Throwback to 2011, the country’s first ever laptop brand, Doel, left a sour taste in the mouth for most Bangladeshi consumers. Coupled with limited stock and sub-par hardware specification, it perfectly showcased why international laptop brands were superior.
When Walton entered the local laptop market couple of years ago, it wasn’t much of a different scenario. However, with the release of the Walton Prelude N5000, we might need to get our perceptions regarding our local laptop makers rechecked.
The Looks
Gone are the days when Walton laptops looked like things straight outta 1990s. The Walton Prelude N5000 packs a very decent look, and looks kind of similar to slightly dated entry level Dell laptops. The build quality of the laptop is pretty solid as well. On the front you will notice a 14.0-inch HD Matte LED Backlit Display with 45% NTSC color accuracy. The bezels around the screen are rather big and noticeable, but nothing to complain here, considering the price tag on this machine. There is also a 1MP HD webcam present, which I personally liked a lot. Big props to Walton for the 1MP HD webcam, mainly because of the numerous online sessions everyone has to attend in COVID era and anything below 1MP just won’t do these days. Next is the more unique and limited to Walton, type feature you would notice on this laptop. Which is, the Bijoy Bangla keyboard, which you won’t find on any laptop available on the market. But, one complaint I had regarding the keyboard was about the spacing between keystrokes and that unusual travel distance, which made me uncomfortable while typing.
Under the Hood
The Prelude N5000 is the only laptop under not only under 25k, but under 30k, to use the quad core Intel® Pentium® Silver N5000 processor (1.1GHz-2.7Ghz). The low power consumption Intel® Pentium® Silver processor does not require air cooling; hence any sort of fan noise is non-existential. The low power consumption also adds more time to the battery life. Speaking of battery, it packs a removable 31WH Lithium-Ion battery pack which can provide 5 to 6 hours battery backup depending on your use. The 4GB DDR4-2400MHz RAM is more than enough to get your work done smoothly, while the laptop does offer another slot for expanding the overall RAM to 8GB. For storage, it comes in two variants, a 1TB HDD and the other, which I personally prefer, is the 256GB SSD. At this price point, an SSD is an added delight. For those who will end up with the SSD version, expect a read speed and write speed of nearly up to 500MB/s compared to just 30 to 40MB/s of a traditional HDD. Other than these key hardware specifications, you can find 3 USB ports, 1 of them being a type C; headphone and microphone jack; card reader; HDMI port and weirdly, a VGA port; something I haven’t seen on any laptop since 2010.
Performance
In terms of raw performance, the Intel® Pentium® Silver N5000 processor can be compared with an Intel® Core™ i3-7100U. It can do majority of your essential tasks with ease. Unfortunately, the built in Intel® UHD Graphics 605 graphics card won’t give you the luxury of playing latest and greatest games. Only AAA games from pre-2014 might be playable with moderate fps. Overall, its performance is pretty good for most of the task. However, under heavy load you will experience sluggish performance.
Biggest Selling Point
The Walton Prelude N5000 has the looks and specs, but so does many of its alternatives. Then what makes it the best option amongst the crowd? It’s price! Although listed at 25k on Daraz, you will find discount codes for the laptop all around the year. Which reduces its price to just around 24k, but that’s not the lowest price you can buy the Prelude N5000 for! Walton and Daraz are constantly discounting the Prelude N5000 on difference occasions, and the lowest price seen for this laptop so far is 21k. So, if you are luck and not in a hurry, camp up and wait for the discount campaigns and hog this laptop for just 21k; however if you are in a hurry, you can get it right now for as low as 24k on Daraz.