Product Listing

BenQ Joybook P41 (AMD Turion 64 X2)

By Vincent Chang - 22 Jul 2006

Conclusion

Conclusion

It's obviously not an ultra portable but portable it is. It's not going to razzle-dazzle you with its multimedia goodness (despite its widescreen pretentiousness) but it's not a stranger to multimedia. It's not really meant for business (with only the elementary security measures) but you can easily run your presentations off it (S-Video, VGA analog output but no DVI) if required. It's not suited for serious gaming (integrated graphics), though it has DirectX 9.0 support and is sufficient to tackle Microsoft's next generation OS requirements. It has the latest dual core mobile processor from AMD but it's only the entry level Turion 64 X2 TL-50. And finally, it's not the quietest or the coolest of notebooks as the noise can be quite apparent once the notebook starts to work hard.

The BenQ Joybook P41 is targeted at the budget segment, with a recommended retail price of S$1,599. Its performance is nothing to crow about, but "functional and utilitarian" probably describes it best.

So how did the BenQ Joybook P41 really fare after going through our testing? Well, we found that its performance rather under-whelming compared to older notebooks of the single-core (Turion 64) variety. Stacked against the few Turion 64 X2 results that we had obtained, the BenQ fared better than a similar prototype from MSI, but only just. The power consumption did seem to have improved significantly though. Overall, we weren't too impressed by the performance that we saw. Battery life too was only of average expectancy (but reasonable considering it's 14-inch display) though the P41's relatively light weight ensured that it had a decent showing in our mobility index.

If you ask us, we aren't too sure what's the user group this notebook is focused on here, as the Joybook P41 seems to gravitate towards the jack-of-all-trades, master of none category. Given its competitive price bracket (S$1,599), our only conclusion is it fits the budget conscious. And that's probably what BenQ intended from the start. Students (of the non-gaming kind) in particular are users who would find in the BenQ Joybook P41 the right blend of utility and price. For schoolwork and presentations, this notebook would suffice more than adequately. It would also be suitable for simple leisurely pursuits like watching movies or surfing the Internet. In the end, even the budget conscious crowd may find better alternatives for their dollar, like the Dell Inspiron 640m, which poses a performance challenge with its Intel Core Duo processor and attractive pricing. Other vendors like Acer also have similar budget notebooks to compete, though maybe not in terms of portability. In short, the BenQ Joybook P41 is an entry-level notebook, which scores quite well in portability and price but lacks the extra oomph in performance.

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