Introduction

Gigabyte is best known for their production of PC components like motherboards and graphics cards, but the company also has a line of laptops. Today we’re going to be looking at one such laptop, which is something of an oddity in the Windows 8 world: it does not employ a touch screen, but it does include a Nvidia 650M discrete graphics card. This should make it a stronger gaming laptop than the Windows 8 notebooks we’ve looked at in the past, which all relied on integrated Intel HD 4000 solutions. Combined with an i7 processor, 128 GB SSD and 8 GB of RAM, we’re looking at a very powerful machine indeed. Let’s take a closer look.

Specifications

• OS: Windows 8
• Processor: Intel Core i7-3517U (1.9 GHz to 3.0 GHz)
• Memory: 8 GB DDR3 SDRAM
• Storage: 128 GB mSATA SSD
• Display: 14″ 1600 x 900 pixels LED
• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M (2 GB) + Intel HD 4000
• Inputs: 2x USB 2.0, 2x USB 3.0, HDMI, VGA, LAN, 2x 3.5 mm audio
• Card Reader: SD
• Webcam: 1.3 megapixel
• WiFi: 802.11 a/b/g/n
• Bluetooth: 4.0
• Battery: 47.73 Wh
• Height: 18.5 – 21 mm
• Depth: 233 mm
• Width: 339 mm
• Weight: 1.59 kg

Sadly, the U2442 box provided has been covering up almost entirely by a large collection of shipping labels, so there’s little point in photographing it. The box must have looked nice though, with Gigabyte’s traditional black and gold colour scheme.

Inside the box, we find the laptop itself, a power cord and the usual bits and pieces of documentation. There are no extras here.