Asus A7Tc review

It's been a long time coming, but the Turion 64 X2 heralds AMD's acceptance of DDR2 memory -- a feature Intel chips have enjoyed for several years. DDR2 can process more read/write instructions per clock cycle than standard DDR, can have a faster data rate and run at lower voltages, making it more efficient in theory. Asus has tried to make the most of the X2's DDR2 compatibility by supplying 1GB of DDR2 533MHz memory in the A7Tc.

The A7Tc includes a 120GB hard drive, which provides plenty of room for multimedia content. It's capable of storing well over 100 hours of high quality digital video or over 30,000 music files, plus you get a DVB-T Freeview tuner for receiving digital TV on the move. The aforementioned 17-inch screen is great for watching movies on, thanks to its widescreen 1,680x1,050-pixel resolution. Like most modern laptops it uses a glossy screen coating which can be difficult to use in direct light as it's highly reflective, but it provides excellent contrast and vivid recreation of colours.

Asus has supplied the A7Tc with a Lightscribe-enabled DVD rewriter drive. This can etch greyscale labels directly onto the label of compatible discs using the drive's internal laser. It can take up to 30 minutes to create a high quality disc label, or around five minutes for a CD with a simple track listing, and the results are very polished.

Connectivity is of great importance in a laptop, and the A7TC excels in this area. It has four well-spaced USB ports at the rear for connecting semi-permanent devices, such as a printer and scanner, and another more accessible USB port on the left that's ideal for devices you'd connect on a whim, such as a memory key or MP3 player. You also get full 802.11a, b, g Wi-Fi support.

Performance
The A7TC was very nimble in everyday use -- we zipped through everyday tasks with only the occasional stutter under very heavy load. It's fair to say the laptop is faster than the majority of mid-range desktops we've reviewed this year, as indicated by its PCMark score of 4,102. It's not quite as high as the 4,236 achieved by the Acer Travelmate 8204WLMi Centrino Duo laptop, but it's not far off.

3D gaming performance was slightly less impressive, but still satisfactory. It reached a score of 1,750 in the 3DMark 2006 benchmark, which was good for running Doom 3 at 48fps and Far Cry at 61fps at the default image quality settings and 1,024x764-pixel screen resolution.

Perhaps more importantly, the A7Tc lasted just under two hours in our MobileMark 2002 battery test. This is a decent amount of time for such a large and powerful laptop, but quite poor in comparison to the Travelmate 8204WLMi, which lasted nearly 4 hours (231 minutes).

Edited by Mary Lojkine
Additional editing by Kate Macefield