The Amilo is neatly designed in silver, with a black trim around the edges. The edges of the unit are tapered, giving it a streamlined appearance and making it easy to slip into a bag.

Inside the solidly built chassis is a 1.66GHz Core 2 Duo processor with 512MB of Ram and an 80GB hard disk.

That’s not the fastest processor in this group, but the Amilo produces respectable results in most of our performance tests and will be more than adequate for running ordinary business applications or doing the occasional spot of digital photography or multimedia editing.

It’s got a built-in Firewire port too, so you can easily connect a DV camcorder and import video clips straight onto the hard disk.

Admittedly, 3D graphics performance isn’t particularly impressive, as the Amilo opts for an integrated graphics processor that shares some of the main system Ram. But none of these laptops provides very good 3D performance so this isn’t a big weakness.

Battery performance is a mixed bag. When playing DVDs the Amilo lasts for almost three hours, so it’s a good choice if you want to while away the hours on a long plane or train ride. But it lasts only about an extra 25 minutes when running ordinary business software.

That gives you well over three hours of working time, but rival products from Sony and Samsung beat that easily.

It may lack any outstanding features, but the Amilo provides good performance and an attractive, lightweight design at a competitive price.

This article is part of a group test of lightweight laptops.
See also
HP Compaq
Mesh Pegasus
Packard Bell
Samsung NP
Sony Vaio
Evesham Lightbook
Graphs and table of features can be read via our pdf downloads above.