and Amazon. On Walmart, Amazon and Newegg, I check only what they themselves are selling, not other sellers.)
