Like the HP and Sony, the Hi-grade Notino D7000-5500 is one of only three notebooks here to use Intel’s entry-level Core 2 Duo processor, the T5500.

Running at a clock speed of 1.66GHz, on the face of it, it doesn’t sound as if things have moved on much since the days of the Pentium, but with two cores to share tasks, the new processor can be much more efficient even at lower absolute clock speeds.

What does hold the Hi-grade back, however, is the mere 512MB of DDR2 memory fitted as standard, which is really far too little these days – 1GB is a minimum and 2GB preferred, especially if you’re considering moving to Vista at a later date. However, if you’re looking to jump on the Core 2 Duo bandwagon, the Notino D7000-5500 is a cheap way in.

While its benchmark result of 195 in Sysmark wasn’t exactly groundbreaking, a score of 3,629 in PCmark05 makes it faster than the MSI and Sony notebooks, are both more expensive notebooks.

You’d think at this price Hi-grade would want to keep costs down. However, the £700 price tag buys you an 80GB hard disk, a multiformat dual-layer Sony DVD writer and Nvidia’s Geforce Go 7400 graphics chipset with 128MB of dedicated graphics memory.

However, the result of 1,856 in 3Dmark05 suggests that it will struggle when too much game detail is switched on. When the screen resolution was increased to 1,280x800, it scored 1,645, which will mean some nasty jerking and jittering.

The 15.4in WXGA widescreen is bright, sturdy and copes well at various viewing angles. Because of the way the lid is hinged to the back of the chassis, the display sits further down than most. We didn’t find it too much of a strain. However, for the best picture you need to be head-on and centred to the display, especially when watching DVD movies.

The chassis is home to a reasonable selection of connectivity options. As well as four USB ports, mini-Firewire, S-video, network, modem, and memory card slots, the Hi-Grade also has DVI and digital audio output sockets, and an 802.11g wireless networking adapter is built in.

It weighs 2.7kg excluding adapter, which is relatively portable, but unfortunately the battery life lets it down, as with a few others in this group test. When working with Windows applications it will need recharging after two hours, which isn’t impressive, and neither is the one hour, 53 minutes you’ve got to watch a DVD before the battery goes flat.

Using the Notino D7000-5500 proved fairly comfortable and there’s plenty of room to rest your palms while typing. The trackpad is a little small for our liking, especially with part of it reserved for document scrolling. Five shortcut buttons lie above the keyboard.

Clad in the same old metallic grey and plastic black, the Notino D7000-5500 won’t win any awards for industrial design.

The software bundle includes Sonic Recordnow (for DVD burning), Sonic Cineplayer (for DVD playback), Bullguard Anti-virus (a three-month trial) and Open Office (free office suite).

The one-year collect-and-return warranty seems a bit stingy compared to some of the other offers here and you don’t get much bundled software. However, there’s no escaping the fact that the Notino D7000-5500 is a highly affordable entry into the world of dual-core computing.

This article is part of a group test of budget Core 2 Duo notebooks
See also:
Evesham Voyager C530
HP Compaq NX7400 (RH393ET)
MSI Megabook M662
Rock Pegasus 665-T56
Sony VGN-C1Z/B
Asus F3Jv

Graphs and tables of features can be read via our pdf downloads above.