Polywell PolyNote MXM915AS

Polywell’s PolyNote MXM915AS is ideal for those who need an affordable jack of all trades laptop that’s as adept at e-mailing and Web surfing as it is at playing 3D games. This notebook boasts a 15.1-inch widescreen, fast processor, and Nvidia graphics, making it powerful enough to replace your desktop. Since the PolyNote weighs a manageable 6.3 pounds and lasts more than three hours on a charge, it’s light and convenient enough to take on the road.

The balance between performance and portability is largely due to the PolyNote’s Intel Pentium M 760 processor. Polywell paired this notebook’s 2-GHz processor with a full gigabyte of DDR2 memory and a 5,400-rpm 60GB hard drive, a combination that allowed the PolyNote to fly through image editing, file compression, and audio encoding tasks. With so much RAM onboard, the system had no problem with multitasking, either. The MobileMark productivity benchmark gave the system a high score of 224.

The 15.1-inch display offers the crisp SXGA+ resolution of 1400 x 1050 pixels, and it’s driven by a 128MB Nvidia GeForce Go 6600 video card that cruised through Far Cry. Even at a 1024 x 768 resolution, the gameplay was smooth and offered fine detail. The 3DMark03 score of 4,770 is very good for a mainstream notebook. Especially noteworthy is the MXM Graphics Module, allowing easy graphics card upgrades.

DVDs played perfectly on the PolyNote using the installed copy of CyberLink PowerDVD. Unfortunately, the system’s display uses the standard 4:3 aspect ratio, so movies don’t look quite as good as they do with systems that sport widescreens.

Despite that high-powered GPU, the MXM915AS delivered 3 hours and 11 minutes of battery runtime. The notebook’s wireless networking performance was also impressive. The installed Intel tri-mode 802.11a/b/g radio offered 18.9 Mbps of data throughput at 5 feet from our access point and 14.9 Mbps at 50 feet. Activating the Wi-Fi adapter cut only two minutes off of the total battery runtime. Complementing the speedy Wi-Fi adapter is a Gigabit Ethernet port.

As much as we loved the PolyNote’s performance, its fit and finish is a bit lacking. It’s great to have an SD, MMC, Memory Stick, and xD card reader, but it’s recessed too far, making it difficult to push cards all the way in or pop them out without using a fingernail.

The touchpad looks good, but only the inside halves of the buttons actually work. The closer you get to the outside edges, the harder the buttons are to push in. Worse yet, there was a noticeable amount of flex in the keyboard. The PolyNote includes three USB 2.0 ports, plus a six-pin powered FireWire port, but we’d appreciate them a lot more if they weren’t all crammed onto the back panel.

On the positive side, the PolyNote has five keys above the keyboard to play CDs without booting up Windows. A tiny LCD screen helps you manage playback, and there’s a hard-wired volume control wheel located toward the back of the system’s left side. Why you’d put the headphone and microphone jacks on the back panel is beyond us, but Polywell has. You’ll want to use that headphone jack, however, since the integrated speakers are very tinny.

Another plus is the inclusion of an ExpressCard slot, the next-gen version of the PC Card slot (one of which is also included). There aren’t any cards you can use today for the ExpressCard slot, but win the future you’ll be able to plug in everything from higher-speed cellular modems to TV tuner cards, and you’ll be glad you have it.

A double-layer DVD burner is another amenity, recording to DVD+Rs and DVD-Rs at a speedy 8X using the included Nero software. The preinstalled copy of Nero ably handled disc burning chores.

We think this notebook could have used another couple of weeks in the design stage, but it is a good performer. If you can live without a widescreen display and want to play the latest games on the cheap, the PolyNote MXM915AS is worth a look.