Six hot sub-$900 notebooks compared

By Darren Yates - December 1, 2011
Feature

We knew the notebook market was competitive but even so we were pleasantly surprised after asking notebook makers to send in their best models for under A$900. At this price, we found, you now can get everything you would have got for A$1000 a few months ago, and more: 640GB hard drives, HDMI and USB 3.0 ports are commonplace. Forget budget Core i3 chips – second-generation Intel Core i5 processors are the standard now for budget 15in notebooks. Alternatively, you can find decent, lighter-weight 13in models at this price now.

Gigabyte Q2532N reviewed

By Darren Yates – December 1, 2011
Gigabyte Q2532N
Rating: 
9

If you’re looking for absolute bang for buck, Gigabyte’s Q2532N was the stand-out among the sub-$900 models submitted for this feature. We’re not big fans of the keyboard and at over 2.6kg, this 15.6in model is the heaviest of this group. However, the specs are undeniable, in particular Intel’s Core i5-2520M processor – the fastest in this feature and not surprisingly it blitzed the field, cracking 70 on our UserBench Encode HD media-encoding benchmark.

Acer Aspire 5750 reviewed

By Darren Yates – December 1, 2011
Acer Aspire 5750
Rating: 
8

Acer’s Aspire 5750 doesn’t quite reach the same heights as the Gigabyte Q2532N but since it costs A$120 less, it doesn’t need to. Essentially, you lose the Nvidia gaming graphics and the Blu-ray combo drive in favour of a regular DVD burner but other than that, it’s very good value. With Intel’s Core i5-2430M processor, it delivered the second-best results of the roundup, topping 65 on UserBench Encode, and still includes a 640GB hard drive.

Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E320 reviewed

By Darren Yates – December 1, 2011
Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E320
Rating: 
8

We’ve got a soft spot for good performing lightweight notebooks and Lenovo’s ThinkPad Edge E320 is a little beauty. Its A$629 price tag made it the cheapest of the roundup, but it’s not short of speed. Thanks to its Core i3-2310M processor, it almost reached 50 in our Encode HD benchmark. Basically, for less than twice the price of a netbook, you’re getting five times the performance.

Toshiba Satellite L730 reviewed

By Darren Yates – December 1, 2011
Toshiba Satellite L730
Rating: 
8

Toshiba’s Satellite L730 was one of three 13.3in models here under the 2kg mark, and while Lenovo’s E320 offers better value mostly thanks to its lower price, the L730 comes out ahead of the other one, HP’s 5330m, in most respects. With Intel’s Core i5-2410M processor, it gave the HP a shellacking in our performance benchmarks.

HP ProBook 5330m reviewed

By Darren Yates – December 1, 2011
HP ProBook 5330m
Rating: 
7

In terms of raw specs, there’s not much separating HP’s ProBook 5330m from Lenovo’s E320. Both have the same processor, same amount of RAM, same graphics, lack of optical drive, similar weight and share the bulk of their peripheral features. The main differences are a bigger hard drive here (500GB), no Service Pack 1 with its Windows 7 Pro OS and smaller battery.

A struck match separated the two in most of our performance benchmarks, but the HP lasted half-an-hour less in our battery test.

ASUS K53S reviewed

By Darren Yates – December 1, 2011
ASUS K53S
Rating: 
7

ASUS’s K53S came to us with a recommended A$999 price tag but we found it selling for $899. It’s not a bad notebook but has some curious features that just take off the shine. ASUS has gone for a dual graphics option, combining Intel integrated graphics with an Nvidia GeForce GT 520MX chip. We’re not quite sure why because the GT 520MX barely gets past Intel’s HD 3000 engine in gaming performance, although the GT 520MX should improve multimedia decoding.

Sub-$900 notebooks: specs and benchmark results

Six hot sub-$900 notebooks compared
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