CeBIT 2010 First-hand: Gigabyte shows off the latest M1305 and M1405

The docking stations have much more power this time

It has not been long since the motherboard manufacturing giant Gigabyte forayed into the red hot notebook business, and their related core competency ensured that they do well here too. Once their first booktop concept was appreciated, the Taiwanese giant recently unveiled the M1305. Bjorn Froehling of Gigabyte showed us two interesting new booktops, which the manufacturer wants to be listed on the German market before the end of April.

The M1305

The M1305 has a very sophisticated white and black combination. The notebook is white except the area extending onwards the LED indicators right above the keyboard. This excessive white shade poses the danger of the system getting dirty easily though. This is a slightly different booktop in the way the docking station doesnot actually keep it upright; it rather attaches itself to the back of the notebook. It has the usual connectivity ports you’ll find on the notebook, so when the notebook is connected, you have more than two sets of almost everything. The docking solution provides for the display ports HDMI-, DVI- And VGAPort. Thus, the user can operate up to 5 displays on M1405/M1305. At the BookTop docking are still 6 USB and an Ethernet port.

On the inside, an Intel Core 2 Duo processor SU7300 (with a clocking speed of 1.3 or 1.6GHz options, 3MB L2 cache and 800MHz FSB) breathes along with a Mobile Intel GS45 Express, with the graphics capabilities of the Nvidia Geforce GT220 with 1GB DDR3 memory when connected to the docking station (an Intel GMA 4500MHD without it). It comes with up to 4GB of RAM and 2.5-inch SATA HDD with up to 500GB of storage space. As the name suggests, the M1305 features a 13.3-inch LED Backlit LCD widescreen with a resolution of 1366x768 pixels. The 3.5G antenna is built-in. An interesting stuff with the M1305 is that the webcam supports encrypting technology which lets one lock the system by face recognition. The fingerprint reader is in the middle of the two mouse buttons present below the touchpad.

The M1305 comes with a 6 cell 3800mAh Li-Lion battery with a promised life of 6 to 6.5 hrs. When the notebook is dislodged, there is space for a 2^nd Li-Polymer 3-cell 2550mAh battery.

The M1405

The 14-inch Booktop is powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo or a Celeron ULV Processor, along with a Mobile Intel GS45 Express chipset, and the Intel GMA 4500MHD graphics chip (Docking Station includes NVIDIA GeForce GT220 DDRIII 1GB VGA Card). It is similar to the M1305 in look and configuration except the size and the silver and blue colors replacing white in the M1305 – and a few more. Being a 14-inch display panel, the system can give you a better 16:9 aspect ratio than the M1305. It is a WXGA screen with a resolution of 1366x768 pixels. It also has a less powerful primary battery (6-cell 3600mAh), but the second battery is same. I’m not sure if you can get the 3800mAh one here. This 1.65kg machine has a dimension of 328.3(W) x 230(D) x 27.6(H) mm.

Gigabyte Q1585N

We got to know of another product that Gigabyte is planning to release this year – the Gigabyte Q1585N. This one comes with a 3D panel, which like the Acer 3D notebook, can let you watch a 3D video. It is not certain whether it has the same polarization principle like in Acer, or owes to the shutter glasses and 120 Hz panel technology of Nvidia. Anyway, this notebook will feature a 15.6-inch display panel, along with a Core i5 540 processor and GT 335M graphics chip.