WinBook T230

Sometimes, a machine doesn’t have to be thrilling to be worth the investment. The WinBook T230 won’t take your breath away with bleeding-edge multimedia features or a stunning design. But it’s nonetheless a solid entry, combining good dual-core-powered performance with a complete feature set in a thin, relatively light package that’s well priced at $1,199. The only strike against this thin-and-light system is its below-average battery life.
 
At only one inch thick, this 5.4-pound notebook is easy to carry. Lift the lid (no fumbling with a latch required) and you’ll find a black full-sized keyboard with a good feel. Below the keyboard is a touchpad with a scroll area. The touchpad’s surface created a bit more friction on our fingertips than other notebooks’ touchpads did, but it’s easy to get used to. WinBook included a few programmable hot keys but no dedicated volume or mute controls.
 
Text looks sharp on the 14.1-inch WXGA (1280 x 768-pixel) widescreen display, though aging eyes might find the default font sizes a tad small. The screen exhibits a wide side-to-side viewing angle, with almost no drop-off in brightness, just some glare from the glossy coating. Unfortunately, the screen’s vertical viewing-angle performance is poor; the display looks washed out when viewed even slightly off-axis.

 

DVD playback showed rich colors, though scenes were a bit oversaturated with red. On the plus side, the T230’s built-in stereo speakers delivered good sound quality and plenty of volume, making this a solid choice for a personal theater.
 
The T230 is equipped enough to serve as your primary PC. In addition to the welcome widescreen, you get a spacious 120GB hard drive and a multiformat, dual-layer DVD burner. The full contingent of ports includes four USB 2.0, FireWire, S-Video, VGA, an ExpressCard slot, and a 4-in-1 memory card reader. We wish WinBook offered a PC Card slot instead of the ExpressCard, which has not yet reached its prime.
 
The 1.6-GHz Intel Core T2300 means plenty of processing power for demanding chores. The T230 delivered a score of 236 on our MobileMark 2005 test, putting it near the front of the pack among the thin-and-light models we’ve tested this year. With a score of 1,016 on 3DMark03, the embedded Intel GMA 950 GPU delivers enough 3D kick for occasional low-res 3D gaming.
 
Short battery life is the T230’s biggest drawback, at least for those who do a lot of work or play unplugged. With a runtime of 2 hours and 32 minutes, this system’s endurance is about an hour less than that of other notebooks in its class, and you can’t upgrade to an extended-capacity battery.
 
WinBook backs the T230 with the typical one-year parts-and-labor warranty with weekday phone tech support. So if you crave a widescreen and other extras in a portable, powerful package—and don’t need a lot of battery life—the WinBook T230 is worth a look.