MV Sirius

Sirius might be the brightest light in the night sky but this MV notebook doesn't quite match the Dog Star's shine. MV is promoting the Sirius as a budget portable for those interested in mobile game-playing as well as all that boring document editing.

It goes some way to meeting its own brief - it comes with an ATi Mobility Radeon 9700 graphics card, which scored better than respectably in one of our graphics tests. However, the very latest games may need to have their graphic quality setting lowered a notch if players are to avoid irritating slowdowns in the action.

The Sirius has plenty of processing bite to go with its graphics bark, with a Pentium 4 processor running at 3GHz. This gives the notebook a problem, though, as the power required to drive the powerful chip saps the battery. It's a common problem for gaming notebooks and is sometimes solved by using larger batteries, which makes such notebooks anything but portable.

With MV stressing mobility and gameplay in the same sales pitch, something had to give - and it's the battery life. Our test showed one hour and 30 minutes, but we fear that anyone trying to play 3D games while out and about would see the battery wither a bit faster.

And while the PC did well in our general processing power test, it wasn't quite as good as its 3GHz rating would suggest.

There's no integrated Bluetooth or Wi-Fi but you can add either for £58. The 60Gb hard disk and 512Mb of memory is about right at this price, there's a recordable disc drive in the DVD plus (+) and minus (-) formats and a memory card reader.

The display is a slight disappointment from a gaming perspective. The 15in screen is adequate for tasks such as document editing, but is a little dull so it may be tricky to see detail while out and about where ambient lighting conditions are beyond control.

Leaving the gaming aspect aside, the Sirius is adequate in most respects, but one or two of its design elements proved irritating. While provided with plenty of options for plugging in various peripherals, users will doubtless find it annoying to have to reach around the back of the unit to connect USB 2 devices, especially when the lesser used FireWire port is situated within easy reach at the front.

The keyboard is a little spongy but is comfortable to use in every respect but one. We know that notebook manufacturers have less room to accommodate normal keys but we wish they would stop moving the position of frequently used modifier keys.

In this case, the Ctrl key has been moved in from its usual bottom left and right spot to sit just next to the Alt key. Those used to keyboard shortcuts involving the Ctrl key will be driven up the wall.

Contact:
MV 0871 855 4668
www.go-mv.com

Also consider:
Evesham Voyager x4