Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Pi 1536 review

Everyone in the world seems to have gone mad for Intel's Core Duo processors - the first ever dual-core chips designed to work in laptops- even Apple is in on the act.

So what could Fujitsu-Siemens do to make its Core Duo offering stand out from the crowd? By offering almost the same specification as the Sony Core Duo machine we reviewed last month but for £300 less, that's what.

Speed demon

The Amilo notched up an excellent score of 97% in our 2D performance benchmarks. The benchmark system, which scores 100%, is a desktop PC based on an Athlon 64 3500+. For a laptop to be almost as fast as a powerful desktop PC is a cracking achievement. Unfortunately, can't make a direct comparison with last month's Sony Core Duo VGN-FE11S because our 2D and 3D benchmarks changed this month. So instead, we ran the old benchmarks on the Amilo as well. It turned out to be not quite as fast as the Sony in our 2D tests, but was slightly faster in the 3D test.

As you'd expect from its ATI Radeon X400 graphics with 128MB of dedicated memory, the Amilo also did well in our new Call of Duty 2 benchmark, coming in at 26% as fast as our benchmark desktop PC. You wouldn't be able to play Call of Duty 2 unless you turned its details right down, but the Amilo is more than powerful enough to run slightly older games at lower resolutions.

Glorious Technicolor

Like the Sony, the Anmilo has a 15.4in widescreen display - perfect for playing games that support widescreen resolutions and for watching DVD movies. What's more, the screen is gorgeous. Like most posh laptop screens these days, it has glossy coating that gives a high-contrast, pin-sharp image, but also makes the screen very reflective. This won't be a problem in the home, but will be a pain in well-lit hotel lobbies and airports. Surprisingly, the speakers were awful - so quiet we could hardly hear them.

Otherwise, the Amilo's specification is excellent. Like the Sony, it has 1GB of 533MHz DDR2 memory, which is more than enough for even the most demanding programs. The 100GB hard disk is 60GB smaller than the Sony's, but still huge compared with most laptops.

After it's been on for more than an hour or two. the Amilo starts to run quite warm - not hot enough for it to be uncomfortable, but certainly warm enough that you'll feel it when it's on your lap. It is, however, exceptionally quiet, making hardly a whisper of noise, even when it was crunching through our demanding gaming and video editing tests. Build-quality is good - the Amilo is built well enough to stand up to the knocks and bumps that any laptop will sustain when it's taken out and about. While at 3.1kg it's not light enough to be classed as ultraportable, it isn't so heavy that carrying it around will be a major pain.

The Amilo has plenty of ports, including four USB2 ports, a mini-FireWire port and a CardBus slot. There are also DVI and S-Video out connectors for hooking up to a monitor, projector or other external display device.

The battery lasted for 2 hours and 6 minutes in our light-use test, which is good but not exceptional. On the bright side, this time dropped by only 11 minutes when we connected the Amilo to a wireless network and turned screen brightness up to full, so you'll get at least a couple of hours of web surfing before the battery runs out. The Amilo played our test DVD for an hour and thirty six minutes before it ran out of juice, so you'll be able to watch a film of normal length too - but only just.