Review: Hi-Grade Notino D8000i

The Hi-Grade Notino D8000i is aimed at the average consumer who needs a laptop for home and office use, although its limited battery life makes it much better suited to a life at home.

Like most Hi-Grade laptops, a generic plastic chassis has been used. The appearance is cheap in comparison to other laptops such as the Asus P52F, Samsung R440 and Dell Vostro V130, and the silver body flexes under pressure. However, the lid is firm enough to ably protect the 15.6-inch screen.

A glossy Super-TFT finish has been used for the display, and photographs and movies are vibrantly reproduced as a result. The only drawback is increased reflectivity, which hampers use outdoors or in brightly lit environments.

We were impressed by the deep blacks and sharp contrast, although the screen barely folds back past vertical, which makes it difficult to find an ideal viewing angle at times.

The isolation-style keyboard proves perfect for touch typing, with perfectly-sized keys and a separate numeric pad for data entry. The touchpad is sensitive and responsive, and supports both multi-touch gesturing and scrolling for quickly zooming into and navigating through web pages, photos and office documents.

This laptop features an Intel Core i5 520M processor, which should have produced one of the best scores in our benchmarking tests. Unusually this wasn't the case, but we ran further tests and found there's plenty of power on offer, so you can happily run several applications at once with little impact on performance.

Graphically, the Hi-Grade performed well, despite featuring an integrated Intel GMA HD graphics card. The power difference isn't massive, and you won't be able to edit your media or play the latest games easily, but high-definition video plays smoothly.

Benchmarks

Battery life: 187 minutes
MobileMark 2007: 178
3DMark 2003: 3529

Limited portability

Battery life is sadly restrictive for anyone who regularly takes to the road, at just over three hours from each charge. The 40mm chassis is one of the thickest here, further restricting portability.

The Notino fares better in terms of features. The 500GB hard drive provides a huge amount of storage. There's also a comprehensive range of ports including HDMI and eSATA connections, and even an ExpressCard slot for attaching peripherals.

While the Notino D8000i isn't a pretty machine and suffers from limited portability, among other flaws, it's also a strong performer, with a vibrant screen and some excellent features. If you're looking for a reasonably priced home machine, you could do a lot worse.

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