Siemens Mobile Scenic 360 review

The Siemens Scenic Mobile 360 costs £1,149 (£1,350) and packs a 300MHz Celeron, 32Mb of RAM and a 4Gb hard disk.

It boasts a 12.1in TFT screen - typical of today's entry-level A4 notebook, but a very welcome feature all the same.

The whole point of a notebook is that it's portable. Exactly how portable it is depends not only on its size and weight, but also on how long its battery will last, and all of this has to weighed up against performance and ergonomics. Some manufacturers are going for ultra-slim designs, with floppy and CD drives as external units that can be left at home when they're not needed. Siemens' weight and volume is about double that of these machines, but you do get everything packed into one box.

Battery life is similarly unadventurous, giving just under two hours use in our test conditions, while others are managing over three. There's no upside to this feature.

The Scenic's largish dimensions should allow for a decent quality keyboard. Alas, the keys are almost flush with the case, and level with the wrist support. This made for a less comfortable typing posture. What concerned us more was the fact that the Siemens' keyboard flexed terribly as we typed. The action lacks travel, and is accompanied by a plastic feel and nasty rattling.

The touch pad had its problems, too. The pad sits quite deep in the case, with a ridge of plastic around its four edges. This makes darting around the pad a little uncomfortable, with your finger often hitting the frame. Other pads have a smooth run-off area.

The Siemens screen is a 12.1in display, and it really impressed us. It was the brightest and crispest panel we've seen on a notebook. It also worked well in bright conditions, where others may have struggled with reflections.

Performance is another strong point for this machine. The mobile Celeron 300 chip, combined with the Silicon Motion LynxE graphics chipset proved a healthy partnership, as demonstrated by the Siemens solid performance in our CorelDRAW test.

A great screen and strong performance are two important assets for a computer, but a poor keyboard and battery life are serious deficits. Overall, this is a decent machine, but there are better to be had elsewhere.