Packard Bell EasyNote NX69

A mobile, well-equipped, reasonably priced laptop is what Packard Bell is setting out to give us with the EasyNote NX69, which is a pretty ambitious claim from a manufacturer that has up until now put the accent on design quality rather than value for money. Here we have a laptop with a 14.1 inch panel – almost without any border – a Core i5 processor and discrete graphics card on sale for under £700.

A good design, but the touchpad needs revisiting!

The brushed platinum hood flatters to deceive. Inside the NX69 the finish is in aluminium and good old plastic, which is nevertheless of good quality. While there are no major issues with the finish on this 14.1-inch, the contours of its keyboard do unfortunately sink in when you press down on them.
 

The chiclet style keys are placed as you’d expect and keying is supple and quiet. The directional arrows have been reduced in size but there are extra controls on the right to increase or reduce the volume or to mute the sound. In our experience, being able to control this setting with just one finger – as against the combination of keys required on many competitor models – is sometimes very practical.
    
The coating used for the multitouch touchpad didn’t give a very good impression. Already to the eye the glossy black coating (so sensitive to finger marks) seems a little ill-considered. What‘s more, the coating in question doesn’t give a smooth glide but rather sticks to the end of the finger. While the glide may be precise, you’ll want to use a USB mouse wherever possible.

The webcam is okay. Light zones are detailed and movements are correctly rendered but the image lacks detail in dark areas. This webcam will do you fine for occasional usage – no need to go for an external model unless you’re using it everyday.

The connectivity includes the essential. On the right, there’s an Ethernet (RJ45) port, a DVD rewriter and a USB 3.0 port. ON the left you'll find the power socket, the VGA and HDMI outs, the headphones and mic sockets and two USB 2.0 ports. The SD card reader is on the front. This should satisfy the general user.

The underneath of the chassis is fairly standard. Air is sucked in underneath and expelled from the left hand side – towards the knees if you're using the laptop on your lap. During our tests, the air expelled by the NX69 got over 51 °C so it isn’t advisable to sit it there when you're pushing the components hard.
 

Processor power: good performance

No surprises when it comes to the CPU. The NX69 runs on an Intel Core i5-2410M, a processor we see fairly regularly on laptops. It gives this 14.1-inch enough power to handle any task you care to throw at it in reasonable time.

For tasks such as 3D modelling, optimised to share the load across different cores, the absence of two physical cores (or 4 virtual ones), which is the difference between the Core i7s and Core i5s, will make itself felt (processing will take twice as long).

Gaming: decent capacity

With NVIDIA Optimus technology on board, the graphics card only powers up when the integrated chipset (Intel GMA HD 3000) can’t handle the tasks you ask of it. As the HD 3000 chipset consumes a lot less than the graphics card, using it also helps you to conserve maximum battery life. It is, for example, perfectly able to decode 1080p videos.

In gaming however, the GT 540M takes over. This mid-range card is able to power up any title at all though you won’t be able to ask too much of it when it comes to the level of detail available. The more demanding the title is, the lower you’ll have to push your options and the most demanding titles will mean you also have to reduce resolution.

Audio: Dolby Home Theater

We criticise sound spatialisation often enough to be able to recognise it when it’s effective. Here, turning Home Theater on radically changes the audio, turning it from mediocre to pretty good and this is rather astonishing for a machine of this size.

The ins/outs are of good quality though we would have preferred more power. Note, there’s a slight problem when it comes to maintaining the bass through the headphones out.

Battery life: 4h15

The aluminium hood means transporting it around in a rucksack won’t result in too many scratches or marks. At 14.1 inches, this machine will slip into your bag without too much difficulty and, while at 2 Kg it won’t go completely unnoticed when you’re carrying it around, it won’t be too heavy either.
The Optimus feature helps extend battery life to around 4h15 for video playback. This is okay though not exceptional for a product that's designed to be transported with you. The Asus U36SD is lighter (1.66 Kg) and has a longer battery life (5h15).