Evesham QUEST A420 review

Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 is appearing on more and more computers.

Originally reserved for hi-fi-style living room PCs with TV tuners, it's now found on notebooks such as Evesham's Quest A420. We applaud this move wholeheartedly, as the excellent interface makes accessing your media files easier.

The Quest A420 plays games well. Evesham has used the brand new Radeon Mobility X1600 graphics chipset with 256MB of dedicated memory. It scored 37.8fps in our Doom 3 test, which is good enough to run any modern game at decent detail levels without a problem.

The 15.4" display is widescreen with a native resolution of 1,280x800. It is ideal for playing new games that support widescreen resolutions, such as Call of Duty 2. The screen has a gloss coating. There is a slight graininess to the display and the whites could be a bit brighter, but it does the job well and will make your games look good. A handy webcam is built into the edge of the lid.

The chassis is slender and tastefully finished in dark grey with an illuminated Evesham logo on the lid. It feels reasonably sturdy and should withstand a few knocks. The keyboard is a nice size, but the keys lack spring and typing becomes tiring after a while. While the Quest A420 is fine for gaming and web browsing, we wouldn't recommend it for budding novelists.

The speakers on either side of the keyboard lack bass, but sound clear up to their maximum volume. The touch pad is big and correctly proportioned for the widescreen display. All the usual ports are provided, including four USB2 ports, a DVI output, FireWire and a memory card reader.

Inside there's a large 100GB hard disk and a DVD writer to deal with all your storage needs. A generous 1GB of RAM is paired with a fast 2.0GHz AMD Turion processor. This gave a respectable overall score of 96 in our benchmarks. It will manage all but the toughest tasks. Battery life was 157 minutes, average given the large battery pack that extends from the rear of the notebook.

The Quest A420 is ideal for use around the home. The combination of Media Center and a powerful graphics card means it has something to entertain everyone. It's not cheap, but it will undertake almost any task you throw at it. But if you plan to type a lot, get an external keyboard.