Notebook review: Mesh Pegasus 3070

When it comes to building good-value PCs, Mesh can usually be counted on.

We fully expected the Pegasus 3070 to have the production hallmarks of a cheap notebook, but it has some components we thought could have been better.

For example, money saved using AMD’s 2.2GHz Turion 64 MT-40 processor could have been spent on increasing the 512MB of DDR Ram to 1GB. However, the Sysmark score of 158 was one of the fastest here.

PCmark was less forgiving, with this notebook garnering a paltry 890. This is predominantly due to the notebook’s graphics ability and the integrated Via/S3G chipset, which shares only 64MB of the system memory, and just isn’t powerful enough to do anything fancy in more than two dimensions.

It didn’t even have sufficient memory to run 3Dmark and notched up a sloth-like 3.67fps when running Far Cry at its native resolution of 1,024 x 768. In its defence, though, nothing else in this group test is suitably equipped to play modern 3D games at any decent detail setting or screen resolution.

The 15.1in screen is bright, sturdy and balances colours well across the whole display.

Using the eight-speed dual-layer DVD writer to play a movie provided a good visual experience; however, the cinematics were a little jumpy at times, which is proof of the notebook’s low graphics clout. Battery life wasn’t too hot, either, achieving just over two hours before dropping dead.

Four USB ports are included and all ports and sockets, bar those for the headphone and microphone, are on the left-hand side. There’s no memory card reader but TV-out and VGA sockets will allow connection to a larger display.

At 2.8kg, the notebook is portable and there’s a heap of productivity software included too.

This article is part of a group test on £699 notebooks. Others are:
Intro and Editor's Choice
Acer Aspire 9503EWSMi 
AJP M551G-E
Elonex Prowire 153
Evesham Voyager A215
Fujitsu Siemens Amilo M 6450G
Hi-Grade Notino C5515-1700
HP Compaq nx6125 (EK157ET)
Mesh Pegasus 3070
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