The Pegasus 665-T56 is billed as Rock’s ‘gaming to go’ Core 2 Duo notebook, which sounds like a bargain at £849. But in fact, as far as 3D prowess goes, there are far better performers here. Nonetheless, the 665-T56 is quite capable of playing the latest games without jerkiness, if you’re prepared to compromise on detail settings and resolution.

Scores of 2,818 in 3Dmark05 and a frame rate of 55.66fps in Far Cry put it in third place behind the Asus, which uses the same 256MB Nvidia Geforce Go 7600 graphics chip, and the Evesham which employs ATI’s Mobility Radeon X1600.

Rock uses the T5600 version of the Core 2 Duo processor, which runs at 1.83GHz and has a 2MB L2 cache. Combine this with a couple of 512MB sticks of DDR2-667 memory and, on paper, you’ve got a strong competitor in this round-up.

However, while the 665-T56 excelled in PCmark05, scoring 4,277, the Sysmark result of 204 wasn’t as good as it could have been. That said, along with all the other laptops here, the Pegasus will run all of today’s software at a fast pace. The difference will come when undertaking hard-core processing duties such as video encoding or image rendering.

Along with the Sony, the Rock sports the biggest hard disk here. Even by today's standards, 120GB is a decent size and, considering this notebook costs less than £900, it represents excellent value for money.

Like Asus, the Rock’s 15.4in widescreen TFT display is one of the best here. Not only will it display a maximum resolution of 1,280x800 but the image is pin-sharp. Unlike other screens here with anti-glare coating, Rock’s X-Glass system seems to be a cut above the rest, projecting a balanced image quality from a variety of viewing angles.

At 3kg excluding adapter it’s not the lightest notebook in the group, but with its granite grey colouring and smooth lines, it’s definitely one of the better looking. The positioning of the ports and sockets seem considered, with nothing looking out of place.

Among the connectivity highlights is a DVI port, a digital audio output and an Express Card slot, though there are only three USB sockets. 802.11g wireless networking is fitted as standard and there’s a Gigabit Ethernet port too.

Like the Evesham, the Rock continues the trend of having powerful graphics and processing power but absolutely dire battery life. Our Mobilemark test squeezed just one hour, 47 minutes out of the 665-T56 in the Productivity suite and a mere one hour, 35 minutes when watching a DVD.

Rock has incorporated a ‘silent mode’ feature into its notebook, though. Pressing a button above the keyboard reduces fan noise for those pensive moments.

Windows XP Home is its operating system and Rock includes copies of Roxio Creator 7, Microsoft Works 8 and a 60-day trial of Microsoft Office 2003. There’s also one month of free Wifi access with The Cloud and a superb three-year collect-and-return warranty. Rock also states that if you have a change of heart up to seven days after purchase, it will give you a refund.

As usual, Rock has built a notebook that offers good value for money and has taken care with its design. With all things considered, the battery life is a sour point on what is otherwise a very good notebook.

This article is part of a group test of budget Core 2 Duo notebooks
See also:
Evesham Voyager C530
Hi-grade Notino D7000-5500
HP Compaq NX7400 (RH393ET)
MSI Megabook M662
Sony VGN-C1Z/B
Asus F3Jv

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