Home page » Notebooks

Search Notebooks:

Refine search for Notebooks

Overall, the Zieo N500-HD performed very well. It attained excellent PC Mark scores, comfortably beating the Asus A7S which retails for around £300 more. Testing with Turbo Memory produced almost identical results except where the HDD tests were concerned, with a large increase in score. This is because with a ReadyBoost capable flash module the hard-drive will spin up less, improving responsiveness and extending battery life.

In this sense it doesn't provide a tangible performance boost, as our 2D tests show. There are even cases where the system without Turbo Memory enabled performs better, though this is likely to have little to do with the NAND flash and more to do with variables in testing. Bottom line: there's no performance difference.

What it does do, however, is make regularly used programs and files load faster. This particular facet has been clear from the start, it's just important to remember the difference between 'performance' and 'responsiveness'.

Another area where Turbo Memory has an effect is in boot-up times. I tested boot-up times from cold with and without NAND flash enabled, running each test three times and taking an average. Results showed a noticeable difference; boot-up was just over ten seconds faster with Turbo Memory enabled, with an average time of 52.15 seconds compared to 75.18 seconds without.

Gaming performance was impressive too, providing playable frame rates, sometimes even at native resolution, and often performing better than the Asus Lamborghini VX2. It’s worth bearing in mind too that by default we run our tests with textures and detail pushed to the maximum, so it should be possible to get playable frame rates at 1,680 x 1,050 with some anti-aliasing and filtering by turning down texture detail and other effects.

Battery performance, quoted at two hours, is another significant performance consideration. For general use the two hour figure figure proved accurate, though this figure naturally varies depending on usage. In any case this isn't amazing performance, thus once again enforcing the idea that the Zieo won't spend much time out and about.

Add your comment

© 2003-2008 TrustedReviews | About Us | Contact Us | Legal | Privacy | RSS