Product Reviews

Packard Bell have obviously decided that their regular EasyNote laptops were just too monotonous. They've unleashed a trio of 'Limited Edition' machines that stand out from the crowd a bit more.

A lot more, actually. The whole case is bright white, but for a couple of accented strips down each side. These come in three colours, according to the type of EasyNote. There are Sunny Orange, Lime Green and Dark Chocolate to choose from, and our test unit was of the orange variety. This is the intermediate model, with a 15.4 inch screen, sandwiched between 12 and 17 inch options.

The white lid is interrupted only by a circular Packard Bell logo. This is perhaps not quite in tune with the bling styling (especially since it says 'Packard Bell', rather than 'Prada') but there's quite a bit more going on when you open the lid.

The trackpad, normally among the dullest features of a portable PC, is silver, shimmering and circular. It's the only thing that interrupts a bright strip slashed across the wrist rest, and with 'Limited Edition' written just below the keyboard, mercifully in a classy font, you can't miss the fact that this is not your bog-standard budget laptop.The keyboard is also white, although, for some reason, a slightly different shade to the rest of the casing. It feels light and cheap, but we found the springy keys easy enough to type on, although we missed the reassurance that better build quality would bring. A full numeric keypad has been squeezed in, unusually for a 15 inch machine, but the price for this is a slight narrowing of the keys, which is unnerving and makes for an awkward typing position.

Wheels of steel

That circular trackpad is easy to use and pretty responsive, although if you're used to a nippy mouse you may want to tinker with the settings in the Windows Control Panel to make the cursor move a bit faster. Annoyingly, the trackpad has no dedicated scroll function - something that's commonplace in ordinary rectangular pads these days - which makes wading through longer documents and web pages a more cumbersome and time-consuming task.

The mouse button, rather than being attached to the trackpad, hangs over the curved edge of the EasyNote, and can be clicked at either side to simulate a left or right click. Problematically, it's incredibly stiff to use, making a single click something of a chore and a double click a real effort. The screen is another area where build quality seems to have been sacrificed to the price tag. There's a worrying amount of flex to it, which means you'll have

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to be careful when taking the laptop out, even if it's in a padded bag.

And it doesn't look any better when you turn the laptop on and start using it. For a screen boasting 'Diamond View' technology that promises an exceptionally sharp picture, it proved very pale and vapid. The display was also noticeably lighter at the bottom than at the top, which made finding an optimum viewing angle difficult. Darker colours were well reproduced, but as colours got lighter they looked more washed-out. Edges were also blurry. In short, the EasyNote won't suit if you need an accurate screen for tasks like image editing. With basic jobs like word processing and web surfing, it's fine, but its limitations will be distracting if you try anything more complicated.

The internal specification is just as uninspiring as some of the exterior features. An Intel Core 2 Duo Mobile processor is a specially modified component that's been tailored for laptop use - to increase efficiency and reduce energy consumption, mostly - but the T5450 is at the bottom end of Intel's range, and this was reflected in our benchmark results. A 2D (general) score of 124% isn't bad at all, and means the EasyNote will cope fine with everyday tasks in Windows Vista, but compared to other recent machines at similar prices, it's lagging behind a little.

There's better news on the graphics front. The nVidia GeForce 8600M GS is a mid-range mobile graphics card, but it's a bonus to see any graphics card at all in a machine this affordable - many rely on integrated graphics, which snuffs out any hopes of gaming. The EasyNote managed a 3D score of 39%: modest, to be sure, but better than plenty of budget systems, and enough to make plenty of games playable if you're willing to turn down the detail levels.

Sunset strip

The orange stripes down the sides of the case coat a decent array of connections. Four USB ports provide plenty of opportunity to add peripherals, but three of them are located on the right-hand side and one at the back. We'd prefer them spread around more to avoid cables being dragged everywhere. An eSATA socket is an impressive inclusion that enables you to add a fast external hard disk if you need to bolster the 160GB of storage that's built in. If you're interested in using an external monitor or HDTV, the DVI-I and HDMI sockets will also appeal.

Built-in 802.11n WiFi is complemented by an Ethernet port for wired networking, and there's a webcam built into the bezel above the monitor. A card reader positioned on the left-hand side accepts most of the usual formats, which is very handy for digital camera users.

There's no doubt that the EasyNote will divide opinion. Some will love the stand-out design, which is more exuberant than the perennially silver MacBook line that tends to dictate laptop style. Others will find it too garish. What's inside, though, aside from a graphics card that's decent for this price range, is undeniably average. These components aren't well suited to running several demanding applications or getting into serious creative work, and there are better specified laptops available at a similar price.