It has a few minor flaws, but the Amilo Pi 1505 produces consistently strong all-round performance in our benchmark tests, and backs it up with excellent battery life.

Its 1.66GHz Intel Core Duo processor is one of the more up-to-date processor designs in this group, and while the AMD-based laptops from Acer and MSI provide a little more raw horsepower, the Amilo still offers very solid performance that should meet the needs of most home users.

It’s certainly unfazed by ordinary business software, as well as having enough in reserve to cope with more demanding tasks. And, of course, the other benefit of the Core Duo is that it’s a dual-core processor design – the only one in this group, in fact – so it’ll give you extra responsiveness if you’re working with more than one program at a time.

The Amilo is also one of the few laptops in this group to include a Firewire port, which will allow you to plug a digital camcorder into the machine and download your video footage (although in this case it’s the 4-pin version of Firewire, as used in Sony’s iLink ports, so some users may need a suitable adapter cable).

There’s even an S-video output socket, so you can import your home videos, edit them on the Amilo and then output the finished project onto a larger TV screen or simply burn it onto DVD using the bundled Nero software. The Amilo is therefore a good choice for people who are interested in digital video and multimedia work.

The 100GB hard disk provides plenty of room for storing video and other files. Like most of these laptops the Amilo only has 512MB of Ram, which is a bit basic for any kind of multimedia work, but at least this is a relatively inexpensive upgrade (under £50 for 512MB from www.crucial.com) that you can perform whenever you feel like it.

The only obvious weakness – in performance terms, that is – lies in the area of 3D graphics. The Amilo’s Integrated Intel GMA950 graphics processor manages a mere six frames per second (fps) in our Far Cry test – though, to be fair, it’s one of the few machines in this group that can actually run Far Cry at all, and it’s also one that’s capable of running Windows Vista’s Aero interface. However, the Amilo more than compensates for its gaming performance with really impressive battery life.

We were able to get more than two and a half hours of DVD playback time from the Amilo, and more than three hours in Mobilemark 2005’s productivity suite. We also liked the brightness of the Amilo’s 15.4in widescreen display, which makes it a good option for people who want to watch DVDs during a long journey.

Our only minor concern about the Amilo has to do with its construction. It’s not quite as robust as some of its rivals and the upper panel housing the screen seemed as though it could do with a little extra rigidity to protect the screen from damage. We wouldn’t say this was a major weakness, but it was a noticeable blemish on an otherwise well-designed machine.

That minor worry aside, the Amilo performed well, and its battery life and video input and output capabilities make it a great choice for multimedia work or simply whiling away the time on a long journey.

This article is part of a group test of laptops.
See also:

Introduction
Acer Aspire 5101 AWLMi
Asus A6Rp-AP026H
Hi-grade Notino W5600
MSI Megabook M670
Toshiba Satellite Pro A120
Graphs and table of features can be read via our pdf downlaods above.