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PC Nextday Zoostorm 84-5200 review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £650
inc VAT

Specifications

15.4 in 1,280×800 display, 2.7kg, 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P8600, 4.00GB RAM, 320GB disk, Windows Vista Home Premium

PC Nextday

PC Nextday’s Zoostorm 84-5200 is almost identical to the 82-4200 in our £500 group.

It shares the same case and includes the same components and ports. The only differences are a faster 2.4GHz P8600 processor and an Nvidia GeForce G 105M graphics chipset with 512MB of dedicated memory.

Despite this, its gaming performance wasn’t very good, and the laptop managed only 8.9fps in Call of Duty 4. While this rules out the latest first-person shooters, the chipset should cope with less demanding strategy games.

Windows performance was considerably better, and the 84-5200 achieved the highest benchmark results in this group. Its score of 4,084 was second overall, making this laptop faster than models costing twice as much.

The 15.4in widescreen display has a resolution of 1,280×800. Its glossy finish helps to improve contrast and colour vibrancy, but reflections can be a problem under bright lights. Image quality was very good, although we found that whites had a slightly blue tint, giving the image a colder appearance.

The 84-5200 has a generous 320GB hard disk, as well as HDMI, S/PDIF and eSATA ports, but only three USB ports. It has no FireWire ports, Bluetooth or Draft-N WiFi.

The black-and-white design may appear tacky to some, and for £650 we’d expect something a little more refined. There’s nothing wrong with the case, though, and it’s well built. The keyboard is firm, and we liked the moulded keys with their standard layout. The touchpad is large and smooth but the buttons are too stiff, and the all-in-one design makes it hard to distinguish the buttons from the surround.

In a group test dominated at the budget end by a £500 Blu-ray laptop, the 84-5200 still offers decent value thanks to its great performance, even if the lack of a Blu-ray drive is slightly disappointing. If you don’t want Blu-ray, but you need a powerful laptop for video or photo editing, the 84-5200 is a great option. Otherwise Acer’s 6920G is better.

Basic Specifications

Rating ****
Processor Intel Core 2 Duo P8600
Processor clock speed 2.4GHz
Memory 4.00GB
Memory slots 2
Memory slots free 0
Maximum memory 4GB
Size 40x359x267mm
Weight 2.7kg
Sound Realtek High Definition Audio
Pointing device touchpad
Power consumption standby 1W
Power consumption idle 29W
Power consumption active 45W

Display

Viewable size 15.4 in
Native resolution 1,280×800
Graphics Processor Nvidia GeForce G 105M
Graphics/video ports VGA, HDMI
Graphics Memory 512MB

Storage

Total storage capacity 320GB
Optical drive model TSSTcorp SN-S083A
Optical drive type DVD+/-RW +/-DL

Ports and Expansion

USB ports 3
Bluetooth no
Wired network ports 1x 10/100/1000
Wireless networking support 802.11b/g
PC Card slots 1x ExpressCard/54
Modem Yes
Supported memory cards SD, MMC, Memory Stick Pro
Other ports eSATA, minijack audio output, minijack microphone input, minijack S/PDIF output

Miscellaneous

Carrying case No
Operating system Windows Vista Home Premium
Operating system restore option restore partition
Software included none
Optional extras none

Buying Information

Warranty one year RTB
Price £650
Details www.pcnextday.co.uk

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