Review: Packard Bell Easynote BG45-U-300 notebook computer

This has been the year of the mini-notebook, with several released at a price of less than £300.

There have been plenty of larger notebooks in that time, too, but the Packard Bell Easynote BG45 sits in between the two.

It has a larger screen – at 12in – than the typical 10in found on the mini-notebooks. The display was clear and easy to read but extremely glossy, meaning it suffered quite badly from reflections in bright light, making it harder to use.

The BG45 has a solid metal case, which is surrounded by a soft black rubber coating that provides an extra amount of grip compared with the plastic cases that are, again, typical of mini-notebooks. It is not as light, although its weight of 1.6kg makes it very easily portable.

The rubber coating gives the impression that it might bounce if you were to drop it, although that's probably not the case, so it isn’t recommended. The chassis is brushed black aluminium, with white lights surrounding the important parts such as the mouse trackpad and the power button.

The trackpad is different from the standard rectangular ones found on most notebooks: instead it has a circular area, which is responsive and easy to use, and has a coating that makes it easy to glide a finger over it. The left and right mouse buttons, although recessed into the chassis in another nice design touch, are responsive and of a good size.

The keyboard, however, is disappointing. Although the BG45 has a large chassis the keyboard doesn’t make the most of it, being cramped into the middle with a good few inches of wasted space around the edges. This means that typing was sometimes a little difficult and those with bigger-than-average fingers may struggle here.

In terms of performance the BG45 is more similar to the mini-notebooks than to other full-size models. While the Intel Pentium Dual Core T2390 processor is adequate for office tasks and internet browsing, the graphics performance was disappointing. That means those wanting to run high-end games on this notebook will be unable to do so.

However, it shouldn't impact on people using more standard applications, although budding video and photo editors will notice a slowdown when working. It comes with Windows Vista Home Basic rather than the more common Home Premium, which doesn’t support the fancy graphics elements of Windows Vista or a few other features.

The 1GB of memory is also on the small side – we'd expect to see all notebooks having a minimum of 2GB these days, which adds to the problems if you try to run more than a couple of programs at once.

However, we were disappointed to see that while the notebook comes with Nero disk-burning software, there is no DVD writer. It does come with the more useful Microsoft Works 9 for word processing, spreadsheets and other office tasks. Sound quality from the stereo speakers mounted below the palm rest was reasonable.

The BG45, then, has more or less the same set of features as a mini-notebook but in a bigger case, and a bigger £399 price tag. It's still a good computer, but it falls between two stools – it's not as portable as smaller computers, and not as powerful as bigger ones, both of which can be had for similar prices.