Hi-Grade Notino C6700-1700 review

Not content with its huge market share, the PC is now biting at the Apple pie too. Hi-Grade's Notino W6700 was a fine example - steal Apple's keyboard and widescreen TFT, sell it for £1,099 and you've got a winner. The main clincher was the price, but with higher specifications could it still compete with an Apple-like price of £1,599?

This depends on the specifications. The new C6700 contains a 1.7GHz Pentium-M, which in our tests is faster than a 2GHz Pentium 4-M. For proof, compare the C6700's benchmark result of 1.31 with the W6700's 0.94, although the Dell Inspiron 8600 is even quicker.

The battery life has also improved - 239 minutes under light use compared with 168 minutes - again thanks to the Pentium-M. The C6700 also has double the memory, 50GB more hard disk space and a slot-loading DVD burner. This even writes to DVD-RW and DVD-RAM, but is this all worth an extra £500?

It's difficult to say yes. It may be better specified, but you'd expect a quicker processor and larger hard disk after five months, and the other upgrades aren't worth £500. It's especially frustrating when Hi-Grade was so competitive beforehand. By comparison, a PowerBook with the nearest specifications costs only slightly more at £1,646.

In the Notino's favour, however, is a GeForce FX Go5200 graphics chip. Its 3DMark2001 SE score of 6,806 in 32-bit XGA is a long way off the 9,163 from the Mobility Radeon 9600-based Multivision Solus 1025 (see p62), but it's fast enough for most people, and 3D games look fantastic on the 15.2in widescreen TFT. This is the C6700's best asset. The screen has great viewing angles, a clear and sharp image, plus a widescreen resolution of 1,280 x 854.

The screen hasn't changed since the original, and neither has the large chassis. This is a shame, as many notebooks became smaller with the Pentium-M's arrival, a good example being IBM's thinner ThinkPad T40 (see issue 107, p61).

The large chassis has one main advantage, though - a spacious keyboard with full-size keys. However, the notebook's corners dig into your wrists when you're typing, which can become uncomfortable and, although the big keys are easy to type on, the keyboard feels flimsy in action and tends to sag and dip.

PowerBooks don't suffer from this kind of problem and, while the Hi-Grade has better performance and battery life than the W6700, its predecessor cost only £1,099, and at £1,599 it's tempting to buy an Apple instead.

Author: Ben Hardwidge