Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Xi 2528 review

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Verdict:

If you like your laptops plain and simple, this has all the right bits on the inside. What it does is great, but the way it feels to use seems to have been overlooked.

Review Date: 16 Oct 2007

Price when reviewed: inc VAT

Reviewed By: Darien Graham-Smith

Our Rating 3 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

The Amilo Xi 2528 is loaded with features suited to home entertainment, including a 17-inch screen and a snazzy remote control for controlling Windows Media Center.

It's a shame it doesn't look the part: the characterless grey design seems drab and bulky.

Still, it's solidly built and well specified, with an unusual breadth of features, including HDMI output (for digital TVs), Bluetooth (to add gadgets like wireless headsets or communicate with your mobile phone), and the new 802.11n WiFi protocol (for connecting faster to the latest wireless routers). Uniquely, it has two hard disks, totalling a whopping 320GB; you can combine these into a single RAID volume if you like. If even that isn't enough, there's an eSATA port to add fast external drives.

The core components are powerful, too. The Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 contributed to a strong score in our general (2D) benchmark, and although the 8600M GS 3D chip isn't as powerful as the GT version in the Zepto, it'll still play recent 3D games well as long as you turn the detail settings down.

Although the Fujitsu works fine, it could be more pleasant to use. As well as being big, it's heavy at 3.7kg, and while the battery life of around two-and-a-half hours is acceptable, it took over four hours to recharge fully - more than twice as long as most. The keyboard makes typing infuriating thanks to the punctuation and cursor keys being smaller than the letters and numbers.

On paper, the Amilo Xi 2528 looks like a real contender, and the price isn't bad considering its features. Unless you really need all its capabilities, though, you'd probably be happier with a different laptop.

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