Product Reviews

Often the cost and extra weight of rugged notebooks make them impractical for most people. Semi-rugged machines, such as this Centrino notebook from Elonex, can offer useful resilience to everyday knocks and spillages without the need for compromise elsewhere.

The Soliton Safari has a spill-resistant keyboard and the company claims the machine is drop-proof to US military standard 810E, so it should stand up to the small knocks and scrapes of on-the-road use. The magnesium alloy chassis is scratch-resistant and both lid and base feel rigid, but despite its sturdiness the overall weight is a reasonable 3.15kg.

The screen's hinges are stiff and its 1,024x768 resolution panel is clear and crisp with wide viewing angles. It doesn't suffer from distracting reflections and is well protected against pressure from behind the lid. A simple catch mechanism allows the screen to be pulled open, but it doesn't seem as sturdy as other elements of the notebook's design.

The keyboard stays cool and is comfy to type

An ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 graphics chip with 128MB of memory helped the Elonex to some solid benchmark results. A score of 3,144 in PCMark04 indicates lots of power for everyday use, and is backed by a healthy 77 on the new Shopper application benchmarks. Serious gamers won't be impressed by a 3DMark03 score of 2,446, but it's plenty for all but high graphics settings on the latest releases.

The Safari has a FireWire port in addition to three USB slots, network and modem ports, a PC Card slot, D-sub and S-video connector. Conventional headphone and microphone jack sockets are supplemented by an S/PDIF connector.

Our criticisms are minor. The DVD+/-RW drive's drawer has a locking switch to prevent accidental ejection, but it slides with little resistance and became locked accidentally several times. Moderate noise from the cooling fans is intrusive, but remains constant even when the machine is working hard. There's little bundled software.

The Elonex is a good choice for commuters and other mobile users. It has the power to breeze through typical office applications and can even run games convincingly. It combines this with a generous battery life of four hours and 30 minutes.

While it's a little thicker, heavier and pricier than the Toshiba Tecra A2 we reviewed last month (What's New, Shopper October 2004), the Soliton Safari is stronger, has twice the storage space and memory and comfortably outperforms it.