Asus A7J review

The A7J uses the Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE) operating system. This is an extension to the standard Windows XP interface designed to be used from a distance via remote control. It provides quick and convenient access to your collection of movies, digital photos and music, and in some cases, can turn your PC into a television receiver. The A7J doesn't miss a trick -- it includes both analogue and digital TV tuners, so you can choose to watch Freeview broadcasts, or if you live in an area with poor digital reception, standard analogue TV.

The A7J's 17-inch widescreen display runs at an impressive 1,400x900-pixel resolution. This makes use of Asus' Color Shine LCD coating, which provides improved contrast and clarity -- ideal for watching TV or DVDs. Unfortunately, the A7J doesn't include a Microsoft-approved MCE remote control. Instead, Asus has bundled a poorly designed substitute remote that lacks the recommended MS Start button for easy MCE navigation.

More bizarrely, Asus has chosen to include a rather puny 60GB hard drive, in our review unit at least. Considering business latops such as the AJP M555N-E are equipped with drives twice this size, this is pathetic. Larger drives are available (we found the laptop for the same £1,399 online with a much more generous 100GB drive), so we suggest you opt for a model with at least 100GB of storage. If you choose not to, you'll be making regular use of the TSSTCorp TS-L532u DVD rewriter. It's a dual layer offering, so you can copy up to 8.5GB of data per compatible disc.

Performance
The A7J put in a strong overall performance in most of our tests. It achieved a PCMark 2005 tally of 3,825 -- which is slightly more than we've seen for any laptop that uses a similar specification. Its dual-core processor will chomp its way through most applications without much slowdown, and it's especially adept at running several applications at once, so you can safely perform video encoding while you surf the Internet.

Its gaming performance was also admirable. It clocked up a 3DMark 2006 score of 1,963, which again is the highest we've seen on any laptop using the same graphics card. It's not as fast as the all-conquering rockdirect Xtreme 64, but it ran Doom 3 at a very respectable 66.1 frames per second at a resolution of 1,024x768 pixels, and only dropped to 39.7fps at a resolution of 1,280x1,024 pixels.

Despite its Centrino backbone, the A7J doesn't last particularly long away from the mains. In our tests it lasted 46 minutes before keeling over -- which isn't bad for a desktop replacement, but it's far from ideal if you're often on the move.

Edited by Mary Lojkine
Additional editing by Nick Hide