Reviews / Pegasus 210 - Computer Shopper

Rock Pegasus 210

If you spend a lot of time in departure lounges or using your computer at the bottom of your garden, the Pegasus 210 could be just what you·re looking for. It survived for over six hours in our light-use battery test. Rather than use a massive battery the 210 manages this through the use of components with extremely low power consumption. Even at full tilt, it consumes just 16W. The screen is backlit using LEDs rather than fluorescent tubes, and the Intel A110 processor has a single core that runs at 800MHz.

The inevitable downside is performance that can be politely described as basic, as demonstrated by a score of 44 overall in our Windows benchmarks. In practice, this didn·t hamper simple tasks such as basic web browsing and word processing, but more demanding software was painfully slow, and navigating Windows felt pretty lethargic, too.

The laptop comes with a choice of Windows Vista Business or XP Professional. We recommend the latter for the lower demands it places on the hardware.
Build quality is excellent. The slim, magnesium alloy lid provides ample protection for the high-quality 12in screen. The keyboard isn·t as satisfying to type on as the HP or Lenovo·s keyboards and its single-height Return key is easy to miss, but it·s spill-resistant and feels robust. It·s also reassuring to have a three-year pan-European warranty.

The performance rules out entertainment software, so the 80GB disk should be sufficient, but it·s a little dissapointing that a DVD writer isn·t integrated or an external drive supplied as standard. A 3G modem capable of speeds up to 3.6Mbit/s is built into the Pegasus 210 3G, which costs £118 more.

The Pegasus 210·s build quality, weight and battery life are amoung the best here, but we wouldn·t be happy to spend over £1000 on a laptop that trundles along at such a leisurely pace. The Toshiba doesn·t feel as robust but it has more all-round appeal.

RESULTS
3 / 5

Summary:

Superb battery life
Strong and light
Poor performance