Gigabyte Q2550M

IT DOESN’T GET ANY CHEAPER.

GOING HEAD TO head against the likes of Acer’s Aspire E15, the Q2550M is Gigabyte’s attempt to capture the price-conscious market. In many ways it shares the same strengths as the Acer… not to mention the same aws.

It begins with the display. 1,366 x 768-pixel simply doesn’t cut it for a 15.6 inch screen, as individual pixels are far too easy to spot. At least Gigabyte went with a matte display, making it much easier to read in bright lighting conditions. Once again we see a nice full-sized keyboard, married to a relatively average touchpad. As with the Acer touchpad, movement feels a little laggy and inaccurate, but not bad enough to bother plugging in a mouse.

Unlike Acer, Gigabyte has stuck with Intel for the Q2550M’s processor. e Core i5-4210U only has twin cores, but they’re Hyper readed, with a top frequency of 2.7GHz. A mere 4GB of memory is just enough to keep Windows 10 running responsively, but Gigabyte has followed in Acer’s mechanical footsteps when it comes to the hard drive, with a 500GB HDD. ere’s no option to swap this at purchase either, though users are free to do so a er they’ve bought it. On the ipside, Gigabyte has included a DVD burner in this laptop, something missing from Acer’s unit.

Considering how similar both machines are, the $200 price saving on the Gigabyte laptop makes it hard to recommend the Acer. For that price you’d be able to install a sizeable SSD into the Gigabyte, making it the superior machine in every way.