Product Reviews

The Tourbook 5102 is the latest creation from Systemax, a company behind some of the best value notebooks we've seen. And this is its best yet, benefiting from Centrino technology but priced at just £999.

The 1.6GHz Pentium-M processor helped the Tourbook to 1.37 in our 2D benchmark suite, so it's a good overall performer. Just note that, with 1.01 in the multimedia portion of our tests, it isn't the prime choice for audio or video work. Systemax sensibly provides 512MB of PC2100 RAM to keep Windows flowing, and there's a generous 60GB hard disk to look after storage. But the biggest bonus considering the price is a DVD writer, capable of burning DVD-R and DVD-RW discs at 2.4x.

The Tourbook is suited to games thanks to its ATi Radeon 9600 graphics chip, and its score of 9,375 in 3DMark2001 SE indicates it will even cope with DirectX 9 releases. Thankfully, the screen deals well

The keyboard also makes life easier, with an excellent layout, a separated cursor group and control keys on the outside edge. Our big criticism is that it lacks solidity, flexing noticeably across the key range, but we still found it quite pleasant to use.

Of more concern is the flimsy lid, so you should invest in a decent carry case if you intend to use the Tourbook on your travels. It also feels heavier than its slimline design might suggest, although at 2.8kg it's far lighter than most sub-£1,000 laptops. And if you do carry the Tourbook around then its battery life won't disappoint, lasting for just under four-and-a-half hours in our light-use test.

To top it all off, the back is well stocked with ports, offering parallel, three USB 2 ports and FireWire. The side has infrared, a Type II PC Card and a SD card slot. There are also VGA and S-Video outs for hooking up external screens. Finally, in addition to the V.92 modem and 10/100 Ethernet ports, there's an Intel 802.11b wireless chip inside, giving you plenty of opportunities to connect to the outside world. With free delivery, it's a great value package, and hard to fault for the price.