The NEC Versa M540 is a mixed bag, with middle of the road benchmarks and a high gloss display well suited to watching movies, but not the best for gaming.
Despite the Pentium-M 2GHz processor under the bonnet, there are few real standout features that put this ahead of the pack. And this probably isn’t helped by the fact the processor is accompanied by the older Intel 855GME chipset – most of the units in this roundup are built around the Intel 915PM chipset, which supports PCI Express.
There’s no sign of Bluetooth, Gigabit Ethernet, infrared, 802.11a or a Wi-Fi button. Likewise on the entertainment front, there are no multimedia buttons, volume buttons or anything else to really grab the entertainment crowd.
There is one thing that this notebook offers, however, that shows it’s intended to stand apart from a standard notebook and that’s the high gloss display and, despite the ordinary sound quality, a subwoofer speaker on the bottom of the unit.
Compared to your every day notebook, this does cast this NEC as a multimedia unit, but compared to some of the behemoths we’ve reviewed this month, the Versa M540 doesn’t stand out from the bunch. Digging through the box we were impressed to find a Windows XP Pro installation disc – something you don’t always get from multi-national vendors – and very handy if you’re fond of rebuilding your computers every now and then. Overall, this notebook demands a premium for the speedy Pentium M 2GHz processor, but it doesn’t follow up on the features-front.
This article appeared in the August, 2005 issue of PC Authority.
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