Wrapped in an attractive silver chassis, this sexy looking notebook is easy on the eye, and features all of the latest gadgets. The left-hand side of the machine features the usual legacy parallel and DB9 monitor out for use with an external monitor, although both are hidden beneath a rubber cover so as not to ruin the smooth clean lines of this housing. Also docked here are two more USB ports and the 3.5mm audio sockets. Located on the right is a single PCMCIA for card expansion, 4-pin FireWire, single USB port, slimline DVD combo drive and an integrated SD memory card reader compatible with MP3 players and digital cameras. The latter is great for entertainment and power users on the move and removes the need to lug around external memory card readers.
Due to the reasonably sized footprint of this notebook, it features an evenly spaced and comfortable to work on keyboard, a big plus in our eyes. Unlike many of the other notebooks we have seen of late, this unit doesn’t feature any shortcut buttons at the top of the keyboard, instead opting for just the power and two independent volume controlling buttons, which doesn’t detract from the clean layout.
Running the notebook through its paces with our usual benchmarking suite, it returned slightly disappointing scores for a machine of this calibre, with only 161 overall SYSmarks although PCmark04 results were positive at 3,132 overall. Its 3Dmark01SE score was more in line with the sort of performance we expected, due largely to the 64MB RADEON 9600 built into this powerhouse package. Scoring a very reasonable 8,784 marks, it’s capable of providing a very comfortable gaming experience or DVD movie watching care of the DVD-ROM/CDR-W combo drive.
Unfortunately we were unable to give the unit a work over under Batterymark02 to ascertain what sort of performance it offers as a Centrino. From what we’ve already seen, this unit still offers very reasonable value for the cost.
Sure, it’s not the cheapest notebook on the market, but for the money and hardware grunt, we think it’s a compelling package nonetheless.