LG T1-72C1A

With a slim, angular shape and an attractive colour scheme, the LG T1-72C1A is one of the most strikingly designed notebooks we have had through our offices. It looks excellent and exhibited quite good battery life, however its performance in our benchmarks wasn't quite on par with some other 1.8GHz machines.

It came as no surprise that the T1 has won awards for its design. Its gloss piano black external casing opens to reveal a slim display with a black bezel, complemented by a matte white keyboard. The whole aesthetic is extremely classy and it is without a doubt one of the most stylish notebooks on the market. Measuring 334mm x 240mm x 21.5mm, not much space is wasted, and its rather impressive weight of just 1.9kg means it is on the light side for a notebook this size.

It is also well constructed; the screen is rigid and doesn't bend easily under pressure, while the keyboard is spacious and comfortable to use. LG hasn't shrunk any keys in order to cram extra things in on this model, and this, combined with a little extra space where you can rest wrists, makes typing on the T1 a breeze. The touchpad is quite responsive, as is the scrollpad, and LG has also included a biometric finger scanner, which we found worked very well. There is little in the way of shortcut buttons, with just some basic volume keys and a bass boost button running along the top of the keyboard, next to the power button.

However despite having an excellent design, this notebook didn't score the star rating it could have. Its performance in our benchmarks was a little below the competition. With a 1.83GHz T2400 Intel Core Duo processor, a 60GB hard drive and a very nice 1GB of RAM (upgradeable to 4GB), we were anticipating some strong results from the T1, but its score of just 81 in World Bench 5 didn't live up to our expectations. Many machines with the same, or slower processors, and only 512MB of RAM have achieved similar or higher scores, putting the T1 well below average. It is still more than powerful enough for day to day office tasks, and the 1GB of memory will be a great boon during more complicated tasks such as media encoding, but the overall result is disappointing nonetheless.

The extra RAM did makes its presence felt in our gaming tests where the T1 scored slightly higher than some competing models, but as it uses onboard Intel GMA950 graphics, it was never going to be a games powerhouse. With a score of 6105 in 3DMark 2001, it will be suitable for games that are a few years old, but don't expect to run any modern titles acceptably.

We were slightly more impressed with the T1's results in our battery test. During our MobileMark productivity test, which checks the machine's performance with a variety of basic office tasks, it lasted 212 minutes, which is a fairly impressive result for a notebook with these specifications. This is more than adequate for professional users who move around a lot, and also indicates that the T1 has enough battery life to watch DVDs while on the road.

The 14.1in widescreen display further enhances this machine's media capabilities. With a resolution of 1280x800, it has great colour balance and displayed sharp, clear images with minimal signs of ghosting. It is perfect for movie playback, but also makes most other desktop tasks a little more enjoyable. Do take note though; it has the increasingly popular glossy finish, which can cause reflection issues under fluorescent lights.

The T1 sports all the usual connectivity options including Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11 a/b/g wireless, a 56Kbps modem and Bluetooth. There is also an Express Card slot and a five-in-one card reader (SD, MMC, xD, MS, MS Pro). It comes with a DVD writer that can write all the major formats, including DVD+RW, DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD-RW and DVD-RAM.

Overall the T1 is a solid notebook. The design is certain to turn some heads, and if that is what you are after then it could be a consideration, but there are other units out there with better performance.