It’s been a while since NEC has sent us a notebook and we were instantly impressed with this one. It’s clear some effort has gone into the styling and the build quality is very good. The lid can flex under force but it should protect the 15.4in screen from most bangs and knocks. Metallic mouse buttons and trim along with a black glossy screen bezel all contrive to make a stylish notebook that would suit regular consumers and businesses alike.

A glossy coating attempts to enrich the slightly subdued colours but our main gripe is the relatively-low brightness. It also has a speckled, crystalline appearance meaning whites aren’t pure. However, we weren’t distracted. Viewing angles also aren’t great – horizontally they’re fine but if you’re not looking directly at the screen, the vertical viewing angles make some parts look darker than others. This all said, lag was minimal and we enjoyed watching HD films and playing Far Cry on it.

Other ergonomics were impressive. Some may find the keyboard stiff but it’s generally comfortable and the mouse is refined and responsive. The speakers sound great for a notebook: they get loud and a subwoofer offers some punch. A remote control, which hides in the Express Card slot means it’s really good for multimedia.

Under the bonnet is a 1.83GHz T2400 Core Duo processor, 1GB of RAM and a generous 100GB hard disk. These combined to generate an impressive score of 0.92: just eight percent behind our performance desktop PC. Gamers are also catered for thanks to a Mobility X1600 graphics chip. The integrated 128MB memory struggled with our Call of Duty 2 textures in our medium test (6fps) but improved markedly with our low settings (19fps). Far Cry was consistently playable with 38.3fps at low settings and 25.6fps at medium. In short, it plays games.

Indeed NEC hasn’t left much out, there’s 802.1a/b/g WLAN, mini FireWire, four USB 2 ports, DVI and S-Video out and even a 3.5mm S/PDIF connector next to two audio jacks on the front. Bluetooth is listed but was absent from our review unit. The optical drive is a dual-layer DVD writer that supports DVD-RAM.

The battery lasted only 59 minutes in our intensive test and one hour 51 minutes in our light use and this, with it’s 2.9kg weight means it’s not the most portable and you can’t work away from the mains or watch a film on battery power. The warranty is only one year RTB but we can’t fault the value on offer. The Dell 6400 may offer a better screen and battery, but this cheaper model looks better, offers better all-round performance and better features. As such it becomes our mid-range notebook of choice.