Hi-Grade notebooks usually fare well in PCW group tests, so we had high hopes of the A9700.

A first look suggests good things; there’s a big, bright 17in widescreen display, lots of space to rest your hands while typing and a minimalist design once the lid is up.

The inside doesn’t sound bad either, with an AMD Turion 64 Mobile ML-37 (2GHz) processor, 1GB of Ram and a dedicated ATI Radeon Xpress 200M graphics card (even though it steals 64MB of system memory). Nevertheless, when we put the A9700 through benchmarks, several weaknesses became apparent.

Achieving the lowest results in all but one of our tests, the Hi-Grade managed 137 in Sysmark and a PCmark score of 1,775 . Granted, for many office, internet and Windows tasks this is perfectly adequate, but with Windows Vista around the corner and software becoming increasingly demanding, those scores mean this notebook could feel the pinch very quickly.

Hi-Grade has decided to use a relatively old processor. As most other manufacturers have made the jump to dual-core technology, you can’t help wondering if this is a case of old stock being used up to make way for the next big thing.

Even with its dedicated graphics card, the A9700’s attempt at running Far Cry resulted in a no-show, while a 3Dmark score of 454 speaks for itself. Battery life was also dire, lasting just 1 hour 15 minutes.

On the up side, there’s a multiformat Sony DVD writer and six USB ports embedded into the sides of the case, and media playback buttons on the front lip. It’s also the only notebook here with a DVI port. These gestures, however, are not enough to make up for the lacklustre performance.

At 3.4kg, the A9700 is unlikely to live anywhere but on a desk, with the battery life ensuring it’s permanently tethered to the mains.

See full performance results for Hi-Grade A9700 laptop
Compare to all laptop performance results

This article is part of a group test of laptop computers costing under £700 .
See also:
Asus F3F
Evesham Quest A430
MSI Megabook M662
MV Mobeus 13"
Toshiba Satellite A110-275.

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