Labs

Squeezing components into a small chassis is what adds a premium to the price of an ultraportable notebook, but you also pay extra if the screen size is above the standard 15.4in. We expected Hi-Grade's 17in to balance that cost by scrimping on core components or battery life. But we were wrong.

Inside the huge frame sits a 1.86GHz Core 2 Duo T2350 - not a spectacular choice at first glance, but coupled with 2GB of RAM it helped the Hi-Grade to an impressive 0.83 in our benchmarks. This puts it ahead of all but the Advent, and the 12% performance gain over the Toshiba demonstrates the benefit of that extra gigabyte of memory.

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Ultinote also features a 160GB hard disk for all your music and videos, and you can enjoy the latter on the 17in screen, the only one here with a resolution of 1,440 x 900. It isn't as bright as we'd like, but it's sharp and, for a glossy screen, it isn't too reflective. The speakers are loud, although not quite up there with the superb Toshiba, and offer just enough bass to enjoy a movie or two, plus there's a handy volume dial on the right side of the machine. Best of all, though, is that we got nearly five hours from the battery when idle.

Then there's the Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11a/b/g wireless and a DVD writer that can write dual-layer discs at 6x. A card reader for the major formats and an ExpressCard/54 slot sit on the left side of the chassis, which is much thinner than you might expect when open. We'd have liked the keyboard to make better use of the full width of the body, but it's comfortable to use, with no reduced-size or out-of-position keys.

We were amazed that Hi-Grade sent in a 17in model for such a low budget, but our initial apprehension was soon quashed. If portability isn't a priority, the Ultinote A9800R offers a blend of power and features that no other model here can match.