Packard Bell EasyNote XS20 review

Two months ago, we reviewed Asus' Eee PC 701. Although the Eee doesn't have Windows preinstalled, it is easy to use, hugely portable thanks to its 7in screen and costs just over £200.

Packard Bell's EasyNote XS20 is just as small - it's not much larger than a DVD case - but it comes with Windows XP Home Edition and a 30GB hard disk. At 950g it also weighs exactly the same, so you can carry it anywhere without even noticing it.

The laptop is powered by a 1.2GHz VIA processor and there's 1GB of memory. A webcam is built into the screen surround and you get 802.11g wireless networking, Bluetooth and a DVI output for attaching a larger screen.

The built-in screen is identical to the Eee PC's: a 7in 800x480 LCD. It's not particularly bright, but the problem is that Windows XP is unusable at this resolution, as there isn't enough room to display most applications. You could switch to a 800x600 display, but this squashes everything horizontally and makes text hard to read.

Although the EasyNote uses an identical keyboard to the Eee PC, its mouse buttons and touch pad are located at the top corners of the keyboard. At first this feels awkward, but they're ideally placed for your thumbs when holding the XS20. The only problem is the lack of space on the tiny touch pad, which allows the cursor to move only short distances.

The keyboard's tiny keys take a bit of getting used to, but unless you have overly large digits, you'll quickly become accustomed to it. We'd rather the Enter key wasn't half-height, though, as we kept hitting the # key instead.

We couldn't run our benchmarks on the Eee PC due to a lack of hard disk space, but there was no such problem on the EasyNote. However, we didn't need to wait for the results to know that they were going to be some of the lowest we've ever seen. An overall score of 26 is dismal and, in practice, it means you'll often be waiting 30 seconds or more for applications to load. This is a laptop for light use only.

Even the speakers disappointed with their lack of volume, but at least the battery lasted for three hours and 34 minutes. We're not surprised by the absence of an integrated optical drive, but at this price we'd have liked one to be provided in the box. Instead, you get a basic velour slip case.

Given that Windows XP is unusable at the screen's resolution, and looks so poor at 800x600, there's no reason to spend the extra £150 on the EasyNote; the Eee PC is a much better deal.