Labs

With slightly more budget to play with, Asus has nonetheless taken the same decision as MSI and chosen a lower-cost processor from Intel's rival, AMD. But it's opted for a more up-to-date chip, the Turion TL52. Like Intel's Core Duo, this is a dual-core chip, handling more instructions at once for better performance. It's also ready for new 64-bit software as it

Given the Turion's clock speed of 2.0GHz - the joint highest here - performance was disappointing. The Asus dragged its heels to a 2D score of 103%, but did manage to take advantage of the low-power processor to achieve an impressive battery life of four hours and 35 minutes.

Our 3D games test gave the Asus an opportunity to redeem itself. You can't expect a laptop at this price to run the latest 3D games playably, and only four of these models even completed the benchmark. The Asus was one of them, and came second with 7.6 frames per second (fps). You couldn't actually play a game at that speed, but it'll cope if you turn the detail levels right down.

The screen is fairly bright, though it lacks the Gateway's sharpness, and the 1.3-megapixel webcam in the bezel is a nice touch. We'd be happy to use the Asus,but there are livelier laptops here.