Gigabyte U2142 review

We’ve quite liked Gigabyte’s latest laptops, so we had high hopes for its Ultrabook tablet convertible, the U2142. This model converts with via its central pivot hinge that rotates the screen and lets it fold back against the keyboard. Despite this mechanism, the laptop weighs just 1.39kg and is just 20mm thick.

It’s easy to turn into a tablet, but we quickly ran into problems with the screen’s auto-rotation. At times it worked perfectly, but other times it simply refused to rotate at all, leaving us with the display in the wrong orientation. Thankfully, there’s a button to lock the screen in place, but this is of little consolation when you can’t get it into the position you want in the first place. We weren’t fans of how the lip design of the pivot bulged out of the side either, but it did make it slightly easier to hold while in tablet mode.

Unfortunately, the U2142’s fails to improve and there are multiple issues lying beneath its tiny chassis. The most disappointing is its raw processing power. Our review sample came with a 1.8GHz Intel Core i5-3337U processor that can Turbo Boost up to 2.7GHz when there’s enough thermal headroom and 4GB of RAM, but it only scored 35 overall in our multimedia benchmarks. This is a full ten points behind other laptops we’ve tested with the same processor and our tests revealed that it was actually under-clocking itself when it came to certain parts of our tests.

It performed normally during the image-encoding section of our benchmarks, reaching an average clock speed of around 2.5GHz, but this nosedived to just 1.3GHz when it began multi-tasking and encoding video, effectively cutting its speed in half. This makes its performance much more akin to a Core i3 processor, which means you’re getting far less processing power than you might expect. We suspect this is due to it overheating, as there’s very little room for ventilation, but it’s disappointing nonetheless.

Its graphics performance was equally poor, as it failed out Dirt Showdown test on High Quality settings and a 720p resolution. We had to set the quality settings right down to Ultra Low and disable the anti-aliasing to get a playable 30fps, but even then the fans were whirring quite loudly. Instead, we’d recommend sticking to older, less demanding titles or 2D games from the Windows 8 Store.

Unfortunately, the U2142’s 11.6in touchscreen won’t be able to get the best out of your photos, films and games due to its below average image quality. Its 1,366×768 resolution looks fine and its ten-point touchscreen was very responsive, but much like Gigabyte’s S1082 tablet, there’s a visible grain from the display coating that makes the screen look quite hazy and pixellated.

The screen has a matt finish, which is good for keeping reflections at bay, but this in turn makes the screen’s coating stand out even more by sapping the vibrancy out of its colours. Reds, greens and blues all lacked depth and richness and whites looked particularly grey in our solid colour image tests. Its black levels were reasonable, though, as were its contrast levels as we were able to see a good level of detail in most of our high contrast test photos. Its viewing angles are rather limited, as we could barely see anything onscreen when it was lying flat on our desk or when we tilted the screen backwards and forwards.

Typing on the U2142 was much more pleasant, although this too had its own issues. The Chiclet-style keys had a tendency to rattle a bit too much for our liking, but they’re well-spaced and gave plenty of feedback. We found the touchpad a little more frustrating, as our hand repeatedly caught the edge of it while typing. This made writing long word documents quite frustrating as our cursor was constantly being sent all over the page as we kept accidentally hitting the touchpad.

Luckily, one of its function buttons can disable the touchpad altogether, but this will mean you’re limited to the touchscreen for navigating the desktop. We were also disappointed that it didn’t support multitouch gestures or Windows 8 shortcuts, as this should be standard practice on all Windows 8 laptops.

The U2142’s battery life was more promising, as it lasted 6h 7m in our light use battery test with the screen set to half brightness. We’ve seen longer lasting laptops, but this is still quite good for an Ultrabook.

Another redeeming feature is its wide selection of ports. It has two USB3 and two USB ports, HDMI and VGA outputs, a SIM card slot for mobile broadband, an SD card reader, a Gigabit Ethernet port and separate headphone and microphone jacks. We’d recommend plugging in a pair of dedicated speakers for listening to music, as its integrated speakers are very tinny and produce no bass whatsoever.

Sadly, lots of ports and a decent battery life aren’t enough to save the Gigabyte U2142 as it has far too many systemic problems that affect its overall usability. At this price, you’d be much better off with the Best-Buy winning Samsung Series 7 Ultra.