- Hey guys, this is Austin.
Inside this box is either
one of the best laptop deals
that I've ever seen,
or something that you
should avoid at all costs.
So, you may remember a
video I did last year
on the Walmart gaming laptop.
It was a decent laptop with some issues.
However, there was a huge backlash
and it got severely slashed in price.
Now, this time around, Walmart's like,
"Oh no, that's fine,
everyone forgot about that."
So, they've created their
own brand of gaming laptops
called Motile, Motile, mottle? (beeps)
So, if you take a look at the specs,
there's a lot going for this.
But what really makes it
interesting is the price.
So, when this launched,
it came out at $500.
Not bad, but also not particularly great.
However, recently, this
is available for $300,
which is a pretty excellent deal,
except that a few days later,
when I purchased it, it was $400.
So, I dunno exactly how
to review this thing.
If it's a $200 laptop,
it's amazing, it's great.
$300, it's awesome.
At $600 or $500 though, it's
a little bit harder to say.
What I'm really curious about
is what exactly have they
done this time around?
Because there's a lot of stuff
which looks very cool on this.
So, you can see, Motile is a
trademark of Walmart Apollo,
which I'm not sure exactly what Apollo is,
but this is definitely a
Walmart-specific brand.
What was the last one,
Overpowered is what they
called their gaming laptops?
So I guess they've, OP, yeah, of course.
So, now they've moved onto Motile.
So, it's got a decent power brick.
It does have an old school barrel plug,
but whatever, that's not important.
What I'm curious about is the laptop,
which is immediately very thin.
So, they advertise this
as a performance laptop.
And with the Ryzen inside,
it is actually supposedly
a pretty powerful laptop,
given that they spec it out right.
There are a lot of things you can do here,
which will negatively
impact for performance.
It seems like it's got a decent
selection of ports at least,
USB-C, USB-A, HDMI.
We've got another couple of
USB ports, as well as ethernet.
All right, that's cool.
Oh, oh that's, (laughs)
in case you're curious,
(laughing) it comes with THX.
You know what, it actually
looks pretty unique though.
I mean, I actually like
the black surround.
It also does have a
Windows Hello IR camera.
The keyboard, it looks nice, let's see.
(keys clacking) Oh, that's not bad.
It's a little bit low travel,
but something that's
really jumping out to me
is this feels incredibly lightweight.
Supposedly, this is
also a backlit keyboard.
So far, even at the $400 I spent on it,
I'm actually really happy with this.
There we go.
All right, see what's inside
our Walmart mystery laptop.
Wow, that is, that's metal (clanging)
Oh, what, there's a few
things that jump out to me.
First of all, is the fact
that we do have an M.2 drive,
although actually, is that?
That might be SATA. I'm
not sure if that's SATA.
No, that is SATA.
Okay, so we have a 256
gig SATA drive, fine.
It is nice that we have
a secondary M.2 slot,
but beyond that, there's some
really questionable decisions.
First of all, there's this huge gap here,
which seems like it's meant
for something like an SSD
or another hard drive, but it's empty.
There's no port to actually
plug it in, which is bizarre.
The cooling seems to be
maybe not the greatest,
just a single heat pipe
to what looks to be a fairly small fan.
But the bigger problem is if
I lift up this little flap,
you'll see that there's only
a single eight gig DIMM here.
I just realized something.
So, we have our eight
gigs of RAM right here,
perfectly fine, no problem.
But if you wanna install
more memory in dual-channel,
which as it's a Ryzen system,
you should absolutely do,
the SSD's in the way.
So, you actually can't run
dual-channel memory and dual SSDs.
You have to pick one or the other.
I'm actually gonna double check this,
but if I uninstall our standard SSD.
These are the world's cheapest screws.
They're all stripping. Well,
I would love to be able
to pull that SSD out and show you,
but I think the idea is that
if you wanna upgrade this,
you need to take advantage
of an NVMe SSD on this side
and put in extra RAM.
That's, I've never seen
something like this.
That's such a dumb decision,
'cause there's no way
the extra channel of
memory would fit there.
- [Ken] So, I found
something on this laptop.
- What do you mean, you found something?
- [Ken] So, try to change
the wallpaper on it.
- Okay, Windows isn't activated.
Are you, are you serious right now?
You're trying to tell me that
Walmart is selling a laptop
without a real copy of Windows on it?
I refuse to believe that.
No, that's not, that's not a real thing.
Detecting activation problems.
Wait, wait, wait, you
might just be wrong, Ken.
It might just activate.
What's the problem, huh?
What's the problem?
We've activated, see,
you got me all excited.
You're like, "Oh, it's not real,"
and then it just, it was one click.
That being said, it is very strange that
that was not done out of the box.
However, Windows is fine.
We've also got eight
gigs of single-channel,
2400 megahertz memory, which
as I've already discussed,
is pretty much the absolute bare minimum,
especially with a Ryzen.
Not only does that make a
difference to the graphics,
obviously, you're almost
halving your performance there,
but it also slows down the CPU.
Generally speaking, Ryzen definitely needs
dual-channel memory and the
fastest stuff you can get.
So, if we were willing to
kinda reorder that SSD,
move it over, or get a NVMe drive,
bump this up to 16 gigs of fast memory,
would cause a huge, huge
bump to performance.
I'll say having Windows Hello
for facial recognition is a big plus.
The keyboard, I think, is fine,
especially considering that it's backlit.
Let's try that THX action.
We have our spatial audio demo.
So, they're saying that
spatial audio is better,
but I think the spatial audio
is just purely an app running.
Yeah, it's just headphones.
So, there's this thing called bass.
It exists, and it makes things sound cool
when they're actually not.
I know they're very happy
to put THX branding this.
I'm sure they're very happy to say
that the display was tuned by THX.
I don't think that matters whatsoever.
I'm gonna move on with the
rest of this wonderful laptop.
So, while I get a couple of
things installing on the Motile,
let me introduce you to the
best competitor to this,
the Acer Aspire 5.
Now, this is something that
we did a video on last year,
and there's a lot going for it,
and it's actually fairly
similar in a lot of categories.
So, at about $330, you're getting Ryzen 3,
four gigs of RAM, and a 128 gig SSD.
Now, that might sound like
a little bit less powerful,
however, actually, Walmart
sells a version of the motile
with that almost exact same spec.
And right now, they're
selling it for $349.
So, it's broadly sort of similar.
And there are actually, obviously,
a lot of advantages to
going with the Acer,
but all that being said,
as many problems as I found
with this Walmart laptop,
there were definitely some things
which are very much a redeeming quality.
First of all, the screen.
Yes, I know, the tuned by THX
thing is kind of overrated,
and no, it's not the greatest
screen I've ever seen.
It's 14 inches, 1080p,
it's a matte finish.
It gets reasonably bright.
Honestly, for this three
to $400 price category,
I have zero complaints.
It's actually really nice.
Now, if you were to spec the Acer
to the same degree as the Walmart laptop,
it actually becomes a pretty decent deal.
So, we're talking Ryzen
5, eight gigs of RAM,
and a 256 gig SSD costs
you $500 on the Acer side.
Not unreasonable, considering
this is significantly cheaper
at the moment and has been
a lot cheaper in the past,
it actually starts to look pretty good.
I mean, again, that screen is great,
and a lot of the hardware
actually feels, to me,
even though it's not
incredibly well built,
it almost reminds me
slightly of the LG Gram
in that is a very lightweight laptop
that's kind of surprising.
I don't know what to say
here 'cause I'm torn.
On one hand, it's from a
company which Walmart may
or may not decide to
dissolve in like 30 seconds.
It also has some
legitimately poor decisions,
I would say, in its configuration.
But, if you were to say, pick
this laptop up from cheap,
swap out the RAM and add an SSD,
an M.2 SSD as opposed to
the one that's inside,
move things around,
you actually would have
what I think is pretty solid system.
And especially considering that this thing
will ping pong between three and $500,
if you get it toward that
$300 side of the spectrum,
it's actually a legitimately good deal.
- [Ken] And most
importantly, no bloatware.
- I, personally, much prefer
the sort of fit and (coughs)
I prefer, (exhaling)
I prefer the fit and finish
of the Walmart laptop.
I will say one thing though,
I nearly stripped two screws
while trying to open this up
and replace the SSD, which does
not fill me with confidence
on the fact that while
you should upgrade it,
you actually would be able to.
So, it's a little bit of a hard sell.
But generally speaking, it's not bad.
I thought I was gonna
tear this thing apart.
I thought it was gonna be terrible.
This is actually a legitimately
pretty decent laptop.
Is the fan running at 100% as
I install Fortnite right now,
fort right, right now, Fortnite right now?
Yes it is.
Am I going to continue the video
as if I didn't accidentally
say the wrong thing?
Yes, I am going to do that.
This is not great.
Okay so, this is why you want
dual-channel memory in your laptop.
So, even at 720p medium, we're struggling.
We're hitting 30, but
it's a very jittery 30.
Look man, there's a lot
to like with this laptop,
but if you buy it, you should
not use it as it is right now.
You should upgrade the RAM for sure,
and realistically, you
probably want an M.2 SSD
to fill up that second slot,
'cause the way they've configured it,
it just doesn't make a lot of sense.
If you're not gaming, it's fine,
but what Walmart has done with this,
is they're absolutely taking
a standard white label laptop chassis,
they're customizing a little bit,
and they're selling it
under their Motile brand.
Now, do you trust that Walmart
will continue to make this
laptop and support it, maybe?
If you get it for a great price,
I do think that this is a no-brainer,
but the problem is, is
whether or not you trust
that this company's
even going to be around
and whether this laptop
will continue to hold up.
It's cool, it's
interesting, it's different,
and it could be a great price,
or they might double the price tomorrow,
so it's kinda hard to recommend.
However, I'm curious,
what do you guys think
about the Walmart laptop?
Let me know in the comments
below. I will have a link to it,
if I can find it, in the description,
if they haven't discontinued it
by the time this video goes live,
which will be not good, I guess.
I'd probably have to make
a new video after that.
(upbeat music)
