This cheap Microsoft Surface Laptop rival has a better screen, rock bottom price
Challenger brand ups the ante but fails to nail it
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What is it?Meet the GTBook13, a newlaptopfrom challenger brand Alldocube with an all-metal (aluminum alloy) chassis. It is a major refresh of the Vbook which was launched in 2020 and failed to impress us.
What makes it special and why should I buy it?It has the highest screen resolution - six million pixels - of any budget laptop we have come across with a spectacular 100% sRGB coverage and a 3:2 aspect ratio.
How much does it cost?The GTBook 13 isavailable on preorder from Banggood from as low as $319.99(about £264/AU$461) with prices going up, à la Kickstarter when they reach certain sales target. Note that if this product ships from mainland China, it will take a month to reach either the UK or US (and potentially more). You may be levied an additional tax, either directly or through the courier.
What else should we know?The 13.5-inch IPS display that adorns it has a 6-megapixel resolution, a 480nits maximum brightness and is probably the best you can settle for under $500, especially with a 3:2 aspect ratio. That’s the same as the PixelSense display on theSurface Book 3fromMicrosoft, a laptop that costs five times more. We love the wedged design, the full array of ports (three USB, one card reader, one HDMI), the large 60.5WHr battery as well as the 36W USB Type-C power delivery feature. Alldocube swapped the Celeron N3350 for a much faster Celeron N5100 processor, which should deliver adequate performance, especially when paired with 12GB memory and a 256GBSSDin lieu of the eMMC memory used in the previous iteration.
Any cons?The webcam has been downgraded to a 1-megapixel one, down from a 2-megapixel one. And if we’re picky, we would have preferred to get a better processor (Core i3, 11th generation) even if it added an extra $200 to the price. There’s no fingerprint reader orWindows 11Pro, which would have transformed it into a greatbusiness laptop.
Have you reviewed it?We’ve asked for a sample.
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Désiré has been musing and writing about technology during a career spanning four decades. He dabbled inwebsite buildersandweb hostingwhen DHTML and frames were in vogue and started narrating about the impact of technology on society just before the start of the Y2K hysteria at the turn of the last millennium.
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