The elegantly named Asus A6Rp-AP026H sports one of the best displays of all the PCs on test. It’s no bigger than the others, but it’s significantly sharper, with rich colours even at brighter settings.

Indeed, this is a good-looking PC in general, with a handsome gun-metal grey body. The design is spoiled slightly by an odd tendency on behalf of the manufacturer to cover any available space with unnecessary symbols and meaningless text such as “Entertainment Notebook Series”.

The impressive build quality is reflected elsewhere, with a comfortable keyboard and a relatively wide touchpad that’s easy and pleasant to use.

The A6Rp-AP026H’s central components, the processor, memory, and hard disk are a pretty solid bunch and gave us an average set of test results. All except for our battery tests, where the A6Rp-AP026H demonstrated as little as half the staying power of some of its rivals. This factor could seriously limit the PC’s usefulness as a portable system but it’s not a problem if you intend to use it at home.

Again, this is no gaming machine, but the A6Rp-AP026H should be more than powerful enough for most family and home office tasks. It’s an easy computer to upgrade too, whether you’re looking to add new components or use older accessories you have hanging around.

As well as memory card, USB and PC card slots, you’ll also find a parallel port for an older printer and even infrared for communicating with your mobile phone. Like the Acer, there’s even a built-in camera and microphone for video calls. The inclusion of Microsoft Works Office Suite makes for one of the more practical software packages in the test, too.

This article is part of a group test of budget notebooks.
The table can be read via our Pdf download.
Others are:
Acer Aspire 5101 AWLMi
Fujitsu Siemens Amilio Pi 1505
Hi-grade Notino W5600
MSI Megabook M670
Toshiba Satellite Pro A120