Evesham Voyager C510

A fast and great-value Sonoma portable

The system can cope happily with office applications, but where it really excels is in the graphics department. Its 128MB nVidia Geforce Go 6600 graphics card notched up a score of 1,739 in 3Dmark 05, humbling most notebooks of a similar spec. Unfortunately, despite using the same 2GHz central processing unit as the Acer and Asus notebooks, it could only manage a Sysmark 2004 score of 154.

At nearly 3kg, customers won’t be carrying the Voyager C510 around for long periods. Its 15.4in widescreen display also contributes to its bulk, but it has a widescreen aspect ratio and a native resolution of 1,680 x 1,050. This is ideal for watching DVD movies.

Its substantial frame means Evesham has been able to incorporate shortcut keys for launching an email client and web browser.

Like many of the entries in this group, the Voyager C510 comes with an 80GB hard drive. This should be adequate for most users, but for additional storage the Panasonic DVD-RW dual-layer optical drive can be replaced with a second hard disk.

Arguably the best thing about this notebook is its price. At just £1,173, it is one of the least expensive Sonoma models available. It wouldn’t be fair to compare it directly with the other notebooks but, despite an influx of challengers, Evesham’s debut Sonoma laptop stands up as an excellent product.