First looks review: Evesham Quest A230 Turion 64 X2 notebook

The first AMD Turion 64 X2 notebook has made it into our labs in the form of Evesham’s Quest A230.

With its Turion platform struggling to make any real impact on Intel’s dominance of the notebook market, AMD must be hoping that finally it has got something worth shouting about.

The big feature of the Turion 64 X2 platform is, as you’ve probably guessed from the name, that it sports a dual-core 64bit processor.

Intel ’s current top-of-the-range mobile processor is dual core (and has been for some time), but not 64bit. However, this will soon change with the imminent release of Intel’s Core 2 Duo .

The first thing that strikes you about the Quest A230 is that it’s small. Not Sony Vaio small, but a definite decrease in size compared to Evesham notebooks we’ve reviewed recently such as the Voyager C550.

It’s also reasonably light, weighing 2.1kg including the battery.

The new Turions are available with clock speeds up to 2GHz, but Evesham has gone for the TL-52 version, which runs at 1.6GHz.

One of the big promises of AMD’s Turion specification is enhanced battery life. We’re currently in the process of running our tests and will deliver our findings early next week.

If the new dual-core Turion can’t match Intel’s current Core Duo, which has managed to achieve some decent battery scores, AMD is certainly in for a rough ride.

Graphics are taken care of by the Radeon X300 from ATI – not exactly groundbreaking, but this notebook isn’t designed with gamers in mind.

Other specs include an 80GB hard drive, 512MB of Ram and a 12in 1,280 x 800 display.

The price tag of the Quest A230 is remarkably low – just £799 inc VAT. This includes a three-year warranty (one year on-site).

Our first impressions are good. Evesham's Quest A230 Turion 64 X2 is small, reasonably light and, despite housing AMD’s latest dual-core 64bit mobile processor, it’s available for less than £800.

However, we’ll reserve judgement until we get those all-important benchmarks.

We'll be paying close attention to the processor and graphics scores, but it’s the battery life that really interests us.

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