Evesham Quest A425 review

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Verdict:

Evesham's Quest A425 has the most powerful graphics processor in this group, making it a good choice if you need to play games.

Review Date: 19 Feb 2007

Price when reviewed: inc VAT and delivery

Reviewed By: Simon Handby

Our Rating 4 stars out of 5

This is the only notebook in this test with a fingerprint scanner, so you can easily log into Windows without typing a password.

Despite costing more than the other notebooks here, the A425 has a smaller 100GB hard disk. Unless you have a large collection of music or videos, though, you should still find this plenty.

The lid hinges feel a little too loose, and the lid itself feels very flexible. Pressure from behind the lid causes the screen to discolour, suggesting that it's not very well protected, so you'd need a good bag. The screen is bright and evenly lit, with a reflective coating that enhances movies and games.

The keyboard's function button is at the bottom left, but otherwise the layout and size of the keys is sensible. The keys feel a little stiff, though, so you need to type quite firmly. After a while the area under your right wrist becomes uncomfortably hot.

PERFORMANCE

With a powerful graphics processor, the A425 managed an impressive 48.9fps in our Doom 3 test, making it a great choice for playing 3D games. Although its AMD processor has the highest clock speed in this group, its results in the Shopper benchmarks weren't the best. It scored 123 overall, which was a little way behind the Sony, Acer and MSI notebooks.

Lasting just under one hour and 45 minutes, the Quest's battery won't survive long enough to watch a film or get any serious work done away from mains power.

VERDICT

The Quest's powerful graphics chip makes it a great choice if you need a reasonably priced notebook for playing games. With poor Windows performance and a disappointing battery, though, it's not a good buy otherwise.

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