Pitched against stylish designs such as the Asus and Sony in this group test, the Evesham Voyager C530 isn’t that enticing to look at.

Its sturdy, square design won’t attract the style-conscious and the plastic, metallic tone throughout suggests that grey has finally become the new beige.

However, looks can deceive, and you can always count on an Evesham to provide excellent performance for the money. At a clock speed of 1.83GHz, the T5600 may not be the quickest Core 2 Duo processor here but Evesham’s engineers have managed to use it to full effect.

With 1GB of Corsair DDR2-677 memory to help, the Voyager C530 managed some of the best test results, which also shows just how much of a difference having that extra core makes.

Scores of 225 in Sysmark and 4,310 in PCmark05 are impressive and allowed us to fly through a number of simultaneous software tasks without any sign of faltering. For instance, we ripped a music CD to mp3, touched up our holiday photos and had music playing in the background, without any glitches or slowdowns.

Its graphical prowess was also among the best here, scoring 3,431 in 3Dmark05 and 66.62fps in Far Cry, which is impressive for a notebook of this price and looked great on the robust 15.4in WXGA X-Bright widescreen display.

Undoubtedly this is due to the ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 chipset, which has 512MB of its own dedicated graphics memory.

A 100GB Sata hard disk provides enough storage space to get going with the Windows Media Center operating system but we all know how hungry video files are; record too many episodes of Robin Hood and hard disk space soon gets gobbled up.

Naturally, there’s a recordable DVD writer built into the side and four USB sockets to attach external storage devices if things start to look tight.

The media centre theme is completed with a TV tuner, DVI for connection to external monitors, a digital audio output and memory card reader. An Express C ard slot can also be found on one edge, as can a mini-Firewire socket.

The Evesham may be fast and feature-rich but all these components use a lot of power, and bring the total weight to 2.75kg excluding adapter. Running for just over an hour and a half before needing a recharge means you’ll need to keep an eye out for power sockets.

The space surrounding the keyboard is pretty sparse, with just one shortcut button that puts the Evesham Voyager C530 into a battery-saving mode; a wise choice considering how poor its life is away from the mains.

In use, the Evesham is comfortable, with a plenty of space to rest your palms when typing. The trackpad has no scroll panels but, unlike other notebooks we’ve seen, is thankfully positioned directly below centre of the keyboard.

Software includes Microsoft Works 8, Roxio Easy Media Creator 7 (rather than the currently shipping version 9) and Bullguard Internet Security.

There’s no ‘Vista Capable’ sticker in sight but it’s unlikely to be short of the horsepower needed to run Microsoft’s new operating system when it arrives.

Like all Evesham computers, the Voyager C530 comes with 24-hour online support and Big Fix for remote diagnostics. The warranty provides one-year on-site service and two years return to base.

This article is part of a group test of budget Core 2 Duo notebooks
See also:
Asus F3Jv
Hi-grade Notino D7000-5500
HP Compaq NX7400 (RH393ET)
MSI Megabook M662
Rock Pegasus 665-T56
Sony VGN-C1Z/B

Graphs and tables of features can be read via our pdf downloads above.