Asus/Hi-Grade Notino T9400

Things have been a bit quiet in the Asus/Hi-Grade stable of late, so it's good to see that the engineers haven't been resting on their laurels.

This new single-spindle notebook is one of the few on the market to feature a detachable MP3 player. It's a pretty canny idea. The dainty 64Mb player slots into the front of the notebook, where you transfer MP3 files from the notebook's hard drive to the device. It also recharges its batteries while docked.

An easy-to-use utility for transferring your files is preloaded. The device has a small LCD display at the front, and you control it using the play, fast forward, rewind and menu buttons.

There's a headphone socket on the side, and also a mini-USB socket. Using the supplied cable, you can connect the MP3 player to any machine with a USB port. The player can also function as a dictation machine as there's a miniature microphone built in. All in all, it's a very useful little extra.

None of this would matter in the slightest if the notebook itself wasn't up to scratch. But, thankfully, it's the best Asus/Hi-Grade we've seen.

The 14.1in screen is excellent. At its native resolution of 1024 x 768 the image is bright and sharp with no dark patches or dead pixels evident.

We've complained in the past about the keyboards in Asus/Hi-Grade notebooks, so it's no surprise to see that it has undergone a redesign. The keys are substantial enough to type on for long periods without your hands getting tired, and the springiness inherent in past versions has been overcome. A touchpad is the pointer option of choice.

It's not the thinnest ultra-portable in the world, but then it can't be due mainly to the removable MP3 player. It measures 310 x 255 x 28.5mm (w x h x d) and weighs 2.2kg, which is certainly light enough to carry around with you.

There are no internal drives, obviously, which is where the Aibox comes in handy. This is an external media bay which plugs into a 50pin socket at the rear of the notebook. The cable is a little short, so you'll have to keep it close to the notebook when connected.

It can accept CD, DVD or CD-RW drives, and even a second hard disk. It is even possible to hot swap the drives using the preloaded utility. This version comes with a DVD drive. Hi-Grade also supplies a USB floppy drive.

Despite the fact that this is an ultra-portable notebook, there are still plenty of ports to go round. Both a modem and 10/100 Ethernet ports are located at the rear, so all your connectivity options are covered. There are also two USB, a parallel port, PS/2, D-SUB and audio ports. There's even a mini FireWire port on the left-hand side as well as an infra-red port.

The whole caboodle is driven by Intel's 815EM chipset, which also provides the graphics. This is fine for 2D applications, but you won't be able to play games on this Notino.

Hi-Grade has packed the Notino with a pretty powerful level of kit. First, there's a mobile Pentium III inside, which runs at 1Ghz. There's also 256Mb of memory which should see you through the odd intensive application or two. There's also a generous 30Gb hard drive.

Windows Me is preinstalled, and you also get copies of Microsoft's Works Suite 2001 and Norton AntiVirus for your money. Performance is on a par with other 1Ghz notebooks and with plenty of memory, you should be covered for some time to come.

One thing that could easily have slipped is battery life but, fortunately, this is not the case. The Notino lasted one hour and 43 minutes in our rundown test. This is pretty impressive for an ultra-portable, and is roughly the same score as Hewlett Packard's Omnibook 500. As always, you will get more than this in general use.

The T9400 is an excellent product and, at £1299 ex VAT, it's a bargain.

Contact: Hi-Grade
0800 0740403
www.higrade.com.