Acer Aspire 1502LMi

The race for the notebook performance crown is certainly heating up, with the latest revision to the Pentium M processor on its way, and potentially giving Athlon 64 a run for its money. But there's still no doubt that if you're after power, the Athlon 64 is the way to go, and this latest Acer notebook is the proof, earning the highest benchmark score that we've ever seen in a notebook. Narrowly breaking the 2.00 mark in our real-world tests, it particularly excelled in spreadsheet and database applications, as well as being more than capable at 2D graphics and multimediaÊoperations.

It doesn't quite match this form on the 3D arena, though it certainly comes close. Using a Mobility Radeon 9600 rather than the 9700 chosen in AJP's D870P (see above), it still performed remarkably well, achieving 16.4fps in Halo and 38.9fps in Unreal Tournament 2004 (SXGA, 32-bit colour depth). This is fast enough for these games at more reasonable resolutions, but it may struggle to handle games such as Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 when they grace our screens laterÊthis year.

The screen is a good quality 15in model, with an SXGA native resolution and excellent viewing angles. We were slightly disappointed by its colour reproduction though, as everything appeared a little washed out. Aside from this, we had no real complaints when it came to gaming, office or DVD use.

The 1502LMi is large and pretty weighty at nearly 4kg, and so the vast array of ports and drives it sports comes as no surprise. A dual-format DVD writer offers an extra storage option should you manage to fill the generous 60GB hard disk. There's also an SD card reader and, rather surprisingly, a floppy drive. Attaching any sort of peripheral shouldn't be a problem, thanks to the four USB 2 ports, a mini-FireWire and parallel port, plus two Type II PC Card slots. There are plenty of options for connecting to the outside world too, with the inclusion of infrared, modem and gigabit Ethernet ports. There's also an 802.11b and g-compatible wireless card inside.

The rest of the design is pretty solid: the dark and light grey plastics look professional and feel sturdy. The keyboard feels good in use too, with large, well-arranged keys and good travel. The touchpad is large and comfortable, and comes with a four-way navigation pad.

Given its weight, you're unlikely to use the Aspire away from a mains socket for long. Nevertheless, its battery is powerful enough to let you present away from a mains socket for over two hours.

Besides its weight, though, there's little to fault the 1502LMi. And with a price as low as this, it easily slides onto our A List as the power notebook of choice.

Author: Mark Walsh