At first sight, this laptop, the Amilo Pa 3553 looks like it could be the PI 3525's little brother--but appearances can often be deceptive! If you look at the connectivity options available on each side of the computer; and the components on the inside, there's a world of difference between the two computers.

Fujitsu-Siemens' house style of black and white trim with clean, neat lines on both machines, but apart from that, the two computers follow completely different paths--even adopting different processors: the Pa 3553 uses an AMD while the PI 3525 is based on an Intel CPU.

Handling
The general build quality of this model is a notch above the other model. For video, the DVI port has gone to make space for a HDMI output, accompanied by a VGA. Handily, the HDMI link can also transmit sound.

There are three USB ports dotted around the laptop, along with FireWire and e-SATA links.


There's still no numeric keypad, despite there being enough space for one. A small touchpad seems to drown in the space in front of the keyboard.

2 USB	HDMI, VGA
USB / e-SATA and FireWire	3 mini jacks

Processor Power
These days, laptops with AMD processors are increasingly rare. Manufacturers seem set on Intel, which now has an undeniable advantage. This chart shows the results of the Amilo Pa 3553 compared to the Asus M50Sv, our standard reference, which is indexed at a score of 100.

The results are hardly stunning, and when it comes to complex operations, the Pa 3553 is halfway between a netbook and a more powerful model. Despite our best efforts, we couldn't install Photoshop, so we weren't able to run our usual image editing test.


Copying files to the external hard drive was very fast using the e-SATA interface (up to 55 MB/s for large files) but more average over USB (19.5 MB/s)

Gaming
The ATI HD3470 graphics card is the same one found in the Asus M51VR, but Fujistu-Siemens give it more of a chance to perform by using a lower native resolution: the move from 1440 x 990 to 1280 x 800 reduces the number of pixels to show by 20%, which makes life a lot easier for the graphics card. Compared to the Intel-based PI 3525, which uses a graphics chipset rather than a separate card, you can enjoy a lot more games.

Battery Life & Portability
After having looked at so many netbooks, it's really hard to go back to a 15'' notebook that really can't be described as 'portable'. Next to a netbook, regular laptops like this one seem huge, and we'd really think twice about taking it travelling. What's more, its battery life is lower than the Intel model, which can loop video for 2 hours 8 minutes: it can only manage 1 hour 45 minutes.

Amilo Pi 3525 vs. Pa 3553

In theory, we thought the Pi 3525 more interesting because of Intel's dominance of the processor market.  After a close look at both computers, though, we realized that the AMD-based laptop had an ATI graphics card rather than a chipset.  If we leave the Pi 3525's poor performance on our tests to one side--which were probably due to an isolated problem--then the competition between the two laptops becomes more even.  The Pi 3525 has better battery life, while the Pa 3553 trumps it with more video inputs and outputs.