Mesh Edge 15-R review

If you’re shopping for a laptop, you can get a lot for around £500. Mesh’s Edge 15-R notebook isn’t the best example of this trend, though. It doesn’t look too bad, despite using a generic chassis with a glossy black lid and silver wrist rest. Unfortunately, it doesn’t stand up to close examination – there’s a mysterious third 3.5mm stereo input that isn’t actually connected to anything and rubber bungs glued into places that are marked as HDMI and eSATA ports.

It’s not all bad, though. Although it rattles a bit, the flat, widely-spaced keys proved fast and comfortable to type on. Plus, the trackpad, which sits flush with the wrist rest, didn’t get in the way at all. Unfortunately, the wrist rest itself became surprisingly warm in a very short space of time.

This came as something of a surprise, as the Edge 15-R isn’t the most powerful £500 laptop around. While other manufacturers are introducing Core i3 and Core i5 laptops, Mesh has opted for a Celeron Dual Core T3000, along with 4GB of RAM. This produced one of the lowest scores we’ve seen in our benchmarks, limping home with an overall of just 53.

Performance in Call of Duty 4 was no more encouraging, with a frame rate of just 4.4fps, courtesy of the motherboard’s integrated Intel GMA 4500M HD graphics. You can output resolutions up to a maximum of 1,680×1,050 via the VGA port, but the absence of an HDMI output is disappointing these days.

There are few more odd omissions: no eSATA and no Gigabit Ethernet. Instead, there’s a 10/100 network port and a built in dial-up modem. It has three USB ports, 802.11n WiFi and a card reader than can handle SD, SDHC, Memory Stick and MMC formats. There’s an ExpressCard/54 slot, which could be handy if you want to add USB3 in the future. Sound quality isn’t too good from the built-in speaker – it’s quiet even at maximum volume and the sound that comes out of it is tinny, with no bass and a fizzy edge to high notes.

Lasting three hours and 11 minutes between charges, the Edge 15-R can be used away from the mains, but its 2.7kg weight means you won’t want to carry it around every day. Plus, most laptops last longer these days.

The one saving grace is the 15.6in display. It has a resolution of 1,366×768 and is crisp, bright and evenly lit. Whites and pale colours were pure, although some of our darker colour test screens were somewhat lacking in intensity.

Unfortunately for Mesh, the screen doesn’t make up for the poor performance and when you factor in the other niggles like no HDMI output and the slower network port, there’s no reason to buy the Edge 15-R when you can buy a better-specified Core i5-based laptop like Acer’s Aspire 5741 for only a little more money.