Asus’ brand-new entertainment laptop, the M50SV, is notable for debuting not one, but two cutting-edge technologies. Not content with being powered by one of Intel’s first 45nm Penryn processors, it also has the first Nvidia GeForce 9000 series gaming chip we’ve seen at PC Authority. And all this is housed in a very stylish and desirable chassis.
The processor in question is a 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo T9300, one of the new family recently announced by Intel. The move to a 45nm fabrication process gives more scope for squeezing extra performance from the CPU without raising the power consumption (35W TDP). It also has a larger 6MB shared L2 cache and an 800MHz front side bus – a combination promising extremely quick performance.
It certainly didn’t disappoint. With 2GB of RAM to back it up, it scored 1.32 in our application benchmarks – hugely impressive and way ahead of every laptop we’ve seen before (bar Pioneer’s expensive, desktop processor-based whopper). Laptops based on the more common 65nm 2.4GHz T7700 processors can only manage around 1.15.
It’s harder to tell what impact the die-shrink has had on power drain, however. The M50SV gave us 2hrs 15mins of light-use battery life and a little over an hour under intensive conditions. This isn’t an unexpected result, as the battery’s capacity is just 4800mAh, but we’d have liked a bit more juice.
The graphics chip is new, even if it’s only Nvidia’s latest mid-range offering. The GeForce 9500M GS is more suited to video than hard-core gaming and didn’t quite manage playable frame rates at our lowest settings in Call of Duty 2. That said, older games will play fluidly. More interesting is the inclusion of an HDMI port. There’s no Blu-ray or HD DVD drive to really take advantage, but if you have downloaded video stored on your hard disk it will look great on an external HDTV.
The glossy finish of the M50SV adds a touch of real class that photos can’t do justice. And unlike most gloss finishes, fingerprints aren’t too noticeable. A full-sized keyboard makes daily use extremely comfortable, with a separate number pad on the right. The half-height Enter key is a minor fault, but we found little else to criticise. The touchpad is responsive, and the presence of a fingerprint reader and a TPM chip eases security concerns.
Our review model had a 15.4in 1280 x 800 screen, but when the M50SV goes on sale the resolution will go up to 1440 x 900. It’s a bit too reflective for use in an office, but at home the gloss finish really adds to the vibrancy of the picture. The backlight is even and colours appeared accurate throughout our testing. The lid feels strong, with a very small amount of give towards the hinge area, and there’s a rotating 1.3-megapixel webcam above the screen.
One area of disappointment is the speakers. Despite a large Dolby Home Theater logo above the keyboard, they sound far too tinny and lack bass punch. They’re certainly usable, but we wouldn’t want to watch a film using them.
For storage there’s a generous 250GB Seagate hard disk, and we like the inclusion of an eSATA port on the side for connecting an external drive. A media card reader supports Memory Stick, MMC and SD formats, plus there’s a mini-FireWire port and three well-positioned USB sockets. We’re always happy to see a physical wireless switch, and the M50SV has an adapter compatible with 802.11abg networks as well as draft-n. Infrared and Bluetooth adapters complete a full house of communications tools.
We can’t help feeling that the Asus M50SV has a bit of a split personality. It’s fast with applications, but not so hot as a gaming system; it has an HDMI port for entertainment but lacks a cutting-edge HD drive; it’s quite portable at 3kg but only offers a two-hour battery life.
That doesn’t mean the M50SV is a poor machine, though. If you need a laptop for mostly 2D applications, it’s a powerful, solid and stylish option at a very good price.
This Review appeared in the April, 2008 issue of PC & Tech Authority Magazine
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