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iBuypower M865TU

Katherine Stevenson — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:15:39 -0600

A 15-inch gaming notebook that holds its own in bigger company

From the looks of it, you probably wouldn’t figure iBuypower’s M865TU for a gaming notebook. Its aesthetic is much more subdued than typical representatives of that class. The chassis is covered in a subtly textured black plastic, with tasteful silver trim around the edges and the touch pad. Unlike other gaming notebooks, backlighting is limited to the power button and an unobtrusive iBuypower logo on the notebook’s lid. Furthermore, the 15-inch M865TU is smaller than many gaming rigs and has a more streamlined formfactor.

But despite its smaller stature and no-nonsense appearance, the M865TU’s got game. That’s courtesy of the Nvidia GTX 260M GPU under its hood. Based on a reworked G92 chip, which uses a smaller, faster process (55nm vs. 65nm) and features slightly higher clocks, the GTX 260M proves more capable than previous-generation G92 mobile parts. For example, the M865TU performed almost 30 percent better in Far Cry 2 and Call of Duty 4 than the 9800M GTX-equipped Qosmio X305 we reviewed in June, with scores of 31.3fps and 58.3fps, respectively, at the notebook’s 1680x1050 native res and the highest quality settings. (This month, we jettisoned the games we have previously used for notebooks reviews in favor of FC2 and CoD4, which are far more indicative of a GPU’s prowess—expect to see these titles integrated into our benchmark chart going forward.)

If not for the tell-tale glossy screen, you might mistake the staid M865TU for a business notebook.

In the applications department, the M865TU is also competent. The rig’s 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo Mobile helped it handily whoop our zero-point notebook in the benchmarks by 30-60 percent. Granted, the story changes when you compare the M865TU to quad-core machines. The Core 2 Quad Mobile part in the Qosmio X305, while clocked at just 2GHz, beat the M865TU by 13-18 percent in the benchmarks that scale with cores (Premiere, Photoshop, MainConcept), although lost to the M865TU in Photoshop by four percent. Naturally, the Core i7 AVADirect D900F (reviewed in September) was even more punishing, winning the multicore-optimized apps by upwards of 60 percent and even Photoshop by 38 percent. Of course, the D900F is a mammoth desktop-replacement rig that costs twice as much as the M865TU—it should dominate.

What we like about the M865TU is that it provides decent application performance, a marked improvement in single-card notebook gaming, and a more portable size and weight—it’s lighter by two or more pounds than other gaming notebooks we’ve tested recently. Sadly, its battery life isn’t much better than the pack’s, lasting just one hour and 40 minutes when playing a movie in power-saving mode. Oh, and the speakers suck.

Lenovo IdeaPad S12

Nathan Edwards — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:30:00 -0500

How big can a netbook get before it stops being a netbook?

The guts of the Lenovo IdeaPad S12 are virtually identical to the IdeaPad S10 that we reviewed back in 2008—1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 CPU, 1GB DDR2 RAM, 160GB HDD, and integrated Intel GMA950 graphics. The difference is the body. At 11.4 inches wide, this is one of the largest “netbooks” we’ve ever tested. The S12 has a 12.1-inch WXGA screen with a 1280x800 native resolution—far superior to the netbook-standard 1024x600, and much more usable. The glossy screen is impressively bright even at low LED-backlight levels.

The S12’s keyboard features large, comfortable keys and is a joy to type on, although as usual, Lenovo has mixed up where the Ctrl and Fn keys should be. The glossy black patterned lid and matte-black ABS frame make the S12 one of the best-looking and best-constructed netbooks we’ve ever tested, although the battery is a little wobbly and the lid is a fingerprint magnet. Both RAM and hard drive are easily accessible and upgradeable.

You'd be amazed how much difference a screen with decent resolution makes.

While some S12s ship with VIA’s Nano platform and an Ion-based version is in the works, ours came with a standard N270, and its performance reflected that. The S12 took 708 seconds to complete our Photoshop benchmark—about the same as the Lenovo S10 and Samsung NC10, two other N270-based netbooks. In Quake III, the S12 grabbed a respectable 60.9fps, slower than the 63.8fps the record-holding MSI Wind U123 managed with the same settings. The six-cell battery lasted a respectable four hours, 15 minutes in our rundown test.

The Lenovo IdeaPad S12 is not the fastest netbook we’ve ever tested, nor the smallest—but that isn’t the point. It’s a competent netbook in a much more usable formfactor. The higher screen resolution makes everything better—from browsing the web to editing photos and watching movies. And at a three pound, 6.5 ounce lap weight, it’s only a few ounces heavier than the Asus Eee 1000HE or MSI Wind U123—still light enough to throw in a bag and bring to the coffee shop.

Some might argue that a netbook with a 12-inch screen isn’t even a netbook anymore. We think they’re wrong. It’s still cheap (on the low end of $500) and portable, has great battery life, and the combination of a great screen and excellent keyboard means that folks who dismiss netbooks as too small to be usable have another thing coming.

Toshiba Portégé A605

Katherine Stevenson — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 13:00:00 -0500

A top-of-the-line ultraportable in lower-rent wrapping

In our August 2009 ultraportable notebook roundup we fell hard for Toshiba’s Portégé R600—the lightest, sleekest ultraportable notebook we’d ever tested. At $2,150, however, that notebook isn’t cheap.

This month we tested Toshiba’s more affordable ultraportable, the Portégé A605, to see how this consumer-class model compares with its fancier business-class kin.

In looks, the two machines are quite different. While the R600 wowed us with its silver, svelte stylishness, the A605 looks more commonplace. Inside and out, it’s adorned with that shiny black plastic you see everywhere these days, which looks really good… until you smudge it. Its keyboard, thankfully, has the same fingerprint-proof silver coating as the R600’s, and more importantly, sports the same full-size dimensions that make typing on it easy. The A605, which measures 11.3x8.8x1.2 inches, is close in size to the R600, just not as wafer-thin, and it’s a noticeable three-quarters of a pound heavier. Like the R600, the A605 offers a generous selection of ports and expandability options, including a USB/eSATA port (in addition to two standard USB ports), an ExpressCard slot, and an SD media reader.

One of the few features the A605 doesn't share with the elite Portégé R600 is a transflective screen. This one is still serviceable outdoors, however.

Inside, the R600 and A605 sport the same ultra-low-voltage 1.4GHz Intel Mobile Core 2 Duo proc, the same 3GB of DDR2/667 RAM, the same Intel GS45 chipset, and nearly the same DVD burner (the R600’s has a slimmer profile). Besides all that, the A605’s 320GB hard drive is double the capacity of the R600’s.

Not surprisingly, the two machines perform similarly, although the R600 did ever-so-slightly edge out the A605 in our benchmarks. Photoshop and ProShow are mostly CPU-bound, so it’s hard to explain the small gap in those scores. Perhaps the A605’s larger hard drive plays a part, or maybe extra baggage in Vista Home Premium (vs. Vista Business) is at fault. Other variables could explain why the A605’s battery pooped out just shy of four hours in our video rundown test while the R600’s lasted almost a half-hour longer.

Neither the R600 nor the A605 are the best-performing ultraportables we’ve tested. That honor goes to HP’s 2530p and Lenovo’s X200s (both also reviewed in August), which featured 1.86GHz Core 2 Duo procs. The R600 overcame this deficit with its near-weightlessness. The less-expensive A605 doesn’t have this special quality. It does, however, have respectable performance, a strong feature set, and a damn good price.

MSI Wind U123

Nathan Edwards — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:30:42 -0500

Large and in charge

MSI’s latest venture into the netbook market offers slightly faster performance than the rest of the netbooks we’ve tested with much longer battery life to boot, but the nine-cell battery that makes that possible sends the MSI Wind U123 into the heavyweight range. It makes us wonder: How heavy can a netbook become before it stops really being a netbook? Do we buy them for their formfactor or their performance? Or is it just the price?

The battery is the first thing we noticed about our Wind review unit. The dang thing juts from the back of the netbook, raising the back end more than an inch from horizontal and adding more than a pound to the total weight—making the lap weight three pounds, four ounces. But it’s worth it if battery performance is king. In our full-screen DVD-video battery rundown test, the U123 far outlasted the competition, achieving just over seven hours of playback. The previous netbook record was shared by two Eee PCs, the 901 and 1000HE, both of which clocked in at five and a half hours. This means a nine-cell-powered Wind U123 will likely get eight to nine hours of light usage on a single charge.

Battery life wasn’t the only area in which the Wind U123 outperformed the competition, though. In both Photoshop and our newly instituted Quake III benchmark, it squeaked out small but perceptible leads on the competition—beating our previous Photoshop winner, the Asus Eee 1000HE, by five percent, and running Quake III 5fps faster than the Samsung NC10.

If you don't mind a bit of junk in the trunk, the Wind U123's nine-cell battery will fast win you over.

The Wind U123’s internals are exactly what we’d expect from this newer generation of netbooks: 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280 CPU, 1GB DDR2/667 RAM, 160GB 5,400rpm hard drive, Bluetooth 2.0, and 802.11b/g wireless card. Its external features are similarly standard: three USB 2.0 ports, a multicard slot, VGA, audio in/out, and 10/100 Ethernet. The LED backlight on the Wind U123’s screen is one of the brightest we’ve seen on a netbook; at 60 percent it was brighter than the 1000HE at 100 percent.

MSI has outfitted the U123’s lid with a color scheme it calls Midnight Blue—we call it Sparkly Blue Fingerprint Magnet. The rest of the netbook is matte black and much more smudge-resistant, except for the LCD bezel and the area above the function keys, which are glossy black, and the touchpad buttons, which have a brushed-metal look. The touchpad itself is responsive, if a bit small; you have to download drivers if you want to enable touchpad scrolling. The keyboard is a standard scissor-switch mechanism keyboard, as opposed to the chiclet keys we’re used to seeing on netbooks these days, but it’s quite comfortable to type on, and is nearly full-size. Indeed, our only gripe is the same one we have with every MSI keyboard: the damn Function key is where the Ctrl key should be, and vice versa. This has screwed us up more times than the 1040-EZ.

The Wind U123 boasts user-upgradeable memory and hard drive, though it involves removing 10 screws and punching through a warranty sticker, then removing the entire bottom of the chassis. At least you don’t have to take the whole computer apart, as with the original Acer Aspire One, but it’s not exactly as simple as removing two screws and popping off a panel, à la the Asus Eee 1000HE.

The Wind U123 brings a lot of muscle to the netbook arena: It’s slightly faster and has a much longer battery life than any we’ve previously tested, though the nine-cell battery adds bulk to the otherwise sleek netbook. And the bright screen is sure to win fans. But there are certainly netbooks out there that are lighter, easier to upgrade, and offer similar performance, even if they can’t quite match the battery life.

AVADirect D900F

Katherine Stevenson — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:30:00 -0500

The highest-performing CPU isn't just for desktop rigs

When AVADirect offered to send us a Core i7 notebook, we said, hell yeah, and immediately cleared off space in the Lab—a lot of space, because the D900F not only sports a powerful desktop CPU but also the powerfully large proportions you’d expect from a desktop replacement. At 15.5x11.75x2.5 inches with a carry weight of nearly 15 pounds, the D900F is portable in only the loosest sense of the word. You certainly wouldn’t want to lug this thing around on a regular basis.

What it offers instead is the best damn applications performance we’ve ever seen from a notebook. That’s primarily due to the machine’s 3.33GHz Core i7-975 Extreme Edition proc, but the two 80GB Intel X25-M SSDs in RAID 0 no doubt also help. The closest-performing notebook we’ve tested—Lenovo’s W700 ThinkPad, with its 2.53GHz Core 2 Extreme Q9300—was more than 50 percent slower than the D900F in our Premiere Pro CS3 and Photoshop CS3 benchmarks, and more than 80 percent slower in ProShow Producer and MainConcept. Indeed, in all those tests, the D900F was within 10 percent of the 3.6GHz Velocity Micro desktop system that held our desktop benchmark records for months until Maingear’s 4GHz ePhex unseated it in August.

The D900F's Clevo body has no trouble accommodating the highest-performing Core i7--it ran Prime 95 for 24 hours without incident.

While the D900F isn’t intended to be a gaming notebook, per se, we’d expect a desktop replacement, particularly one at this price, to serve all of our needs, not just work chores. In our standard gaming benchmarks, the D900F blew away the competition—including notebooks with CrossFire graphics—in Quake 4, but performed only average in FEAR. We don’t hold its FEAR score against it as FEAR has grown increasingly unreliable and we’re retiring it this month. To gather more usable information, we also tested the D900F with Far Cry 2 and Call of Duty 4, where we achieved respectable frame rates of 34.5 and 68.9, respectively, with the resolution set to 1680x1050 (down from the native 1920x1200) and visual quality at the highest settings. The D900F likely wouldn’t satisfy the needs of a hardcore gamer, but then again, we don’t know of any mobile graphics solution that would.

Aiding its mission as a desktop replacement, the D900F is generously appointed for entertainment purposes. It’s equipped with a Blu-ray reader, the notebook’s four speakers put out good sound, the screen’s glossy surface adds vibrancy to movies and games, and the port selection includes HDMI, a front-mounted headphone jack, and a 7.1 channel S/PDIF output. There’s even a cable port (although our model was not equipped with a TV tuner card).

Those features along with useful others such as an ExpressCard slot, a media reader, a webcam, four USB ports, and eSATA make the D900F a well-rounded machine. Again, this isn’t the machine for a road warrior—besides being cumbersome, the D900F’s 12-cell battery couldn’t run a movie for much more than an hour on a full charge. But if space issues have you considering an alternative to a full desktop setup, or if you need a machine you can occasionally take with you, the D900F is a solid choice.

Fujitsu P8020

Katherine Stevenson — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 15:38:47 -0500

This small wonder fails to stand out in any one area

Fujitsu has been a pioneer in the notebook category, dating back to its P2000, one of the first ultraportables to feature an optical drive. In this roundup, however, the standard Fujitsu set is better implemented by its competitors.

At 10.75x8.25x1.5 inches, the P8020 has a slightly smaller footprint than the others, but, sadly, where that’s most apparent is in the keyboard. It’s surprising how less than a half-inch can change your typing experience, but we found the slightly smaller keys and key pad difficult to use. The P8020’s touchpad has the distinction of being multi-touch, meaning you can zoom in and out by pinching or separating your fingers, a moderately useful tool. We’d rather have multi-touch right-click, frankly.

At two pounds, 13.8 ounces, the P8020 is light but feels well-constructed, although there’s some flex to the body and display cover. The entire unit is matte black, save the glossy black lid. Fingerprints on this surface are of course inevitable, but the lid also picked up a scratch after minimal use.

The glossy finish of the P8020's display enclosure is matched by a glossy screen.

The P8020 is no thinner than the X200s and 2530p, but Fujitsu opted for the same ULV 1.4GHz processor found in the R600 and paired it with 2GB of RAM—there’s easy access to an empty DIMM slot on the underside of the notebook should you want more memory. Storage is handled by a 64GB SSD. (A 128GB SSD will run you $200 more, while hard drive options ranging from 160GB to 320GB will save you from $200 to $300.)

The SSD has the advantage of being more durable than an HDD, but we’d prefer more capacity, especially since the Toshiba-brand MLC drive in the P8020 doesn’t offer any performance advantage—it had an average read speed of 67.2MB/s in HD Tach, which isn’t dramatically better than the 52.1MB/s of the R600’s 160GB HDD. In fact, the P8020 fared worse than the R600 in all the benchmarks except battery life. That’s not to say it didn’t perform satisfactorily. The P8020 has the chops for productivity and content-creation purposes; it can certainly serve for typical day-to-day use.

In terms of ports and slots, the P8020 matches the other notebooks in this roundup—although it features PC Card rather than Express Card technology, which doesn’t really limit your expansion options but does seem quaint.

In the end, the P8020 suffers most from the caliber of the competition. Taken as a whole, the P8020 is a competent machine, with a wealth of features packed into its wee formfactor. But with other ultraportables costing the same or less while offering superior qualities and/or features, the P8020 can’t help but seem average by comparison.

<< Back to the Ultraportable Index

Toshiba Portege R600

Katherine Stevenson — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 13:40:14 -0500

The ultimate in ultraportability

If you think of HP’s 2530p as a strapping workhorse of an ultraportable, Toshiba’s R600 is like a stylish, sophisticated cousin—and we were quickly smitten with its charms. The R600 shares much in common with Toshiba’s R500, but with improvements to its build quality and structure. At 11.1x8.5x0.8 inches and a weight of two pounds, six ounces, the R600 is so thin and light as to seem ethereal. There’s some flex to the magnesium-alloy case when you lift the notebook by one corner and some bendiness to the display enclosure, but the notebook doesn’t feel fragile.

And svelte as it is, the R600 is packed with features. It offers a healthy array of ports, including an SD media reader, an ExpressCard/54 slot, and three USB ports—one of which doubles as eSATA and can even be used for charging devices when the notebook is off. Amid all that is a DVD burner, as well as a volume dial.

Despite its wafer-thinness, the R600 is equal to its peers in features.

The R600’s keyboard is full-size and feels firm during use, and it’s paired with a conventional touchpad. And unique to all the other notebooks here, the R600’s 1280x800 screen is transflective, so the backlight can be turned off in favor of bright natural light when using the notebook outdoors, which can preserve battery power. A button at the upper-right of the keyboard lets you toggle between the two states. When we tried using the screen outdoors, we found the feature most effective when the sun was shining directly on the screen. Fortunately, battery life with the LCD is strong; sporting a 6-cell battery like the other notebooks here, the R600 kept pace with the pack, lasting four hours and 17 minutes while playing continuous video.

With a notebook as thin as this, you can expect some compromises in processing power. The R600 can’t weather the thermals of even a low-voltage proc, so it’s equipped with an ultra-low-voltage 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Mobile, which puts out just 10W TDP (thermal design power) vs. the 17W of an LV part. The 400MHz clock-speed differential between this and the 1.86GHz procs was apparent in the benchmark scores, but the R600’s performance was still acceptable, and it can handle general computing chores effortlessly. It can even run Quake 3 at 107fps, for what that’s worth. Our model came with a 160GB HDD, with movement detection to protect the drive (a 128GB SSD can be had for a whopping $850 extra).

Another consequence of the R600’s slim proportions is that its internal components aren’t easily accessible. Only a single hatch can be removed from the notebook’s underside, exposing a single DIMM—another module resides deeper in the machine on the motherboard.

Be that as it may, the Toshiba R600 stands out above the other notebooks here with its supreme portability, while still offering comparable features, a quality build, and a stylish appearance.

<< Back to the Ultraportable Index

HP 2530p

Katherine Stevenson — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 12:12:12 -0500

A small machine that was meant to be manhandled

The first word that comes to mind when you pick up HP’s 2530p is “solid.” From its heft, to its construction, to its scratch-resistant anodized aluminum display enclosure and palm rest, this notebook seems eminently rugged. HP claims that the 2530p has passed a battery of Mil-Spec tests including 26 drops from different angles at a distance of 30 inches, but we didn’t have the stomach to verify that. We will say the notebook seems up to the rigors of heavy use and regular transport. The price of this sturdiness is added weight—at three pounds, 12.7 ounces, the 2530p weighs about a pound more than the other notebooks in this roundup, although it doesn’t feel cumbersome. We’re more bothered that the battery protrudes from the notebook’s 11.1x8.5x1.5-inch body by almost an inch.

The 2530p’s keyboard feels as solid as the body, with a conventional key layout, full-size keys, and both TrackPoint and touchpad options. Small nubbins just above the palm rest ostensibly prevent the keys from abrading the screen when the notebook is shut. Like the X200s, the 2530p sports a keyboard light. An LED-lit touch-sensitive volume slider above the keypad would be handy if it weren’t so twitchy. Teleconferencers will like that the 2530p features a 2MP webcam (vs. the typical 1.3MP) and a dual-array mic. Most everyone will like the notebook’s full complement of ports and slots—our only complaint is that there are just two USB ports.

Included software lets you use the 2530p's webcam to take snapshots of business cards and transfer the info to Outlook.

Under the hood, the 2530p boasts the same low-voltage 1.86GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Mobile CPU found in Lenovo’s X200s, combined with 3GB of DDR2/800MHz—HP says it will switch to DDR3 when performance benefits warrant the price premium—and Intel’s record-setting SSD. The drive is a less-common 1.8-inch formfactor, with an 80GB capacity. (If your storage needs exceed this limit, HP offers a 160GB 5,200rpm HDD option for $200 less or you can swap out the notebook’s DVD burner for MultiBay storage of varying capacities.)

Tinkerers will appreciate that the 2530p offers more access to its innards than any of the other notebooks here, with easy access to one of the notebook’s DIMMs, two Express card slots—one occupied by a Wi-Fi card, the other wired and ready for EVDO—a Bluetooth radio, and the drive bay.

While the 2530p had a very good showing in the benchmarks, performing neck-and-neck with the X200s, we were surprised it wasn’t faster. We thought the read speed of the SSD, which averages 180MB/s in HD Tach, would give the 2530p a marked advantage in the Photoshop and ProShow tests, but that wasn’t the case. Perhaps the X200s’s 1,066MHz RAM helped level the playing field. Nevertheless, the 2530p proved to be plenty capable of performing a variety of chores and its 6-cell Li-ion battery gave us more than four hours of uninterrupted use in our video run test.

If you’re looking for an ultraportable solution that gets the job done and requires no babying, the HP 2530p is that product.

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iBuypower M865TU

A 15-inch gaming notebook that holds its own in bigger company

Lenovo IdeaPad S12

How big can a netbook get before it stops being a netbook?

Toshiba Portégé A605

A top-of-the-line ultraportable in lower-rent wrapping

MSI Wind U123

Large and in charge

AVADirect D900F

The highest-performing CPU isn't just for desktop rigs

Fujitsu P8020

This small wonder fails to stand out in any one area

<< Back to the Ultraportable Index

Lenovo ThinkPad X200s

HP 2530p

Toshiba Portege R600

Toshiba Portege R600

The ultimate in ultraportability

<< Back to the Ultraportable Index

Lenovo ThinkPad X200s

HP 2530p

Fujitsu P8020

HP 2530p

A small machine that was meant to be manhandled

<< Back to the Ultraportable Index

Lenovo ThinkPad X200s

Toshiba Portege R600

Fujitsu P8020